
FBI asked Sony for data on user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine - danso
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp73/fbi-asked-sony-playstation-4-user-data-cocaine-dealer
======
skunkworker
That reminds me of when they found out that people would clandestinely use the
draft of a shared email account in order to send messages without actually
sending an email. It’s ingenious and terrorists and even General Pertaeus used
it.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-
the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/?outputType=amp)

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special/techsidebar.html)

~~~
newguy1234
Sounds interesting but now there are encrypted decentralized e-mail systems
like bitmessage. So if you are doing anything supersecret then bitmessage is
the perfect solution.

~~~
maxerickson
Connecting to mail.google.com is frequently going to be much less conspicuous
than participating in a peer to peer network.

~~~
chrischen
That’s why you hide even when you have nothing to hide, so that hiding doesn’t
itself become a signal.

~~~
acollins1331
That argument works assuming you're the only one being watched. "Oh chris
hasn't done anything bad even though he's hiding, we can just ignore him now".
It's more like "99.8% of people don't hide, chrischen is one that does,
monitor that guy".

~~~
chrischen
That argument is why Apple tries to encrypt by default... and is actively
employed by privacy advocates.

Your iMessage history is hardly banking website info, yet it employs the same
“Military Grade Encryption.”

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qxnqd
The other day I was playing in a private (pirate) server of World of Warcraft
and some guy was yelling in one of the major cities that he was selling pills
and shipping worldwide. I wondered if he was serious. It was, definitely,
really original.

~~~
wil421
I can remember this being done between my college dorms when Halo 2 came out.
We were not able to play Xbox online but figured out we could play over LAN.
Business hippies found an opportunity to spread the good word.

A friends brother also met someone online from “Amsterdam” around 2003 who
would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent
back...

~~~
lawlessone
>Nothing was ever sent back...

perfect scam really, who is going to call the police and say their drugs never
arrived?

~~~
na85
By the same token, who's going to go to the police and say they got the shit
kicked out of them for not holding up their end of a drug deal?

~~~
jimmyspice
That is different because your face is now evidence something happened.

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save_ferris
A friend of mine recently showed me an instagram account that sold magic
mushrooms. To place an order, you had to friend the account and send them a DM
with a specific set of emoji.

I couldn't believe it, might as well have been a public Venmo feed.

~~~
013a
Oh yeah. This is one of those mindblowers that you can tell even older young
adults and we realize how out of touch we are getting with The Youth.

"Kids are getting bootleg THC vape liquid, where are they getting it?" "Oh,
its gotta be their dumb older friends." "Well, not usually; would you believe
The Internet?" "Oh sure, some dark web site." "Nope. Its a popular app."
"Snapchat, with its self-destroying messages for sure?" "Nope." "I hear a lot
about tik tok these days, its popular with the youth." "Ha, no, the Chinese
are actually good at censorship and moderation, unlike us." "Ok, craigslist?
that's always been a little seedy" "No one uses that anymore, least of all
kids; Would you believe... Instagram." "What?!"

~~~
Groxx
If it has a messaging system, it will be used for illicit sales. Doesn't
matter what system it is.

If it's popular, doubly so.

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sneak
The burden on the state for a search warrant is also hilariously bad/low;
basically they can say whatever fantasies they like in a warrant application
to a court and they will almost always get rubber stamped.

The idea that you need probable cause for a search warrant in the USA is only
plausible to someone who hasn’t read very many of them that bear a judge’s
signature. Doubly so when computers of any kind are involved.

Whenever you see the phrase “based on my training and experience”, a colossal
steaming heap is almost always about to immediately follow.

“Only disclosed upon a valid warrant” is no privacy protection whatsoever.

~~~
newguy1234
Completely agree. This is why it is important for individual users to take
responsibility for their own privacy.

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Scoundreller
> "The CHS [Confidential Human Source]

Anyone want to guess which other animals the FBI has convinced to talk?

Because there are some dogs and cats that might solve a lot of crimes.

~~~
whoopdedo
Well, there is the case of the parrot trained to alert its drug-trafficking
owners when the police were nearby.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-
dru...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-drug-dealers-
raid-police-brazil-teresina-custody-a8887906.html)

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jimbob45
This would seem to be Exhibit A on why otherwise innocuous data collection by
companies can come back to harm you.

~~~
ossworkerrights
Specifically, how does catching drug dealers harm you, unless you are a drug
dealer? IMO this is exactly why we should collect more data to catch them,
terrorists, pedos, and so on. And this is a good example to why if you are not
a criminal you need not worry. If you are, it can indeed harm you.

~~~
asaddhamani
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have
nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech
because you have nothing to say"

[https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-
is-...](https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-
way-to-think-about-surveillance/)

~~~
ossworkerrights
I do care about the right to privacy, and the freedom of speech. But I also
care about police being able to investigate these new ways of communication
that criminals have at their disposal. If it were classic letters, phone
calls, or a restaurant discussion these would have easily been intercepted by
the police. The same needs to happen with online communication when there is a
crime taking place. And online communication can only be "intercepted" by
storing it somewhere and making it available when need be.

~~~
asaddhamani
It's a slippery slope. Making a system insecure for one makes it insecure for
all. A 'secure' data storage system with a backdoor is not a 'secure' system
at all.

And criminals can build their own encrypted apps. They don't need to use PSN
to communicate. And if you look at some of the more oppressive regimes in the
world, a lot of things that you and I would consider freedom of speech, they
would consider a crime and lock you up for it.

"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person
should suffer"

~~~
ossworkerrights
I agree with the statement that oppressive regimes around the world abuse
this, but I would argue it's up to peoples of those countries to fight back.

"They don't need to use PSN to communicate." but they do, and that's the
issue. We know they use publicly accessible communication systems that law
enforcement needs to have visibility over _when required and approved by a
judge_. Therefore I think the issue is how do we make sure that law
enforcement can access such data when they genuinely need to? What laws need
to change in that regard, instead of what laws need to be made so we can
obscure their visibility even more, and have the likes of ISIS or other
organised cults / crime rings organise right in front of us. To be honest,
although a very bad thing, i'd rather have one person falsely accused rather
than 100 people dead because of a terrorist attack organised on the PSN
network that we just wouldn't hand data over, so we can protect kids' privacy
over making jokes about "yo mama".

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rolltiide
When your PSN buddy is a government informant

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kamfc
Um...is this effective overall or does it feel the government's resource is
being misdirected at a superficial level. How hard is it to get to the root of
evil?

~~~
newguy1234
Of course it is a waste but it allows the FBI to make claims about how they
busted a "kingpin". The war on drugs was never about actually stopping the
flow of drugs. It just gives a justification to keep funds flowing into
FBI/DEA etc type agencies. If you really wanted to stop the flow of drugs then
we need a war on addiction. When you compare how much we spend on interdiction
type enforcement versus drug treatment, it is obvious that the United Stats
was never interested in actually helping people.

~~~
FillardMillmore
I think the state of addiction is often times a symptom of a larger problem -
similar to the symptom of terrorism - what social and geopolitical factors
have driven young men in the Middle East into the embrace of radicals?
Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven
people into the throes of addiction?

I think often, when fighting or attempting to mitigate a symptom, you may
decrease said symptom in the short-term but in the long-term, precious little
is being done to solve the problem (e.g. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on
Terrorism, etc.).

~~~
npo9
> Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven
> people into the throes of addiction?

It’s not the whole story, but access to cheap addictive substances is part of
the equation of how someone becomes addicted.

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Jagat
Is it just me or did anyone else read the title as: FBI asked Sony for
Playstation users in order to sell cocaine to them.

~~~
anonytrary
We're off topic, but I also read it that way at first. The title could be less
ambiguous. Setting the user data as X makes your interpretation much clearer:

> FBI asked Sony for X to sell cocaine

Where X = data on user who used PlayStation network.

~~~
wcunning
Disagree -- that's more confusing because the English use of parentheses is to
encapsulate something that can be _removed_ , so your version is equivalent to

> FBI asked Sony for to sell cocaine

I would instead group as follows

> FBI asked Sony for data on (user who used PlayStation network to sell
> cocaine)

~~~
anonytrary
I noticed this as well and updated my comment. Also, I don't think either of
those examples work. It makes more sense to talk about an "order of
operations"; unfortunately parenthesis in English are not used to specify an
order of operations. In this case, the order of operations is ambiguous in the
title.

