
UK Cops Say Visiting the Dark Web Is a Potential Sign of Terrorism - askl56
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pay4gz/uk-cops-say-visiting-the-dark-web-is-a-potential-sign-of-terrorism
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gozur88
The fact that cops would want to be aware of people using the Dark Web doesn't
seem particularly surprising or alarming. When you're looking for bad actors
you build up a profile based on previous bad actors. I used to work in fraud
prevention, and we found, for example, for our particular product if someone
opened an account and then changed addresses within two weeks, there was a
pretty good chance it was identity fraud.

Of course there's nothing nefarious about opening an account two weeks before
you move to a new place, but it would get you looked at because so many people
who did were fraudsters.

The goofy thing about this story is the fact that they circulated a _leaflet_
listing something like this as suspicious behavior. They're going to get
buried under bogus tips from nosy neighbors as actual terrorists avoid doing
this kind of stuff publicly.

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techmagus
Yes, exactly. For those who are not like you and me, people who probably
subscribe to "if you have nothing hide…" will suddenly get suspicious of us.
Sure, maybe not terrorism, maybe buying "unusual" items, say illegal drugs.

It's the way they worded it. Too encompassing. Lacking information, and yes,
distributing leaflets. People who doesn't understand what the dark web is will
simply believe what they've read. (And "dark" being in the phrase…)

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techmagus
"holds passports or other documents in different names for no obvious reason"
\-- their spies are terrorists, wow

"travels for long periods of time, but is vague about where they're going" \--
seriously?! Must every citizen post their travel itinerary now?

"is visiting the dark web, or ordering unusual items online" \-- well, they
need to start arresting thousands if not millions of people \-- also "unusual
items" like what? When is something "unusual"?

These UK Cops are spreading FUD and turning people, families, against each
other.

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jomkr
I'm a liberal/hacker/software-engineer - you know the type, even joined the
Pirate Party years ago.

But am I the only one that doesn't have a problem with this. The set of people
that visit the dark web intersects with the set of terrorists so obviously
they should look into those people.

>their spies are terrorists, wow

Their spies are a special case.

If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you to
live here.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
>If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you
to live here.

Oh please, this is just another way of saying "if you're disenfranchised you
don't belong here."

People born in the UK are absolutely forced to live there in the short term--
You need a passport to leave the country, and the means to afford
resettlement.

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petre
The only country capable to deal with terrorism today is Israel. In the UK and
the US there's a generalized state of paranoia. Or maybe finger pointing is
just a sign of incompetence? Everybody is _suspicious_ now, yet they failed to
act on warnings from Italian security agencies regarding the perpetrators of
the London Bridge attack.

~~~
techmagus
Add to that, the intelligence the Philippines gave to the US re: threat of,
what we later know as, 9/11, was ignored. No doubt (and this was also
reported) because they don't trust "third-world" countries, or from
intelligence agencies that is not themselves.

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savethefuture
Maintaining privacy is now terrorism, what a world.

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sitkack
Probably true, it moves someone from 1-in-15m to 1-in-14.5m chances of being a
terrorist.

