Live data from Hacker News

Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 68 posts

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#41
post #20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is accusing him of anything other than hosting some poor joke domains. However, his domain was the one that the emails threatening several school districts came from. And while I'm sure they don't think he's the culprit, his server would still have some evidence on it.

Point of order: gratuitous use of the word "nigger" is not a joke. Jokes are funny, or at least attempt to be funny. This doesn't qualify. This is something other than a joke.

It's shock humor. Whether you perceive it to be subjectively funny doesn't affect how others see it. You could call it childish, but it's still a joke.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#42
Imagine if this was regular mail.

It's the equivalent of German seizing private mail from EVERYONE that uses the hypothetical Cock Postal Service because one individual used that same service in the US to make a threat.

This is ridiculous. Outright abuse of power and invasion of privacy. Yet another reason to encrypt everything.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#43
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not responsive or relevant to this situation, in two very important ways: first, this isn't just any email service, a threat which cost millions of dollars was made from this service. Second, and more crucially, the service was NOT shut down.

> a threat which cost millions of dollars It was the reaction to the threat which cost millions of dollars. We should be careful to distinguish between the costs of terrorism and the costs of our reaction to it.

You might think differently if you were responsible for those children. Do you want to take the risk that it might be a real threat? How do you tell the difference between a real threat and one that isn't real? I'm guessing the people at the school district thought the small risk wasn't worth it, and decided to close the schools. Who would want to be labelled as the person who didn't close the schools if someone ended up getting killed? Even if the threat seems implausible, it must be a very difficult decision to make. There have been many bomb threats recently, probably mostly implausible, but for every one of them the airline acts as if it might be a real threat.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#44
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that one should be allowed to threaten to kill people in one country from another, and not be held accountable?

No, he definitely was not saying that.

That seemed to be the implication.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#45

Imagine if this was regular mail. It's the equivalent of German seizing private mail from EVERYONE that uses the hypothetical Cock Postal Service because one individual used that same service in the US to make a threat. This is ridiculous. Outright abuse of power and invasion of privacy. Yet another reason to encrypt everything.

It's more like seizing the customer records from Cock Postal Service (presumably operated by James May).

My guess is that the fact this guy ran the operation from his bedroom, and they weren't sure whether he would co-operate or not, was the reason they seized the disk rather than just subpoena him. Presumably if it was hotmail or gmail this wouldn't have happened.

I think it's good that this scumbag cocksucker is going to get his commuppence (I'm talking about the idiot who sent the email, not the guy who runs the cock email service). He's obviously a bit of an idiot to use an email service that says "will report any illegal activity to the relevant authorities" rather than one that is actually properly encrypted (if such a beast even exists at the moment -- they seem to all get DDoSed out of existence by China or similar pretty quickly).

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#46
post #7
post #2

cock.li. The proud owner of nigge.rs, horsefucker.org and goat.si. RIP in peace

The "anonymous mail service with offensive names" could be made a standard indicator of a country's freedom of speech status. Actually, that'd be a good research project: setup and host such a service in as many countries as possible, wait as they get shutdown (+6 points)/subpoenaed (+3)/ddosed (+1) and make a map.

At a security conference a couple of years ago in Melbourne, a speaker said that for entertainment, he used to set up a Tor exit node and time how long it took to get the not-legally-enforceable ceast-and-desist letter from the authorities. Apparently he had it right down to a couple of hours.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a threat which cost millions of dollars It was the reaction to the threat which cost millions of dollars. We should be careful to distinguish between the costs of terrorism and the costs of our reaction to it.

You might think differently if you were responsible for those children. Do you want to take the risk that it might be a real threat? How do you tell the difference between a real threat and one that isn't real? I'm guessing the people at the school district thought the small risk wasn't worth it, and decided to close the schools. Who would want to be labelled as the person who didn't close the schools if someone ende…

You might not, too. The LA district shut down. The NY district, which also received a threat, did not. Why? And why the difference in response?

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might think differently if you were responsible for those children. Do you want to take the risk that it might be a real threat? How do you tell the difference between a real threat and one that isn't real? I'm guessing the people at the school district thought the small risk wasn't worth it, and decided to close the schools. Who would want to be labelled as the person who didn't close the schools if someone ende…

You might not, too. The LA district shut down. The NY district, which also received a threat, did not. Why? And why the difference in response?

I'm aware of that, and I don't know the answer. All I'm saying is that it was not necessarily unreasonable.

Re: Cock.li e-mail server seized by German authorities, admin announces

#50

Imagine if this was regular mail. It's the equivalent of German seizing private mail from EVERYONE that uses the hypothetical Cock Postal Service because one individual used that same service in the US to make a threat. This is ridiculous. Outright abuse of power and invasion of privacy. Yet another reason to encrypt everything.

It's more like seizing the customer records from Cock Postal Service (presumably operated by James May). My guess is that the fact this guy ran the operation from his bedroom, and they weren't sure whether he would co-operate or not, was the reason they seized the disk rather than just subpoena him. Presumably if it was hotmail or gmail this wouldn't have happened. I think it's good that this scumbag cocksucker is go…

I think it sucks that all ~65,000 other people have their data seized because of him, though.

The fellow running the service ran it on a German hosting service (https://www.hetzner.de), and not his bedroom. Full cooperation was provided by everyone, following in the letter and spirit of the law.

It just really sucks that the German authorities took it upon themselves to take the entire thing.

Post reply on HN