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I Worked for a Criminal Organization

openmonstervision.github.io

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Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#71

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

PappaPatat wrote: post #63
hackermailman wrote: post #13

Not uncommon in some cities in Canada to find out you're working for a criminal outfit if writing point of sale/restaurant software where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Profitek was busted once, InfoSpec Systems, zappers are in high demand

My first sale of my selfwritten software (about 35 years ago) was for a car driving instructor. The initial sales conversations where difficult. I thought they did not see the advantages of having their planning & bookkeeping in a computer... How wrong I was. It was their "creative bookkeeping" that worried them. When I offered to make that all possible ('zapping' as it is called now), they loved it. Based on their r…

Ethics. Where were yours?

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#72

Post by jacobush »

samplatt wrote: post #41
gruez wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Isn't this super easy to discover if you use any sort of electronic payment? Salons and restaurants might be cash based, but who pays their mechanic in cash?

A lot of non-regular-maintenance jobs are easy & quick to do but break the law - for example, deleting the catalytic converter or EGR from the exhaust system will give your engine better performance and economy, but is illegal since it increases emissions. Lots of places will do it anyway on a cash job if they think they can get away with it, because it's relatively easy money. A shop replaced my failed catalytic con…

At first I couldn't see how this could work - I assume there is no yearly government check up on your cars including emissions?

https://www.bilprovningen.se/boka-besiktning.html

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#73

Post by [deleted] »

frandroid wrote: post #31
hackermailman wrote: post #13

Not uncommon in some cities in Canada to find out you're working for a criminal outfit if writing point of sale/restaurant software where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Profitek was busted once, InfoSpec Systems, zappers are in high demand

No wonder the Québec government swooped in and mandated a government POS terminal for the food service industry. :)

[deleted]

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#75

Post by normalnorm »

Koremat6666 wrote: post #15

May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ? Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can. A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley. Is having shell companies a crime ? I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize…

Am I the only one getting depressed with all the excuses and rationalizations in this thread? It's the same with "adtech" and the like... "Hey, I'm not killing anyone, what's the harm?"

Technology has the potential to raise humanity above its current conditions and limitations. But we can't have it, because we are selfish and short-sighted monkeys. Take a big dump on all the ideals if this delivers the paycheck. "Business" justifies everything. Fuck humans.

A global instantaneous network of information exchange? Let's turn it into a dystopic market of bullshit covered in distasteful advertising, Idiocracy-style. AI breakthroughs? Will help make the Skinner box much more effective! A search engine capable of finding any public piece of information in human record? Replace the entire thing with ads in disguise! Still, autocratic regimes want to censor some of the ads? Can do, they are a huge market!

Space programs? Canceled. We now have a Rube-Goldberg machine made of human suffering that can deliver whatever trinket you want the next day to your door, nicely package in a cardboard box with a corporate grin printed on it. But don't worry, some guy who sells cars is taking us to Mars or something.

Fuck all this.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#76

Post by tyfon »

badpun wrote: post #70
tyfon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it is common to report the company to the authorities when a request like that comes in? Where I live at least not reporting activity like that could result in a few years in jail.

In Poland you're only required to report a crime if you're a civil servant and the crime is related to your job.

Here in Norway there are special provisions for tax fraud and money laundering. It doesn't apply to "normal" crime only those. But it does apply for everyone not just civil servants.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#77

Post by speedplane »

Causality1 wrote: post #42

The only substantial difference between this company and, say, Facebook, is that Facebook generally knows how to budget properly. Facebook and other large successful companies try to only commit crimes when they know the profit from doing so exceeds the risk of being caught and punished.

> Facebook and other large successful companies try to only commit crimes when they know the profit from doing so exceeds the risk of being caught and punished.

While this statement is often true (big companies make these cost-benefit decisions), I don't think it really captures what is happening to Facebook. Doing a cost-benefit analysis like this requires having data on potential costs and benefits. In most cases, Facebook didn't have this data.

When an individual, company, or institution is faced with a decision, but lacks data to properly evaluate it, they fallback on other decision making tools, including instinct and principles.

Facebook almost certainly didn't know the consequences of the many decisions they made, they didn't know the potential costs or benefits. But they did have some underlying principles, namely: maximizing platform engagement, convincing people to share more personal data on their platform, and exploiting user data for better advertising.

With these foundational principles, you can end up making some really bad decisions even without a proper cost-benefit analysis.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#78

Post by toyg »

blackrock wrote: post #74

Geez. I wonder if working for a porn hosting company is better. I’d rather not work for either, but if you’re not in a hot tech area, then your choices are limited.

Sometimes I find myself thinking that working in porn could actually be pretty interesting - what with massive caching needs, video encoding etc etc... Unfortunately the few job ads I’ve seen were for super-boring stacks like PHP or Perl, which I’d rather avoid.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#79

Post by Cthulhu_ »

toyg wrote: post #78
blackrock wrote: post #74

Geez. I wonder if working for a porn hosting company is better. I’d rather not work for either, but if you’re not in a hot tech area, then your choices are limited.

Sometimes I find myself thinking that working in porn could actually be pretty interesting - what with massive caching needs, video encoding etc etc... Unfortunately the few job ads I’ve seen were for super-boring stacks like PHP or Perl, which I’d rather avoid.

Definitely, I'm convinced that a lot of people that made youtube and other video hosting sites work in the early days actually came from the online porn industry.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#80

Post by throwaway54324 »

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #71
PappaPatat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first sale of my selfwritten software (about 35 years ago) was for a car driving instructor. The initial sales conversations where difficult. I thought they did not see the advantages of having their planning & bookkeeping in a computer... How wrong I was. It was their "creative bookkeeping" that worried them. When I offered to make that all possible ('zapping' as it is called now), they loved it. Based on their r…

Ethics. Where were yours?

I’m not saying what OP did is right, however, is creating tools that could possibly bypass a governments’ laws always an ethical issue?

Would the creators of VPN software need to consider ethics since it could break government censorship? Or if the government requested I create a backdoor for them, would that also be an ethical issue?

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