131–140 of 193 posts
The sad thing about this technology is that it's routinely used, as enumerated in this article, to a completely worthless end. Cocaine should not be illegal anywhere, nor should surveillance stings be set up to entrap people.
It is a fascinating case, but apart from the technical aspect of it.. how is that not entrapment? FBI effectively created a tool explicitly designed for criminal element and 'marketed' as such. I would ask about legality, but I am worried its in a very, very grey area.
No. Stop. This is not how you report news. This is a failed fiction author’s blog post.
When I read a news story, I want the facts, not a goddamned noir piece. Give me the facts, and I’ll respond to your plea for funding. I have a recurring donation to Wikimedia because they do this properly. If I wanted to pay for pretty narrative, I’d buy your ebook or subscribe to your LiveJournal or whatever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s one case. It doesn’t apply to all criminal organizations. The cartels in Mexico are sophisticated enough to build their own cell networks [1] to evade wiretapping. Why couldn’t they also recruit engineers to build their own crypto and secure protocols? [1] https://www.npr.org/2011/12/09/143442365/mexico-busts-drug-c...
that's not a cellphone network that's a VHF/UHF radio repeater network. basically same idea as ham radio hilltop repeater stuff in the US, but built for private purposes, and using COTS radios capable of basic encryption.
Soldiers seized 167 antennas, more than 150 repeaters and thousands of cellphones and radios that operated on the system.
It sounds like it had both radio and cell bands if phones were able to use it.
The striking thing is that criminal enterprise relies on software as much as any other legitimate business. The adage "software is eating the world" comes to mind. It's probably the case that more technically adept criminals will roll their own tech and out manoeuvre rival criminals and law enforcement. Considering the sums of money discussed in the article it's not inconceivable for criminal organisations to start c…
You would think that, but the whole an0m thing showed that it wasn't really the case.
a) Crypto is secure, b) Infiltration is difficult, and c) You can't trust hardware and software vendors.
From what I can tell the criminals need international communications to facilitate their operations.
Ergo, my earlier speculation that the technologically savvy ones will adapt and develop their own proprietary software.
Maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze for criminals to learn software development, but I worry about criminals who do learn.
> The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Austra— No. Stop. This is not how you report news. This is a failed fiction author’s blog post. When I read a news story, I want the facts, not a goddamned noir piece. Give me the facts,…
The sad thing about this technology is that it's routinely used, as enumerated in this article, to a completely worthless end. Cocaine should not be illegal anywhere, nor should surveillance stings be set up to entrap people.
I find myself asking this question, what causes more net harm, the social impact of people abusing cocaine and associated problems or the damage caused by cocaine being high lucrative while illegal and the war on drugs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that this isn't strictly true. If you naïvely apply bad encryption before good you may weaken the entire system. For a silly example, imagine your "homegrown" crypto adds a publicly known plaintext to the start of the cyphertext. I think this is discussed in Schneier's textbook.
> If you naïvely apply bad encryption before good you may weaken the entire system The strength of the system can be viewed from multiple angles. From a practical angle, applying one kind of commercial encryption on top of another type of commercial encryption turns it into a technically weaker, but unique cryptosystem. And uniqueness has value if you're just a single fish in a big pond. For instance, if one single A…
> The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Austra— No. Stop. This is not how you report news. This is a failed fiction author’s blog post. When I read a news story, I want the facts, not a goddamned noir piece. Give me the facts,…
This is a long feature piece. It's journalism. If you want the simple facts, the story has been reported plenty of other places. You can get the CliffsNotes on Twitter.
Point me towards a “simple facts” version, and I’ll submit that link instead. This is the first I have heard of it, and I want to know more, but I do not want to read a spy novel to get the primary info.
Every time I read about police investigation techniques that justify the use of mass-surveillance, deception, and entrapment, I grow closer to fully rejecting the legitimacy of criminal law and criminal justice. The less legitimacy I assign to criminal law and criminal justice, the more infuriating it is that the budgets of law enforcement agencies grow ever more inflated to do ridiculous schemes like this to enforce…
Have you ever hung out with a cokehead?