When can we stop the madness and regulate drugs rather than criminalizing them? Didn't we learn anything from prohibition?? In a time when so many people are aware of the limitations of government why do so many people think that we're going to resolve the drug problems with more government in the form courts and prisons. We're just creating a market opportunity for the cartels by inflating prices and turning their customers into criminals.
She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
21–30 of 218 posts
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you were downvoted because people suspected you of glossing over the subject at hand (for the record, I upvoted you). I would say that for some of these local journalists, you're correct in suspecting that their technical expertise isn't high...however, it's not easy to report on dangerous local conditions from outside that locality. For one thing, you've introduced another attack vector for a MITM attack --…
That's a very good point. Perhaps being overseas is not an option. In that case, I guess the best she could do is use a disposable OS (Tails) and VPN at the time of posting sensitive information online, and never use her whistleblower identity/handle outside that very narrow context. Some newspapers (correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was NY Times) have even started running an .onion website where people can leave s…
>VPN
Are a terrible idea. You need to trust the operator that they won't screw you by keeping logs. Since these are centralized they are always at the whims of cartels and the like. Just stop and think for a second if you won't give everything you have to them if they took your children hostage as an extreme example.
The only way to deal with a situation like the one in Mexico is to get the whole community to use something like Tor. The cartels already are so they can't kill all such connections, and if everyone uses it all the time then you can't target anyone for using it. The reporters are protected by the crowd they hide in.
This is the same reason why tor isn't blocked in the first world. It gives all the alphabet soup agencies proper anonymity that doesn't raise red flags when used in other countries which might not be friendly.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#23And that is what the USA 'War on Drugs' is doing to the poorer neighbours.
And what about all the customers of this cartel who give them the money to pay people enough to do things like this?
>And what about all the customers of this cartel who give them the money to pay people enough to do things like this?
Drugs are a fact of life, they've been used since the dawn of man and will be used likely until the end of man. They're not going away.
It's abhorrent that in order to access drugs, you've to essentially send money down the chain to people carrying out such acts...but people are going to do drugs, and in the face of no alternatives, this is where they're going to get them.
The people buying these drugs, generating the income for these cartels, are so removed from the reality behind them that it may as well be totally unconnected as far as all are concerned. We, first world Westerners, are generally very disconnected from the realities surrounding many of the products we buy, from legitimate products like those manufactured by Nestle, to cheap clothing manufactured in terrible conditions in the East, through to illicit substances such as cocaine which are manufactured in South America and whose trade fuels a bloody war there.
Indeed, many of our tech products that we all here use are manufactured by Foxconn, a company whose working practices are so bad that they had issues with people killing themselves on the job and tackled it by installing suicide nets around the back of the buildings and in the stairwells.
As such, there is a lot of inherent immorality associated with a lot of the consumerism we here fuel, but the reality for us is that we are extremely disconnected from these issues.
But what are the alternatives? Go even harder on those found with drugs, while continuing to let Western consumerism promote without any interference terrible working conditions for our manufacturers in the East?
One potential solution to all these issues is to apply a similar approach to all - manufacture these in the 1st world under regulations and subsidize their sale so that the consumer points towards these regulated manufacturers rather than using products manufactured abroad.
Unfortunately, while this may be the solution, it itself raises so many other issues. If we took coke production out of the hands of South America and made it in the US, for example, what in hell's name is going to happen when the vast numbers of not just cartel members, but relatively innocent coco farmers in South America can no longer derive anywhere near the same income from them?
Manufacturing these things ourselves would also, if not greatly subsidized for promotion, drive prices for the consumer up and thus have them pointing in the wrong direction again.
It's a complex issue and personally I'm not sure of what the best potential solution may be, but I find it hard to sit here and criticize those using coke in the US from a product containing FoxConn parts where people are miserable and ending their lives because of what our demand for the products being made there is doing to them.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#24This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own. That no mobile OS offers these yet is pathetic. When twitter and facebook don't let you connect anonymously from tor, this is what the result is. If you have a major website that is used by dissidents and journalists in countries such as Mexico or Iran and you don't have a plain…
> This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own. Yeah, that would have saved her against Mexican drug cartels and a $50.000 dollars reward.
Yes, it literally would have since they found out who she was by looking through her phone after kidnapping her for an unrelated death of a cartel member.
Try and read the article before you comment.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#25Why are the majority of the comments here blaming the victim?
This is the death if a person who tried to stand against an overwhelming force. To try and stand against the cartels where the police didn't dare and instead of honouring her work or get death you mock her for not using tor.
If you seriously think that lack of cybersecurity is the problem then at least use this to highlight the lack of good easy to use security software.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#26It's somewhat amazing that it was a seemingly unrelated kidnapping that lead to her discovery given that she seemed to be tweeting from her own phone, probably publishing from her own (unsecured?) computer etc. and the reach that the cartel are purported to have in law enforcement / military in those areas. I sincerely hope for America's sake that there's no substance to the claims that the CIA are working with these…
The CIA working with cartels abroad is not mere rumor. There is substantial evidence that this takes place. Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes. They are the closest thing to a god that has ever existed; and organization that is profoundly beyond the grasp of society at large. They smite as they see fit, and there is nothing tha…
>Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes.
That's assuming they are something like a rogue agent, and not a coherent part of an overall national strategy (not for the common folks of course).
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#27If you're going to whistleblow on your local government online (be that a legitimate government, or a violent drug cartel), the only reasonably safe way to do it is from outside the country AND using Tor. It amazes me that people don't take these basic precautions. Mexican cartels are known to have infiltrated ISPs, where they were able to tie IP addresses to identities. Using encryption is the only way. EDIT: may I…
Tweeting outside the country is probably not an option, and it's unlikely defeating encryption is a sufficient safeguard against cartels that kidnap and torture people. Kidnapping, by the way, is how they allegedly found their target according to the article.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you were downvoted because people suspected you of glossing over the subject at hand (for the record, I upvoted you). I would say that for some of these local journalists, you're correct in suspecting that their technical expertise isn't high...however, it's not easy to report on dangerous local conditions from outside that locality. For one thing, you've introduced another attack vector for a MITM attack --…
That's a very good point. Perhaps being overseas is not an option. In that case, I guess the best she could do is use a disposable OS (Tails) and VPN at the time of posting sensitive information online, and never use her whistleblower identity/handle outside that very narrow context. Some newspapers (correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was NY Times) have even started running an .onion website where people can leave s…
If the ISP is compromised by the cartels as you say, then this would just leave her open to correlation attacks (e.g. "who was using Tor at time X in city Y?").
Opsec is not a simple matter, as the death of this woman shows and people like the grugq try to explain.
You need serious technical nous to get it right.
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#29It's somewhat amazing that it was a seemingly unrelated kidnapping that lead to her discovery given that she seemed to be tweeting from her own phone, probably publishing from her own (unsecured?) computer etc. and the reach that the cartel are purported to have in law enforcement / military in those areas. I sincerely hope for America's sake that there's no substance to the claims that the CIA are working with these…
The CIA working with cartels abroad is not mere rumor. There is substantial evidence that this takes place. Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes. They are the closest thing to a god that has ever existed; and organization that is profoundly beyond the grasp of society at large. They smite as they see fit, and there is nothing tha…
The CIA must be the most organized part of our government to carry on decades long conspiracies and liaise with every nefarious group in the world! If only they could redirect some of this management "excellence" to the more deserving and productive areas of the government that could actually use it.
I just highly doubt the effectiveness and existence of any long running conspiracy. See:
Re: She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder
#30This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own. That no mobile OS offers these yet is pathetic. When twitter and facebook don't let you connect anonymously from tor, this is what the result is. If you have a major website that is used by dissidents and journalists in countries such as Mexico or Iran and you don't have a plain…
> This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own.