Slashdot Mirror

I may sound like an ass$%^ explaining this to a little child, but in the US a public prosecutor once actually claimed, in front of a judge, that an IP address is like a social security number! You could laugh at this, but the suspect did walk.

The same goes for a huge gang of 419 scammers in Amsterdam. (Some of which actually came from Nigeria). They lived with a lot of people in a very few apartments. So who was sitting behind the PC when the "send" button was pressed? An undercover agent dressed up as a pizza delivery guy could find out. Just ring the doorbell and peek in after a spam salvo is send. The problem certainly wasn't cooperation between the police and the internet provider. This group used stolen cable modems hooked up by crooked installers. So the provider had every reason to work along with whatever the police would ask.

The biggest offender in this area must be the RIAA and its friends. They just keep harassing grannies.

Sure in 99%, hell, lets make that 99.99%, of the cases a phone number identifies a pin protected cell phone that can only be answered by the person who carries it and whose name is on the phone bill and the bank account that pay that phone bill and who owns the house where that cell phone spends its nights....

But people who fear they might be the target of surveillance will work hard, very hard, to be in that 0.01%. Depending on the penalty of getting caught they might go pretty far in this. Would you steal cell phones if it kept you out of GITMO?

So you if you talk about social network analysis then you risk getting people a little to excited about extensive legislation and billion dollar surveillance projects. Its more like mapping a sexual relations network to find STD sources...based on surveys. You would be wise to expect some missing links. Phone traffic network analysis sounds less exciting, but it's accurate.

So how would you stay safe regardless of how high your e-mail identity scores on the statistical Japanese^d^d^dcommunist^d^d^dterrorist detection system?

Well Khalid Shaikh Mohammed used Swiss pre-paid cell phones. A good start and had he seen HBO`s the Wire like others suggested here already then he would have dumped them regularly as well. He didn't. (The register headlined: "Al Qaeda boss confused phone SIM with cloaking device")

Maybe that fact that they used Swiss phones is the result of a western intelligence agency "hinting" that this would be smart. There is no way that someone would mistake banking secrecy and neutrality with communication security after the crypto AG story. For those who forgot, Crypto AG sold NSA and German intelligence designed crypto systems to every country, but especially those under extra US export rules. That is, until Iran decided to take one of their sales rep`s hostage and started asking questions, after that other customers started asking questions as well ;-) And then some of the engineer started talking about the people that gave them the algorithms.

A Pakistani named Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan had a smarter idea. He and his communication partners regularly changed e-mail addresses and used crypto. He may have used his own algorithms though. He got caught and started to work with Pakistani intelligence. He started to arrange for the capture of the people he was in contact with. But then there was a pre-election terror alert in the US. US Intelligence people were looking for an explanation for this alert, so someone leaked to the New York Times that Pakistan

I'm certainly not. I want to see them in PMITA prison and destitute, but not dead.

However. According to a report from 2004, spammers sent about 12.4 billion messages per day. If it takes one second per email to delete, then that consumes 393 person-years to remove from our collective inboxes. Assuming an average lifespan of 75, that means spammers use the entire lives of over five people each and every day.

Put in the context that they're effectively killing 1900 unwilling people per year, that proposal doesn't seem quite as unthinkable.

Again, I don't encourage violence against spammers. Still, I can see the point of people who do, even though I don't reach the same conclusion.

Keep in mind that this guy was not just "being a mass annoyance", he was defrauding 10,000 to 17,000 individuals a month selling a "FedEx refund processor" that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a Web site of delinquent FedEx accounts.

This guy made $750K per month defrauding people with his sham product, so before you say "wow! 9 for just spamming, realize that spoofing email headers was just his mechanism for delivering his con game to millions of people per day in order to take advantage of that "sucker born every minute" that falls for get rich quick schemes that require them to send $30 to "find out how they can get rich quick with FedEx refunds".

I don't feel sorry for this criminal. Considering the guy will be out in 3 years with good behavior, I think the punishment is a fine fit for the crimes this man commited.

Then again, my /. sig (usually) points to a SpamVampire script designed to run up spammer's bandwidth bills, so I suppose you may want to take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I really don't like spammers.

The company making the charges is listed on ROKSO and SPEWS and sparked similar controversy with a Slashdot article last year. The defendant, Jay Stuler calls it a "frivolous lawsuit designed to harass and intimidate" and is asking for PayPal donations to help him fight it. More at Spamfo and DSL reports

From the Spamfo article:
"The IP address of makelovenotspam.com has also changed from 83.241.136.230 to 213.115.182.123 and links to the screensaver removed from the lycos.co.uk main homepage."

Lycos wanted publicity, now they have it!

Phish Net

Some folks here may find it usefull.