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Using Your Privacy Against You

Posted by timothy on from the guns-butter-and-syrup dept.

guttentag writes: "Christian Science Monitor Reporter Warren Richey suspects he may have stumbled onto a credit card fraud ring that uses Internet merchants to quietly funnel night-vision rifle scopes to Middle Eastern terrorists and privacy policies to cover their tracks. Even if these are isolated incidents, it's worth noting that the privacy rules intended to protect us can also work against us."

19 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Where are we heading to? by Jugalator · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yesterday: Open Source development might make it easier for terrorists to break into systems.

    Today: Credit cards might make us pay for terrorist actions.

    Tomorrow: Windows might actually be an act of terror. Umm.. Nah, that wouldn't be news. We knew that all along.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  2. You don't say... by ebbomega · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can we please moderate the whole story?

    If I had the points I'd be giving it Flamebait with all five points....

    Jesus Christ. Yes, it's true that privacy helps criminals do crimes, but it's not like I'm going to install a camera in my bedroom so that the police know in case a crime happens to occur within the bounds of my room.

    I know of a similar group that had the general mantra that Security compromises Freedom, and quite frankly The Party in 1984 scared me more than two liner jets flying into the World Trade Center ever did.

    Point of the matter is the only way to ensure stuff doesn't get smuggled to the Enemies of State is to keep your eyes on the entire populous 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, then we forfeit our general human decency of free will.

    Honestly, every person who is capable thereof has a right to commit a crime. They also have a right to face the consequences of that crime. And that is what a lot of these security-mongers don't seem to understand.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we SHOULD go out and kill people and break every law in the book. What I'm saying is that with our free will we should be perfectly well allowed to do it to our capabilities and face the consequences. Me, personally, I don't think I'd want to go to jail, so as a result I won't do any crimes that would get me there. But there are crimes I break. I smoke Marijuana, I drive above the speed limit and I serve alcohol to minors (not all at the same time, mind you...). But I'm well aware of the consequences and I feel it is my right to break those laws, just as it is the government's right to punish me for doing so.

    --
    Karma: Non-Heinous
    1. Re:You don't say... by peddrenth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right. It's not a story about privacy policies, it's a story about credit-card fraud, and how one large credit card handler is destroying evidence even where there is clear proof of fraud.

      Their 'privacy' policy is irrelevant, they're laundering money for terrorists and destroying evidence. What does this have to do with privacy?

      Read the story, people

    2. Re:You don't say... by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was a victim of a drunk driver.

      I live in California, so it is against the law.

      I have permenant nerve damage as a result of this incident.

      The basic of the story was that I was in the cross walk and I was hit. The girl I was walking with lost her ability to breed.

      Just because I was a victim does not mean I want stricted rules, infact quite the opposite.

      A loss of liberty is not a straight across trade for safety.
      Most of the time you do not gain physical security, rather you think you gain mental security as a result of simple psychological tricks.

      So as a victim of crime, with family and friends also victims, I feel I have the right to say this: I do not need to be a victim to have a point of view.

      --


      "Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
    3. Re:You don't say... by colmore · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The drinking age in America was 18 in most places until the Reagan highway bill. He tied highway funding to the drinking age to incourage states to up it to 21. Conceivably a State could get rid of the drinking age alltogether, but the federal government would make up all sorts of unrelated things to penalize them on.

      Further proof that the modern American government in *no way* resembles the government described in the constitution.

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
    4. Re:You don't say... by colmore · · Score: 3, Insightful

      probably not.

      certain people are predisposed (for whatever reason) to liking narcotics and not really minding the idea of breaking the law.

      a sequential chain of events *does not* mean a causal chain. just because A happens before B does not mean that A causes B, and any argument based on that assumption is very very flawed.

      what i'm saying is, the of course the kids who do heroin are smoking weed. but i bet they drink too. hey i bet most of them work in fast food places. i bet they smoke cigarettes. why is pot the cause of the heroin and not anything else in their life.

      the only "gateway" aspect to pot is the mental barrier to breaking the law. a pot smoker (and i'm talking from experience here) begins to see the law as an arbitrary social construction that is to be creatively avoided as opposed to blindly obeyed. the mental barrier to doing hard drugs becomes much lower after this realization.

      now, i'm smart, i've read up on the side effects of other drugs and i wan't nothing to do with it. the only permanent damage pot does is too your lungs. and trust me after 3 years of smoking (including pretty heavy smoking during the summers) i have no greater desire to do coke than i ever did. pot does not increase cravings for narcotics. that doesn't even make medical sense. it's a cannabinoid, which is a very different chemical from hallucinagins, amphetamines, steroids, alcohols, and opiates (the chemicals in most other drugs) it's like saying that drinking coffee will get you hooked on cigarettes or alcohol.

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
  3. RTFA please by Em+Emalb · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dude was in a foreign country. In Amman, Jordan to be exact. This is a sensationalist version of basically what amounts to standard fraud, except dude was in a middle-eastern country where a lot of people aren't friendly to the US and West in general. Granted, sucks that this occured, but is it news?

    Synopsis: Journalist travels to Middle Eastern country. While there, orders stuff on his Amex. Amex receipt (I assume? Article not too clear on this) was used to purchase military equipment. Sucks, but such is life. This doesn't have anything to do with Privacy in the US, as far as I can see.

    As a side note, when I was in the Middle East, (USMC--Oohrah!) we were instructed to make purchases only in their currency, so scams (which is all it really is) wouldn't happen.

    Lastly, why the hell wasn't his card cancelled? Is he that stupid?

    I seriously doubt this story is real at all, come to think of it.

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
  4. Privacy verses Terrorism by Diabolical · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course privacy is being used against us. It allways has and always will be. Every country has it's examples of this fact.

    But would it be worth it to give up our privacy to maintain a false feeling of security? Terrorists will always be able to get their hands on weapons and other stuff to use against us. Whether it is through buying stuff with stolen creditcards or use of a malafide dealer or manufacturer. Weapons and other military stuff are being produced all over the world.

    In the light of 9/11 would we have to give up our privacy? For what? The hijackers used frigging hobby knives and some of them weren't even known terrorists. The absense of privacy is not a threath to them. It is to us though...

    What's more important is that our governments will not be a totalitarian one and our every move would not be under scrutiny by the government. I like my privacy although i know that my name and other information is going through hundreds of databases each day. I would never like the idea of a government knowing every little thing i say or do though. What's preventing a government of misuse of all that information?

  5. Freedoms by DarkZero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The freedoms enjoyed by millions of people can be exploited by a few hundred, or even a few thousand malicious people. This is new to someone? Someone ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD? Wow. You must know very, very little about the histories of free countries, as well as very basic things like the wide availability of kitchen knives, which can be used to cut meat and also murder family members in their sleep.

    Why do these stories suddenly become new or shocking when the word "terrorist" is connected to them? Are so many people really that ignorant about the basics of how freedoms work and the costs that come with them? This stuff is so simple that it could be taught to first graders and they would fully understand it in less than an hour.

  6. TV commercials. by Una · · Score: 4, Funny

    Strangely enough, This reminds me of the war on drugs commercial where they have multitudes of teenage children proclaiming "I support terrorists" and "I killed those cops", and at the end gives a message something to the effect of "If you use drugs, Your supporting terrorism."

    Now Id really like to see a new mastercard commerical along those same lines:

    Hotel room in Jordan: $125 a night.
    Crispy waffle breakfast: $5
    Knowing your MasterCard helped Al Qaeda terrorists buy weapons: Priceless.

    -Una

  7. Partial solution CC fraud: volutary limits by Drashcan · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Why don't the credit card companies introduce the possibility for the card holders to opt out of certain categories of goods so that the credit card cannot be used to buy these kind of goods?

    I am thinking in the first place about firearms. These are usually sold in specialised stores which can be easily identified in the credit card transaction databases. Most people do not buy firearms very often and certainly not with a credit card.

    This could also apply to other goods.

    --
    The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
  8. Slashdot summary totally wrong by smiff · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Once again, Slashdot got the summary totally wrong. From the Slashdot writeup:

    it's worth noting that the privacy rules intended to protect us can also work against us.

    The privacy policy was never intended to protect us. From the article:

    Ccnow says it has a confidentiality agreement with Internet merchants.

    The privacy policy is a contract, and its purpose is to protect the merchant (which in this case, may also be the perpetrator).

    With all due respect, it is rare that I ever see a privacy policy intended to protect me. Usually, privacy policies have so many loopholes, that they do not constitute a privacy policy at all. There general purpose is to protect the merchant from liability. Even if there were a privacy policy to protect the author, that policy would not have impeded the investigation.

    Finally, the article wasn't even about privacy policies. The article was about credit card fraud. The privacy issues just happened to be mentioned in the third-to-last paragraph.

  9. Nothing to see here ... by RWarrior(fobw) · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This isn't news.

    Kids have been stealing credit card numbers for years. Fraud investigations on stolen credit cards have ended when the CC company gets the money back. Story time.

    Someone at my place of employment either stole a Visa debit card from my personal posessions or from my wife's purse, or I left it in an ATM machine, or something. They wiped my checking account clean of well over $3000 plus my overdraft protection, buying beer, shoes, gasoline, and in general living it up and having a good time.

    When I discovered what was going on (because checks started coming back), I reported the card compromised, closed the account, did a police report, the whole bit.

    If it had been stolen from the ATM machine, the security camera might have snapped a shot of the person who took it. In any case, the establishments that took the card might have had security cameras picking up someone committing fraud with my card to the tune of three grand.

    The police took the report and filed it under "Theft Under $100" (because the cash value of the card is less than a dollar), and that's the end of it. My employer didn't care either, because it didn't cost them any money. My bank closed the account after charging back the merchants who took the money.

    The only people who lost here were those merchants. Nobody cares. Write it off as a cost of business.

    The only thing that makes this different is that it happened to two people in the same office. They could have bought rocket launchers, and it wouldn't matter.

    As for the privacy policy ... well, that's CCBill's problem. Someday they'll get slapped with a subpoena they can't fulfill because they don't keep records for the length of time they should, and then they'll be a huge Congresscritter investigation about privacy on the Internet with people storming that there shouldn't be any, and then the EFF and CDT will have to get all worked up and lobby some more. Until then ... business as usual.

    --
    Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
  10. FUD by idiots by jsse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    someone used her account information to send a $1,800 US-made night-vision scope with infrared capability to an address in the United Arab Emirates

    Let me get this straight: this author use two unique instances to conclude that 1) piracy helps terrorists, and 2) Internet merchant helps terrorists.

    This is incredibly idiotic, how could /. even repost such an article written by people as dumb as ox? I'm sure this guy has a collection of Dummy's books on his shelf.

    To author:get a clue! The goods was NOT magically shipped to Middle East electronically, it's sending to a real address physically. The supplier must be well aware what goods is to be shipped to what destination. Just because the paymant is done on the Internet and he concluded that Internet merchant is to be blamed?

    Also I'm not convinced that piracy helps terrorists in any way in this case. If the supplier shipped suspicious goods to problematic countries without question, then they should take full responsiblity.

    We have enough news sites that crowded with editors who have subliminal intelligence and clue. I'm very annoyed that /. even post this article, making people thought /. is standing in ths same line with such news sites.

  11. Kids, please by AftanGustur · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Sounds like you didn't RTFA. The problem is that the privacy practices prevented any real investigation of the fraud.

    Instead of shouting back and forth 'it does', 'no it does not', could you please be so kind as to tell the rest of us who *DID* read the article, where it says anything in that direction.
    I'm sorry but the string 'priv' doesn't even appear 1 time in the article.

    --
    echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
  12. And in other Credit Card News... by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Insightful
    People are watching pirated movies over the Internet, after giving their credit card number to a website in Iran.

    Hmmm. $1 for a movie, extra for the night-scope to go?

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  13. Article's Real Issue by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Informative
    Its pretty hard to find something worthy of discussion in this article. Lets cut throught the fluff real quick:
    1. Freud is being used to purchase weapons - hello and welcome to the world of gunrunning. You were thinking that the weapons seen in civilian hands on CNN were purchased at the Wal-Mart in Al Kars?
    2. Two reporters from the same newspaper get their card info lifted at the same restaurant - same racket is ran in the US on occasion. No mysterious conspiracy there.
    3. Terrorism might involve crime - terrorism IS crime... or at least was according to US Military doctrine. At least, until the War on Terrorism.
    4. The FBI didn't jump on the opportunity to track down a set of night scopes headed for Saudi Arabia - those involved with the security of US citizens and forces in the Middle East are probably rather resigned to the fact that terrorist forces in the area already have access to such equipment. They might have one lead that could eventually uncover something, but hardly drop-everything-else valuable. Its likely a dead-end.
    5. ccnow, identified as the "vendor", wouldn't give the reporter details citing privacy policy - amazing, an absolute stranger on the phone claiming some connection to a transaction can't get details? Its obviously a front!

    Actually, the ccnow bit might be the only interesting piece of the entire article. The fact that the reporter couldn't get information is probably a good sign that the policy is actually being followed as promised. But it hardly means the information is not available to appropriate parties. CCNow's privacy statement reads in part:

    We treat this customer information as private and confidential, and we will not disclose this information to other individuals or organizations unless required by law.

    There is more detail in their client agreement which notes in Section 7 (emphasis mine):

    While CCNow generally treats Client and Customer information as private and confidential, including contact information (name and address), personal data, sales data, product data, credit-card information, and E-mail addresses, Client agrees that CCNow may, without notice to Client, divulge or share any Client or Customer information with law enforcement or regulatory authorities in response to a valid subpoena, court order, or other similar order issued by any law enforcement official, regulatory official or any Federal or governmental agent or body of the United States or of International Countries. Client agrees to deliver, acknowledge, execute or produce any documents, information, instruments, data (financial or otherwise) or certificates, and to cooperate and do such other acts and things as may be required by law, or as may be reasonably necessary for the compliance with the requirements of any federal, state, local or international law, or any regulations of any governmental agency or authority.

    So really - what we have is another non-issue. If / when the FBI, CIA, or other lawfull agency makes the appropriate request for this information, CCNow will apparently present it (and furthermore requires their clients to also comply with such requests). The privacy policy is not inhibiting this case at all, despite the reporters horrified whispers and hand-wringing over waffles, weapons, and Al Qaeda.
    1. Re:Article's Real Issue by forkboy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Freud is being used to purchase weapons - hello and welcome to the world of gunrunning

      You know, sometimes an M-16 is just an M-16.

      There's another famous psychiatrist who was into terrorism, too...does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

      --
      This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
  14. give me a break by Afrosheen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This should've been from the 'no shit sherlock' category or the 'captain obvious' category. Any privacy policy can be used for felonious means. It's the same reasoning the US government uses to circumvent any form of personal privacy afforded it's citizens. "If we can't listen to everyone's phone calls, how will we find the terrorists?" type of mentality. Just ask yourself how many more rights you're willing to give up in the name of 'national security' and don't bitch when we have a full-on police state. 1984, here we come.