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Orkut Linked To Drug Ring Bust
Dynamoo writes "Google's Orkut service has been allegedly used to sell drugs by a Brazilian outfit, according to a BBC news report. According to the report, the dealers offered pot and ecstasy for sale via the system to Brazil's large Orkut user community. Google is reported to be investigating. One interesting issue that springs to mind is: how can you monitor and moderate such a large, multilingual community such as Orkut? And what are the limits of criminal liability in a case like this?"
What is Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon's legal liability for illegal activity ranging from petty drug dealing all the way up to terrorism when their products and network are used to perpetrate those crimes?
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Since when is Orkut multilingual? I gave up on the site many many months ago when posting something in english in any of the dozens of forums I was in resulted in 20-30 abusive responses in portuguese.
The Brazilians took over Orkut long ago, it's useless to anyone else.
this is getting old and so are you
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In other news, a new device called a "cellphone" was recently used in the bust of three columbian druglords. Apparently they were using the address book feature to store phone numbers of other drug lords and were using the "voice" features to network and make deals. How does one go about "wiretapping" and busting such a multi-lingual and diverse group of folk who use "cellphones?"
How would Orkut be any different than having a coffee shop where some people were dealing drugs without your knowledge? Yes you provided a gathering place, but it's not like you really did anything other than that to facillitate it.
Obviously if you knew about it and didn't make some effort to stop it, that would be a different scenario but there's no indication that's the case here.
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These guys seem to have gotten caught after being found out on a telephone conversation - leading to the authorities to get access at their internet connection. First rule of traffic is to keep a low profile, and apparently someone broke that rule (and got phonetapped in the process, which blew the rest of this open).
I honestly don't see how Google (or anyone else for that matter) could manage policing this type of environment. Instead of saying "Hey I have $SUBSTANCE", smart dealers will say things like, "Free kittens to good home" or whatnot.
Of course, I could springboard from here to legalization arguments, but that would bring me way OT...
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I don't think there should be any liability for providing a service like this. Thats like saying the US government is responsible for drugs that someone sold using the US mail. Or UPS being responsible for the same thing. However this begs the question should a more dangerous item such as a bomb be the shippers responsibiliy? Personally I think it should not be. However in a good free market I think you should see some competition in this area, "our service is better because we scan your packege before you get it" which of course spawns services that are completly scan free and so everyone ends up buying home scanners. Or not ;)
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what has made Orkut such a popular site for Brazilians? (aside from drugs!)
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So, take a quick look at craigslist.org - I'd say one in 5 personal ads includes the dollar-sign refernce for "will pay" or "for pay" and a similar ratio of them includes a "420" reference for pot smokers.
Is craigslist responsible too? Or are they just a "common carrier" of information? [As a voting libertarian, you know my feelings, but, it is an interesting question anyway.]
> how can you monitor and moderate such a large, multilingual community
Within a few years ISPs will be required to store *everything* they transfer so peoples internet usage can be scanned for copyright materials, evidence of drug dealing etc. The government will spend a lot of money developing code to track social networks (quite apart from just taking the data from Orkut and similar), AI to locate people using codes etc. It'll be an offence to operate as an ISP without such storage (perhaps you'll have to get a license from ICANN, which will be run by the UN).
Don't get me wrong, most of them are extremely nice people who are eager to learn about other cultures, however there are some who are incredibly racist, and think that just because they have the largest population on Orkut, that they don't have to follow the rules when it says English Only in a community.
I've since enforced a rule that drew a LOT of hostility whereby I deleted every post that did not contain an English translation, and banned people for disruptive behavior (you have no idea how many attacks there were on the community).
I've grown a little lax due to work lately, but I can easily say they ruined it for the rest of us. Too bad, with a bit more work, Orkut could have been quite cool.
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There are DOZENS of drug deals happening on Craigslist all the time.
Check it out.. look for the names like "Crystal," "Tina," "Mary Jane," and any post that says "party tonight."
They're all dealing with drugs. People flag them, but more just pop up.
back on track, used properly, they could net a lot of good intel in the drug trade keeping quite instead of playing cowboy... there's no reason Google wouldn't cooperate with investigations by providing logs or even fake accounts if the police just asked rather than made a heavy-handed power grab out of everything they don't understand.