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Gangs on the Internet
mikesd81 writes "Apparently street gangs have gotten Web-savvy. Web Bangers are posting potentially incriminating photos and taunts on their websites. Police departments suddenly faced with gangs are looking for help on the gangs' own easy-to-find Web sites. The director of the National Gang Crime Research Center has stated "In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida, witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language.'
Knox said it's important for police to learn how to read between the lines on gang Web sites and blogs. Just as time on the streets has given gang investigators the ability to read the hieroglyphics of wall graffiti, time on the Web helps them understand arcane Web clues. Gang identifiers, such as tattoos, graffiti tags, colors and clothing often are embedded in each site."
Publish a Grand Theft Auto MMORPG and use google adsense to advertise it on gang blogs...take real world crime into virtual space....and make money....wonderful.
How did Wicca get lumped into a sentence with these other three groups?
Hello... peaceful earth-based religion here. We don't go on Crusades to conquer someone else's Holy Land...
Interesting stuff. Targetting the idiots who are lower rank in gangs seems like a really good idea, given some of the spectacularily stupid stuff people admit on the internet. Can't help but feel this won't catch any of the serious gangsters though.
Well, obviously after the War on Terrr, we can expect a War on Witches (with televised burnings on Fox News), followed by a War on Evil (and I know my neighbour must be a devil worshipper), followed by a War on Youth, after which there will be no-one left to consume drugs, giving us a neat conclusion to the War on Drugs.
When all those wars are complete, we can expect a War on Wars, which will involve the peaceful use of tactical nuclear weaponry on all those who remain after the subcultures have been eliminated.
When it comes down to basics, humanity is just too unreliable and messy to be trusted with its own fate.
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myspace hardly requires any leet geek skills... this is just a sign that the web has got dumb enough for dumb people to use it.
Their god isn't the problem, it's the fanatical followers who feel that despite worshiping a peaceful, loving god they can still be violent and hateful.
Oh, Please. The article did not say "Wicca." It said "witches." Give it up.
The "Witches are Happy Peaceful People" diatribe is even slighthly more annoying then the "Hackers are Happy Curious People" screed. Both words mean something else in popular parlance, and that's all there is to it. I have more sympathy for the "hackers-are-good" crowd, because they legitimately lost their word to a media gone suddenly cyber-melodramtic, but the Buckland and Gardner crew deliberately took an already negatively charged word, stuck it up there with all the other chips on their shoulders, and tried to win it back -- in the most irritating and condescending way possible -- from all us ignorant "mundanes." Sure, good luck with that...
Oh, yeah, about those Crusades: many, many, centuries ago, my li'l crystal polisher. Better analogy would have been, "Hello... peaceful earth-based religion here. We don't crash airplanes into someone else's building in the name of our goddess..."
oooooh, i'm gonna get modded down so-o-o-o-o fast.....!
If public web sites help the police track down perpertrators of illegal activities, that's a good thing. But I worry about statements like these:
"In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida, witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language," Knox said.
Devil worship and witchcraft aren't illegal in the US and are rarely linked to illegal activities; the police has no business getting involved in that "subculture" at all.
Furthermore, even when it comes to al Quaeda and gangs, they should be careful: after all, if we can get al Quaeda and gangs to limit their activities to free speech on the Internet, then that's a good thing. We should encourage these groups to use the Internet, not drive them away.
Witches !- Wicca. Traditionally in Europe it meant devil worshippers and possible followers of some fairly nasty practices. It also covers African witchcraft which frequently involves murder. You may wish to dissociate Wicca from that. Fair enough. However it is not reasonable for you to expect to redefine the meanings of the words involved in line with your beliefs. Wicca is essentially a modern invention (not one I have much sympathy with but that should not matter to you) and I would need a lot of convincing that it has any meaningful links to either ancient paganism or most old traditions of witchcraft so I do not see any reason to re-define the word witchcraft in line with Wicca. Ancient pagans fought wars, took slaves and slaughtered civilians and in all that thought the gods were backing them. If you claim any link with them you can not then disclaim their bad side.
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Says alot about the mindset of this guy...he lumps in un-popular religions with groups who actually set out to hurt people.
Blar.
The other day I was driving through Bathurst and saw "CRIP 4 LIFE" spray-painted on a mailbox.
Seemed a bit pathetic at first, really, some kid from small town Canada pretending he's a member of a gang he probably saw on TV and thought looked cool. But I have to wonder if these sites aren't more of a recruitment tool than anything else, an attempt to start branches of these gangs in places where they would normally would have no reach.
Having small local gangs with national and international affiliations would be useful if you needed out-of-town locations for smuggling, safe-houses, grow-ops...
And this is bad how? Seems like the exact opposite of what everyone on capital hill is crying about. Want to shoot people, sleep with hookers, steal cars, paint grafiti, run from the law? No reason to do it in real life when you can do it virtually, and remain within the limits of the real law.
I see no problem with games being an outlet for a life that a person would otherwise shy away from. Nothing wrong with make-believe.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
While we're at it, every "pagan" I've ever met follows a fairly recently concocted hodgepodge of dozens of individual, mutually contradictory bits of pre-Christian religions, along with a healthy dose of made-up nonsense. "Wicca" dates back to the 1920s, at best.
So yeah, I look down on it.
Does it make much difference if something was completely made-up out of thin air 50 or 100 years ago, or thousands of years ago?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
English is easier said than done.
I think you forgot to add "Won't somebody think of the children" in your post... Oh and also "If you aren't a terrorist, you have nothing to hide"..
Now that's a good little cattle, go back to chewing your cud in the field... Try not to think about anything too hard...
"But this one goes to 11!"
You're talking to a member of one of those victim's families, and I'm not talking about the actual terrorists. I'm talking about everyone who gets mislabelled a "terrorist" by a frightened public who wants to do away with them. I've been called a "terrorist" for attending peaceful protests. People nowadays are constantly called terrorists for having the wrong name, accent, skin color, or political view.
Sure, there were people calling themselves "witches" in the 1600s. There were also real practicing Communists in the 1950s, and there are actual terrorists in the world now. But how many non-witches were burned at the stake? How many innocent people had their lives ruined by being accused of Communism during the McCarthy era? And how many people are now called "terrorists" for looking or thinking differently than you?
Nothing justifies taking a word that scares the majority, and using it as a blanket term to describe anyone you hate/fear/disagree with, and to ultimately effect their dissappearance.
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