Slashdot Mirror
Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales'
Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"
One would think this is a big time no-no.
----
OK, what is the speed of Dark?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...I am!
Registrant:
Sean Bucci
Sean Bucci
23 Marshall Street
North Reading, MA 01864
US
Email: SeanB00@aol.com
Registrar Name....: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: www.register.com
Domain Name: whoisarat.com
Created on..............: Fri, May 21, 2004
Expires on..............: Mon, May 21, 2007
Record last updated on..: Tue, Jan 02, 2007
Administrative Contact:
Who''s a Rat
Anthony Capone
9 Tanbark Circuit , Suite 1945
Werrington Downs, NSW2747
AU
Phone: (02) 9475-0699
Email: contact@whosarat.com
Technical Contact:
Who''s a Rat
Anthony Capone
9 Tanbark Circuit , Suite 1945
Werrington Downs, NSW2747
AU
Phone: (02) 9475-0699
Email: contact@whosarat.com
DNS Servers:
ns32.servershost.net
Didn't some guy write an article something along the lines of "Who's a Government Agent Whose Husband Disagrees With the Policies of the Current Administration?"
There was a bit of a kerfuffle over that if I recall.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
Talk about a list that you don't want to be mistakenly included!
I wonder about legal liability for releasing this information if it leads to the death of the undercover agents...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Did no one consider the irony that creating a web site ratting out the rats is rather a ratty thing to do?
Coding Blog
When you risk getting informants or cops murdered in reprisal killings. That seems like a good line to draw.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
BOSTON, MA - A North Reading man was convicted late yesterday in federal court of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, money laundering, structuring financial transactions, and tax evasion.
United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Douglas A. Bricker, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation in Boston; and June W. Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in New England, announced that SEAN P. BUCCI, age 34, of 23 Marshall Street, North Reading, Massachusetts, was convicted by a jury sitting before Senior U.S. District Judge Morris E. Lasker on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute over 100 kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy to commit money laundering, two substantive counts of money laundering, seven substantive counts of structuring currency transactions, and four counts of tax evasion.
name and address correspond with the whois data
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ma/Press%20Office%20-%2
And the entire list is tar.gz'd up and put on your file-sharing service of choice in 5..4..3..2..1..
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
What exactly is the whole premise behind this idea, if not to protect those who do wrong from being called out or caught? Isn't the whole point of being a whistleblower or informant that you can either help put bad guys behind bars or expose a corporate scandal or safety breach without fear of reprisal, because your identity is kept secret? Or am I completely missing the point here? It just seems to be that the whole point of this website is to give bad guys the ability to track down and "punish" those who actually help the authorities curtail their wrongdoings.
This definitely seems like attack on law and order - when properly authorized and overseen, undercover investigations are one of the few legitimate means of acting to prevent crime in a way that can be ethically and logically defensible for a state. And I'm very much in favor of more prevention (where compatible with human and civil rights), and less mindless punishment in terms of law and public order.
If this was a site devoted to outing torturers or other players in indefensible state actions, I'd understand - but this is just horrible. Oversight is certainly needed more over the modern executive branch, but this is just cruel undermining.
Ryan Fenton
This site has been around for a little while so it is not news and I fail to understand why it is causing such an uproar. Here are the US Today article counterpoints I would throw out there...
Since then, it has grown into a clearinghouse for mug shots, court papers and rumors. All publicly available anyway (mug shots, papers, etc.). Rumors... Rumors will always be rampant no matter what.
Federal prosecutors say the site was set up to encourage violence, and federal judges around the country were recently warned that witnesses in their courtrooms may be profiled online. Where is the proof of the federal prosecutors' claim. Do they have substantial evidence that states "This crime happened specificially because of this site". If not then its speculation. Thats like saying "this shooting happened because there was a gun store in town"
"My concern is making sure cooperators are adequately protected from retaliation," Isn't that the job of the US Marshalls who offer snitches protective custody. They turned snitch most often under the agreement of something either financially motivated, or under the notion they would be protected. Not your problem Judge.
"Stop Snitching" T-shirts have been sold in cities around the country What does one have to do with the other. So what T Shirts are being sold across the city. Would it be correct for me to say... "And their is a car dealer in town. So it must be so that those who are committing drive by shootings buy their cars here since its the only car dealer in town." BS.
There is so much crapaganda on this discussion it is disgusting, and if the website is removed, like it or not the government is hindering free speech. Bottom line
Infiltrated dot Net
If judges and prosecutors are going to use people's MySpace, Facebook, and Google search results against them and claim, "Hey, it's a public record!" then they shouldn't be surprised or outraged by this. The whole trend of using publicly available online data to snoop on people is a two way street.
If we keep it on the front page of /. and digg, the site will only give 'connection failure' messages ;)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I went to West Virginia University, and the other large University in the state was Marshall.
When anyone would get busted in Marshall for any reason, they were given 2 choices.
A. Go to Jail and pay the consequences.
B. Go to WVU to school and continue your education on US, while working undercover.
You would be surprised at how many times this happens. It also happened with people I knew (or thought I knew) when they were busted at WVU and sent to MU for "REHAB".
Nonetheless, it's funny they're doing this, simply because if someone's a supposed "rat" and they're found out... you're more than likely not messing with the scene anymore. If you're honestly doing anything that has risk, your best bet is to just not meet new people and don't deal with people that wouldn't go down for you.
In other words, you're going to get caught if you're stupid or deal with stupid people. When messing with drugs, you're usually messing with fucked up people. If you stay in long enough, those fucked-up people are going to get you caught.
My suggestion is, if you MUST, just do drugs, don't sell them.
;)
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
If they are using public records to compile the list, then how "secret" is the information expected to be?
Couldn't the Feds poison the data on this site by posting information that mobster A ratted on modster B, who ratted on C, who ratted on A?
Also, won't they be subpoenaing the subscriber list real soon now?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The show Numb3rs season finale was based on this.
Report them to themselves for ratting out rats. When they add that to their database, they'll be guilty of ratting themselves out for ratting out rats, which means they need to add another entry to their database...
Just don't tell them I sent you.
...but I see this ending up like those "sexual predator" lists. It might possibly serve a good purpose but it is easily exploited. Still, if all of this is obtainable through the internets, then one would suspect Google would be able to find the info too. So, if some one had a real need or desire to discover an informant or under cover agent, then they'd be able to do it already.
i also question why defense attourney's would be for this. Do they not get proper access to witnesses and other info from the prosecutor before the trial?
As Sun Microsystems chairman and CEO Scott McNealy said, "You have no privacy, get over it."
Of course, the authorities are happy to use all sorts of public information & databases. When citizens complain of invasion of privacy, they say it's public information.
Either it is or it isn't.
That's really the question here. Are court officers and informants at risk of death or major injury due to this data being made public at this time. I do not argue that the information should be censored permanently. But a temporary court order to cease distribution of those names during court proceedings seems perfectly reasonable.
Which means that as long as those undercover officers have pending investigations and court dates, their names and faces should be protected from public disclosure until they're reassigned or they retire.
the site is down already heh
If anyone *really* wants somebody from this list dead, doesn't it seem reasonable to think think they would've acted on that desire back when the information originally became public in the respective court case?
As if we didn't have enough problems with the "anti-snitch culture" that prevents law enforcement from finding witnesses in places like the inner cities when serious crimes are committed! Now we'd end up with a sex offender-style registry of people who have cooperated. This sort of thing has to go, unless you want such things as secret evidence and witnesses to start becoming topics for debates on constitutional amendments.
After all, why help the cops do their job trying to track down the person who murdered your son/daughter/husband/wife/whatever when it is so much easier to just go out, get a gun from the guy on the corner and shoot the person.
As far as the baby shot in a drive-by, there is no need for you to be an eyewitness.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Good news for the pool of mayor Quimby though.
Because these people whining about publishing it have been irresponsible in not drawing a real line to protect real secrets. Of course, they draw all kinds of lines to protect public info from public view that isn't really secret, but on which their power depends.
So they're incompetent to actually protect secrecy, which any crypto person can tell you first requires minimizing the secret info any way possible, then controlling only secret data with nonsecret logic. While covering up all kinds of info people need and have a right to see.
So of course they react by blasting a mere demonstration of their own blabby, yet prohibitively inconvenient management of public data.
"Fingerprint File", by The Rolling Stones
--
make install -not war
The same way knowing your neighbours is musulman/christian by waiting at the entrance of the moskee/church is one things (public knowledge), but having a read point and click available database showing the religion of people is a privacy offense in many country (in europe). This is the commodisation of the information which is protested, and I think it is arguable that without commodisation the chear effort to get the same information on a whole group of people de facto protect them (although this is quite not the definition of secrecy, I would call it "losing the key in the hay stake". Same with sex offender list. You can research every people looking for home in your4 neighbourghhood for sex offense in every court, but having a lsit make it incredibly easy to single out the people.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
while the site doesn't seem like such a good idea, if the information was gotten in publicly available operations, then the agents and informants have not really been operating under secrecy all this time, and now perhaps they shall be disabused of the notion that they were. it could lead to better security in the future.
Law & Order sort of tackled this in the 2004 episode Gunplay. A website very similar to WhosARat.com, run by a defense lawyer, got two undercover cops shot while they were trying to score some illegal guns. (The story was apparently inspired by the deaths of James J. Nemorin and Rodney Andrews on Staten Island in 2003, although I don't think the website element was present in that incident.) As is typical of Law & Order, they raise the tough question, but they don't answer it: The prosecutors are let off the hook when they discover a much more sinister wrinkle.
Anyway, if the site does not get shut down preemptively, I'm sure that a death like this is only be a matter of time. When that happens, the investigators and prosecutors will stop at nothing to make a very messy example of the site owners, First Amendment be damned.
are they planning on adding themselves to that list? After all, they are tattling on tattlers. ^)^
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Wiggum: My bad! Can't work my answering machine, either. Now I ...
need a new informant. Say, Lisa, people trust you. How'd
you like to be a snitch? The pay stinks, but
\u262D = \u5350
in east coast cities like baltimore and philadephia, street violence continues unabated, and police have a problem getting witnesses to cooperate in shooting death investigations due to t-shirts, songs, and the like that demonize cooperating with the police
but of course, you will hear the regular cacophony of folks here on slashdot who can only think of subjects like this in a vacuum, outside of real world effects, and support "who's a rat", just because it's vaguely antigovernment
as if the government is the source of all of our problems in the world. as if the police are only the brutal shock troops of tyranny
gee, i dunno, maye sometimes law enforcement is there to fight simple straightforward crime and protect us and we should help them do that?
i know, wacky reactionary ultraconservative fascist and authoritarian of me to say that, huh?
pffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've seen a number of "mistaken" confusions of Rathaus and Ratnest (abbreviation of Rattennest, "rat's nest") before.
That was fast. Site redirects to a suspended page on their hosts server. http://xicom.biz/suspended.page/
I guess the IPO dislikes snitches on snitches.
Law & Order sort of tackled this in the 2004...
Yeah, all the best legal advice is on TV these days. I should catch up on all the episodes and memorize them so they are easier to cite the next time I defend myself in court.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Let's face facts here, the vast majority of prison inmates, people whose lives have been ruined by our justice system, are in there for victimless crimes involving drugs. Undercover agents are often instrumental in putting them in there. They're not making the world a better place.
They use lies, deceit and misdirection as the tools of their trade, to put normal people in jails and prisons where they are systematically abused and indoctrinated into actual hard criminal activities, to the detriment of all society. Your average person who gets charged with the average crime that an undercover agent helps to bring about also has no chance of getting a job afterwards as well, because he's got a criminal record now. Which means he's now stuck with either a low paying job for the rest of his life, or a life of crime in order to pay the rent.
Isn't the real problem here that this information IS publicly available? I would never want to prosecute anyone for compiling and disseminating public info. Thats why we're all here, right?
In fact these people are doing us a service by showing us all the holes in the system. At least now this information is available to anyone, including people on the list, and could alert them they might be in danger. Previously this info might only be available to unscrupulous people with the resources to track it down.
I'm generally not in favor of additional legislation making more things illegal, but perhaps it would be good to have a law making it illegal to reveal the identities of undercover law enforcement officers, or people known to be secretively aiding them, under certain circumstances, similar to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, so that these people could get in trouble when they break it.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Good luck making parole, Sean !!!!
music lover since 1969
"There's no connection between the two."
Ok, one list makes information available that allows for reprisal against private citizens.
The other list makes information available that allows for reprisal against private citizens.
Yes, clearly they're nothing alike.
First of all, I've seen this site before. The whois says it was registered in 2004. Second, you have to pay for the information, which is probably to pay for his legal fees. Third, the arresting officer and CI should be public information, right?
Now, I don't feel confidential informants are constitutional. You have a right to face your accuser. And even though officers should be forced to site their reference, the DA most of the time argues that they can't do their job and be trusted if they have to reveal their source.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Your Honor, in my defense, I'd like to direct your attention to Law & Order, Season 7, Epsiode 15. Yes, clearly it was the politically connected Step-father who murdered the co-ed he was having an affair with. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd like to ask the prosecution some leading questions in regards to Wookies."
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
According to my job's favorite Big Brother - Websense - the site is blocked.
Reason: The Websense category "Illegal or Questionable" is filtered.
Really?
What happened to "Honesty is the best policy."?
If lying to catch criminals isn't wrong, why would ratting to catch rats be wrong?
He only charges a fee to read the list. He's missing half the market.
He should also charge to *not* publish a name on the list. *sheesh* some people just don't know how to write a business plan.
I tried to visit the link and it gave me a generic "site has been suspended" type message.
But anyway, I agree. A site like this may not make government happy, but who cares? If it deals in collecting and distributing data that's in the public domain already, all it REALLY does is serves as a "wake up" call to government, that they need to be more careful about keeping the covers on their "undercover" employees.
Who told?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
When you risk getting informants or cops murdered in reprisal killings. That seems like a good line to draw.
Reprisal killings are this big scary monster that is blown way out of proportion. About 50 officers a year are murdered, and in '04, there were ~850,000 officers in the US. That's a homicide victim rate of 0.00058%. Guess what it is nation-wide? 0.0056%. You read that correctly. Police officers have a homicide victim rate that is one tenth that of the general population despite working a job we'd assume puts them at more danger of being murdered. The #1 cause of death for police? Traffic collisions, overwhelmingly. Don't believe me? Go check out the DoJ and FBI statistics; they spend a lot of effort compiling these stats.
On the flip side, "snitches" are a huge problem, as are "expert" witnesses. If you want to be scared out of your mind, read John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, ISBN 0385517238. A hick prosecutor and police department, with plenty of help from a state crime lab "expert", put SEVERAL men on DEATH ROW despite massive flaws in the evidence and witnesses against them and horrendously flawed trials.
Please help metamoderate.
He was most likely busted by an undercover for this. And because of that 100 kilos of cannabis will not hit the street. Making the street value that much higher for the general consumers. Meaning the average criminal body has that much more of a reason to kill, maim, and extort for it, to gain control of the supply.
For goodness sakes, all the war on drugs does is raise the price of drugs, and increase crime. That is it.
The best thing to do is legalize all drugs, make heroin $0.03 a dose for addicts with a perscription (enabling them to actually function in society, as they use to.), let the FDA make sure the global distributers of cannibis is free from all unlisenced contaminants (like tobacco).
I am glad for his data mining, which will help the general population pick out the DEA and local narcotics officers, stop them from their unconstitutional activities; resulting in increasing the supply of drugs on the street, lowering the value, and in turn lowering the violent crime surrounding such trade.
Not saying all drugs are good, many of which are very bad (In my opinion, never do a drug named after a part of your ass...) , but the general population needs to make that choice themselves. Some adults don't drink or smoke, or indulge in caffeine (myself included these days). Or indulge in any of the other legal drugs. That is their choice. If some teenagers decide to save their lunch mone for four years, and blow it all on a kilo of cocaine, and die, thats not a reason to make the drug illegal. It means that their parents failed to tell them that doing blow is not a great idea, and if they do to do it in moderation. Of course no parent these days wants to teach their children moderation. "One brownie for dessert?" "Billy wants more?" "Give him the tray". That seems to be the major cause of obisity these days (and parents not letting their kids play outside because of "perverts", not realizing that there were just as many perverts in their days, and not everyone got raped by Father Macintire or Ol' Man Rivers in their day. Hell, if the kid falls for the puppy trick, after being warned about it, then thats just a life lesson. One that would cause them to never disregard the advice again.)
So support the site, laugh at some cops trying to sell cannabis on the street and place a few photo's of them in police regalia on the telephone poles, and tell the police in your district to start spending those resources on getting rid of handguns (for civillians and police), stopping auto theft, stopping people from driving under the influence, etc. Oh, and catching the Father Macintire's and Ol' Man Rivers.
Just my two cents.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
At least for the last 5 minutes since I tried to pull up the page it's been showing the default apache page.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
They destroy families, lives, health, and general peace and good order. Making them legal does not prevent any of that.
I applaud felony convictions for drug possession and usage and the barriers they introduce to such individuals getting gainful employment after release.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Wow. Let us just say this is a huge breach of security and will get people killed that are doing us (the general public / law abiding (the big ones at least) ) citizens.
Anybody got a mirror? The Coral Cache is no use, it says "Success! Apache is working..."
Here is the text I get from my proxy
"You cannot access the following Web address:
http://www.whosarat.com/
The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Criminal Skills
You can:
Submit a site review request to your network administrator.
Temporarily override filtering on this computer if you have an override name and password. (Note that your administrator may be notified that you've bypassed filtering.)
Use your browser's Back button or enter a different Web address to continue."
It seems that someone has made the decision for me that this is not a good thing...
The question posed at the end of the summary is wrong; it implies secrecy through obscurity.
If the information is available from court files online, then it has already passed the legal transparency barrier.
Obviously, the problem here is that the names of those informants and undercover agents have already made it to the public sections of the court files, instead of being censored appropriately - especially nowadays that everything is searchable.
The website seems to be suspended. However, the screenshot from the nytimes article shows that the site also encourage users to submit information. Users can submit profiles of others, and I wonder who verifies the information? It seems like an easy task to falsely submit someone's name, and seriously harm their reputation.
I always wondered -- is there a similar site that lists people who sued then "settled out of court"?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
thinking that the identity of whistleblowers should be hard to get means i support an oppressive government?
the cognitive dissonance makes my head asplode
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Good. I hope they keep it. And I doubt very much that they will be ale to stop it. After all they get the info from public records like court transcripts. So anyone can get it anyways. Hey if it's good enough for sex offenders then it's good enough for John Q. Snitch.
Well, that is the point of the sex offender lists. Whether you agree with them or not, it is plainly obvious that the lists were designed to help generate vigilante behavior.
meant for GP. My bad.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If you're talking about drug-related violence, then you can count me out. Government is the cause of that violence, and they know it -- this crime epidemic did not exist before prohibition, as history shows. Prohibition exists because it's a cash cow for those in the business of government, in terms of both revenue and power over the people -- not because the average citizen gives a flying f*ck what other citizens do peacefully on their own time.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword" is the only information I will pass on to cops who risk their lives in the prohibition business.
3. You are the government.
P.S. No, never read "Dune".
I tend to believe there is value in both sides' arguments. Completely restricting the data on informants could have side effects of allowing people to act unchecked. Public accountability for actions has a positive tempering effect on society. However, the safety of informants and agents is tantamount. The question is how to strike a balance that can be made flexible for different circumstances. I would suspect that the timeliness of data has value for people who would wish to do harm to informants and agents. If the data was publicly restricted for some time, possibly years, this could provide an effective control mechanism to provide safety. Of course, some information might need to be permanently sealed, and provisions would remain in-tact for that. I wish Slashdot had an easy-to-use search function to check to see if someone had suggested this already throughout this story's comments.
Certainly these two are different (resisting temptation to go hackneyed "chalk and cheese" way). In fact, there is no sense in "legal transparency". If one is talking about information being made available to people outside the courtroom, then the judge in any case dictates how much can be discussed outside (gag-orders?). How the trial goes is dictated by the judge at the same time ensuring that there is no bias. Secrecy issue is also covered the same way. If required the sessions are held "in-camera".
Coming to the real issue of such information making adverse impact on the ability of the law-enforcement/prosecuting agencies etc., this issue will certainly come to a legal stage some day. If it will seem to impact things badly enough we may see some mechanisms getting defined.
In the meantime, identities of/information on all people involved in legal dramas will be available to people with motives and resources to manage it. Cannot think it does not happen even without facilitation provided by the net.
there were no websites called "who's a rat"
so his comment is still true today, because he knows, unlike you, that there are still very much in existence assholes who would put a bullet in your head for snitching on their organized crime efforts
what, you thought that the fading of the mafia in recent years meant that human nature was somehow fundamentally altered?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
level headed guy: "homosexuals should be allowed to marry"
spastic conservative moron: "i bet you support pedophilia too!"
level headed guy: "disclosing the identity of whistleblowers is dangerous to whisteblowers and detering crime"
spastic liberal moron: what you wrote above
thanks for the comic relief! your attitude is hysterical
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As somebody who has been falsely accused of shoplifting (it was called in by somebody other than the store employee, and required a call from the store owner to get the fake call-in quashed) and was harried on the phone by cops, as well as having them show up and "chat" with my family. All this without even calling the store to see if a theft had actually taken place
The cop on the phone went so far as to tell me I was on camera, even though he wouldn't let me come in to see if I matched the person on video (I later found out from the store owner that cameras were non-recording surveillance only), and spent quite a lot of time trying to nail me using lies and various other tactics that probably could have resulted in a nice lawsuit on my part, had I recorded the call.
When the police were called the store owner, they simply went away. No apology, nothing.
This is one of a few various incidents that have me at a loss of respect for police. Yes, there are both good and bad cops. Unfortunately though, even good cops can get tunnel-vision and end up pursuing innocents in a misguided attempt to fight crime.
Ok let's get specific: smoking and/or selling pot is pretty much victim-less crime, it's not going to ruin your life, and a judge isn't going to put you in jail for growing or selling it, unless you're running some kind of insanely large greenhouse. Now cocaine, crack, meth, PCP really does ruins people's lives and their families. So you can explain to be again what victim-less criminals are in jail?
how would being rich or poor change my attitude?
if you go in the poorest of neighborhoods, and the richest of suburbs, you will find two kinds of attitudes:
1. efforts against bad police and abuse, which is good (fed up poor people, rich people with a conscience)
2. efforts against the very existence of police, which is stupid (rich retards, gangbanging assholes in poor neighborhoods)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
are you against bad cops? or are you against the very existence of police?
the first attitude is commendable, the second attitude is retarded
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
will get pulled over for dui, and whine about the oppressive tyranny of police abuse in the name of fascist authoritarianism
of course that doesn't invalidate the abuse of poor people at the hands of bad police, but my point is not to invalidate that, because i don't have a problem with the fight against bad police, i support it
what i have a problem with are retards, rich or poor, who dispute the very existence of police itself, who somehow believe you don't need police, or that the ONLY function of police is to enforce goose stepping fascism
such people are either comic relief, or incredibly frightening, to think that seemingly functional people can be so utterly stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm for a reformation of the police and justice system in general. There was a time when there were beat cops, and they were well known and in many cases respected in a neighborhood. They weren't out to nail people for ticket revenue, or to police religious values, etc. Yes, abuse of power and overzealousness did exist, but due to the size of the area/city they could still be held accountable by the community at large if they weren't by the actual departments. Of course, even then there were flaws.
Nowadays, like many things, the police have a certain veil of anonymity. Faceless officers abuse their power in pursuit of faceless criminals. Sometimes they make bad calls because they don't have time to properly assess or investigate scenarios. Sometimes bad things happen because bad cops get in. A lot of times bad things happen because like most things, the justice system has become a bureaucracy ruled at times by the almighty buck. Less money means making it through other means. It means less pay, which means less applicants, which means you can't always keep certain standards. It means you can't police the police properly, and the bureaucracy and red-tape slow down that process anyways.
Should police not exist? Yes, of course they should exist.
Should steps be taken to improve the way the policing system runs? Yes
I can think of many things that need to be fixed. Firstly, the system for reviewing misconduct needs to be indefinitely separated and maintained from the normal police body.
Record-keeping needs to be greatly improved, in some cases, in regards to evidence-keeping, collection, and storage. I hear lots of cases where property that is held doesn't make it back in good condition, or sometimes at all.
And actually, I think that police surveillance should increase as attached to the officers themselves, in a bi-directional manner. Camera on the cars (already exist in most cases), or somehow attached to the police themselves. They are getting small enough to attach to people without being a large encumbrance, and if an officer suddenly decides to turn it off then it could be considered pretty fair evidence of intent to do something improper.
Yes, there are good cops. I've met some of them. Unfortunately, the joy of meeting a good cop is greatly overclouded by the feeling of personal helplessness and danger incited by meeting a bad one. There are plenty of ways to have your life ruined, or at least made very unpleasant, but the darker areas of law enforcement.
In terms of this site now... it could be good or bad. There are plenty of cases where "snitches" are just as criminal as those they are used against, and in the cases of an "axe to grind" they aren't exactly trustworthy. There are plenty of cases where cops have turned "to the dark side" when question to nail a suspect too, as described in many of the stories posted by others in this article.
Maybe one day cops will all have required undetectable cameras on themselves. Until then, we've got a case of a "watch the watchers" that can go either way
I'm sure this is redundant by now, but it sure is ironic to hear the Government crying about their lack of privacy.
However, blowing the lid on undercover people is bad bureaucratic karma, if nothing else. There aren't going to be any people in the gubmint disposed toward leniency for the hapless webmaster in the article.
until the feds got it:
l l+Street,+North+Reading+MA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068& sspn=33.02306,59.765625&ie=UTF8&ll=42.56141,-71.07 6071&spn=0.014983,0.029182&t=h&z=15&om=1
0 Press%20Release%20Files/Feb2007/Bucci-Sean-convict ion.html
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=23+Marsha
address from doj press release:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ma/Press%20Office%20-%2
i also support legalizing psychodelics, like mushrooms, lsd, etc., in controlled use: you need to have a prepared environment to take them, and you need time to recover
but hard drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine, heroine: should be illegal forever
the reason for this is that i recognize and acknowledge every single problem with prohibition you raise: it is absolutely true that outlawing drugs creates blackmarkets and fuels crime, etc. you bring up any problem you can think of with prohibition, and will i acknowledge without a single argument. i dispute none of your points
but for some drugs, the effects of the drugs are still worse than the effects of prohibition
for most drugs though, in fact many that the government retardly makes illegal, the negative effects of prohibition outweighs the negative effects of the drugs themselves (such as dui)
draw a graph: addictive potential on the x axis, inebriating effects on the y axis
something like caffeine is low on x and y: barely addictive, barely inebriating: legal
something like nicotine is high on x, low on y: very addictive, but barely inebriating: legal
something like lsd is low on x, high on y: barely addictive, but very inebriating: legal
something like alcohol and marijuana is middle x, middle y: somewhat addictive, somewhat inebriating: legal
but then you have stuff that is both high x, high y: highly addictive and highly inebriating... things like cocaine, heroine, methamphetamine. these drugs turn people into zombies, constant use takes them to a place where they can't hold a job, have a girlfriend, etc. they destroy themselves and need society to take care of them as former shells of themselves. because now, all they want to do is take drugs. whereas before they wanted to paint, or play basketball, or start a business. not anymore. now the goal is just: get the drug, in me, now. and these drugs are so addictive, just casual use is enough to get you sucked to that place and get stuck there
so: the prohibition effect is 100% real and all it's negatives is 100% true, as you say
but it is utterly retarded to look at all drugs, from caffeine to methamphetamine, and treat them the same. you can see wisdom in treating different drugs differently based on their different pharmacological effects, right?
in such a way, for some hardcore drugs, the prohibition effects are still real, but they are, all of the crime, etc., still LESS detrimental on society, and individuals, than the effects of the actual drugs themselves
in other words, there is more to the story of drugs than just prohibition
and in real life, you are sometimes forced to choose between two negatives: the negative effects of the drugs, versus the negative effects of prohibition. for some drugs, the effects of prohibition are worse, for other drugs, the effects of the drugs themselves are worse
got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They destroy families, lives, health, and general peace and good order.
It is time to deescalate the drug war.
i have no problem with you whatsoever
and i have a caveat to your remarks: if any effort to reform police is infected with morons who actually believe that all police are bad, period, then reform efforts will fail. and unfortuately, these voices are often the loudest (dumbest) voices in the room, and stymie genuine, real, intelligent, and important words like what you just wrote above. and that's a shame
there needs to be a way to separate out and remove retards who are against police and only believe them to be jack booted thugs, from the genuine effort to reform police and make them more accountable
bad police: bad
police in general: good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So one case is the basis of your entire (flawed) argument? Informants are most often criminals, yes. From there you wandered off into fantasyland. In most cases, the informants are rolling on someone to negotiate a reduced sentence for themselves. Further, the "entrapment line" is not exactly thin: to be considered entrapment, an accused criminal has to be forced to commit a crime that they were unwilling to commit, e.g. "Buy this weed or I shoot you." If you willingly give an undercover cop a suitcase full of money for a trunk full of cocaine, it's not entrapment - it's good police work.
but "who's a rat" isn't about the mafia in particular
so you can't expect anyone to read your comment that way, to read your mind and understand your comment was narrow in scope. you need to qualify your comment, that it only applies to a narrow point, or you run the risk of sounding stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your Honor, in my defense, I'd like to direct your attention to Law & Order, Season 7, Epsiode 15. Yes, clearly it was the politically connected Step-father who murdered the co-ed he was having an affair with. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd like to ask the prosecution some leading questions in regards to Wookies."
Dude, you're clearly not competent enough to be your own defense. You should never request permission to ask leading questions.
expect to be called stupid
what you wrote was stupid. low iq. retarded
what, you expect that you can say stupid things on the internet and no one is going to call it that?
what are you, the bubble boy? the last internet virgin?: "i can post my thoughts on the internet and no one will respond negatively"
wtf?!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
dude: if your feelings can be easily hurt, don't make your opinions known to other people (especially don't post it on the internet!)
but if you believe in ANYTHING in this world, and make your opinion known, you WILL encounter resistance from people with alternative opinions. and if someone thinks what you said was stupid, THEY WILL SAY THAT and you need to be able to HANDLE THAT
get fucking used to it, it's called life. real life doesn't coddle your waaaahmbulance feelings you fragile child
grow the fuck up you sheltered closet case, or stop fuckign posting on the internet and expecting no resistance
what an infant
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is no justification in my mind for a site like this to be allowed to exist, particularly not by a convicted criminal who has an axe to grind. But I'm equally outraged that this information is available to the general public in the first place. You should force people to make a real effort to get it, and even then, I would suggest that the information on informants in cases of violent crimes or drug dealing should be kept sealed. Get a lawyer, and convince a judge that you need to know who snitched in that ten million dollar drug bust. Please! This is why people refuse to get involved when they see a crime going down. Getting your name and address plastered all over the internet as a result is a sure fire way to get yourself (and maybe your family, too) killed.
In my humble opinion, there is too much stress these days on the rights of the criminal, and little or none on the rights of the innocent, law abiding person just trying to live a normal life doing the right thing.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I bet these geeks think they are really clever coming up with an idea to get criminals to pay them to find out "who is a rat". But then again, rats are not angles either. These geeks have opened themselves up to some real world hurt where the pain might not end with a strongly worded email.
I hate slashdot
"The vast majority of drug users don't harm others. "
Vast majority huh? I'd ask you to back that up, but we both know when arguing pro-drugs you have to use the words "vast" and "majority" to sound persuasive, like the "vast majority" who are pro-drugs really need an argument anyway. Maybe the "itty-bitty minority" might need the argument though so we'll be that much closer to a drug utopia. Although why you all feel drugs are so needed that evolution forgot to include them in your design is a complete mystery.
when you become an addict. because then you expect society to take care of you
if you expect society to take care of you when you are an addict, then you have to accept that society will fight the creation of "you": more addicts
free will is an awesome thing, and it is your right as a human being. it is also true, as a human being, that you bear repsonsibility and accountability for your actions. you can't have one, free will, without the other, responsibility. and unfortunately, addiction robs you of both: free will and responsibility. you lose free will when you are an addict because you aren't free anymore: all you want is more of the drug. and you have no responsibility anymore because when you do something bad, it's the drug talking, not you
you want free will? you champion that?
guess what? i do to!
and i recognize something you don't: the most fascist, fundamentalist, ultraconservative, authoritarian government is LESS of a destroyer of your freedom than heroin is. take the most evil abusive prison system designed by the most craven sadistic monster, and it is less of a prison on you then the bars that heroin puts in your mind
i recognize that the fight on heroin is less of an imposition on your freedom than heroin is itself
why can't you see that?
heroin and its derivatives (like oxycontin) are amongst the most addictive substances known to man
but you go ahead and rail against cold pharamacological fact if it makes you feel better
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Drugs are bad, m'kay?
if the information the government has is the identiy of an informant against a criminal organization before or during a trial (or even for awhile after, if the animosty is huge enough), then i EXPECT the government to censor that, in the NAME OF freedom
freedom from crime
what, you think the government is the only thing in life that can imperil your freedoms?
and please note i applied censorship to this SPECIFIC incident. i did not say "the government can censor anything it wants to"
why do you think that would be anything that i support? why do you think censoring the identity of whistleblowers is the same as censoring anything?
life is a little more complicated than simplistic across-the-board brain dead approaches to subject matter
most of the time, cnesoring is bad
in the name of protecting a whistleblower, censoring is GOOD
understand?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... It's a shot in the dark
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
the registries/lists of the: holy ones, the witches, the inquisition, the sex offenders, the rats, ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
... he will never get access to cheesy-dip-saus!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
how about i prove it to you?
I bet you wouldn't feel that way if you were one of the tens of millions of people the police has thrown into prison for things that shouldn't even be a crime in the first place. But you just go ahead and sit there supporting whatever the government does. Because it's all just black and white, good and bad, right or wrong, until the government decides to go after YOU, decides YOU'RE different or unwholesome somehow and you become the new target because of your beliefs, your traditions, or the way you choose to relax in the privacy of your own home.
wow, the person your responding to sounds like a monster. based on what you wrote above, the person you are responding to:
1. doesn't know that "tens of millions" of people are in prison for "things that shouldn't be a crime"
2. supports whatever the government does
3. thinks everything is black and white
4. is soon to be on the government's target list of unwholesomeness
ok, let's examine what i actually wrote
do you see my problem yet? WHAT DID I WRITE and WHAT DID YOU RESPOND TO? do you notice, gee, i dunno, a SLIGHT FUCKING DISCONNECT?!
in this world, there are ultraconservative assholes who HONESTLY believe that if you support gay marriage (as i do), then you must also be for pedophilia (same as homosexuality in their mind), or people marrying dogs (same as two people of the same sex amrrying). i'm going to give you the BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT on your intelligence and assume that you can understand why thinking someone would support pedophilia or bestiality marriage just because they support gay marriage is STUPID and HYSITERICAL SPASTIC BULLSHIT
am i correct?
now, apply the SAME analysis to WHAT I WROTE and YOUR REACTION and you get the SAME kind of HYSETERICAL and STUPID overreaction
understand you frgaile twit?
i don't respect you for the SAME reason i wouldn't respect the ultraconservative asshole who thinks gay marriage is the same as pedophilia because you are both STUPID and SPASTIC overreactors and I DON'T RESPECT YOU
i don't respect you, understand? because you want ME to talk to you calmly and passively like a mature adult when YOU are the own who hasn't a SHRED maturity in you based on your SPASTIC HYSTERIA
do you understand you fucking ignorant spastic asshole?
FUCK you and your expectations of reasonable civility when it is YOU who are providing the hysteria to the conversation!
at BEST that makes you fucking blind hypocrite!
man you are one ignorant asshole!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i very clearly pointed out that i do not support across the board censorship, and you respond to me as if i support across the board censorship
are you ok? are you mentally sound?
let's put it this way: if there was a criminal organizaiton on trial, and the identity of an informant in that trial was made public, do you think that the informant's life might be in trouble?
it's a very simple, honest question
and another very simple question: do you believe the government is the only threat to your freedom? does organized crime threaten your freedom?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"So one case is the basis of your entire (flawed) argument?"
,a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/04/na tional/main542678.shtml">case.
Yep, just one
Then, you go on to acknowledge that my flawed argument is in fact, in part, correct:
"Informants are most often criminals, yes."
Now, we venture into "fantasy land":
"In most cases, the informants are rolling on someone to negotiate a reduced sentence for themselves."
Would you think this would make their testimony more or less reliable?
"Further, the "entrapment line" is not exactly thin: to be considered entrapment, an accused criminal has to be forced to commit a crime that they were unwilling to commit, e.g. "Buy this weed or I shoot you." "
No, entrapment means that the criminal commits a crime that he would not have otherwise committed. Many of us are willing to buy drugs and wouldn't have to be forced to do so, but the undercover officer has to be careful to use specific words and not to use other words. That's because offering drugs to someone is creating a crime from thin air. Were you not there, no crime would have been comitted. Creating crimes is not the job of the police.
"If you willingly give an undercover cop a suitcase full of money for a trunk full of cocaine, it's not entrapment - it's good police work."
Actually, it sounds like the start to a great weekend, minus the undercover cop of course. So, selling cocaine is great police work, but buying it is a crime. Interesting that you have gotten that all straight in your head somehow.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
somalia
go ahead and move there if you believe in anarchy, if you believe there is no need for ANY type of law and order machinery in society
it's a total fucking gas, it's a utopia
because, you see, when there are no police, no one else threatens you with violence, because as we all know, only the police can oppress you or shoot you
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hadn't thought of that angle. Very good point.
Your brain is not a computer.
This would only be true where the person taking the drug was in a controlled environment, i.e. not permitted to do aything that would affect another non-consenting person, until after the effects of the drug wore off. Overuse of many illicit drugs can lead to long lasting personality changes (effectively a drug induced mental disorder) - and how do you propose that society handle that?You're also completely ignoring the problems with addiction.
everyone has a character flaw. you do to
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
alcohol is not nearly as addictive as heroin, and not as inebriating
2 24147
nicotine IS more addictive than heroin... but it is barely inebriating. a nicotine addict can have a job. you see them every day outside office buildings in fact, supporting their habit, and supporting themselves with a job
i covered this already in the previous post, please read what i say before commenting next time:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235669&cid=19
if you put alcohol or nicotine in your body, i hsve no right to tell you not to
but if you put herion in your body, i have every right to prevent you from doing that
why?
1. your chance of becoming an addict is much more likely than with alcohol and nicotine
2. when you become and addict (not if, but when, it's simply a matter of time, small time for most, a little longer for some), then i, along with the rest of society, will be forced to support you, because you won't be able to support yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In all honesty, I see no problem with legalizing 'victimless' crimes, if for no other reason than taxes. You could probably fund Social Security, Welfare, AND a national healthcare system with the tax money from legal marijuana alone. Of course, the money would most likely go to porkbarrel crap, corporate welfare and/or bombing some poor fucker's sand hut, but that argument is neither here nor there.
"if we accept homosexuality in society then we also have to accept pedophilia: they are all sexual deviations"
"if we legalize marijuana, we also have to legalize heroin and cocaine: they are all nasty drugs"
"if you allow abortion, then why isn't infanticide or murder ok: it's all the taking of a human life"
etc.
no, dorothy, the slippery slope, in fact, is the antithesis of rationality
the slippery slope is, in fact, the penultimate example of the triumph of fear, uncertainty, denial ove reason and logic in someone's mind
rational human beings are able to keep censorship of sensitive information at trial as a separate issue than censorship in general
really
no slippery slope
at all
you need less hysteria, more reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a blog post disputes solid medical fact
;-)
won't the wonders of the internet ever cease!
(snicker)
i can pull up links that "prove" "beyond all shred of doubt" that the god favors christians, that the pope is gay, that we never landed on the moon, that jews planned 9/11, etc.
i'm sorry i'm not going to get into a web link pissing contest with you
let's just leave it this way: you go girl, you go ahead and "know" "as fact" that alcohol is more addictive than heroin
i'm obviously a crazy crackpot
it's just a wacky prejudice of mine. no science to support my views at all. nope. it's all an evil conspiracy to cover up "the truth" for malicious agendas. a freedom loving people obviously can enjoy heroin occasionally and move on without a second thought
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
oh man, thanks for the comic relief!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The purpose of the site seems to be to bring retribution to informants. If there is another aim, I would like to hear of it.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I learned some interesting facts from this site: http://leap.cc/
The most interesting was that in the early 1900's - at the start of the prohibition era, at the time when they officially began to make drugs illegal - 1.3% of Americans were addicted to drugs.
In the 1970's - at the start of the drug war - 1.3% of Americans were addicted to drugs.
Now, today, 2007 - after $70 Billion dollars spent on the drug war, the highest incarceration rate of ANY country in the entire world, and thousands of innocent victims and well meaning policemen dead - 1.3% of Americans are addicted to drugs...
I was utterly shocked. In fact, I didn't believe it until I did the math myself! Look up addiction rates and divide by 300M Americans - the statistic is right on target.
It's time we step up as human beings and STOP all this needless suffering! The people who are going to get addicted to drugs will get addicted. You cannot stop this by hurting people! We are in a prohibition era, thru and thru. We know from history that Prohibition DOES NOT WORK. And it does not work because People Deserve Better.
- DaftShadow
except the population is not constant .....
Heh, of course not :) But 1M/100M and 3M/300M are statistically equal.
You don't find it immeasurably criminal that $70B Dollars have been spent and Millions of victims have been arrested and cheated and considered criminals for life, in the name of decreasing an addiction figure that has not actually decreased AT ALL?
History and statistical analysis show that in the USA, drug addiction rates are stable. There has been no change in over 100 years of 'drug policy!' Doesn't matter if we spent money and killed drug dealers or not. Drug Addiction is not a public policy problem, but by making it one we have hurt so many more Americans than drugs ever would have! I consider that criminal.
- DaftShadow
You're right. I totally forgot about Law & Order SVU, Season 5, episode 12. Thanks!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
And the usual thing will happen - the companies and servers will move overseas
Then regulation will create a case for that to be blocked as well. Just as it has for gambling, and will be for China (when someone has the guts to say "no, we're not going to sell ourselves out again.").
It'd be quite nice to see SAIC, Lenovo, and Chery next to those jailed folks from the UK for nice long sentences - without the Aspen "vacation".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Dick Cheney.
;)
Carl Rove.
Alberto Ganzalez.
See subject....
Freedom of information and the right to know who your accusers are makes such a service perfectly legal, and I suspect that if challenged in court, the challenge would fail--as much as a judge might hate having to agree. Open societies should be loathe to conceal accusers too efficiently if only because it can quickly lead to abuses (or rather, make abuses easier to commit and hide) popularly associated with totalitarian societies.
On the other hand, witnesses and informants do need to be protected from criminals who would do whatever they could to either silence them or exact revenge after their day in court. Otherwise, few will be willing to stand up and bear witness or tip law enforcement about impending crimes or crimes in process. We do exercise such non-disclosure policies where doctors, lawyers, and priests (and in many places, even journalists) are allowed to refuse the disclosure of any information divulged in confidence. Likewise, the courts also allow the excision of names and other information from public records in cases that involve national security.
If this data service is exploiting a flaw in the system, then perhaps it's time that confidentiality laws extend to the names of witnesses and informants.
Turnaround is fair play.
quia potentia mens mentis