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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?"
...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."
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.
Yeh, I see the murder rate going up a point or two in the next couple of weeks if this site doesn't get taken down.
I mean do they not see the dangers in doing this? Or do they just not care?
They don't care. This is probably from the crowd that things the only thing wrong with comitting a crime is getting caught.
That being said, they need to put the creators/curators on the list - aren't they rats themselves now?
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
If this site does in fact gather all its information from documents that are in the public domain (as it claims), then there's not much in the way of recourse.
I wonder if soon we'll see a prohibition on this sort of data mining...making it a crime, or at least a regulated activity, to collate publically available data into a more usable form. I don't see how such a law could be enforced, however, since data-mining technology is already available to practically everyone. Perhaps we'll see restrictions on data-mining technology we currently see on encryption algorithms.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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
Sean Bucci, a former Boston-area disc jockey, set up WhosaRat.com after federal prosecutors charged him with selling marijuana in bulk from his house. Bucci is under house arrest awaiting trial.
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.
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.
Nonsense, this is a compilation of information that is already publicly available. All this site does it make it easier to reference. It isn't as if the site blows the whistle on anyone, the whistle is already blown.
That's like giving Slashdot credit for terrorism hysteria when all Slashdot did was post links to the stories on CNN, FOX, and the BBC.
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?
The cop that offers to buy or sell drugs on the corner is an 'undercover agent' and chances are their name if not even their picture is probably available on the wall of your local sheriff's office not to mention they're still going to have to come into court to testify against you. More worrisome would be if they're giving personal information about the individual like their phone number or home address.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
See? You lock a guy up in his house with nothing but an Internet connection and a bunch of pot, and this is the sort of thing that happens. I bet his next project will be cataloging the exact coordinates of every bag of Cheetos in the world.
If this site does in fact gather all its information from documents that are in the public domain (as it claims), then there's not much in the way of recourse.
Well individual acts may be legal, but still expose you to criminal and civil liability if you carry them out. It's not illegal for me to tell my friend that he can use my car any time he wants without asking, and it's not illegal for me to cut the brake lines on that car; but if I don't inform my friend that driving it might not be a good idea, and he subsequently drives off a cliff, that's probably murder on the criminal side, and wrongful death on the civil side.
There's something about a guy being accused of selling drugs from his house being under house arrest that's just wrong.
At least his incarceration isn't hindering his enterprise.
Although from what I understand he'll have an easier time of it when he actually goes to prison.
I talk about stuff.
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?
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.
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
If the site puts law enforcement officers in danger, it should not be protected by free speech. It should be taken down.
I'm getting the feeling that many Slashdotters really, really hate law enforcement.
"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."
Bullshit. Informants are often criminals themselves and are paid for their information. Undercover policework walks a very thin line to keep from crossing over into entrapment. Not to mention, almost all of the "wrongdoing" that this network of lies is trying to stop is victimless drug crime.
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
Is the aggregation the problem, or the disclosure? The information is already publicly available, it is simply being pulled together and republished. If the disclosure is the problem, then the law surrounding the initial disclosure should be changed. If the aggregation is the problem, any remedy needs to give careful consideration to the fact that someone with sufficient resources can go ahead and get this information any time they want it, whereas people without those resources can not. Yet another reason to make sure that you are rich and powerful.
At the moment, it doesn't appear to be illegal. If there is no good way to change that, tough noogies for law enforcement.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
Yea, we need to stop all the data mining going on to research the cure for cancer. In addition, we need to stop the data mining looking for intellegent life in space. Heck, we need to stop the data mining involved in global warming research. Dude, here's your sign.
In God we trust, all others require data.
it is probably time to pull the plug.
Apparently, it's already done. Or down. Whatever. The adress http://whosarat.com/ points to http://xicom.biz/suspended.page/ .
If the police really wanted to turn those "No Snitch" movements around, they should go back to doing what they have written on their cars: To Protect and Serve.
As opposed to racial profiling. As opposed to beating suspects mercilessly when they present no danger to the officer. As opposed to taking their sweet time to respond to inner-city disturbances while rushing to rich neighborhoods. As opposed to villifying teenagers that are just bored and want to hang out in a public place and not causing any trouble. As opposed to the "we are above the law" attitude that many many officers seem to have.
I remember getting pulled over by an undercover detective for looking at him wrong. Quite literally. He parked his unmarked vehicle with illegally dark tints across two handicapped spaces at my local bank branch and some old lady had to park considerably farther. As I left the ATM I saw him getting into his vehicle and I saw this poor thing with the appropriate handicapped tag in no more complicated than a nightgown struggling with her walker.
I stared at him nastily. I wanted him to feel the shame that others were judging him. Obviously I rubbed him the wrong way since I drove off maybe three blocks before this guy turned on ol' red and blues mounted on his dashboard. I was pulled over and given a lecture about how HE was keeping me safe.
Pro tip: in those situations, the only thing you should do is "Yes, officer" lest you get tazered.
Hell, I live in South Florida... NBC did a story on filing complaints to police stations. Most of the stations just wanted a verbal report and wouldn't provide him with the anonymous forms required under law. To top it all off, when the report got on the air, the investigator had a BOLO notice posted! "Fuck da police" isn't just because we're rebellious: it's because so many DO WRONG.
Questioning witnesses for murders is movie-time. Law and Order on CBS time. It happens, but it's not so prevalent that doors are being knocked on day in and out to find out where they were on August the 11th at 3:19am.
If the police stopped intentionally being antagonists to the citizenry maybe we'd cooperate more.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The hell they can't. Example. In most states, judges are allowed to "correct" trial transcripts at will with no oversite. If the judge were biased, and didn't want his ruling to be overturned on appeal...
Anyway, I'm sure that with a helpful judge, the witness relocation project has created tons of false court documents. As long as no one is convicted based on a falsified document, I'm not sure it's even illegal.
Besides the document wouldn't have to exist anywhere except for this site. You could even set up alarm bells that go off is anyone starts to search for certain bogus names in the court databases.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
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?
So basically, everything goes as long as it's somehow difficult or annoying to do it? But as soon as an automated system is up, then it becomes illegal?
Riddle me this, is it right or wrong to have the identifying information available in court orders etc? If it's right, this guy has done nothing wrong. And if it's wrong, it shouldn't have been available in the first place (AND you support oppressive, secretive gov'ts, but that's an argument for another day). Either way, it's not this guy's fault. Unless it's also Google's and pretty much every other entity on Earth capable of compiling a list of things.
Global warming is a cube.
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.
Also, one of the MAJOR purchasers of data mining services: law enforcement. I work for the IT staff at a local county government (which includes the Sheriff's department naturally). They have a subscription to a service (it's run by the same company that does LexisNexis) that lets them look up ALL KINDS of information on people. You want a Blue . . . maybe Grey SUV registered within 50 miles of a crime scene that has a 5 and either an I or 1 in the license number? Yeah, it'll pull that up for you. You want a GIS driven map showing every sex offender within a certain radius of a coordinate, complete the mug shots and everything? It'll do that. You want to find every person remotely connected to a suspect? As a demonstration the sales guy plugged in a random person from our office and it brought up a list a list that included a college roommate of his wife from 20+ years ago. All of it was sorted by "closeness" and it was a long ways from him, but it found it.
ALL of this information was data mined from public record. Basically, everything you could want to know about someone or something they had, and it was for sale. Only restriction is that they blank out the SSN of people if you're not law enforcement (we had to give specific IP's of the machines using the service so that they could ID us and open that up too).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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.
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?
Publicly publishing already publicly available even if not widely known true information about matters of public concern is about as protected an act as there is under the first amendment.
Talk about a list that you don't want to be mistakenly included!
Yes, but a FAKE list like this might be brilliant:
1. Identify 2nd/3rd highest ranking members in gangs
2. Post their names as rats on a website claiming to out undercover agents
3. Gang leader has them killed
4. Go to step 1 a few times
5. Post leader's name as supposed agent
6. Any remaining members kill leader
The resulting gang, much reduced in leadership and too paranoid to work effectively as a team, would be much easier to round up and the taxpayers would have a much smaller prison / court system tab.
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.
How about the legal drug, alcohol? We need to keep in mind that legal recreational drugs are already present and that most users of those drugs don't harm others.
Silly Personal Anecdote:
One time, when I was following my girlfriend in her car (I was driving my car), I saw her pulled over. To make a long story short, after a few minutes, the cops walked away from her car, and we continued on home. I called her up, expecting her to be crying over a ticket, or scared about a warning.
In reality, they pulled her over to ask for her phone number, and her friend's (who was sitting in the passenger seat) phone number.
This made my blood boil.
You see another man hitting on your girlfriend or wife? You kindly tell him to give up.
You see a cop hitting on your girlfriend or wife while pursuing their "official" duties (I'm talking lights flashing on a major, crowded public street), what do you do? Walk up to him and expect to get tazered?
Another one:
A few days ago, after the Cubs/Soxs game at Wrigley Field, I was out on Lincoln having a drink. We're walking to a restaurant around 7 pm, and I see a cop (sitting in the passenger seat of cop car, with another officer driving) get out of his vehicle, and walk up to a bar to talk to some bouncers. Interestingly enough, I see his hand cupped around something.
It was a can of Miller Light. Now, what would the cop have done had he seen me getting out of a passenger-side door with a can of beer. Tackle me?
I hate this kind of legal inequity. Police should not be above the law. Acting as if they are, and enforcing unjust laws will result in this kind of anti-police speech, and it should.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell