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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.
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.
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?
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.
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
"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
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
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.
So because you know some people who went overboard, everyone is automatically a victim.
"Victimless crime" is usually meant to exclude the person committing the crime.
Even if you don't buy that, "drugs" isn't a crime. "Drug Possession" is a crime, and IS victimless. Now, people who use the drugs may have made themselves victims. That is something else, though.
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
Selling marijuana to consenting adults is the very definition of a victimless crime. It's the government's own fault for not legalizing it & collecting taxes.
There is a war going on for your mind.
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.
Criminal neglect is a separate issue from drug use. Neglect can be the result of legal or illegal drug use (including alcohol use), or it can be the result of other mental problems. We can pursue and prosecute criminal neglect on its own merits, distinct from the question of drug use. We take this approach with alcohol as it is.
> Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money,
> its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!
This is a parent being neglectful. There are separate laws for that.
> When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs
Yes, that is "victimless" in the sense that the only person they're hurting is themselves.
"Hurting yourself isn't a sin -- it's just stupid." Robert A. Heinlein
> or can't afford what they a mentally or physically dependant on, and
> rob/kill others for drug money, its a victimless crime.
You are aware this is an argument for legalization, not for illegalization, don't you?
> People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown
> how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime.
So you would support mandatory pamphlets be handed out with the drugs beforehand to make sure the buyer is aware of the risks? Sounds good to me.
And, for the record, I've taken less drugs than Bill Clinton even publicly admits to.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!
No, it's child abuse, just the same as if they spent the children's money on a trip to Vegas. That doesn't mean that staying in a luxury hotel or selling someone an airline ticket is or should be a crime.
When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs
No, it's criminal negligence, just the same as if they put on a blindfold and got into their car. That doesn't mean that owning opaque pieces of cloth should be a crime.
People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!
If you choose to consent to something, you aren't a victim of it. Now, there might be a small minority that were addicted by someone else, in which case they are victims, but most people who use drugs choose to do so.
(And so on for the other examples)
Honestly, I could care less about the people who know the risks, and still use the drugs to the point of harming themselves. It's those that use them and harm others in the process, that bother me.
The vast majority of drug users don't harm others. For the minority that do, harming others is already a crime, so punish them for that.
What would Lemmy do?
Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!
Dude, that's not drug use, that's abuse.
When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs, or can't afford what they a mentally or physically dependant on, and rob/kill others for drug money, its a victimless crime.
Again, that's not drug use, that's robbery.
People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!
It's a consensual transaction.
Listen, I smoke pot every day. I have a job. I pay my bills. I did well in college. I have a nice home. I'm friendly with the neighbors. I'm good with kids. I love my family. Who is the victim here? If you believe I should go to jail for this, you're a far more dangerous man than I will ever be.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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. Care to back any part of that loaded statement with facts?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!
Of course that's not a victimless crime. The crime here is child abuse and neglect, which is not victimless.
People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!
It's a little difficult to accurately gauge the efficacy and dangers of a drug when, as schedule 1 drugs, it's very, very difficult to research them. That said, making a drug illegal will not solve the issue you've raised here. As our experience with alcohol and tobacco has shown, if you want to publicize the dangers of a drug, the best way is to legalize it and use the taxes raised by it to educate the public about the dangers of it.
When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs, or can't afford what they a mentally or physically dependant on, and rob/kill others for drug money, its a victimless crime. The people robbed/killed certainly weren't hurt.
Hypothetically, if I were mentally dependent on World of Warcraft, stayed up for 48 hours straight playing it, found out I didn't have enough money to maintain the subscription because I lost my job, so concluded that I should rob a liquor store to satisfy my dependency, would that mean we should ban World of Warcraft? Of course not. Now, I understand the concept of chemical dependence, but there's a big leap between "Wow, I need this substance in my body" and "Wow, I think I should go kill someone for it." When people make that leap, prosecute them for that. Until then, they haven't done anything wrong.
At this point, I will point out that I'm not necessarily a fan of legalizing all drugs for OTC purposes. I do think opiates should be prescription-only (too difficult for a person to reliably self-dose), and drugs that are addictive that lead to severe bodily harm after constant use are definitely a concern (meth, LSD, PCP, etc.). Then again, tobacco would fall under that category, and alcohol can, too, if it's abused enough - that's the problem with drawing the line in the sand there. I do think that marijuana should probably be legal; I don't think it's a particularly healthy drug, but it isn't any worse than anything else we have legalized.
I think that's what most folks arguing this tend to miss. Sure, people can be cold sober and still commit crime - usually as the result of mental retardation, ignorance, stupidity, or an over-sized ego. OTOH, when an otherwise normal brain is soaked in a narcotic, burns through it, and suddenly that brain cries out for more? All bets are off.
Thanks to the dumbasses who want to out the "rats" so bad, good luck finding out (much less prosecuting) anyone who commits a crime against you or your property in the future. Folks aren't going to be so eager to be a witness on your behalf if the odds are good that the perpetrator looked like some sort of psycho or gangster type, and potential witnesses stood a solid chance of facing bad mojo for the simple act of telling the truth in a court of law.
Feel safer now?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Denying that drug use is a victimless crime is astonishingly ignorant... of the definition of "victimless crime".
Drug abuse does increase the likelihood of other crimes which do have victims, but drug use in and of itself is indeed victimless. (Hint: If you're consensually engaging in behavior which harms you, you're not a victim. Stupid, yes. A victim, no).
Laws are made by men, men are sometimes unjust. As St. Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all".
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm
It's not the vast majority, but neither is it a small fraction.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I see no reason why the names of under cover agents need to be public record in court cases.
Of course their identity needs to be public record. They're individuals testifying in a court case. What are you going to do, have a cop take the stand as "Mr. Anonymous"? Cops already are known to lie on the stand occasionally, but can you imagine if they were allowed to testify and never have their name revealed? There would be no accountability whatsoever! They could say anything they wanted, and even if proven false later, nobody could come after them because nobody knows who they are!
Secrecy and fair trials generally don't mix. This does cause some problems and may be inconvenient, but it is, as they say, the price we pay for freedom.
Why shouldn't we try to actually prevent crime every now and then? How about, if you take the drug out of the equation? Parents don't need drug money, so they can feed the children. Child neglect prevented. Or someone didn't become physically dependant on some drug, and doesn't rob/kill anyone to get the money.
And before you go all "future-crime" paranoid, please be aware that there are such things as victimless crimes which are real crimes, because it will lead to someone being hurt. Drunk driving is such a crime. How would you feel if some jerk drank two whole kegs of beer and hit the road, and the police couldn't arrest him because he hasn't hurt anybody yet? Do you really think we need to wait until the guy kills a whole family with his reckless driving before we stop him? Until he hit someone, there's no victim, yet I do believe it is a crime.
Or how about someone walks into a bar with a pocket full of date rape drugs? Possession is not a crime, there are no victims, so nobody can arrest him. Let's wait until the guy rapes a couple of women before we can start an investigation after which we're not even sure we'll find anybody guilty because the woman can't even testify.
Walking into a bar with date rape drugs in your pocket is a victimless crime and should remain a crime, because it is very likely somebody will get hurt eventually. Driving drunk is a victimless crime and should remain a crime because it is also very likely that somebody will get hurt.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
"How about, if you take the drug out of the equation?"
OK, how do you propose to do that? Is criminalizing use of certain drugs doing a good job of that? Not as far as I can tell.
In any case, when people say "victimless crime" they mean something victimless by nature, not by chance. Reckless driving may be victimless if you're lucky. Getting stoned in your own living room is victimless period. So drop the straw man.
"Or how about someone walks into a bar with a pocket full of date rape drugs?"
One drug is involved in more date rapes than any other by a very very long way. It doesn't fit in pockets well, but bars serve it.
We have, in Alcohol, a fine example of a drug that has been both criminalized and legally regulated. Every negative effect on users or society was much worse under Prohibition. Regulation is simply a better way to mitigate problems related to drugs; it works, and prohibition doesn't. Not creating a market that supports violent criminal gangs, and not locking up huge numbers of non-violent otherwise innocent people are just nice side effects.
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.