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 ..."
here we call them FELONIES!
successfully prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food restaurants[...]Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages,
Movies cost hundreds of millions to create, market, distribute, and be consumed for the same reason: Entertainment. The difference is, movies are legal and often fictional. But does it matter to those watching? No. The deeper question here is -- why do people watch it? Why the popularity? The answer says a lot more about us, the audience, than it does about the criminals.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Reading TFA it shows that this kid doesn't go to school and doesn't have a job, he just spends his days and nights mooching off his mom and finding ways to entertain himself.
One of those cases I'd file under "parents enabling the problem". Kick him out on the street where he belongs, force him to get a job and spend some of his time doing something constructive, rather than 100% of his time spent on destructive self-entertainment. There are some cases where the parents bear a significant chunk of the responsibility for their kids' behavior, and this is definitely one of them.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The economy sucks, the rich have destroyed liquidity to keep their dollars valuable... now more than ever we need community. The one thing rich and unethical people hate.
WTF? Yes, all rich people hate community. Just the other day I saw a rich person going all over town setting soup kitchens and churches on fire. 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.
I really thought we had moved beyond this class warfare nonsense a long time ago.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Are you implying that because the victims displayed great naivety, it somehow excuses the criminals who engaged in these "pranks" ?
...to see how these fine folk reacted once they were outed by TSG. Props to the folk who got the job done.
Tariq Malik calling the cops on reporters standing in a public way outside your flat after having posted numerous episodes of taking advantage of gullible people on youtube has to be the epitome of chutzpah. If the allegations against him and his cohorts are true (and the evidence they collected against themselves seems to back those allegations up), I hope they get to pay restitution to all the folk they tricked and spend a considerable time making up their 'pranks' to society.
Documenting your own crimes and posting them to the internet in the hope of glory seems a bit backwards to me, but hey, to each his/her own.
Yes, I too associate community with inciting people to commit criminal damage.
For fuck's sake.
I write bullshit
You know, they could have been found out much earlier if one of those employees had stopped to make a sanity check of what they were being asked to do.
Also blame employers. Most employers prefer the subordinate type that follows and asks questions later. Those employees are especially vulnerable to attacks like this. All you have to do is find one 'yes sir/no sir' type to 'change the fuses'.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
So...I take it you're one of the pranksters on Pranknet?
Malik, of course, expressed no remorse for his stunts. Prank targets, he declared, were "responsible for their own actions." The victims he and his cronies abused and degraded daily were simply "sheep" with "no brains of their own."
I suppose it doesn't bother you either that much of the pranks are also illegal?
Beetle B.
The people who impose such limits invariably exempt themselves.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
You'd be surprised at how much you yourself rely on trusting other people, even if you do speak like a stone cold trust no-one badass. You'd also be surprised at how much society relies on the ability of its people to trust each other. This is what pranksters and scammers rely on.
I'd like a society where we trust and help each other. What these people do is to make us all trust each other a bit less and to look at our fellow man with the attitude that "they're going to screw me over, so I'm going to screw them first, ha!" a bit more.
Pranknet are scum, quite simply.
Sigh, the Rodney King riots had very little if anything to do with Rodney King. They were much more heavily influenced by the murder of a black girl by a Korean shopkeeper than by anything that the police did. The verdict was just the last straw. It's not exactly a coincidence that the black community focused so heavily on Korean own establishments.
Well, my insurance company took my money, didn't pay for my health care, and now is trying to convince the dumb Americans (which are unfortunately in the majority) that we should reject health care reform.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age and from which I'll be lucky to recoup the money I've put in, let alone any extra monies above and beyond that. If I had invested the money that's been taken from in FICA taxes over the last ten years into bonds and equities I'd have about 110% of what I started with. You'll forgive my skepticism that they are going to do any better with health care.
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.
Corporations will screw you over to make a buck every fucking time.
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
If somebody burst into your home at night claiming to be police, would you be a "dumb dimwit" and believe them, or maintain your cocksure skepticism and wind up like this woman?
To what extent is someone else responsible for bringing those actions about? A key difference here is that the Pranknet guys often rely on danger/panic scenarios: those situations when time wasted can be dangerous, and the guys at Pranknet were portraying themselves as helpers, whereas the scammers usually appeal to their victims for "help." I guess it's a difference of degree...
I think that makes all the difference in the world, really. It's difficult, if not impossible, to find any mitigation in the fact that someone's just being a greedy bastard. On the other hand, someone presented with an authority figure, telling them that there is some kind of immediate danger is a much more sympathetic figure. It's hard to look at such a person as a simple asshat, because it's something that the vast majority of people (many of them quite intelligent) are susceptible to. And it's a good thing, too. We need people to listen to authority figures at some basic level, or society in general would fall apart. In order to have a society, there have to be authority figures.
Someone I respect very much told me, "Trust, but verify." I have no problem with trusting someone whose identity can be verified--whose credentials check out. These so-called victims did not seem to even lift a finger to verify the authority of the person asking them to humiliate themselves and do thousands of dollars in property damage. Maybe they're not terminally stupid, but definitely they're hopelessly, terminally naive. Clearly the mods disagree, and you can see the karmic punishing I'm taking in the GP post :)
I also disagree that our society is based on mutual trust. Volumes and volumes of laws backed up by lawyers, police, and jails show otherwise. If people could simply trust each other to do right, we wouldn't need a quarter of the laws, contracts, corporate policies, and regulations that we have. Hell, even marriages are sewed up with prenuptial agreements nowadays. Fact is, there are tons of people out there who will screw you over and take your money/job/freedom if you give them the chance. They don't look like cartoon bad guys. They look like you and me. Some of them run companies, some of them are in public office, some of them go to your church. By implicitly trusting people, you are virtually guaranteeing that you'll be taken advantage of one day.
Or to put it into Slashdot terms, you can live your life trusting people either: "Order Deny, Allow" or "Order Allow, Deny". Either way is fine, as long as you set the rest of your exceptions up reasonably. Choose wrong too far one way, and you risk becoming a cynical trust-no-one bastard like me. Choose wrong too far the other way, and we'll get to laugh at you when you strip down naked in Times Square because someone on the phone told you he was the police.
And remember, it's not just the people that make idiots of themselves that suffer. The people that owned the motel had to put up with broken windows and smashed TVs. The victims own stupidity doesn't make the Pranknet lot any less culpable.
If I were the motel owner and one of my guests did this, my response would NOT be, "Oh.. let's put our Sherlock Holmes hats on and find out who that mean prankster was!" It would be, "You better find a good lawyer, because my insurance company will be calling."
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.
I also disagree that our society is based on mutual trust. Volumes and volumes of laws backed up by lawyers, police, and jails show otherwise.
That's called selection/observation bias. You're looking at only one side of the coin.
I've lived in countries where there's a lot less trust than here. The notion of returning an opened product to a store and getting a full refund is based on trust (yes, there's a profit incentive, and some people do screw the retailers, but the system works overall). In some countries I've been to, this would be unfeasible: Almost everyone will try to exploit such a retailer.
When a storm knocks out the electricity and the traffic lights stop working, I've always seen everyone obeying the rules. I doubt it's because they're worried about cops. It's about trust that the other drivers will do likewise. Simply unworkable in other places I've lived in.
I've had neighbors whom I don't know receive UPS/FedEx packages for me. Again, trust. I don't think they're afraid of me beating them up.
There are loads of examples. Society, at least in the US, is fairly nice and a lot of that has to do with a common trust.
Which is why someone exploiting that trust is a despised person.
Beetle B.
I forgot to add this: "If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen."
It's particularly disturbing that people who my own security and well-being depends on--hotel and restaurant staff--are stupid enough to fall for these kinds of pranks.
Are you genuinely surprised that there are stupid people in the world? Or that stupid people would work menial jobs? If so, there's a word for people like you.
I rather think that stupid people, by definition, will always be with us. And I also believe that one part of being a good citizen is not taking undue advantage of other people's weakness. This kind of rule is helpful on the inevitable day that one meets someone smarter or stronger than oneself.
If pranknet causes these people to be more careful in the future (or to just gather a couple of Darwin awards), I'd feel safer.
If your feeling of security requires normal people losing what little trust in others they still have, or stupid people being tricked into killing themselves, then I hope to god you never feel safe.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
There are a lot of comments here suggesting that the victims should take most of the blame.
As food for thought, I'd recommend those commenters watch this fascinating TED talk.
He gives a number of examples where we feel that we're in control of our decisions, but the designer of the systems/situations have measurably a greater influence in what you'll do than you yourself may. His point at the end is (paraphrased):
When it comes to the physical world, we're acutely aware of our limitations, and we build systems to overcome them (e.g. stairs to climb vertically, wheels for easy transport, etc). When it comes to the mental world, we have this unreasonable view of ourselves as supermen. We think we are always in control, and that we are always responsible. We need to understand our mental limitations so that we can design systems (e.g. public/company policy, transportation systems, etc) to overcome them (and make the world a better place).
Beetle B.
To be fair, they were actually police, and they came to rob her with an illegally obtained no-knock warrant. Believing or not believing they were the police would not have helped - they didn't ask, they just killed her when she put up a small resistance to her home invasion.
Now, getting off topic a bit, but I found this part of the story to be really, really disturbing:
The Rev. Markel Hutchins, acting as spokesman for Johnston's family, said her family members were "stunned and disappointed" by the announcement of the indictments because they believe it will disrupt a larger federal investigation of civil rights violations by the Atlanta Police Department.[13]
WTF? Who the hell is "stunned and dissapointed" when the murderer's of a family member are indicted for murder? That's fucked up. It's not like the indictments are going to somehow hide the illegal warrants regularly being obtained at that PD, and it isn't like NOT indicting the guys will kill an investigation into the rest of the department. Whether or not you can make what you have stick is a problem prosecutors deal with all the time, and they probably would not have gotten anything out of these guys either.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Wow, I think I'd find your neighborhood kind of eerily idyllic. We lock and bolt our doors at night, and if your package gets delivered to your neighbor's house by accident... let it go, man because it's gone. And the few remaining stores that actually have return policies get taken advantage of mercilessly.
And because of it, your neighborhood sucks, and mine doesn't.
I didn't mean to suggest the whole US was the way I described, but much of where I've lived in it is. Suggesting people become mistrustful will likely turn my neighborhood into one like yours.
Beetle B.
When a stranger calls you up and tells you to do something on their authority, and you do it, you're not doing it because you trust him. After all, you don't even know him. You're doing it because you've been taught to take orders from anyone who speaks in complete sentences and has a manager he can put on the phone. These pranks don't erode my trust in other people any more than the thousands of Nigerian scam emails I get each day. They might, however, give me a little more courage to speak up when something doesn't make sense.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
There used to be ways and means of dealing with humans who exhibited this sort of destructive uncivilised behaviour.
If they were lucky they'd just be Shanghai'd, if they were unlucky they would be lynched and if they really pissed a community off they'd be tarred and feathered.
It's fortunate for the likes of these individuals that western society has bound itself so tight with law and regulation that it's now unable to deter the parasitic members with any sort of finality.
I dont think so. I think once the phone calls start involving transfers of money and other stuff that sets off the alarm bells in people's minds then there's going to an escalation or at least some kind of authorization. Sure, not all the time, but weird stuff like "put your pee in a cup and bring it downstairs" most people just say screw it and do it, but once you start involving credit cards, IDs, and cash they start to get suspicious.
I suspect pranknet's success was largly based on the bizarreness of the requests. The ones that werent bizarre were presented as emergencies (gas leak), so people took the voice on the phone as an authority out of fear. I doubt they are able to do much more than that. While social engineering is always going to be an effective attack, especially against low level service personnel, I doubt that SE alone can do that much damage as the employees themselves have very limited powers.
What I find interesting about all of this is that its like the Milgram experiment from the 60s with a modern spin. We see the corporate guy on the phone or the emergency guy on the phone as a real authority and pretty much do what he wants, even if it sounds 100% crazy. Perhaps this is a side-effect of what happens when an economy moves towards a service job model. Regardless, Im sure many companies are reviewing their policies.
Frankly, its always bugged me that we have such a double standard with telephones. If I want to set off a command in a computer system I can expect at least one level of security, say username/password. On the phone we can use our social skills and say things like "Its Joe from corporate and I need you to do this ASAP" or "The boss wants this done now or someone is getting fired." I think phone calls should have some level of authentication, be it callerID or passwords. The way we do it now is straight from the 20s and 30s and is pretty ridiculous.
I notice the nanny lovers at /. modded me down. That is funnier than shit. Mod away baby,yeah!
That does NOT change the fact that if a total stranger calls me on the phone and says "I iz dah prezidentz of USA. Go strip nekkid and play in deh traffix!" and I do it? Then I am a stupid moron who doesn't deserve to live!
Do you REALLY want a nanny government, is that what the users here at /. really want? Just look at the stink over the suicide girl on Myspace. yes, that woman was a total douchebag. But hey, since being a douche isn't illegal, we'll just screw the law until we get her, yeah! Either you have freedom, or you don't. It is just that simple. News Flash: there have been douchebags for as long as there have been people. We don't make douchebaggery illegal for the SAME reason that the whole suicide girl thing was bullshit-because to do so we would have to make laws that could be abused so badly free speech would be thrown in a fire.
We are already seeing enough nanny government bullshit as it is, do you really want more? Just look at what they have done to the smokers, now they are planning to do the same to "teh fattys". Do you enjoy a cola? Or a donuts? Then pay up, because nanny government says you are duh stupidz and can't be trusted to feed yourself without their help. Freedom includes the freedom to do stupid things and the ONLY way to remove stupidity is to remove freedom. Hey, there are too many morons falling for 419 scams! We can fix it! We can just have mommy government approve all your large expenses! isn't that great?
See the problem? and what if I say "I hate stupid people. I wish they would play in traffic" am I to be charged if some moron does that tomorrow? Of course we'll have to keep logs of every post on every site, so we can catch these evil criminals like me who tell someone stupid to play with matches. See how that slippery slope works? You can NOT protect people from their own stupidity. Every attempt at making something idiot proof has just shown idiots can be even stupider than you imagined. Do you really want a mommy government to protect people that are SO stupid they follow any directions a stranger on a phone gives them? Is that really what we have become? I'm glad my grandfather that fought for freedom in WW2 is no longer with us. You could probably power the entire southern region with the revolutions he is turning in his grave.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
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.
I've got news for you, pal.
Two things:
1) They will have to increase taxes. There's only a few ways the government can collect money. Taxes. Charging for services. Selling off state property. Borrowing. Printing money. The government is on the knife edge of bankruptcy (every one else, including China is sitting back and collectively saying WTF? We don't want no part of this, we're not lending), which means they're printing virtual money. FACT: The money pixies are running out of magical money fairy dust, and we're in an unsustainable position.
2) Printing virtual money is a direct cause of inflation. Inflation *IS* a sales tax *ON YOU.* It means you have to trade *more time* to your employer to buy the money which with you purchase the things you want to buy.
Unless you see Washington auctioning Area 51, and Alaska off--or (preferably) changing the direction we're going in, we're patently fucked.
Right. Such paranoid radio elite as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age and from which I'll be lucky to recoup the money I've put in, let alone any extra monies above and beyond that. If I had invested the money that's been taken from in FICA taxes over the last ten years into bonds and equities I'd have about 110% of what I started with. You'll forgive my skepticism that they are going to do any better with health care.
A better comparison for healthcare would be Medicare, which is indeed a government-run medical insurance program. Medicare boasts around 2-3% administrative overhead, whereas private insurers span 20-25% administrative overhead.
As much as people like to bemoan the concept of "a bureaucrat between the patient and their doctor", the numbers seem to indicate that a shareholder between a patient and a doctor is even worse.
It is no mystery why: the corporate shareholder's best interests run in direct contrast to that of the patient. It is more profitable to deny treatment whenever possible.
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
Let's at least pretend to have an honest discussion.
You simply cannot get by without insurance, and in many cases, your only choice is to take whatever plan your employer has, because you are subject to far more strict acceptance requirements if you try to get an individual plan. Most people do not have the choice to take their business elsewhere.
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
Technically this is true, however, since the alternative to not doing business with health care companies is a likely early death. You are in a way forced to do business with them, if you want to stay alive.
Woah, internet tough guy invoking the lawyers!
*shudder*
What is this "economic distribution" that "they" are "supporting"? Those who say stuff like that presuppose that there are people somewhere who arbitrarily assign and dole out wealth to others, and how, if we just had the "right people" (such as yourself) in charge of it all, we would have a utopia.
Now this Malik guy is an internet celebrity, which is exactly what the article states is his desire. All of his actions have suddenly been validated, because hey, he's an internet star. Visits to prankster.com (or whatever, I don't know) probably just went through the roof, generating some ad revenue for him to pay for another full body massage at the corner-shop. Hundreds of jackass 15 year old imitators are already foaming at the mouth to copy these douchebags. While the article was hilarious in pointing out the creepy people behind prankster, they did them a huge favor by introducing them to the rest of the world.
I really don't like this argument that if you financially penalize a corporation they'll just pass the cost to their consumers. If a corp is selling service, for example, at $45 per month, and they get a $900-billion slap from the EU, and they increase costs to $60 per month, why weren't they selling service for $60/month earlier?. Corporations don't set a profit goal and toe that line exactly, they charge what will get them the most profit. A penalty is a sunk cost, and is completely irrelevant when making future profit optimization analyses.
I really hope you validated this. Wouldn't want some old man getting hundreds of angry phone calls.
Technically this is true, however, since the alternative to not doing business with health care companies is a likely early death. You are in a way forced to do business with them, if you want to stay alive.
It's technically also true that you need to do business with the food companies to stay alive. Maybe the Government should take over the agriculture industry as well?
Oh wait, through corporate welfare and lobbying interests (tax breaks, money into boondoggles like ethanol, a need to appease Iowa to win Presidential primaries, etc, etc) it already has. Hmm, I wonder what the result is? Surely a balanced and well managed system that's working for the greater good, right? I bet if you had left it up to the free market we could have wound up with something that runs on fast food and high fructose corn syrup and which has resulted in 30% of Americans being obese.
You'll forgive my skepticism that the Government is going to improve the health care system.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
There's a very strong norm against publishing phone numbers, addresses, etc in journalism (esp. criminal and political journalism). I readily agree with this norm -- it seems that publishing such information can invite vigilantism and generate life-long problems for the accused without the benefit of a fair trial. I would generally expect journalists to abide this norm in news reports on robbery, drug trafficking, arson, embezzlement, etc.
Never-the-less, I felt a twinge of satisfaction while reading phone numbers and street addresses in TSG's article. I wouldn't mind if these serial harassers received a series of harassing phone calls.
Then again, TSG accuses Pranknet of systematically violating the informal norms that their victims rely on; is it proper for TSG to turn around and break an informal norm of journalism?
I'd like to better understand the ethical question here. Perhaps TSG's approach is the only way to deal with Pranknet? Perhaps it's poetic justice? Has TSG made a special ethical judgement regarding Pranknet? On what basis? Does TSG habitually violate journalistic ethics? Do the participants in Pranknet deserve worse treatment than anyone else accused of crime? How would our opinion change if TSG had presented the story differently?
"You are aware that we just elected a professional class and race warrior as president, right?"
Classy *and* racy!
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
And you know the government has not... how exactly?
Seriously, the government/law enforcement agencies aren't going to move until they have a fairly reasonable case, and even then they aren't going spread the details all over the press - they save that for the courtroom.
"Foisting class warfare stereotypes on sheeple who know no better is how leftists got into office"
No, I think you'll find it's having a hard-right President and Congress commit war crimes by launching an illegal war while crashing the economy which is what elects leftists into office.
In 2000, I was pretty much indifferent to the whole Gore vs Bush gridlock. "They're both the same," I said. "Republicans, Democrats, left and right... they all have the same policies." After all, could anyone be more meh than Clinton? Took him til 1999 to release the crypto export provisions. Invaded Yugoslavia. Slept around like a Frenchman. This Bush guy was talking about "humble" foreign policy. Okay, I thought. They're America, they might be screwing Russia over, and not removing their nukes fast enough, and still trying to control the world... but at least they're not outright stupid.
And then I watched in horror how much, much worse it could get - what happens when you have a Republican rather than Democratic president who "responds" in a lather of panic and pride to a fairly small terrorist incident. Kabloom! United Nations? What United Nations? We'll baldly lie outright to the world if we want! We're Mericka, eff yeah! Bombs away!
A few years later your party of choice picks about the scariest pair of gun-crazy candidates you could imagine to replace Bush, and the world goes "Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. comma. Uniform. Sierra. Alpha? Hotel Tango Hotel? Over? Hello? Anyone in there, Major Tom?"
And then a miracle occurs.
And that's how come you have a quiet, intelligent, soft-spoken mixed-race Democrat representing you to the world. And the world breathed a sigh of relief and muttered "wow, and here we thought you Yanks really were a bunch of fascist jerks... guess we were wrong. When you've exhausted all other options, sometimes you do make the right choice. C'mon over here and give us a big, manly trade and arms reduction deal. We know we'll hate ourselves for it in the morning... but you're just so sexy right now!"
Yeah we know Obama's just JFK and Clinton reborn. We know he's stepped down Iraq just to ramp up Afghanistan. We know he's a master of the velvet glove of American imperialism instead of the naked iron fist. (Bush naked. Either of them. Brrrrrrrrr. Bad brain.)
But, well, he's half-black. And he got elected! That's, whuh, we still can't quite stop pinching ourselves. If you guys don't realise what a massive foreign policy boost you guys get just from having him there...wow.
And domestically, so he flushed money down the bankster hole... okay, that might have been smart or dumb, not sure yet. But healthcare reform? Seriously, THAT'S what you'd fight to STOP? We here in NZ look at American-style healthcare as a Very Very Bad Idea which we flirted with in the 1980s-90s, and thank goodness we didn't completely go that route. It looks like hell, and we're so glad we don't have the mess you now have to fix.
You're welcome.
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.
I really don't like this argument that if you financially penalize a corporation they'll just pass the cost to their consumers. If a corp is selling service, for example, at $45 per month, and they get a $900-billion slap from the EU, and they increase costs to $60 per month, why weren't they selling service for $60/month earlier?.
There could be a lot of reasons why they weren't doing it earlier. The most obvious one is competition. The free market isn't just based on charging whatever you can. It's based on charging what the market will bear. In practice, that means that if your competitor is charging $45/mo., you do whatever you can to stay at or below that threshold, so that you don't lose customers. If you get smacked with a $900 billion fine, and have to raise your rate to account for it, that will lead to a loss of business. (Of course, the impact on customers is rarely that obvious. Corporations usually try to hide such increases in fees that they don't have to include in the monthly rate, so that they can advertise "only $45 per month!", even though the new fees make the price considerably higher.
The agriculture companies can't forbid you from purchasing or using their products. An insurance company can.
I, like many, lost my job. Thankfully, I have a very marketable service and have been able to strike out on my own very successfully after having a very difficult time trying to find a "regular job". When I had insurance, I went to the doctor like I'm encouraged to do, and I was diagnosed with heart disease.
Now, I'm on my own. My insurance is gone, and I no longer qualify for insurance under the 'pre-existing condition' clauses. So, even though I'm a productive, contributing, and tax-paying member of society, I am not entitled to stay alive.
If you're so jaded as to not see how that is wrong, then I hope with all my being that you end up in my position someday.
Property is insured, damage to mental health isn't so easy to undo. You're not talking whoopie cushions here, this kind of very public humiliation can stick for a long long time.
That's basically the US from the outside.
Bush jr. was maybe the worst thing that ever happened to the US international image. He was loud, he was crude, he was as charismatic as a 60s staircase. This wasn't the Uncle Sam we learned to like so much. Sure, Unkie Sam was often a fairly tough guy, but you always had the feeling that he likes you. More the big protector than the belt-wielding "do what I say or bend over" uncle you had to spend your vacation at. And then Bush comes along and is just that: Someone kicked my nuts so now I'll lash out, take cover if you don't want to be hit. It was like rednecks taking over the rule of the country, and we were honestly a little scared. It wasn't easy to like that Uncle. People were really considering the alternatives, but they were even worse, the other Uncle you could run to had that long beard, spoke gibberish and smelled funny. Because the other Uncle, ya know, the funny drunk with that poofy hat, he kinda slept. Or died. Or something.
So the world looked at the US and Bush and what to come after. And we collectively groaned when we saw the Dem primaries. Two candidates without a chance. One not man enough, the other one not white enough, that's what we thought. Not in America. They're gonna elect that half-dead wreck and his churchy sidekick who is first of all even stupider and less educated than Bush was (yeah, we kinda like our politicians intelligent and informed) and second, she'll take over in a year or two after the old man croaked.
And then the miracle happened. The US elected that black man. That guy who was witty (ok, telepromtwitty, but still), who knew how to speak what we like to hear, who promised a lot of good things and who was a lot more charismatic than anything we were used to before. He was the Uncle we liked! Ok, he looked funny, but hey, who cares? I mean, compared to Bush... anyway. He's jovial, he sounds believable when he tries to talk about the burden of the 'common man', he comes across as someone who knows his stuff (again, being able to read those teleprompters surely helps there a lot), and he has a bit of that Kennedy air that we love so much, and that we didn't see since Clinton went away. Oh, we sure liked Clinton. We prefer prezzes that get blowjobs to ones that need one direly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"And domestically, so he flushed money down the bankster hole... okay, that might have been smart or dumb, not sure yet. But healthcare reform? Seriously, THAT'S what you'd fight to STOP? We here in NZ look at American-style healthcare as a Very Very Bad Idea which we flirted with in the 1980s-90s, and thank goodness we didn't completely go that route. It looks like hell, and we're so glad we don't have the mess you now have to fix."
He flushed an amount fairly close to our yearly GNP down the bankster hole and specifically banksters he had connections with. If we count the type of fraud these Prankster people did as criminal, then what Obama has done (following what Bush started, building on the foundation laid by Clinton...) has to count fairly high on the felony scale.
But the biggest thing is that you misunderstand something critical about American politics and why many of us strongly resist "reform". Reform here means changing the rules so that your cronies will profit instead of someone else's cronies. It has been that way since at least the '60s, probably longer and is largely true of both major parties. Health care "reform" means booting the folks who currently have control of healthcare out and putting your people in all the while leaving the actual *citizens* with less power. Each change of regime results in the pendulum swinging further into insanity with each administration trying to top the criminal aspirations of the previous. That is how they now get away with the House passing a 1000+ page bill that no one had read because it hadn't even been completed at the time of the vote ("Cap and Trade"). The memos and briefs coming out of the Obama Justice Department read word for word similar to those from Bush's with statements about how indefinite detention without charge (or even cause) is fine, the accused have no rights because of the severity of the accusation, and we don't really need to tell anyone, even a judge, who we are wiretapping or having followed. Obama's defense budget still has more money in cost overruns and blatant pay-offs (to mostly the same people as usual) than the GDPs of many countries. So it is not really a matter of what the subject of the bill is these days but rather that it is prudent to not let ANYTHING pass right now [at the Federal level] because we cannot control the time bombs they are writing into them until we get firmer legislation at the State level to protect ourselves from Federal overreach, stupidity, and corruption. I would rather have Ghengis Khan in control of my health options at the moment than a Congressional-appointed committee.
It is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing. I believe Democrats to be wrong about the best way to run the country, but I believe most of them are on the level. I, myself, am a Republican because I look back to ideals the party was actually founded to promote... like personal responsibility, personal charity, and freedom. But the core ideals are not promoted by the top levels of *either* party and grass roots efforts to actually change something are quickly co-opted by monied interests, pork, riders, and 'oversights' in the legislation until they do much more damage than if the problems had been left alone. There is a deep racket here where the 'leadership' treats the citizens exactly like those Pranksters, as if they are useless sheep who can be paid off in bright baubles and trinkets to look the other way... and cheating them isn't really immoral. That attitude infects the citizenry just the same, who try to emulate their 'betters' by making their own racket and trying to get a piece of the pie... and cheating The System isn't really immoral... so in a way, the attitude of the leadership ends up being accurate. That's how we end up with people in charge of liberal policies and promote using our tax money to "help others" who have not paid their own taxes in many years and people do not really find it odd.
Health care 'reform,' if it passes will do no better than utility 'reform' or the many Defense-Industrial budg
Are you kidding? So far the majority of stories involving someone acting like a sociopathic prick online, have attracted a number of wannabe sociopathic pricks that lionized the perp on one or more of the following grounds:
- muahahaha, now we're the ones with the power. Phear us! Payback time for the former school bully... and the cheerleader who didn't want to be my GF... and the jock who got her as a GF... and that geography teacher who got me bored to death... (Basically as if having been a victim once is all the reason and rationalization needed for victimizing others in turn. Newsflash: if anyone wasn't a bully just because they lacked the power and/or balls, but turns into one as soon as they can, they never had a moral high ground to start with.)
- OMG, if they were too stupid to defend themselves, they deserved it. (A.k.a., "might makes right.")
- more generally, if it's high tech and not everyone can do it, then it's right to do it if you can. (A.k.a., "might makes right.")
- It's just bits and bytes, and information wants to be free!! (Especially when said information is someone else's credit card number;))
- if it slips through some loophole of an existing law, despite being blatantly against its spirit, then it's morally right. The proposed new amendment against it is blatantly an attempt to control more people by criminalizing something as benign as terrorizing others. Cue quotes out of context from Richelieu and Ayn Rand.
- if it's already illegal, that law is blatantly an attempt to control more people by criminalizing something as benign as terrorizing others. Cue quotes out of context from Richelieu and Ayn Rand.
Etc.
In fact, my best guess is that now the majority opinion is against it only because it was _social_ engineering, and we don't relate that well to that. It involves talking to people and... eew ;) If it were about slipping someone a trojan to terrorize them via their computer, you'd see 200+ posts just defending the perp and blaming the victims.
So maybe it is stuff that matters. Reminding more wannabe sociopaths that doing it over the internet is no shield, is a good thing.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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.
Since I've not seen anyone else point it out yet, I just thought I'd point out that the 'pranksters' are simply exercising Foot-in-the-door technique. They probably aren't, necessarily always, stupid people that get duped by these situations. The actions they are being instructed to conduct are all reasonable - in relation to the one they just finished completing. The 'big picture' isn't as readily available as you might thing.
I hesitate to point this out, because it could empower other 'pranksters', but the formula is basically:
A) Get them to do something innocuous
B) Get them to do something logical
C) Get them to do something slightly/somewhat less logical
D) Continue escalating requests until something breaks
The 'humor' is often found at the ridiculousness of 'D)'.
Look at the hotel scenarios:
A) Get them out of bed thinking there is an emergency
B) Get them to line the underside of the doors, etc
C) Get them to 'open' a window, by force if necessary
D) Get them to break the TV (since force was already used on the window)
No one calls them up and goes straight to 'D)', and THAT alone is why it works.
The best defense against this would be to keep 'A)' in mind at all times. The leap from 'A)' to the end should also make sense without the intermediary steps...