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NewsCorp/NDS Sets Up Operation To Expose Canadian Pirates; What Could Go Wrong?
Presto Vivace writes "Murdoch's Pirates is a business book that reads like a thriller. The chapter excerpted in the Sydney Morning Herald explains how Operation Duck, an effort to discover the identify Canadian pay TV pirates, went horribly wrong. 'By October 25 Oliver had been in Toronto four days and had programmed a swag of pirate cards, using a program he had ripped off another pirate hack. And he had been paid a lot of money. That evening, he met with two piracy dealers in a car and programmed a few cards for them with his portable programmer box, to demonstrate that it worked. The following night Oliver received a call from a friend in London, a partner in his old piracy ring, who was sleeping with a woman who worked for Federal Express. 'He told me, these guys [from the previous night] sent a parcel to Larry Rissler,' Oliver recalls. Rissler was a former FBI agent who headed the Office of Signal Integrity—the operational security division—of DirecTV, and he had been hunting Oliver for some time. One of the dealers Oliver had met was a Rissler informant and he had despatched a re-programmed smartcard by FedEx to his boss. The parcel would be with Rissler early the next morning—if it wasn't already there.'
The story reads like some perverse blend of James Bond and the Pink Panther. It is just amazing."
The story reads like some perverse blend of James Bond and the Pink Panther.
Well, TFS reads like a chinese instruction manual. What the hell? Piracy dealers? Discover the identify?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I don't read many thrillers - does this really qualify as the kind of writing that is "amazing"? It looks to me like a contest entry to write the word "piracy" as many times as possible in a single paragraph.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
So, this is a work of fiction then?
Or are they saying things like, "The Liberal pirates who like to steal from the job creators...."
How many of these pirates had their phones tapped?
had programmed a swag of pirate cards
Are we talking about children's card games here?
Is a synopsis of a story that reads like a cocaine monologue.
I read the summary twice, and skimmed the (long) article it links to, but couldn't figure out what went so horribly wrong. Did 007 capture the SPECTRE bad guys?
Murdoch's NewsCorp makes Billions of Dollars in Profit/Revenues a year, and is one of the largest media companies in the world. Yet NewsCorp only pays about 4% in Taxes on all this income, thanks to an intricate network of hundreds of shell-companies in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Article to back this up: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/6796-focus-pay-your-taxes-murdoch ---- So, Rupert Murdoch, perhaps you should pay your taxes properly before you go after anyone for "Piracy"? You owe multiple governments and territories hundreds of millions of Dollars in back taxes. --- Perhaps you should clean up your "Tax Piracy", before you go after hapless individuals for "Content Piracy"? --- Better yet, run your "archconservative" NewsCorp dinosaur biz into the ground for good, so more ethical, talented, objective news and content producers can fill the gap you leave in the market.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
After all, NewsCorp seems to have funded the design, manufacture, and distribution of hacked cards to bring down British DTV competition. (And were successful. Poor ITV) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723
Not to mention illegally listening to voicemail...
Maybe they should cut their piracy out first.
So the chick is a mole scanning millioms of incming packages a day?
Crook: I just reorpgeammed cards for x and y.
Guy on other end of phone in bed in London: Cool! Hey honey, he just reprogrammed cards for x and y.
Crook: Telling your gf? Cool.
GF: Those names sound familiar. While 10,000 packages whipped by on my shift tonight, I glimpsed their name on one. It was going to...hmmm...to person z.
A little convenent.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
LMAO at people who pirate television.
Agreed.
But then also LMAO at people who think they can bathe half the globe in a radio signal and then decide who is allowed to decode it.
0 1 - just my two bits
Murdoch's NewsCorp makes Billions of Dollars in Profit/Revenues a year, and is one of the largest media companies in the world. Yet NewsCorp only pays about 4% in Taxes on all this income, thanks to an intricate network of hundreds of shell-companies in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
So you're saying they are 100% in compliance with the law and are paying all their taxes?
I'm more concerned with the Obama aides in the White House who owe back taxes. They all have security clearances, and an adversary could use that as leverage to extract intelligence or other favors.
...a better love story than Twilight.
Precisely. If someone shoots photons at me, well, I can do what I want with them.
Canadian pirates? What, they attack people with canoes?
You've obviously never been poor in your life.
The people for whom TV costs too much are exactly the people who need it.
"so more ethical, talented, objective news and content producers can fill the gap you leave in the market" - Are these a thing? I don't think these are a thing.
an american and a fbi agent have no jurisdiction so , in doing what they did , as they also have no private eye license this means they broke about 10 laws and a few civil rights sections of the charter of rights and freedoms and criminal code of canada.
im not stopping pirating neither is 18 million others and when you begin yur lawsuits its the end of the federal govt here ..in fact to really give it too you , im going to do free animated tv and free animated movies and give out free games i make
I'll then teach many others so that in short order we begin open and free world , OH and ya a lil donate button will be there....
have a nice day lawyer scumsucker and unwanted bacon biter fbi man.
AIUI, the unidentified (in the summary) Oliver was an ex-hacker working for NDS - the summary, such as it is, would lead to believe he was still an active hacker being pursued by this Rissler guy. Rissler didn't know he was NDS, and no-one at NDS seemed to want to tell him, hence the shenanigans.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The deal in Canada is there is no legal way to watch DirecTV.
We had bootleg satellite recievers all through the 90s. We had no access to cable, only 2 OTA channels, so we gladly got the DirecTV dishes.
We would happily pay DirecTV for the service, but there is simply no way to do so. CRTC won't allow it
Of course, my story, and the TFA are 15 years old. It's all over and done with now.
Murdoch's NewsCorp was caught pirating DirectTV's cards. Claiming it was done by their NDS subsidiary, and was really to benefit Direct TV, misses the fact that NewsCorp and DirectTV were rivals in cable TV.
Murdoch did it to damage Direct TVs business, it was behind the pirating to make selling Direct TV cards not worthwhile to sell.
Proving you can program a card, doesn't get you an in with other people who can program cards. It makes you a competitor, a rival, someone who might like to rat them out at the first meeting. So this version of events doesn't make sense.
1. The basic premis that Oliver was programming cards to get an in with other card programmers. Doesn't make sense.
2. The girlfriend who has access to Fedex computers and tracks all packages and happens to known enough to make a connection. That doesn't make sense.
3. The argument that Oliver ran from Direct TV because DirectTV wasn't 'trustworthy'... garbage. If he really had been investigating pirates, he'd hand over his info to DirectTV and they be fully behind him, and they're certainly not connected to the pirates of their own cards.
4. The claims that NDS only knew him as 'Alex', why would they need to keep deniability if he was legit? Again bollocks.
So what we have here is a work of fiction, to try to make News Corp look like good guys, at a time when they've been caught hacking phones.
What they did was simple, their subsidiary had a contract to make cards and had been bought out by Murdoch, they then pirated DirectTVs cards to try to drive out their competitors. They hid the links between their card subsidiary and their pirate. He got caught.
You've obviously never been poor in your life.
The people for whom TV costs too much are exactly the people who need it.
Are you seriously suggesting that any people, anywhere actually need pay-per-view television content?
How would an adversary get leverage from information which is already public?
In 2002, Canal Plus accused NDS of extracting the UserROM code from the MediaGuard cards and leaking it onto the internet.[15] According to The Guardian, the NDS laboratory in Haifa, Israel had been working on breaking the SECA-produced MediaGuard smartcards used by Canal+, ITV Digital and other non-Murdoch-owned TV companies throughout Europe. Canal Plus brought a $3 billion lawsuit against NDS but later dropped the action. News Corporation agreed to buy Canal Plus's struggling Italian operation Telepiu.[16][17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDS_Group
"On 26 March 2012, the BBC programme Panorama broadcast that NDS employed computer hacking to undermine the business of ONDigital.[19] At the time, ONDigital was the primary TV rival in Britain of BSkyB, a News Corporation company. The accusations arise from emails obtained by the BBC, and an interview with Lee Gibling, the operator of a hacking website, who claims he was paid up to £60,000 per year by Ray Adams, NDS head of security.[20] UK broadcasting watchdog Ofcom is to investigate these claims.[21] These claims are vigorously denied by NDS and NewsCorp.[22]"
LMAO at people who pirate television.
Agreed.
But then also LMAO at people who think they can bathe half the globe in a radio signal and then decide who is allowed to decode it.
Seems to me that the people that are wealthy/powerful/influential enough to actually decide what you are allowed to do with the signal, should be the ones laughing their asses off at you.
I see many of the movie torrents are seeded for IP addresses in Israel. If he pirated his competitors cards to drive them out of business, he probably also pirates competing movie studios movies for the same purpose.
If TV costs too much you are exactly the kind of person that could benefit greatly from not having it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Does anybody have a car analogy for how Betteridge's law of headlines applies to this article?
If it's public knowledge that someone has large amounts of debt, wouldn't they be rather grateful to someone who was willing to make it go away?
Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
...Operation Duffy Duck, and it went terribly wrong.
"There were $25,000 in money orders in his hotel room and some expensive computer equipment, but Alex had to walk away from it all."
Oliver aka Alex had supposedly been programming a few DirectTV cards for dealers to get investigate the piracy network. He left a money order for $25000 in his hotel room when he fled. $25k is a *lot* of pirate cards at dealer prices and doesn't match this story.
Profit and revenues are NOT the same thing. The article you linked to seemed to indicate that all of the tax avoidance (even thought they called it tax dodging) was perfectly legal. If that is the case, then your problem is not with NewsCorp, but with the politicians who wrote the tax loopholes that they take advantage of.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Are you seriously suggesting that any people, anywhere actually need pay-per-view television content?
Well, the alternative is that they start breeding.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
fueling each other.
This kind of positive feedback loop is not James Bond, it's Spy vs. Spy.
No no, lets hear him out.
See ... um ... poor people are addicted to TV and can't just go cold turkey on it. Pay-per-view television doesn't have advertisements (I've never actually seen pay-per-view , so that's an assumption), and advertising convinces people to spend money. So poor people need pay-per-view television content to satisfy their addiction and not get the overwhelming need to spend money on magic bullets.
We would happily pay DirecTV for the service, but there is simply no way to do so. CRTC won't allow it
And how exactly does the CRTC prevent it? Do they rifle through everyone's outgoing mail to see if anyone is sending a check to DirecTV to pay their bill?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I'm more concerned with the Obama aides in the White House who owe back taxes. They all have security clearances, and an adversary could use that as leverage to extract intelligence or other favors.
You can't be blackmailed with public knowledge. "We'll tell your friends about you back taxes if you don't give us this document!"
"Uh... that's on my website. What next, you're going to threaten to spill the beans on my porn collection?"
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Hah! Well-played, sir!
The Arrogant Worms could tell ya.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URU1qC5fjkk
Where DTV is effectively illegal...and you wonder why piracy is rampant on this stuff.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/h_sf05562.html
Om, nomnomnom...
So you're more concerned with a few bucks a few people may or may not owe, as opposed to billions News Corp owes?
Seriously, your talking about a rounding error compared with News Corp.
You reek of being a Romney shill.
Your link looks like it could be a shell business news group set up by Bain Capital and RUPERT MURDOCK!
KEEP BASHING OBAMA it really helps thing right now
I know this off topic but isn't time for the richest major corporations to do some good old fashion soul searching. If not then perhaps the ghost of Steve Jobs will show up in chains at Cupertino on Christmas eve begging the board members and share holders to get off their buts and do something constructive about hurricane Sandy and what it means to the economy of North America and thereby the Democratic WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!
At the same time Donald Trump and other gazillionairs will have a mysterious catharsis and realise that it was his employees and customers that made him rich in the first place!
It will take enormous resources to get the east coast of North America back on its feet and 2008 might just look like a blip on the stock ticker by comparison to what this hurricane has done. Charity begins at home people and this statement has never been as appropriate as it is today.
For the rich to just sit back this time and comfortably blame government for not responding adequately like they did with the disaster in Louisiana would be tantamount to economic treason!
So you're more concerned with a few bucks a few people may or may not owe
Who are in the government and therefore have control over your life to some extent.
as opposed to billions News Corp owes?
Your original article points out they pay what they owe, and furthermore because News Corp has no control over me why would I care what they do?
Your priorities are FUCKED UP man.
That this exists at all is a result of Mr. Al Gore who sponsored and shepherded through the Satellite Home Viewer Act. What this did was made it a Federal offence to decrypt an encrypted signal that was broadcast. Until this was law it was perfectly legal to receive and decode any signal that happened to come into your home.
This was done, ostensibly, to stop people with a C-band dish from receiving HBO for free. The real effect of it was to create DirecTV and Dish Network - before this law was passed these services could not have existed because anyone could simply receive their signal and decode it. With the power of the Federal Government behind them, however, it became a viable business model.
Just something else we have to thank Al Gore for, in addition to the Internet.
We in the US would not have DirecTV had Al Gore not gotten the abomination called the Satellite Home Viewer Act passed. This makes it a Federal crime to illicitly decode DirecTV's signal.
In Canada there is no revenue model for DirecTV since anyone can decode the signal for free. Give it a month and there would be Chinese receivers flooding the market. Might be nice for some Chinese manufacturers, but DirecTV wouldn't get a dime. And HBO would cut them off.
"perverse blend of James Bond and the Pink Panther"
yep.
Many Mexican cartel weapons turned out to be supplied by what is now the Department of Homeland Security.
The largest Ecstacy dealer was in the US witness protection program while he was dealing.
The CIA trained Osama to fight the Soviets.
The Pentagon backed Saddam to fight the Iranians.
Oliver North backed Amidinijad to fight the Iraqies and admitted they imported coke into the US to pay for it.
The OK city bombing was done by an unemployed guy retired from the US military trained in demolitions.
Tell me again who the government is protecting us from?
Had the excerpted chapter been carried by a non-Aussie paper, this submission would not have been accepted for Slashdot.
The so-called editors of Slashdot seem to devote a lot of effort to finding something with an Aussie connection -- anything with an Aussie connection -- to post on this site.
Hahahaha! Score -1! You must of known the Australians wouldn't let you get away with it!
I, personally, think this law is a Good Thing.
I have DirecTV and happen to like it. My only other options are Dish or Comcast. 3 quasi-choices are better than no choices. When DirecTV and Viacom had their little spat earlier this year, at least I got free Showtime and $10 off my bill for 6 months. Think I would have a gotten that if Comcast was the only game in town?
One could argue that there are other more effective ways to prevent cable monopolies, but good luck getting our politicians to implement them..
And, there is virtually no downside here. The argument "but now I'm not free to decrypt a signal that wouldn't be there otherwise" just doesn't hold sway with me. As a hobbyist, you're still basically free to do whatever you want, just don't brag too loudly on the internet about it.
I don't understand your logic here at all.
Does the signal not reach into Canada already?
My father lives on the US side of Lake Ontario, and he gets great DirecTV signal quality there. Does DirecTV use some sort of active beam shaping to attenuate their signal just 50 miles northward?
Something like 90% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the US border. Seems like most of them would have line of site to the satellites. Why don't Chinese receivers already flood the market?
Umm, they do what any regulation-enforcing government body does and simply denies the company the right to do business in the country. Pretty simple actually....