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The Mexican Drug Cartels' Involuntary IT Guy
sarahnaomi writes: It could have been any other morning. Felipe del Jesús Peréz García got dressed, said goodbye to his wife and kids, and drove off to work. It would be a two hour commute from their home in Monterrey, in Northeastern Mexico's Nuevo León state, to Reynosa, in neighboring Tamaulipas state, where Felipe, an architect, would scout possible installation sites for cell phone towers for a telecommunications company before returning that evening. That was the last time anyone saw him.
What happened to Felipe García? One theory suggests he was abducted by a sophisticated organized crime syndicate, and then forced into a hacker brigade that builds and services the cartel's hidden, backcountry communications infrastructure. They're the Geek Squads to some of the biggest mafia-style organizations in the world.
What happened to Felipe García? One theory suggests he was abducted by a sophisticated organized crime syndicate, and then forced into a hacker brigade that builds and services the cartel's hidden, backcountry communications infrastructure. They're the Geek Squads to some of the biggest mafia-style organizations in the world.
The Mexican Drug Cartels' Involuntary IT Guy, maybe, just guessing really
FTFY.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If you find the topic interesting, there was a very thorough and interesting feature in Popular Science last year, Radio Tecnico: How the Zetas Cartel Took Over Mexico with Walkie-Talkies.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Story seems to be the setup for an episode of either Mission Impossible (original series), or maybe The A-Team (if you can find them).
Once upon a time one of the tester guys at my workplace found out his wife was cheating so took off to Las Vegas for a couple of weeks, blew the joint savings, and never returned. I lol'd. Some people knew what happened - but to a few others, I imagine he'd "just disappeared".
Never underestimate the ability of the media to give you one unlikely and incomplete angle to every story.
Why abduct a guy and force him to do IT work. It's not like there is a lack of skilled people, that can't be bothered with moral/legal questions about who their employer is or what they are doing. If there was banks, mpaa/riaa, phone/cable companies, etc... would all having to abduct IT staff too.
like, the headline reads like they know. but they don't.
more likely killed for snooping around. that was his job anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Cartel leader: "My phone is broken, fix it!"
IT Guy: "Ok what is wrong with it?"
Cartel Leader: "IT IS BROKEN ESE! YOU GET ME BACK MY FLAPPY BIRDS OR YOU DIE!"
IT Guy: " I cant, they removed it from the App market"
Cartel Leader, pulls gun and points it at the IT guy..
Cartel Leader: " GET ME BACK FLAPPY BIRD OR WE PLAY ANGRY BIRD WITH YOUR HEAD!"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Seems to me they could simply find and hire the right IT guy.
Hell, for the right amount of money I would do what ever they wanted. Drop me a couple of million and Ill give them a network and services that are close to untraceable and allow for the management of their business with little worry of the DEA figuring it out. I'd even include classes to teach there guys how to maintain security.
If I was their IT guy, I would make absolutely sure that if anything happened to me their whole system was encrypted.
Oh yeah ... you have thought this through.
First off, the cartel needs to know about the dead man's switch for it to be of any use to you. As someone already pointed out, it will be a simple matter to torture you and threaten your family until you give up control. They will be pretty confident you removed all of it when they tell you what they will do to your wife and children if it ever comes up again, and then they kill you after getting a replacement.
Sounds like a great idea you got there.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Because I have years of experience with computers.
Wow, you were really straining to make that unrelated political rant seem on topic.
Not at all. I think it's humorous (or would be, if it didn't contribute to a large body of evidence about the Clinton way of doing things) to think that one of Obama's would-be (at the time) cabinet secretaries, the moment she was named for the job, ran out and paid cash to have a personal mail server set up under a false registrant's name, specifically so that nobody could ever know which or her emails was, or wasn't part of her official legacy in that job - despite the law requiring her to make all such communication part of her ongoing records at State. That she did this under the table, and never even set up an official mailbox at State, and was magically able, for years, to avoid FOIA requests for her official communications, is just fantastically corrupt. The parallels with some IT guy in Mexico being asked to set up a shadow communications platform for a corrupt cartel there aren't imaginary, they're actually interesting.
It's topical because new of Clinton's furtive behavior along these lines is breaking right now, and it's a related topic. The main point of interest for this audience is the notion of being asked (or forced, in the example of TFA) to set up systems under dubious conditions (legality-wise), and keeping mum to avoid the sort of heat that can come down on them from the people who want the work done.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Nonsense, Mr/s Clinton apologist. Well before that law was passed, there was already a requirement to retain all official communications, including emails. She set this up specifically to get around such scrutiny, and did it the moment that she was named as the nominee for the job. Her use of a false name on the registration and cash payment to the consultant just contributes to the atmosphere (and reality) of deliberate avoidance of the legal requirements.
A law the speaks directly to the matter of forwarding along private messages from private mailboxes that get occasionally used in connection with official duties doesn't mean that the already existing laws about retaining all official communication didn't already exist. They did. She chose not to establish an official mailbox at State. Her personal mail account on her phony-name-registered domain WAS BY DEFAULT her official email channel. And she did not in any way comply with the existing laws that required ongoing official storage of her communications within government systems and available for things like FOIA requests. Countless FOIA requests for her correspondence were in fact completely ignored because of this deliberate loophole that she established (look! no official records of my communication exist because there are no records!).
And because it's her own private email sandbox, SHE gets to decide which messages she should or shouldn't pass along for official archiving per the law. We as her employers have no recourse to see if her judgement on the matter is or was sound, or even legally correct. This was a deliberate act on her part to avoid legally mandated scrutiny of her communications as a government official. Combine that with her panhandling for donations from foreign governments (WHILE she was Secretary of State!) to fund the foundations from which her family drew income and which did things like fly them around the world in luxury accommodations, and you can see why she might indeed want to dodge the law and hide her communications.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well, she didn't break the law.
Actually, she did. The law requires all official communication to be archived by the government. She deliberate set up mechanism to avoid that. That legal requirement was in place long before it was further enhanced by a later bill that spoke directly to the issue of personal email accounts and the timeliness of forwarding personal mail to offical mailboxes. She HAD NO OFFICIAL MAILBOX, because she didn't want that record keeping to even happen in the first place. She set up a personal platform so that she, and only she, could decide what content, if any, might eventually be passed along to a platform subject to FOIA requests, etc.
She was both nefarious AND wrong, and in every way that matters here, acting deliberately outside the law for her own purposes. And she paid cash to someone operating under a false name to set it up, just to make sure we'd all eventually realize just how sleazy she was really being about it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The jobs market is so bad in Mexico that thousands cross the border daily to get into the USA. The cartels would be better off setting up a dummy company and hiring IT guys to simply do the work, no questions asked.
Why go through all the extra trouble of kidnapping people and making them work? In the end, if they are smart, they'll figure a way to get out a message or screw you some other way. Much simpler and more secure to simply hire them.
Heck, they are IT guys. Get them a couple of hot women who don't mind getting naked and blow them, and those IT guys will do whatever you want. Much easier.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Because all those sources will sell every image, message, and status you've ever had for a nominal fee. Lots of hiring companies require you "Friend" them nowadays anyway, so they don't even have to pay. Considering some doufas could just post something stupid on my account and I'd lose the ability for employment... why?
Thinking that's the most likely outcome from my POV as well.
After all, if you're pressed into service as a "hacker", it wouldn't take much to discreetly slip information to the authorities, considering that most cartel types don't strike me as being technically uber-literate. Sure it would be a massive risk, but totally doable depending on the environment.
There are enough other hackers under duress willing to snitch on you for trying to send a mayday, plus they are probably operating under the stance of "do what we say and we will kill you, don't do what we say and we will kill your family". On top of that your mayday is likely to end up in the hands of police or military on the narcos payroll.
Part of the Radio Narco objective is to monitor communications of crime fighting orgs. If you did get a mayday sent to the right people, you and the rest of the captives are as good as dead as soon as they start planning the rescue team, and if they do find out it was you who sent the mayday your family is probably going to disappear too. It's a supremely shitty situation all around.
Since she handed over a large number of emails, there's no reason to conclude she didn't hand over all the ones she was required to hand over.
No. The fact that she set up a home-brew system to avoid the State Department's record keeping in the first place, and the fact she's been stonewalling requests for official mail for years, and is her own gatekeeper on the message she decides State should be allowed to see - combine that with her long history of obfuscation, ethics problems, and working with her husband's supporters to engage in seriously sleazy tactics - the burden is very much on you to explain why you think her private stash has been delivered in whole and intact to State when everything in her history and everything about this entire scenario screams the exact opposite.
In fact, to plow through her "official" mail (you know, the stuff she couldn't be troubled to mirror in her department's archiving system the way that the 2009 regulation required her to do), she used employees of her family's business - and that operation is funded in large part by big contributions from foreign governments and other entities from which she solicited money while she was wandering the world as Secretary of State.
We know Kerry is doing things differently, due to a change in the law.
Both Kerry and Clinton were subject to 2009's regulation. But you already know that.
It is hilarious, though, to play back her nagging lectures about other people using private email at all, and to know that, for example, an ambassador from her department was given the axe for using private email.
The fact that you seem to anxious to write off her behavior as completely reasonable says nothing about her, but a whole lot about your very strange world view.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.