Glowing reviews tout counterfeit cash on the dark web
latimes.com
latimes.com
Surely they have better tactics to neutralize someone without ending up in a gun battle.
A night raid, tailing the suspect, gas masks?
Note: I am a Brit not American, therefore genuinely interested to hear from law enforcement people on this.
If they don't have high profile violent raids to point at they risk people questioning the armament and spending.
At the city council meetings we were assured that the vehicle would 'hopefully never' need to be used. And people fought back saying that the there is no need for this in our small town. There are literal gun ports out the sides of the thing like a tank.
They ended up buying it, and now that they have spent massive amounts of money on it, they are probably going to find some excuse to use it.
For reference they bought the Military warzone model not the SWAT model.
It's moving the overton window that more violence is normalized alongside sliding military tools into civilian countermeasures.
But hey, they brought out the bearcat for a "possible gun domestic disturbance". And the sliding window goes further to fascism.
Recognise newspeak when you see it.
The hierarchical element means that the people at the top in charge of making overarching decisions that the entire bureaucracy then has to follow has very little visibility into the "facts on the ground". Even worse, they can have zero insight into how said problem space actually works because they're often political appointees and not people that rose from the ranks.
This normally isn't that much of a problem in other types of endeavors. But when the use of legitimate force comes into play, decisions from 'on high' can be amazingly arbitrary from a public interest standpoint. The military generally solves this by making it so there aren't any purely political appointees in the chain of command. That, plus the fact that the military generally doesn't exercise force within the borders means that any problems can be hidden from public scrutiny.
But law enforcement does not have this luxury.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/us/georgia-toddler-stun-grena...
That said, there are a lot of different gas varieties, and I've only been exposed to that one.
As far as I know this is also a factor why chemical weapons weren’t used in WW2. They are way too hard to control to be useful.
It was pretty damn shitty that the Russian government did little to assist doctors treating hostages in the aftermath, but aside from that their gas plan worked pretty damn well, considering the circumstance they were up against. The only other realistic option was for the Russian government to give in to the demands, as they did years before during the lesser known but larger Budyonnovsk hospital attack after conventional attacks failed (over the course of which something like 150 hostages were killed and hundreds more injured.)
The FBI tried that once upon a time in Texas. Most formulations of tear "gas" are actually a powder that happens to be flammable powder. It makes nasty poisonous things when it burns (burning already poisonous things has a tendency of doing that). It didn't go well.[1] It's generally not prudent to use tear gas if you're not ok with substantially increasing the likelihood of many people in the target area dying. What's acceptable when you're trying to gas some enemy combatants out of a tunnel in a war zone is not necessarily acceptable for a civilian law enforcement agency to do domestically.
(possibly NSFW) https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f240/14...
I think the intent here was to have the fentanyl put the assailants to sleep. Granted, it went horribly wrong. But violent isn't how I would describe the intent.
Maybe he had some mental issues that might get better with proper medication, but then he most probably wouldn't be able to hold a steady relationship so I don't believe that.
I am far from a fan of gun-ho US style of police force, but in this case it really seems dangerous person was removed from society.
They believe they have trained like the military, and treat everything like a war. I doubt many drill sergeants would agree that they've trained like the military though, and in these threads we occasionally hear from a few who very clearly don't. Last time I read one of these there was a guy ranting about the sad state of trigger discipline even on SWAT teams.
It's just that because firearms are so widespread the US does a lot more raids, so there are more to go wrong. And the US has no equivalent of HMIC or IPCC, so the standards are a lot lower.
1) Finances. US police seems to hoard military grade equipment. Creating a high risk situation demonstrates the need for superior firepower because it doesn't even suggest the possibility of a less expensive/dangerous alternative.
2) Politics. Violent raids against armed criminals make for good optics. Escalating the situation demonstrates the threat of violent criminals while also demonstrating a strong police force, allowing politicians to appear "tough on crime".
Additionally Americans have a more Puritan idea of how criminals should be treated (cf. capital punishment, jokes about prison rape, felonies being permanently banned from voting, etc). And a fairly well-established dehumanising "us-vs-them" mentality in media coverage and pop culture.
Whenever I've heard of the arrest of high profile suspects , there is almost always some smart plan to get the person before they can engage in violence.
This is done to get them to cooperate and get the network that supports the high profile suspect.
I'm not sure why it went down as it did. But I know reality is complex, so I'd guess they were aiming for better but things went badly and they preferred to take him out for sure than let him get away. That would be my guess. That or someone wanted him dead, but the latter is less likely (stupidity being more common than malice and all) - There are probability other probabilities I'm not considering and the fact that multiple factors could be at play... it's hard to tell, the article was short on details.
Also the target seems to have known they were being surveilled and may have been fleeing. This may have been the agents last best chance.
There's also confirmation bias at work: a raid isn't high profile unless it's big and flashy and potentially violent. You hear more often about violent raids than quiet arrests. Even if they're reported as frequently, quiet arrests are just less memorable.
And tailing the suspect is incompatible with assembling a sufficiently concentrate force to have a decisive advantage
Like, that's just fucked up.
That's a fairly conservative ROI if you ask me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From : https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/can-i-be-cha...
"Crimes Involving the Use of Counterfeit Currency The use of counterfeit currency can violate both federal and state law.
Under federal law, the use or attempted use of counterfeit currency is illegal if the person has the intent to defraud the recipient. A conviction for the offense carries up to 20 years in prison and a fine. A conviction for producing counterfeit currency similarly carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a fine, as does a conviction for merely possessing counterfeit currency. All of these crimes require that the prosecutor prove that the defendant acted with the intent to defraud."
"intent to defraud." being key here...
I currently have some counterfeit boullion and fake Magic the Gathering cards. I find the idea of effectively-worthless items that appear very valuable to be quite aesthetically appealing. Fake art seems cool, and I've been looking into movie prop money.
"Real" counterfeits would be an interesting collection item, but would probably deface the back/front of each bill with word "FAKE - do not spend or accept" so I could display them, but reasonably say I did not intend to spend them.
That said, it could also be illegal to buy counterfeit currency, even if you don’t intend to sell it.
Do you have a source for this? I've never heard of it but would be really interested in looking at, say, a disassembly of applicable firmware.
https://propmoviemoney.com/what-does-rush-hour-2-have-to-do-...
I see the neee to proove shippment though. But surely giving out the tracking number to the receiver is unneccessary. Any of his customer could find out where he ships from, not just leo
This is on cgmc
The canonical method seems to be (though I can't confirm this, I am armchair commentator as you say) that most sellers wait until they have a queue of several packages ready and then only do one drive to drop them in the mail, so then it doesn't cut into their time or profits dramatically, whilst also giving them an extra bit of protection.
Double mistake: he habitually used the same postbox to mail his packages. He might have had better luck if he drove well out of his way to mail them.
Though I'm kinda surprised the police weren't able to get a firmer lead on him from the tracking numbers. Is it really possible to get those anonymously issued? I'd assumed they'd at least be able to track him back to a store with security camera footage.
> Double mistake: he habitually used the same postbox to mail his packages.
I suppose the problem here is scale and habit. To avoid using the same postbox you'd need to drive far, and send a lot at once. If you do small transactions like 120 USD it'll take a long time to make real money. Maybe you could use a mail relay service in another country, but still..
That said, look at the resources this operation took, how likely was it that he would be caught? Most small fish like him probably won't be.
And basically yes. You get the tracking number when you create the shipping label, and the info is generated when it's first scanned, no need to be physically present when that occurs
> When they searched Johnson’s body, they found a computer thumb drive jammed in an ankle holster. The device contained 50 screen grabs of text messages.
Wallet word seed?
Does anyone know if FileVault on mac has any known exploits?
I mean, for most users it's better than nothing, since they're not likely to use anything else.
I've never heard it said that it also explicitly doesn't do something like falling back to hardware encryption a la BitLocker. That's just paranoia-baiting though.
I don't know much about counterfeiters, but with ransomware, there's the danger that you pay the ransom and the criminal doesn't decrypt the data they were holding for ransom. If ransomware hackers don't decrypt the data regularly, they'll gain that reputation and people won't pay out the ransoms, which destroys their business model. So ransomware hackers almost always decrypt their victims' data.
I suspect something similar happens with counterfeiters and other DNM sellers: they actually have to provide good customer service, including refunds when promised, in order to keep a good reputation.
EDIT: I'll also add, that assuming people doing illegal things don't follow a system of ethics is a very "square" viewpoint. Sure, some criminals do behave completely amorally, but many simply have ethical systems which don't agree with the law.
You get $400 for $120 in bitcoin.
I can understand the appeal, though I question the sanity of ever trying to pass the $100 bill off after purchasing it on the black market.
The Dark Web is very educational
Its the real HackerNews
Supposedly theres some docs about secret nsa tech, though I never tried to verify any such claims
So maybe you are asking the wrong question?
> Every time I try to look at things on "the dark web", I read through hidden wiki, see a few completely empty forums, laugh, then turn tor back off.
Your search techniques aren't useful. All the information is bought from vendors, and they likely will only send you a file over a peer-2-peer encrypted chat, or in a message with their pgp encryption.
Vendors do not talk on forums much to avoid analysis.
All you have are user reviews.
Vendors come and go.
It is not indexed. The only thing that is indexed are reviews, which you can only use the reviews and the escrow systems to have a better chance of not being duped or scammed
So, for instance: there aren't hosted forums, or other repositories of information? How does somebody get an index of the people to even talk to in these chats?
when I say "the dark web", I'm referring to things I know are hosted on TOR.
what are you having trouble with here? I told you how to use them, you won't be able to recreate your childhood. The most useful hidden services are the dark net marketplaces, and they do harbor an extremely efficient level of tools, exploits, and more. now that there is a monetization model, and still privacy concerns, you won't have hackers posting stuff just for bragging rights, so there are a variety of reasons why there is nothing to be indexed.