Radio Tecnico: How the Zetas Cartel Took over Mexico with Walkie-Talkies (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Radio Tecnico: How the Zetas Cartel Took over Mexico with Walkie-Talkies (2014)

popsci.com

79 pointslxm10 comments

This makes it seem like the guy who built it was a evil genius. I don't think he was - while I'm certain he's a smart guy, building a wide area trunked radio system only really needs one thing, money. The rest is pretty easy.

Or a guy with a gun to his head. The cartels have kidnapped engineers, enslaved them, and then murdered them.[1]

[1]https://www.wired.com/2012/11/zeta-radio/

You still need money to obtain equipment. IDK if stealing it is practical, but it might be.

Indeed, acting as if the Zeta's rise came technological magic distracts from the point that all this is a product of the drug war and moreover, the approaches of the Zetas mirrored the approaches of the police and military - given the Zetas were ex police and military.

The drug war has become mostly cynical and with those deeply involved not expecting it will ever change anything, not for the good. And it's easy to see this cynicism bleeding over to corruption.

Outline alternative: https://outline.com/3gpyRa

[Off topic]

I'm unable to access the site because of a cookie blocker that has a take-it-or-leave-it attitude - there is no option to opt-out of unnecessary cookies. These are the numbers of cookies that the site wants to set:

Necessary (18) Preferences (0) Statistics (10) Marketing (54) Unclassified (22)

18 Necessary vs 86 Other, and no way to opt-out of any of them!

My impression was that this was illegal under GDPR and that the site should work with only "necessary" cookies enabled, allowing users to opt-out of tracking where possible. Am I wrong?

I get GDPR-blocked as well, and your URL doesn't work for me either. Says "something went wrong".

Archive mirror of OP: https://archive.ph/fkYGW

Firefox and uBlock Origin user. Also couldn't read the article until I blocked JavaScript on that page. Site improves a lot without it.

> In at least one location, Del Toro Estrada installed a repeater on the roof of a Mexican police station, either a brazen display of the cartel’s impunity or a signal of the department’s corruption.

Definitely the latter. In Tamaulipas, border of Texas, the city and state police is in the narc payroll. They don't pay them a fortune, just roughly what their legal salary is, but understandably elicit more loyalty from them.

This also happens in other Mexican states, but not to such a blatant degree.

2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCEexG9xjw

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