FBI asked Sony for data on user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine | Hacker News Reader

FBI asked Sony for data on user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine

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116 pointsdanso73 comments

That reminds me of when they found out that people would clandestinely use the draft of a shared email account in order to send messages without actually sending an email. It’s ingenious and terrorists and even General Pertaeus used it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12...

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special...

Sounds interesting but now there are encrypted decentralized e-mail systems like bitmessage. So if you are doing anything supersecret then bitmessage is the perfect solution.

if this is their official claim then it is most certainly snake-oil:

> Bitmessage gained a reputation for being out of reach of warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, and its encryption being difficult to crack. As a result, downloads of the Bitmessage program increased fivefold during June 2013, after news broke of classified email surveillance activities conducted by the NSA.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage

Connecting to mail.google.com is frequently going to be much less conspicuous than participating in a peer to peer network.

That’s why you hide even when you have nothing to hide, so that hiding doesn’t itself become a signal.

That argument works assuming you're the only one being watched. "Oh chris hasn't done anything bad even though he's hiding, we can just ignore him now". It's more like "99.8% of people don't hide, chrischen is one that does, monitor that guy".

All the better, when they do monitor him and spend time cracking his shopping list is less time and resources against the everyone else

That argument is why Apple tries to encrypt by default... and is actively employed by privacy advocates.

Your iMessage history is hardly banking website info, yet it employs the same “Military Grade Encryption.”

My argument is that connecting to a Google server is a better way of hiding than connecting to some obscure peer to peer messaging system.

Obscure like iMessage?

No, like the one mentioned in the comment I replied to initially.

What's the point of ignoring the context of the thread and then pretending my meaning was stupid?

Using iMessage would be more similar to using Gmail than to using bitmessage. Obviously so.

iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, and I don't think I mentioned bitmessage (not sure what that is). It is privacy all the time, even if you have nothing to hide. Privacy by default—which is what I was talking about in the comment you replied to.

My initial comment in the thread was a comparison between bitmessage and Gmail...the comment you replied to.

some people use the trash section as well. same result

not ingenious though

they found a logical loophole in a decades-old heavily monitored form of communication, providing secrecy and easy of use until it was discovered years later - sounds pretty ingenious to me!

I see what you mean now

The vector could still be monitored it just wasn't where people looked

The other day I was playing in a private (pirate) server of World of Warcraft and some guy was yelling in one of the major cities that he was selling pills and shipping worldwide. I wondered if he was serious. It was, definitely, really original.

I can remember this being done between my college dorms when Halo 2 came out. We were not able to play Xbox online but figured out we could play over LAN. Business hippies found an opportunity to spread the good word.

A friends brother also met someone online from “Amsterdam” around 2003 who would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent back...

> A friends brother also met someone online from “Amsterdam” around 2003 who would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent back...

I thought those were the ones that got reported to the FBI.

> Nothing was ever sent back...

How much did he sent before he realized? And this is like the nigerian prince story, but about drugs I suppose.

Probably much more than the average person. The first time the guy claimed the package was not received so he sent more. This was the friends brother that introduced us to Warcraft 3 and flashing xboxes to play burned games. He was not a sociable person.

If you’ve ever seen the WOW episode of South Park he was the elite guy they were trying to stop.

> If you’ve ever seen the WOW episode of South Park he was the elite guy they were trying to stop.

The only thing that guy was missing was an ergonomic keyboard and trackball mouse.

>Nothing was ever sent back...

perfect scam really, who is going to call the police and say their drugs never arrived?

By the same token, who's going to go to the police and say they got the shit kicked out of them for not holding up their end of a drug deal?

That is different because your face is now evidence something happened.

Nope but someone might anonymously report that there is someone with this mailing address selling drugs...

The "Silk Road" conundrum

I once worked with someone in college who claimed he had a friend who ran both a darknet drug site along with multiple popular darkent drug review sites. He would use the latter to push the former as one of the most reliable trustworthy services, despite literally never shipping anything at all.

I'm honestly not even sure if doing so would be illegal either, since I can't imagine anyone pursuing a fraud case in an industry that's completely illegal to participate in in the first place

It’s illegal to pretend to sell drugs. It’s illegal to sell fake drugs. (in the US)

You don’t have to worry about a customer complaining to the police. You have to worry about the police attempting to buy and collecting evidence against you.

The question comes down to how good is your op-sec and how unlikely are you in collecting LE attention?

There was some talk of terrorists using Club Penguin to communicate years ago. It's not really a new concept to use weird channels like that for illicit communication. I remember hearing about ISIS recruiting in clash of clans.

Don't forget mainstream social media like twitter. Nothing catalyzed and unified disparate and fractured online terrorist communities like a single platform that allowed an individual to instantly broadcast a message worldwide.

... and Puffin Party being used similarly in "Four Lions"

A friend of mine recently showed me an instagram account that sold magic mushrooms. To place an order, you had to friend the account and send them a DM with a specific set of emoji.

I couldn't believe it, might as well have been a public Venmo feed.

Out of all social networks, Instagram makes it the easiest to unsend messages without an easily visible trace ( without a warrant or compelling fb to give up info)

Even WhatsApp leaves a "user has removed a message" ghost

There are thousands of people selling THC products on Instagram, I’ve even seen it on eBay. It seems like all these years of civil disobedience is paving the way to a sensible drug policy.

Oh yeah. This is one of those mindblowers that you can tell even older young adults and we realize how out of touch we are getting with The Youth.

"Kids are getting bootleg THC vape liquid, where are they getting it?" "Oh, its gotta be their dumb older friends." "Well, not usually; would you believe The Internet?" "Oh sure, some dark web site." "Nope. Its a popular app." "Snapchat, with its self-destroying messages for sure?" "Nope." "I hear a lot about tik tok these days, its popular with the youth." "Ha, no, the Chinese are actually good at censorship and moderation, unlike us." "Ok, craigslist? that's always been a little seedy" "No one uses that anymore, least of all kids; Would you believe... Instagram." "What?!"

If it has a messaging system, it will be used for illicit sales. Doesn't matter what system it is.

If it's popular, doubly so.

There was a story about this today: https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2019/12/3/20993964/chicag...

I've used instagram to buy drugs all over the world, usually no weird series of emoji are required.

"Hey! I'm visiting $city for a few days and looking for someone who can drop off $quantity for me at $hotel, cash only"

There are a few whatsapp and telegram groups in my area selling all kind of drugs, they even upload gif to showcase their products. You place your order with emojis and some dude show up in your street. Sometime in a black bmw/mercedes, sometimes it's a hippie on a ridiculous bicycle.

It's like ubereats but they're always on time.

Happens a lot here in the UK, so much that they've started to use the images shared to go after the dealers - taking finger and palm prints from the photos https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-43711477

It's always mystifying to me just how many people in illict businesses get so big despite having worse op-sec than a teenager trying to hide porn from his parents

Survivorship bias. For every one that wasn’t caught, x were.

The burden on the state for a search warrant is also hilariously bad/low; basically they can say whatever fantasies they like in a warrant application to a court and they will almost always get rubber stamped.

The idea that you need probable cause for a search warrant in the USA is only plausible to someone who hasn’t read very many of them that bear a judge’s signature. Doubly so when computers of any kind are involved.

Whenever you see the phrase “based on my training and experience”, a colossal steaming heap is almost always about to immediately follow.

“Only disclosed upon a valid warrant” is no privacy protection whatsoever.

Completely agree. This is why it is important for individual users to take responsibility for their own privacy.

> "The CHS [Confidential Human Source]

Anyone want to guess which other animals the FBI has convinced to talk?

Because there are some dogs and cats that might solve a lot of crimes.

Rats and stool pigeons squeal to the pigs.

Well, there is the case of the parrot trained to alert its drug-trafficking owners when the police were nearby.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-dru...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_gathering...

This would seem to be Exhibit A on why otherwise innocuous data collection by companies can come back to harm you.

Specifically, how does catching drug dealers harm you, unless you are a drug dealer? IMO this is exactly why we should collect more data to catch them, terrorists, pedos, and so on. And this is a good example to why if you are not a criminal you need not worry. If you are, it can indeed harm you.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say"

https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-...

I do care about the right to privacy, and the freedom of speech. But I also care about police being able to investigate these new ways of communication that criminals have at their disposal. If it were classic letters, phone calls, or a restaurant discussion these would have easily been intercepted by the police. The same needs to happen with online communication when there is a crime taking place. And online communication can only be "intercepted" by storing it somewhere and making it available when need be.

It's a slippery slope. Making a system insecure for one makes it insecure for all. A 'secure' data storage system with a backdoor is not a 'secure' system at all.

And criminals can build their own encrypted apps. They don't need to use PSN to communicate. And if you look at some of the more oppressive regimes in the world, a lot of things that you and I would consider freedom of speech, they would consider a crime and lock you up for it.

"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"

I agree with the statement that oppressive regimes around the world abuse this, but I would argue it's up to peoples of those countries to fight back.

"They don't need to use PSN to communicate." but they do, and that's the issue. We know they use publicly accessible communication systems that law enforcement needs to have visibility over _when required and approved by a judge_. Therefore I think the issue is how do we make sure that law enforcement can access such data when they genuinely need to? What laws need to change in that regard, instead of what laws need to be made so we can obscure their visibility even more, and have the likes of ISIS or other organised cults / crime rings organise right in front of us. To be honest, although a very bad thing, i'd rather have one person falsely accused rather than 100 people dead because of a terrorist attack organised on the PSN network that we just wouldn't hand data over, so we can protect kids' privacy over making jokes about "yo mama".

Nothing to worry about if you're not a criminal, if you're not trying to unionize (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43507728) and if you're not trying to reveal government wrongdoing (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe...).

I get the sarcasm. But what is the solution really? Letting actual criminals hide behind online chat networks? Or making sure that there is always a valid reason for their communication to be read, so we don't have such abuse made against honest people?

> Letting actual criminals hide behind online chat networks?

Yes. we should. See below for why.

> Or making sure that there is always a valid reason for their communication to be read, so we don't have such abuse made against honest people?

If there's a backdoor, it will get exploited to hurt "honest people".

So then the question is how do we make sure it can't be exploited? Or is the privacy of racist and yo mama jokes on the PSN network more important than catching criminals or terrorists?

We can't. That's just how it is.

So it's either privacy for everyone, or no privacy for anyone.

Solution to what? Crime has been falling for decades, and if law enforcement can't spy on communication quite as easily as it used to, the increase of other surveillance more than makes up for it. They are crying about "going dark", when 50 years ago, there were barely any surveillance cameras.

Ah yes. Because innocent people were never railroaded by prosecutors who just wanted a score. And those prosecutors never used falsified evidence or parallel construction. If you think it can’t happen to you, you’re sorely mistaken.

I agree, it did happen, but the issue is then making sure rogue prosecutors are brought to justice, not making it easier for criminals to hide behind high tech and have their endeavours protected by "freedom of speech".

When your PSN buddy is a government informant

Um...is this effective overall or does it feel the government's resource is being misdirected at a superficial level. How hard is it to get to the root of evil?

Of course it is a waste but it allows the FBI to make claims about how they busted a "kingpin". The war on drugs was never about actually stopping the flow of drugs. It just gives a justification to keep funds flowing into FBI/DEA etc type agencies. If you really wanted to stop the flow of drugs then we need a war on addiction. When you compare how much we spend on interdiction type enforcement versus drug treatment, it is obvious that the United Stats was never interested in actually helping people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

I think the state of addiction is often times a symptom of a larger problem - similar to the symptom of terrorism - what social and geopolitical factors have driven young men in the Middle East into the embrace of radicals? Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven people into the throes of addiction?

I think often, when fighting or attempting to mitigate a symptom, you may decrease said symptom in the short-term but in the long-term, precious little is being done to solve the problem (e.g. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, etc.).

> Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven people into the throes of addiction?

It’s not the whole story, but access to cheap addictive substances is part of the equation of how someone becomes addicted.

Is it just me or did anyone else read the title as: FBI asked Sony for Playstation users in order to sell cocaine to them.

We're off topic, but I also read it that way at first. The title could be less ambiguous. Setting the user data as X makes your interpretation much clearer:

> FBI asked Sony for X to sell cocaine

Where X = data on user who used PlayStation network.

Disagree -- that's more confusing because the English use of parentheses is to encapsulate something that can be removed, so your version is equivalent to

> FBI asked Sony for to sell cocaine

I would instead group as follows

> FBI asked Sony for data on (user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine)

I noticed this as well and updated my comment. Also, I don't think either of those examples work. It makes more sense to talk about an "order of operations"; unfortunately parenthesis in English are not used to specify an order of operations. In this case, the order of operations is ambiguous in the title.

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