Pinkerton (Detective Agency) | Hacker News Reader

Pinkerton (Detective Agency)

en.wikipedia.org

24 pointsthunderbong13 comments

> In 2023, Wizards of the Coast hired Pinkerton to seize products from the March of the Machine: The Aftermath card set for the trading card game Magic: The Gathering from a YouTuber who had received them in an order from a local game store[38]. The YouTuber published a video showing their contents on YouTube ahead of the release. The Pinkertons used intimidation and threats of detention, arrest, fines and jail to force compliance with their goal[38]. According to Wizards of the Coast, this was after several attempts had been made to contact the individual in private, with no response. [39]

I did not expect to see something like this in the article. What in the world?

And there's more: https://gizmodo.com/magic-the-gathering-leaks-wizards-wotc-p...

A very recent development and i suspect the reason OP was looking at the wiki page in the first place. The MTG community is up in flames at the overreaction of hiring a company known for union busting through violence, and which is barred from business with the federal government, to recover already leaked cards.

What did you expect?

That caught my attention as well. I followed the sources and found this:

https://kotaku.com/mtg-aftermath-leaks-pinkertons-wotc-magic...

Another thing I didn't know is how much money is involved in these card things.

I learnt of the Pinkertons from the sherlock holmes stories, and being the young bookworm that I was, I imagined them as some premium american detective agency.

Only later did I realize they were real and had a rather nasty reputation.

I think that happened a few times with Sherlock Holmes. IIRC, A Study in Scarlet was basically the first time the average British reader heard of Mormons.

Fun fact: I was investigated by literal Pinkertons before I got hired at MSFT.

I forget what they're calling themselves these days -- some corporate mouthful or another -- but I was able to trace ownership back. It was the name-brand brand.

I suppose I passed the investigation, but jeez.

What is scary about private information hoovering, private profiling, private credit score reporting and tracking, and of course private security/armies, is that it provides all the infrastructure for a turnkey change for authoritarian regimes.

Especially since the era of the megacorps makes their reach so powerful. And the (Godwins Law warning) third reich was very aligned with corporations, so much so that American megacorps and cartels were meeting to discuss overthrow of the US government for a similar system.

SO all the ghosting abuse by google, ebay, etc is very scary.

Precisely this. I ring every alarm I can about this, since leaving.

The other side of the one-way mirror (digging through telemetry, part of the DRI responsibility which comes with work on Azure) leaves little doubt about the dizzying scope of surveillance. All it takes is one regime change, and boom.

The Pinkerton Agency is owned by the a Swiss security company called Securitas.

They also feature in the amazing HBO series Deadwood

I know them from Red Dead Redemption. Very clever and fierce.

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