You know what grinds my gears?
POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 01:43
VIEWED: 9117
PAGE 8 of 8
Well, I used to be a lot more cagey about some things, but these days most of the folk who would have been a threat are either pushin up daisies, in prison, destitute, or otherwise unable to retaliate - not to mention that I am not technically in charge any more and harming me will have no effect on the organization I built.
(other than making them want heads on pikes, but that's a given)
I wanted to build a better future, not a monument to personal arrogance.
There are some things I might still be cagey about, not only for legal reasons but because there really ARE things in this world that the knowledge of, at least of the details, can pyschologically harm people - that they exist is enough to know without grinding their pysche with the horror, yanno ?
As for your hypothetical, nowadays, a situation like that - well, the internet is a wonderful place sometimes...
Look how many injustices have been righted by Digg, Goonswarm, even 4chan ?
But in the case of trickier situations, at least way back when, it was a matter of us finding you - the girl we pulled out of High Impact, for example, her family was looking for outright mercs, when we caught wind of it and stepped in to help.
There's good reason for that, and many advocacies or activists still work that way, because of the level of scammery and entrapment (by both so-called law enforcement AND criminals, if one makes such distinction in the first place) makes operating any other way a complete liability.
Case in point, a Massachusetts service provider is up to their neck in trouble cause of HOW american law enforcement used their product, and then threw the blame and consequences back on them.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/internet/undercover-web-site-de
railed-hosting-firm
(There's more to the story, but I am using the SG link cause it's the most informative without getting into some pretty ugly details...)
Some of this stuff, oh how to explain - it'd be like police offering free beer at a bar and then letting folk drive off before busting them with DUI, creating crime where it'd otherwise not exist, since the priority has changed from Crime Prevention to Law Enforcement, and all the money and glory is in the latter.
Knocking off these sites prevents the crime, as Marcus Lawson first showed (and wound up forcibly retired from US Customs over) and Jenny Granholm followed up to good effect, and the way to do that is by cutting off the money and going after the billing systems.
No crime, no bust, no glory - so they've taken to creating it rather than fighting it, all of the predatory community (which exists, is well entrenched, and far more technologically capable than law enforcement thanks in part to AOL protecting and assisting them to become so) damn well knows these sites are a setup, but the mere existence of them serves as a vehicle to validate themselves and each other in a circle jerk of ego stroking not too different than american right wing politics, and in some cases rather more closely related than that similarity alone, and don't even get me started about North Carolina...
Anyhow, what they did to the provider is a bit like commandeering your car, using it to commit a crime, and then leaving YOU holding the bag - just as our so-called protectors are a font of terrorism, our so-called law enforcement is a veritable font of crime.
And because of that, any grey-market or shadow-side operations aren't going to advert or share contact data openly, the only way to get in contact is to get word out, and let them find you - which they'll do, and will contact you only after doing a thorough check to make sure you are not bait, a setup, etc etc...
Given your interest though, I honestly don't think that end of it is all that relevant to you anyways, and for most folk it's better to focus on prevention and treatment than get down into the cesspool with a tire iron and a grudge - you have to be more than a little crazy to try that, and more than a little evil to survive it, since the folks who do seem most resilient to such
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You want to know something funny Frem? There's this new show Kidnap and Rescue on Discovery channel. When I watch it I've taken to pretending that the leader of the organization they show, the dude with the voice disguiser (I hate those things but hey) is you. Silly ain't it? Whatever, you're right that I don't really care about the politics of things.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Amusing, in an ironic sorta way, I still have one of those things around here - from before telephones all came pre-rigged with trace capacity via CALEA, and you could subvert lock-n-trace by grounding the voltage... it was handy to not hand out a voiceprint to folks who had a tendancy to arrest folk REPORTING certain crimes rather than deal with em.
Mine though is light on the distort, just enough to not give a clear voiceprint, and sounds kinda vader-overlordish rather than that horribly "crunchy" electro-distorted one.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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You know what boils my broccoli? NAFTA and getting rid of tariffs so all our jobs go to China, Errrrrrrrrrrgh. This is one of my big problems with America today.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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