[anti-abuse-wg] Definition of Abuse

ox <andre at ox.co.za> wrote:

>On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 03:31:49 -0700
>"Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
>> I've made three simple points, none of which should really be all that
>> difficult to understand.  These three points are as follows:
>> 
>>      1)  In practice, law enforcement *can't* deal with these things.
>>          They don't have the resources or, in general, the technical
>>          competence to even understand them.  (See link below.)
>> 
>
>They can, and they do.
>
>an example from two emails ago:
>http://www.pcworld.com/article/174651/article.html  

No.

I really can't fathom how you managed to so throughly mis-read that
article.

You need to go back and read your own reference again.  Read the PCWorld
article.  This time try to comprehend what it actually says.

Note that when I said "law enforcement *can't* deal with these things"
the specific "things" I was referring to were simple deceptions,
perpetrated upon RIPE by various parties in order to obtain number
resources.

As the PCWorld article makes abundantly clear the police were *already*
looking into the various *other* criminal activities of the Russian
Business Network, well before there was any interaction between
law enforcement and RIPE.  And further, by the time that there *was*
some interaction between law enforcement and RIPE, it *did not* occur
because RIPE had called the police to say "Oh help us!  These evil
RBN people have tricked us!"  Rather, in this case, it was entirely
the other way around: Law enforcement came to RIPE to tell RIPE that
RIPE was, in effect, guilty of money laundering.

That, of course, is yet another example of the generallized "Aaron Swartz
principal" which states that *in general* when law enforcement becomes
involved in any "cybercrime" matter which *does not* involve some really
straightforward crookedness (i.e. a large sum of money being effectively
or actually stolen) they routinely screw it up, go overboard, and start
blaming all the wrong people.


Regards,
rfg