El Chapo Trial: Why His I.T. Guy Had a Nervous Breakdown

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html

by ajay-d • 7 years ago

120 83 7 years ago

Animats• 7 years ago

From the article: "The I.T. expert said the crime lord also asked him to install spyware called FlexiSPY on the “special phones” he had given to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, as well as to two of his lovers, including one who was a former Mexican lawmaker. ... Mr. Rodriguez also gave the (FBI) the user names and passwords of Mr. Guzmán’s FlexiSPY accounts, allowing agents to read — almost in real time — the intimate and incriminating texts he sent his romantic partners."

Right there is one of the best arguments to make against backdoors. If you put in a backdoor for yourself, someone else may use it, too. This example will get that across to CEOs and politicians.

rbritton• 7 years ago

I'm honestly not sure it will get that across. The common mindset always for those pushing for these kinds of backdoors is that _they_ are the ones who will be the sole beneficiaries of it. They either fail to accept (or ignore) that something being protected solely by policy is not the same level of protection as something truly impossible.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

So did this man commit a crime against people on behalf of the drug man, and then the FBI became co conspirators to th crime? Or did they seek some sort of warrant?

vanattab• 7 years ago

From this article https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/01/09/El-Chapo-jurors-r...

"FBI Agent Steven Marston said the agency obtained warrants to intercept hundreds of text messages from 2012 via the spyware Guzman installed on the phones of his wife Emma Coronel Aispuro, associates and purported mistress Augustina Cabanillas Acosta, The Los Angeles Times reported."

sandworm1013• 7 years ago

The US warrants can protect against wrongs in the US, but mean little outside the us. If we look too closely we can probably find some illegality somewhere, but everyone is now in the US and will probably never leave. Given the case, i doubt any country will speak up about the fbi tapping the phones of drug dealers outside the us.

But do the same for political or trade reason and yes, they will cry foul.

therealx3• 7 years ago

Funny enough, but this reminds me almost exactly of what I was asked to do while working for an Asian husband and wife duo.

jhowell• 7 years ago

I'm not Asian, but am curious to know why the word Asian is relevant in your post?

throwaway473322• 7 years ago

Even funnier, this reminds me when my white boss asked me if I could hack into his white wife’s email. I told him I couldn’t. I’m also white.

SomethingOrNot3• 7 years ago

The world doesn’t change by “getting things across” to CEOs and politicians. If a CEO’s enlightenment gets int the way of his fiduciary responsibilities, he will simple be replaced.

It’s about systems, not Great Men.

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

People make the system. The CEO. The board. Your local city council. Your federal representatives. There is no smart contract, there is no code that evaluates the rules obediently without interpretation. Just people.

sooheon2• 7 years ago

How do you affect change in systems if not by applying pressure and leverage against elements in the system?

ajuc• 7 years ago

It was a pretty common occurrence in medieval times to start a war, buy an army of mercenaries, miscalculate something, not be able to pay them their salaries, get conquered by your own mercenaries.

The conclusion people got from this was "make sure you pay your mercenaries on time", and not "don't start wars".

sctb• 7 years ago

A couple of recent discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18866729

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18916367

keketi• 7 years ago

After fleeing to the United States, Mr. Rodriguez said he had a “nervous breakdown” within a year. He was hospitalized and treated with electroconvulsive therapy.

I had no idea that electric shocks are still used to treat mental issues.

chdaniel• 7 years ago

tbh that bit sounded like a masked torturing thingy going on for him — but hey, hope he's ok

mehwoot• 7 years ago

They are, and they are one of the most effective single treatments. But usually only when treatment options are exhausted.

rjkennedy98• 7 years ago

ECT is very commonly used still. Its considered the best treatment for drug-resistant depression.

king_panic• 7 years ago

Not for long (fingers crossed)

https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/12/depression-drug-related-...

retsibsi• 7 years ago

It has that 'barbaric and probably pseudoscientific treatment that we surely abandoned 50 years ago' feel, doesn't it? But I remember reading in this SSC post (at point 7) that it actually works well, and isn't quite as scary as it sounds, although the long-term effects are still uncertain: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-...

busterarm• 7 years ago

Memory loss is a very real problem with ECT. Most professionals downplay this and I find that a bit disgusting.

robertAngst2• 7 years ago

EE here.

Electricity disrupts nerves. For better or for worse.

Its very artificial to help, and not solve the root problem. But, it does 'something'. And in Medical, something has a potential use.

Its really grasping at straws to solve this person's problem, but sometimes it helps.

sandworm1013• 7 years ago

Labotomies are still done too. They are now more scientific and are used to control things like eplilepsy, but still involve cutting/burning through brain to sever connections.

Gatsky• 7 years ago

In simple terms, some patients are so unwell with depression they will either never get better or die from malnutrition/debilitation. This justifies the use of ECT, which is conducted under very careful conditions, involving general anaesthesia. It is often effective in a very short time frame.

glbrew• 7 years ago

It made a huge comeback and is apparently very effective when used properly.

bacon_waffle2• 7 years ago

I know someone who has been through ECT, and I had a similar reaction when I learned about it. It's not a treatment to be taken lightly (this followed a suicide attempt), but at least in their case did cure severe depression in conjunction with more traditional treatment.

My very lay-person understanding of the process is that the patient is knocked out with drugs before the electricity is applied - it sounds like a sort of hard reset of memories in the brain. The most obvious and lasting side-effect is memory loss; this person can't remember significant chunks of their life history, so has had to re-learn it from conversations, home movies, photos, etc.

kencausey• 7 years ago

I'm wondering if the use of 'this' in '...this person can't remember...' was a mistake and was meant to be 'the'? I ask because I was looking for, if there was no mistake, confirmation that in your acquaintances specific case significant memory loss occurred.

readhn3• 7 years ago

What i find amusing is that he only asked for $100,000 to build the network. To risk his life and his entire family for 100K ... even in mexico this is not a lot of money it seems.

The number should have been closer to at least 5-10 million range depending on the size of the family - enough $ to get everyone out permanently to a safe place somewhere far far away on a short notice when things go bad. (similar to that breaking bad guy who makes people disappear when things go bad: permanent change of identity, relocation etc. even that movie guy charged 250K to make that happen.)

But perhaps this IT guy was made an offer he couldn't refuse...

Also, i cant believe that someone running multi-billion dollar empire was too cheap to pay for bullet proof security system. You get what you pay for.

p.s. clearly you can tell i watched too many narcos episodes and BB.

BaldricksGhost• 7 years ago

Plata o plomo.

readhn3• 7 years ago

I feel like that was the case here. Even though they said he was "recommended".

SketchySeaBeast3• 7 years ago

Right, so based upon repeated viewings of Breaking Bad and Narcos, you feel you have the real world experience to understand the expected rate of an IT project in Mexico?

jerrysievert• 7 years ago

you feel you have the real world experience to understand the expected rate of an IT project in Mexico?

not OP, but a risk vs reward calculation should probably go into it ...

therealx3• 7 years ago

I haven't watched any of those shows but estimating those specs easily gets that high, esp when there's the risk

readhn3• 7 years ago

The world is global. There is no "local" anymore especially in IT.

vzcx• 7 years ago

There were likely ongoing payments beyond the lump 100k since it seemed there were employees tasked with managing the cartel's network and thus ongoing costs.

excalibur2• 7 years ago

I read it as $100K in equipment costs for the network... I'm honestly not sure whether that's more or less ridiculous.

kevin_b_er• 7 years ago

Poor IT guy will probably be executed too. The reach of the crime syndicates pretty pervasive, even throughout the US. He'll likely never know any peace, even if he hadn't had a total mental breakdown.

krackers• 7 years ago

Won't they have witness protection though?

perfmode• 7 years ago

Good luck hiding from the most profitable black market corporation in the history of civilization.

guessmyname2• 7 years ago

Oh wow! I envy your ignorance.

Mexican cartels are some of the worst organizations in the world. They don’t want to kill you, they want to make you suffer. They will kill his family, the family of his family, and maybe the whole neighborhood just to make him go crazy, and then —right at the end— they will kill him.

If the IT guy was smart enough to hide all his family’s information, then maybe they are safe, but he is still in danger because the mafia will bride someone from the protection program to kill him, and I don’t mean “bride” with money, no, I mean bride them with their own life, because if the person from the protection program doesn’t gives them access to the IT guy, they will kill their family too.

I am exaggerating a little bit, maybe I shouldn’t even write this considering that I’m spreading the fear, and that’s probably what they want —same as other organizations like ISIS— but I have seen so much pain and tears over the years, that I genuinely don’t believe the IT guy will be in peace.

robertAngst2• 7 years ago

Poor IT guy

I don't know how he got there, but I'm guessing this person isnt the highest moral figure.

pault4• 7 years ago

I don't know, I've heard stories about Russian hackers being tortured to coerce them into working for organized crime. They may have made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

throwawaymath• 7 years ago

That doesn't mean we can't be compassionate and empathize with his current predicament. Regardless of his moral character, he did a good thing and has exposed himself to a great potential of suffering for it.

3327• 7 years ago

Yeah, he is done... a pawn in the big game. poor mofo.

the reach of those guys is scary. HE could relocate to the middle of nowhere but i can't imagine a life of looking over your shoulder.

ileri62• 7 years ago

snitches end up in ditches

sucrose• 7 years ago

Snitches get stitches

whoisjuan• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/AZ9kWk

El Chapo Trial: Why His I.T. Guy Had a Nervous Breakdown

Related Stories