Google execs: fight Mexico drug cartels with technology

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/google-executives-say-technology-can-be-harnessed-to-fight-drug-cartels-in-mexico/2012/07/17/gJQACbXhrW_print.html

by SkyMarshal • 14 years ago

33 40 14 years ago

washingtonpost.com

gojomo• 14 years ago

"The trick is that anonymity is provided to everyone, although such a system would know a unique ID for every user to maintain records and provide rewards."

That would be quite a trick!

In a corrupt environment, if someone can be found to reward, cartels can also find them to punish.

michaelt• 14 years ago

You could submit your tip along with your bitcoin address, then if the tip comes up right they send the reward to that address.

Of course, if they failed to deliver the reward or it got redirected along the way, you couldn't exactly complain publicly. And you'd still have the problem that your neighbors would notice if you brought (say) a new car. And you might get murdered just for having a bitcoin client installed. But other than that, it could work!

zcid• 14 years ago

Legalize the drugs. Then there is no money to fund the cartels.

angersock• 14 years ago

Rarely do I agree with the sentiment of "Stop trying to solve people problems with more technology, engineers!", but in this case I find it quite difficult not to.

cageface• 14 years ago

Sooner or later we'll get to this point.

If there's an upside to the economic mess we're in it's that we may not be able to afford to stick to the same old failed policies.

cmdkeen• 14 years ago

Maybe, just maybe for cannabis. But meth and cocaine (including crack)? I don't think you appreciate the damage those drugs cause.

The US policy on drugs is insane, but so is legalisation in a country which can't even manage to generate a proper social stigma against drink driving.

Nursie• 14 years ago

1. They don't need to do as much damage if the legal consequences associated with them are lessened, and people feel able to access help and care for their problems.

2. The money currently spent (fruitlessly) trying to suppress these things could fund one heck of a rehab program.

3. Known dosages and purities, as well as safer methods of taking the substances, could help minimise harm.

I agree that blanket legalisation is probably nuts, by the way, but I don't think it's as black and white as "meth bad, must stay illegal".

kinleyd• 14 years ago

Drawing a line on what kind of drugs to legalize will invariably highlight the damage hard drugs cause. The counter argument is the sheer number of deaths caused by the high profit margins of drug trading: 50,000 in 6 years in Mexico alone.[1] When you add the financial cost of the war on drugs to this kind of death toll, it is entirely possible that the death toll from legalized drug consumption (and the violence that sometimes accompanies it) may be far less.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/mexicos-drug-war-...

mseebach3• 14 years ago

Very simple: Make it prescription based, perhaps even limit consumption to controlled clinics. To qualify for a prescription, you will need to be addicted (or something to that effect, IANA medical professional). As "repeat customers" disappear, the incentive to get people hooked disappear, and the current economic model collapses.

This will take care of the addicts and most of the dangerous drug related crime. There will still be a market to service casual users (ie. rich bankers) which will have to be addressed in a different manner (perhaps not at all - if the market is small enough not to sustain large, dangerous cartels, it will allow the affected countries to get on their feet and establish proper rule of law which is the primary goal).

anamax2• 14 years ago

> I don't think you appreciate the damage those drugs cause.

We do.

We've banned crack and meth and yet there are still problems.

The relevant question is whether the "profit" of banning, the benefits - the costs under banning, are higher than the "profit" of legalization, again the costs - benefits under legalization. I agree that both numbers are negative, the question is which one is closer to 0.

Meth and cocaine are pretty much universally available even though they're banned. So, how much more use (and cost) do you expect if they're legalized? That's the extra cost of legalization. In return, we lose the significant costs associated with banning, such as no-knock searches that kill the wrong people, not to mention the war on privacy. (No, you don't get to ignore that.)

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

I do - I put somebody through rehab last year. Legalize them.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate the gravity of the situation when you're trying to score heroin just to make it vaguely possible that someone can take a bus trip back to their parents to get help.

artmageddon• 14 years ago

I agree that cutting off the funding to the cartels by way of drugs will have a good effect, but bear in mind that there are multiple markets that the cartels sell drugs to, not just the United States - they will sell to Australia and Europe as well. Everyone will have to have some kind of legalization, and we know that's not happening any time soon. In addition, they'll probably expand into other forms of nefarious income generation, such as running protection rackets and human trafficking.

That said, legalization needs to happen.

rprasad3• 14 years ago

With all due respect, that is the stupidest, most ridiculous idea I have ever heard.

Spend more than a few hours in an area ravaged by meth, like San Bernardino or Riverside Counties (especially the high desert). Meth is available from so many sources the sheriff and police don't even enforce possession crimes unless except as add-on charges to other, more serious crimes. Consequently, meth is dirt cheap.

This permissive attitude essentially legalizing the drug and lowering the costs hasn't made the meth problem go away; it made it worse. Now instead of rival meth biker gangs fighting each other over profits, you have thousands of meth heads who get high, usually injuring themselves and any people who happen to be around them while they're dosed (usually, their children).

Even the rich and middle class use drugs regularly in this country--hell, our last 3 presidents have all admitted to using illegal drugs. The solution is not to make drugs more freely available. That doesn't work in a free society because people will consciously choose to use drugs, and the rest of us will have to clean up their messes. The solution is to cut them off at the source.

geon• 14 years ago

The kingpins won't stop running their empires just because drugs stopped being profitable. They will just switch to whatever else violent and illegal they can turn a profit from. Kidnapping, assassination, prostitution, slavery and blackmailing comes to mind.

zalew• 14 years ago

> anonymity is provided to everyone, although such a system would know a unique ID

Wait what? That's a failure from the start. User of such system should be 100% anonymous, untrackable, and not give a damn about personal rewards. With all the corruption leverage the cartels have, all their creativity (tunnels, submarines), and quality of business operations (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-dr...) I imagine surveilling local network traffic looking for unique ids and connecting the dots through data mining would be kind of a task of intermediate difficulty for them. To work at all, it would probably have to be run over Tor, but setting up Tor properly to avoid leaving fingerprints is a task for advanced internet users, while in this situation being less tech-savvy could be deadly.

Second, this system also could be used for deception. If an innocent citizen can report events and locations, why wouldn't the cartel use it to fool authorities?

Third, it looks like an offer to throw even more money into the 'war on drugs' sinkhole, only disguised as 'fighting with technology', 'technological workaround to the fear', and other BS propaganda.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

Don't forget phishing e-mails.

"Please go to googlerewards.com to claim your $10,000"

Name:

Address:

Information supplied:

raphman2• 14 years ago

and of course, drug cartel strawmen could earn money for selling rivals, defectors, or dangerous police officers to the authorities.

elviejo2• 14 years ago

Yeap the way to provide reliabilty is if several anonymous sources report the same problem.

Also this system if the report is by smartphone it could provide GPS to know the location of an incident.

but complete anonimity is crucial. And also the peoplo must believe they are anonymous. some people that dare to report a crime do it from a public phone, they know what happens that do it from their cellphone.

checoivan• 14 years ago

They're assuming high level people don't know who, or where the cartel people are.

Stand outside of the ferrari dealership and jewelry stores in MX, I'll bet they'll find plenty of what they're supposed to.

edoloughlin• 14 years ago

Anyone else find this incredibly hand-wavy? What happens when the cartels infiltrate ISPs and start randomly butchering people using this new protocol?

elviejo2• 14 years ago

everything is infiltrated: banks, goverment agencies, police... complete anonimity is esential.

tpr1m• 14 years ago

This solution is no different than sending more guns. Instead, respect the inalienable right to consciousness modification.

uvdiv• 14 years ago

It's utterly incongruous reading Schmidt advocating personal privacy, anonymity, security of communication -- the same guy who's repeatedly on public record opposing these things. Like this:

"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to...

And also this:

"Privacy is incredibly important," Schmidt stated. "Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It's very important that Google and everyone else respects people's privacy. People have a right to privacy; it's natural; it's normal. It's the right way to do things. But if you are trying to commit a terrible, evil crime, it's not obvious that you should be able to do so with complete anonymity. There are no systems in our society which allow you to do that. Judges insist on unmasking who the perpetrator was. So absolute anonymity could lead to some very difficult decisions for our governments and our society as a whole."

And this:

"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity," Schmidt said. "In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/google-ceo-schmid...

(edit) Apparently this is a popular enough subject that Huffington Post has a collection of these:

"Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Most Controversial Quotes About Privacy"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/04/google-ceo-eric-sch...

codex• 14 years ago

TL;DR: If the public could give anonymous tips, the drug cartels would be weakened.

If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Is it really hard to give anonymous tips? I doubt it. I think the fundamental problem with informants is that only so many people have insider information on criminal activity, and there's a good chance the cartels will find their moles, even if the tips are truly anonymous.

raphman2• 14 years ago

So the government should build an infrastructure that allows anyone to anonymously report another person to the authorities and earn rewards for this?

What could possibly go wrong if you encourage all citizens to spy on their neighbors?

What if a drug cartel subverts or duplicates this system and uses it for their own interests?

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

This is idiotic. As always, you can narrow down who got you busted by figuring first out what authorities knew, then who could have known that information to tell the authorities.

Then you can kill them all, or kill them one at a time until they figure out who told and turn them over. You can do it in public and write an essay near their headless bodies in big black block capitals about how google won't protect you.

Cartels spent a time targeting bloggers and even forum commenters for a while, with gory results. This was simply for making insulting, not informational comments. I think I can remember one guy being killed for a comment because his sister mentioned to a friend that he had been to the site, then the cartel was able to figure out which commenter he was by looking through the comments and making connections.

Fight drug crime by not having stupid drug laws, and/or by following the money. We're not interested in following the money, because in the US, white collar crime is treated as if it were schoolboys breaking the Honor Code rather than mass murder. Angelo Mozilo is not only still free, but still richer than anybody you know will ever be.

edit: "Consider an all-too-familiar situation in Juarez: A man cooperates with law enforcement — or is believed to have cooperated — and his wife is subsequently targeted. Many people are aware of such occurrences but do not report it, thinking: Why take the risk when the chance of meaningful change is so low? Some version of this plays out every day in Mexico."

Everybody is aware of these occurrences, because they are intentionally publicized with placards leaned on piles of corpses, notes kept from blowing away by severed heads, banners stretched across highways with hanged men and women beneath them, and youtube videos. What's the use of killing snitches if nobody knows?

elliottcarlson• 14 years ago

My thoughts exactly. Even if they can't pinpoint someone directly, there are enough people in the cartel, or surrounding cities that are "disposable" and could be used to send a message - and that fear is what they are already using to control everyone around them. Even if they don't punish the correct whistle blower, that person isn't going to come out and announce that they got it wrong.

carsongross• 14 years ago

Sane people: fight Mexico drug cartels by decriminalizing at the federal level, like during the first 140 years of our countries existence.

mrilhan• 14 years ago

... Wikileaks, anyone? I think the model Mr. Schmidt is advocating has been tried, and destroyed in front of our eyes by multiple collaborating governments (sweden, america, england) and corporations (paypal, visa, et al.), in the last 24 months. Perhaps Google would have a better shot at defending itself.

The article seems more written out of shock, the absurdity of his travel experience, rather than an actual long-term plan to disrupt the cartels by injecting (pun? maybe) technology into the problem. The onus at this point is on the governments, which have bigger pockets and more methods of organizing large groups of people, compared to the individual citizens involved who are as Mr. Schmidt himself puts it, 'overwhelmed by crime'. We can't simply treat this specific problem as if it appeared yesterday, it has a history and evolution of its own. Certain methods have been tried, there have been many scandals, people revealed to be 'on the take', thousands of innocent bystanders have been slaughtered. This isn't day #1, and that affects public reaction.

Something else to keep in mind is that this isn't Occupy Wall Street either, you're not just going to get slapped with a loitering ticket and walk it off, there's a very real x% chance that your wife or kids could be targeted (that means 'killed and (maybe) raped'), which isn't a risk you can expect anyone to stand up against out of their own will and the promise of anonymous packets tracked by a unique ID suggested by a guy who got off of a private jet.

rprasad3• 14 years ago

Ah yes, the magical power of technology to solve all of the world's problems. I forgot technology had that power.

Well, let's all get to it guys!

Google execs: fight Mexico drug cartels with technology

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