She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/21/she-tweeted-against-the-mexican-cartels-they-tweeted-her-murder.html

by danso • 12 years ago

334 205 12 years ago

thedailybeast.com

blrgeek• 12 years ago

And that is what the USA 'War on Drugs' is doing to the poorer neighbours.

Natsu6• 12 years ago

And what about all the customers of this cartel who give them the money to pay people enough to do things like this?

rhizome3• 12 years ago

Prohibition is the only reason those cartels have customers.

chimeracoder• 12 years ago

All the more reason to encourage domestic production of drugs in regulated (ie, legal and not cartel-run) markets.

Blaming the customers is ineffective, because there's no way to end the demand for drugs entirely - we have decades of prohibitions that prove that[0]. Whether or not you or I would like them to boycott these products on principle en masse is a moot point, because it's just not feasible.

[0] If we can't even keep federal prisons drug-free, how could we keep the rest of the country drug-free?

ripb3• 12 years ago

And what about all the customers of this cartel who give them the money to pay people enough to do things like this?

Drugs are a fact of life, they've been used since the dawn of man and will be used likely until the end of man. They're not going away.

It's abhorrent that in order to access drugs, you've to essentially send money down the chain to people carrying out such acts...but people are going to do drugs, and in the face of no alternatives, this is where they're going to get them.

The people buying these drugs, generating the income for these cartels, are so removed from the reality behind them that it may as well be totally unconnected as far as all are concerned. We, first world Westerners, are generally very disconnected from the realities surrounding many of the products we buy, from legitimate products like those manufactured by Nestle, to cheap clothing manufactured in terrible conditions in the East, through to illicit substances such as cocaine which are manufactured in South America and whose trade fuels a bloody war there.

Indeed, many of our tech products that we all here use are manufactured by Foxconn, a company whose working practices are so bad that they had issues with people killing themselves on the job and tackled it by installing suicide nets around the back of the buildings and in the stairwells.

As such, there is a lot of inherent immorality associated with a lot of the consumerism we here fuel, but the reality for us is that we are extremely disconnected from these issues.

But what are the alternatives? Go even harder on those found with drugs, while continuing to let Western consumerism promote without any interference terrible working conditions for our manufacturers in the East?

One potential solution to all these issues is to apply a similar approach to all - manufacture these in the 1st world under regulations and subsidize their sale so that the consumer points towards these regulated manufacturers rather than using products manufactured abroad.

Unfortunately, while this may be the solution, it itself raises so many other issues. If we took coke production out of the hands of South America and made it in the US, for example, what in hell's name is going to happen when the vast numbers of not just cartel members, but relatively innocent coco farmers in South America can no longer derive anywhere near the same income from them?

Manufacturing these things ourselves would also, if not greatly subsidized for promotion, drive prices for the consumer up and thus have them pointing in the wrong direction again.

It's a complex issue and personally I'm not sure of what the best potential solution may be, but I find it hard to sit here and criticize those using coke in the US from a product containing FoxConn parts where people are miserable and ending their lives because of what our demand for the products being made there is doing to them.

jn12343• 12 years ago

At this point, the cartels have diversified far beyond drug trafficking.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023032777045793...

Crito5• 12 years ago

And the mob survived the end of alcohol prohibition in the US. It nevertheless weakened them.

dataminded• 12 years ago

Many American's aren't fairing much better in the war on drugs.

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2014-chicago-murders

yarou• 12 years ago

I think the reality is much more complicated than that. Globalization, the speed with which capital moves in an abstract way, and the Internet have caused negative externalities in developing countries.

I'm not sure if legalization of all drugs would end cartels, because they would just move onto a different good or service (i.e. prostitution/human trafficking or water if its scarce). I think the system we have in the world today is irrevocably broken, but nobody wants to have a candid discussion about it. Until we have a conversation instead of a monologue, between the developed and developing world, nothing will change.

VexXtreme4• 12 years ago

If you're going to whistleblow on your local government online (be that a legitimate government, or a violent drug cartel), the only reasonably safe way to do it is from outside the country AND using Tor. It amazes me that people don't take these basic precautions.

Mexican cartels are known to have infiltrated ISPs, where they were able to tie IP addresses to identities. Using encryption is the only way.

EDIT: may I ask why the downvotes? Did I say something offensive or break the HN rules?

tomengland• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how you're going to get out real journalism about the events going on within your city from another country... Did you read the article?

jamornh• 12 years ago

I wonder if the safest way to do this is to have a friend outside of the country help run the social media and you, as the insider, provide the information and direct the friend from within the country/city instead.

VexXtreme4• 12 years ago

I did, and it clearly says that other citizens were sending her information to post online. I don't know much about her situation, but presumably that wouldn't require her to be in the country.

And even if that's not the case, using Tor and not linking your online vigilante identity to your real identity (e.g. by having your whistleblower twitter account linked to your personal phone) is a very basic precaution.

I REALLY don't want to sound insensitive, but if people are going to use technology to fight people who wield the power of physical violence, they DO need to learn how to apply it properly.

danso• 12 years ago

I think you were downvoted because people suspected you of glossing over the subject at hand (for the record, I upvoted you).

I would say that for some of these local journalists, you're correct in suspecting that their technical expertise isn't high...however, it's not easy to report on dangerous local conditions from outside that locality. For one thing, you've introduced another attack vector for a MITM attack -- between the local stringer and the international point-of-contact who then publishes the content.

But the bigger problem is this: the people most passionate about this kind of local reporting, well, they're passionate about it because it is in their town or neighborhood. It's generally not feasible to be a long-time resident (the type who really gives a shit about the terror that's going on in the neighborhood) and then uproot so that you can do reporting safely. For one thing, you're just not as connected to the events once you've left the area.

VexXtreme4• 12 years ago

That's a very good point. Perhaps being overseas is not an option. In that case, I guess the best she could do is use a disposable OS (Tails) and VPN at the time of posting sensitive information online, and never use her whistleblower identity/handle outside that very narrow context.

Some newspapers (correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was NY Times) have even started running an .onion website where people can leave so called "dead drops".

coldtea7• 12 years ago

If you're going to whistleblow on your local government online (be that a legitimate government, or a violent drug cartel), the only reasonably safe way to do it is from outside the country AND using Tor.

Unless, you know, the "outside country" is one participating in those surveillance schemes, like 5-eyes, and is in bed with your local goverment and not beyond sending a tip or two (or even supporting its own thugs acting on the ground in your country).

More or less like it has been throughtout the 20th century in Latin America.

cynicalkane2• 12 years ago

Tweeting outside the country is probably not an option, and it's unlikely defeating encryption is a sufficient safeguard against cartels that kidnap and torture people. Kidnapping, by the way, is how they allegedly found their target according to the article.

Kiro• 12 years ago

People downvote based on disagreement, just as they upvote based on agreement.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

vacri4• 12 years ago

Because if a cartel member is looking for a whistleblower and sees that you use Tor, they're just going to respect your right to privacy and move along?

Anyway, tor wouldn't have helped the woman in the article; she was found by them going through her local app.

shkkmo7• 12 years ago

I agree. What this woman did was not "reasonably safe". This woman is a hero for the work she did for her community and because of the risks she took to do so. I find this level of bravery amazing as well.

(Also upvoted you.)

PhasmaFelis2• 12 years ago

I'm downvoting you because you're sitting in your safe, comfortable chair and smugly mocking a woman who knowingly risked death for the good of her people, because she didn't take the "basic precaution" of leaving the country she was trying to protect first.

ripb3• 12 years ago

It's somewhat amazing that it was a seemingly unrelated kidnapping that lead to her discovery given that she seemed to be tweeting from her own phone, probably publishing from her own (unsecured?) computer etc. and the reach that the cartel are purported to have in law enforcement / military in those areas.

I sincerely hope for America's sake that there's no substance to the claims that the CIA are working with these cartels.

Crito5• 12 years ago

The CIA working with cartels abroad is not mere rumor. There is substantial evidence that this takes place.

Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes. They are the closest thing to a god that has ever existed; and organization that is profoundly beyond the grasp of society at large. They smite as they see fit, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Even if the American democratic system were functioning as designed/desired, the CIA would have ample opportunity to burn all of their records (as the Stasi unsuccessfully attempted). Black budgets (see:their involvement in the drugs trade) is one of their many insurance policies against accountability.

coldtea7• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes.

That's assuming they are something like a rogue agent, and not a coherent part of an overall national strategy (not for the common folks of course).

rustyconover• 12 years ago

The CIA must be the most organized part of our government to carry on decades long conspiracies and liaise with every nefarious group in the world! If only they could redirect some of this management "excellence" to the more deserving and productive areas of the government that could actually use it.

I just highly doubt the effectiveness and existence of any long running conspiracy. See:

http://www.thisisnotaconspiracytheory.com

JumpCrisscross• 12 years ago

There is substantial evidence that [the CIA works with cartels abroad].

Would you be able to point out some references?

selimthegrim4• 12 years ago

This is the funniest shit I've ever heard in my life. The CIA that can't run human intelligence worth shit from Amman to Kabul? The CIA that took 10 years to find Bin Laden after being led around by the nose by the ISI (_nath dalna_, as they say in Urdu/Hindi)?

monochr8• 12 years ago

This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own. That no mobile OS offers these yet is pathetic.

When twitter and facebook don't let you connect anonymously from tor, this is what the result is. If you have a major website that is used by dissidents and journalists in countries such as Mexico or Iran and you don't have a plain html form to fall back on and insist on javascript being on all the time you really do have blood on your hands.

coldtea7• 12 years ago

This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own.

Yeah, that would have saved her against Mexican drug cartels and a $50.000 dollars reward.

monochr8• 12 years ago

Yes, it literally would have since they found out who she was by looking through her phone after kidnapping her for an unrelated death of a cartel member.

Try and read the article before you comment.

wfunction• 12 years ago

This is why we need not only password locks and full encryption but panic passwords and hidden logins on every piece of electronics we own.

http://xkcd.com/538/

monochr8• 12 years ago

Thank you for not reading my post: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/hotsec08/tech/full_paper...

dobbsbob• 12 years ago

Encryption and password locks are pointless against a cartel, presumably they will employ rubber hose cryptanalysis to get any information they want.

Seems like one solution would be to have a web browser that keeps no history, and use that to log into Twitter and report about cartels instead of an app that automatically logs you in or keeps history, or gives away the fact you have a twitter account they will demand to know about.

There's also schemes like this which could be helpful to at risk journalists https://www.ccsl.carleton.ca/~askillen/mobiflage/ unless you are kidnapped while in PDE mode.

If it's any small comfort, whoever was seen involved in this kidnapping is now a liability, as this case has brought a lot of heat so they were almost certainly finished off in the desert by their own cartel compadres to avoid potential snitching. The blog borderlandbeat has countless posts of mass executions the cartels do on their own guys as everybody except the capos are disposable.

edit: Likely cartels have employees at telecoms in Mexico to look up logs for them, there's prob no easy solution. It wouldn't be expensive for them to hire anybody to exploit journalists with old carrier builds that are never updated either http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/09/16/shocking-android-...

malandrew• 12 years ago

It's also a reason why we need to be able to delete our online activity permanently. Everyone who ever corresponded with felina's twitter account via private messages that didn't hide their own identity adequately is at risk. Before the account was suspended, I'm certain they went through the data.

I wouldn't be surprised if they exported all her facebook data as well, which IIRC includes content marked "deleted".

logn3• 12 years ago

HN also makes it hard to connect from Tor... "Prove you're legit" and the captcha never lets you through, even after solving it right. This is a common problem with Cloudflare sites. Cloudflare is an enormous security hole as it is and it's making it worse by actively working against Tor and making SSL certs largely untrustable (if they weren't already).

dang2• 12 years ago

Are you sure you're up to date on that? Captcha for new account creation on HN is either mostly turned off or completely so, and last I tested it, Google had made RECAPTCHA doable by humans again.

HN's restrictions on Tor IPs are only for brand new accounts. That's because of past abuses by trolls. Even then, we routinely override the restriction for accounts that are obviously legit. Anyone who sees a case of this (i.e. legit noob comments that are dead) should email us. In most cases we fix them immediately.

chuckcode2• 12 years ago

When can we stop the madness and regulate drugs rather than criminalizing them? Didn't we learn anything from prohibition?? In a time when so many people are aware of the limitations of government why do so many people think that we're going to resolve the drug problems with more government in the form courts and prisons. We're just creating a market opportunity for the cartels by inflating prices and turning their customers into criminals.

handle_bars5• 12 years ago

Are you suggesting that we legalise everything that is currently illegal, so that we would have no need to prohibit anything and turn nobody into criminals?

We could very well apply this logic to say, murder. Why not let us legalise murder, set up appropriate channels for people to hire hitmen to kill each other, so that the underground killers would not have any more customers and then they will gradually die out?

serf• 12 years ago

We could very well apply this logic to say, murder. Why not let us legalise murder, set up appropriate channels for people to hire hitmen to kill each other, so that the underground killers would not have any more customers and then they will gradually die out?

like a government sponsored drone-strike-for-sale hotline? put the hitmen out of business with pure capitalism and good old legal (international) murder.

rurounijones• 12 years ago

Person A takes drugs, person A is affected.

Person A kills Person B, person B is affected.

zavi• 12 years ago

Murder directly harms other people, while drugs directly affect only the person taking them. The line is if it directly harms others it should be illegal; otherwise not.

chuckcode2• 12 years ago

I'm sorry if the original comment came off as inflammatory.

What I'm trying to say is that when there are enough people using illegal drugs it is very difficult to use prisons and courts to get them to stop. Much like you can dam up a river but then the water flows around into other undesirable places. As with prohibition it seems a much more practical strategy to regulate the industry, if effect rerouting the river to where it does the least harm. Use regulation to make drugs safer and to minimize the harm to our communities when the the $100 billion dollars spent every year ends up in criminal hands.

theobon• 12 years ago

Why are the majority of the comments here blaming the victim?

This is the death if a person who tried to stand against an overwhelming force. To try and stand against the cartels where the police didn't dare and instead of honouring her work or get death you mock her for not using tor.

If you seriously think that lack of cybersecurity is the problem then at least use this to highlight the lack of good easy to use security software.

socceroos• 12 years ago

I feel so sorry for this woman!

I'm quite unfamiliar with the specifics of the whole Mexican cartel situation, but has there been any international aid or effort to help eradicate this?

dannypgh• 12 years ago

The movement to legalize drugs works to eradicate making this type of organized violence so profitable.

wyager5• 12 years ago

Why are the majority of the comments here blaming the victim?

I am tired of this sentiment. It is not necessarily incorrect to ascribe partial blame to someone just because they got the short end of the stick in some situation.

Being a victim does not automatically preclude one from being at fault. For example, if I jump off a cliff without a parachute, it is clearly reasonable to blame me despite the fact that I am definitively a victim of the situation.

In this case, it would be reasonable to ascribe some level of blame to both parties; we ascribe blame to the cartel for murdering people (and clearly most of the blame falls on them), and we also ascribe some measure of blame to the victim for failing to take proper precautions. This is not an affront to the victim's character or a trivialization of their death; it is a recognition of the fact that, with some more preparation, the situation could have turned out much better for the victim. It is important to address these failures so that we might learn from them in the future.

Edit: Downvoters, please comment. I am curious what you think about this. In particular, I am curious why it is never appropriate to ascribe blame to a victim of any sort.

judk4• 12 years ago

And much of the blame lies with you and I for not shouldering some of the risk and uniting with her to be a stronger large force against the murderers.

prawn3• 12 years ago

How very generous of you to apportion "most of the blame" to the murderers in this situation.

legacyfruit• 12 years ago

In the epilogue one of his books (maybe "the drowned and the saved"?), Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi describes giving a talk to a group of schoolchildren. One boy asked him to describe the layout of the camp, and then described how he would have escaped if he had been in Auschwitz. Nothing Primo Levi could say would convince the boy that escape was impossible.

Now I'm not saying that it was impossible for this citizen journalist to hide her identity, but the comments strike me as having a similar tone. People are simply assuming that her capture and death was preventable, because it is psychologically difficult to face the alternative. Namely, that only by accepting personal risk, was this woman able to stand up to the cartels. Even if the technology to protect her identity existed, maybe a person in this woman's situation would be very unlikely to know about it.

Of constructive suggestions are great, although I'm not qualified to judge their technical merit.

selimthegrim4• 12 years ago

Snowden made this point at HOPE X - crypto is not going to obviate having some stones.

tn134• 12 years ago

It seems that you have reached the heart of the problem. Most of us are miles away from that sort of threat. When the word is out that people are out there looking to murder you, it is immensely stressful. You cant eat or sleep.

If I was in her place I would have fled to a different city taking a few days off from work or simply given up the activism to reduce it to a level where the mob would not have bothered that much.

Note: Those who think that she could have managed to conceal her identity, why dont you take her work forward ? Whatever she did you too could do it from safety of USA. (Rhetorical challenge of course).

prawn3• 12 years ago

And against such a dangerous threat, would you really trust that you couldn't be identified by writing analysis from a committed enough opponent? Not to mention the publicised bounty meaning that you could barely confide in anyone or slip up anywhere.

"There's a woman at my work who often uses that same turn of phrase. Wonder if it's her? $50k would really help me."

Icybee• 12 years ago

Escape wasn't impossible, many people did escape from Auschwitz.

glomph• 12 years ago

Which book?

jfoster• 12 years ago

Victim-blaming is bad, but there is also a need for discussion of precautions that might have prevented victims from becoming victims in the first place. I think the answer lies in the tone that is used, as well as acknowledgement that sometimes precautions only become clear after the fact, and that victims who don't choose to take all precautions they could (for whatever reason) are still victims who should not be victims.

For example, this lady made what (I think is) a reasonable assumption that a pseudonym was a good enough way of protecting her identity. It wasn't a bad assumption, but because of what happened to her, we should discuss additional precautions so that people like her might fare better in future.

Another thing to consider in this discussion is that sometimes people like this lady know that they are taking a big risk, may end up murdered, but bravely proceed to take their actions anyway.

andsosayallofus• 12 years ago

Cognitive dissonance, just-world fallacy and hammers and nails.

It's difficult to read a story a soul-crushingly horrible as this and just wallow in the hopeless unjustness of it all. Coping mechanisms kick in. To preserve the comforting world view that people are in charge of their destiny, tragedy is avoidable and the world makes some sense it becomes necessary to demonstrate that the outcome was predictable and avoidable. That the victim failed themselves.

With HNs user base that manifests as a critique of information security practices.

wyager5• 12 years ago

Cognitive dissonance,

Please elaborate on this.

just-world fallacy

I don't see how anyone here is subscribing to this fallacy. No one thinks the victim's actions warranted her fate.

hammers and nails

Crypto would clearly have been more useful in this situation. Sometimes you really do have to hammer in some nails.

walterobm• 12 years ago

This is not about cybersecurity or encryption. This is about a country that has been poisoned by the brutality of drug cartels for decades. While ISIS terrorizes Iraq and Syria. Living in fear has become the norm for Mexico. But cartels cannot be bombed by drones and Mexico cannot be occupied by foreign forces. There are only two choices for those living in Mexico: either flee to the U.S. or accept living in a country where drug cartels yield more power than the government.

judk4• 12 years ago

Why can't mexico be occupied by foreign forces? Because there isn't natural resources for the liberators to pay themselves with?

nailer4• 12 years ago

Writing 'this is not about about security' does not make this not about security (amongst other topics)

xerophyte129322• 12 years ago

you mock her for not using tor.

Ok that doesn't make sense to me. Her murderers weren't Cyber-security experts who tracked her down. They were a group of thugs who kidnapped her, along with other medical personnel. Only after they had her in their clutches did they realize who they had. She was probably going to die anyway, this way the cartel knew who they were killing.

So using tor or whatever would only have the minimal effect on her situation

tzs• 12 years ago

Why are the majority of the comments here blaming the victim?

There were few if any comments here blaming the victim at the time you posted, so I must assume it is the comments discussing proper operational security for one in her position that you are misidentifying as blaming the victim.

It's important that security failures like this be discussed and analyzed so that others who may find themselves in a similar situation can learn from them so as to be able to fight the bad guys without getting killed.

If you seriously think that lack of cybersecurity is the problem then at least use this to highlight the lack of good easy to use security software

Security software, or lack thereof, is probably not the most important thing in this kind of operation. Physical security is more important, namely making sure the bad guys do not get access to the computer you conduct your social media operations from or that you use for communications with your fellow activists.

Doing any of your activism from your cell phone, such as accessing your social media from it, is very risky. It means that if the bad guys have some reason to detain you unrelated to your activism they might find out your secret.

In many ways, the anti-cartel activists are in a position similar to that of those who are in an underground resistance in a conquered nation, such as the French resistance in WWII. Success in that situation generally involves maintaining a dual life, with the public side being something innocuous and non-threatening to the bad guys, and the private, resistance side kept very separate.

nailer4• 12 years ago

Accusing people discussing security of 'victim blaming' is both incorrect and massively unfair. Nobody discussing security endorses murder.

Is lack of cyber security 'the' problem? No, it's one problem of many for people taking on cartels. Another is lack of resources for the Mexican government. Do I think the the Mexican government not having enough resources is the cause of the issue? Obviously not.

Nobody is saying those things are the cause of the issue, and you're probably smart enough to know that - instead, you've gone on to attack people for attention instead. Flagged.

rokhayakebe• 12 years ago

Should we invest serious funds (billions) into creating a 1) legal drug which is 2) not addictive, and 3) far more superior than weed, cocaine, heroine, and all the other drugs.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

If it was that good it would be addicting regardless of any physical effects.

zerr• 12 years ago

The point is that it should be harmless - for the person and for the surrounding people as well...

icelancer2• 12 years ago

#3 and #2 are not compatible.

WildUtah• 12 years ago

Hybridized modern marijuana and Adderall are already the new drugs you propose. We can't manage to get either of them legalized for over the counter sale yet. Prohibition is still the root of the problem.

leeber• 12 years ago

If the Cartels have such a hole on media down there, then how did such a detailed account of this story get out?

jn12343• 12 years ago

Because they put it on an extremely popular Twitter account that was followed by the American media?

icelancer2• 12 years ago

What? A cartel is the one that tweeted out the series of events that occurred after stealing her phone.

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

We've created a monster with the War on Drugs.

It will only get worse unless we reverse course. Unless we do, the violence/terrorism on the border could increase dramatically. We have a historical model in alcohol prohibition and know what it does and what happens after.

We blame Mexico, Central and South America for much of this but policies and our actions there are creating these black markets where only criminals get the revenues. How is that the best solution we have? We are actively creating armies south of the border that aren't state associated, I believe that is terrorism.

themodelplumber• 12 years ago

What does "reversing course" mean? It seems to me that these are markets that build up in response to our declaration of contraband. Do you think that the U.S.A. should simply legalize some fixed subset of all drugs, or just say, "is it a chemical that some portion of our public urged their congressmen to take action on because our kids were doing it behind the school? If so, OK!" Even the definition of "legalize" seems like a messy problem, to say the least. Like it's easy to say "legalize" but where (geographically) can we find existing models of legalization along with which there is no market that incentivizes drug-related criminal behavior? (Asking sincerely because why should I just believe in "reversing course" without knowing what the plan is?)

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

Like it's easy to say "legalize" but where (geographically) can we find existing models of legalization along with which there is no market that incentivize drug-related criminal behavior?

The US before 1970 (CO/WA for MJ obviously 2014). Amsterdam, Vancouver, Uruguay, Portugal, The Wire (only kidding).

Would you rather stop someone from smoking a joint or actively help fund an army/cartel through policy?

It isn't as easy as that no, but the problem we are trying to fight has caused incredible harm in blowback, and is only just beginning. We don't want to fund armies south of the US any further. We saw what happened in the 80's in South America, now it has spread up to Mexico, and now along the border quite frequently. In 30+ years it has only increased the violence and caused immeasurable harm over that time. When do we start ratcheting it down?

The War on Drugs has not stopped drugs from their destination, in fact it makes it more of a demand product and the benefactors concentrated within criminal organizations. Drug abuse isn't that high for illegal drugs, it is a manageable problem and safer regulated. It is more pharmaceutical drugs that are the problem now in terms of abuse. We don't create a War on Pharma because that is silly, we know people will abuse them and we help them. We don't lock them up and give them felonies unless they are transporting outside of regulation.

Really all we have done with the War on Drugs is make criminals rich and they bought lots of guns. The War on Drugs hasn't, nor will it, stop people from using drugs. Moral laws do not work, history consistently reminds us. If people are going to use anyways and that is the case, the only solution is a non-violent/non-criminal response and tax it like tobacco. People aren't going to go out and start doing drugs tomorrow if they are legal, if they do them they already do them. Where people do use though it is safer with a regulated market as in Vancouver/Amsterdam/etc.

But the real question is... If people are going to do it anyway and stopping it with force won't work, then where should most of the revenues of drugs go? Regulated, taxed and tracked or to criminals to build armies. That is really the question. The War on Drugs is a failure in that it has only made the demand higher and riches from it more concentrated to criminals.

College kids drink and smoke weed sometimes. Do you want your son/daughter, or their friends, to happen to do this at college and have to deal with possible criminal elements if they do, or would you rather it be safer. Why do we think it is safer to have kids deal with dealers that are possible criminals "to keep them safe".

nitrogen2• 12 years ago

...where...can we find existing models of legalization along with which there is no market that incentivizes drug-related criminal behavior?

I hear Portugal has had decent results.

paulhauggis3• 12 years ago

Well, drug consumers can stop purchasing drugs that you know that involve the cartels. But most people that talk about the "War on Drugs" would rather blame the US drug policies instead, rather than the own up to the fact that they are contributing to the problem.

I would also like to point out that legalizing drugs would not solve the problem. The problem is corruption, not the drugs themselves. Look at Miami in the 1970s. It was a war zone, just like Mexico is today. The reason is because you could buy off any cop or government official in the city (check out the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" for some real news footage from the time).

If drugs are legalized tomorrow, what do you think would happen? If I were the cartels, I would continue selling my product, this time legal (similar to how companies are outsourcing to China..drug companies will outsource to Mexico). My power would continue or increase, because I could just buy off any cop and/or government official and the violence would continue (ruling by fear).

Fix the corruption..and you fix the cartel issue. At this point, the US would need to bring the military in there to fix the problem.

I also don't think people would stop buying drugs in the black market if drugs were made legal. Why? MJ will not ever be legal in the sense that you can just grow it and sell it out of your house with no government intervention. It will be taxed and regulated, which means much higher prices. Many people won't want to pay those higher prices and there will still be a demand for a black market (just like software and music piracy).

I'm not against the legalization of drugs, I'm against the dishonesty. Supporters were dishonest about "medical marijuana"..which is quite honestly, a joke. There are 10 doctors in my area that will give you a prescription for MJ for pretty much anything..it will just cost you $70. The majority of people that I know that have their prescriptions just want to smoke weed.

I wish I was one of those doctors...they are probably able to retire on the proceeds.

Please..just stop the fucking dishonesty and I might support your cause.

enneff• 12 years ago

Well, drug consumers can stop purchasing drugs that you know that involve the cartels.

How is it possible to know this?

And besides, saying to drug users "Just don't buy the drugs" is like saying to the cartels "Just stop killing and terrorising people." People will buy drugs regardless of what we do—the war on drugs has proven this—and black markets (controlled by cartels) will meet the demand.

You ignore the point that the vast majority of the consumers of the cartels' product is not in Mexico. If these drugs were legal in the target markets, local producers would crop up and cut the cartel's profits. Given the choice, would you buy Cartel Brand® coke or Free Trade Cocaine®?

Large corporations are forced to be accountable to their supply chain, and markets have shown time and time again that consumers will pay a premium for ethically produced products.

nitrogen2• 12 years ago

...rather than the own up to the fact that they are contributing to the problem.

I'm not a user, so I honestly don't know, but is there a "fair trade" movement for drugs? If not, then the only thing users could possibly know is that, if there were no war on drugs, there would be no need for violent cartels to produce and distribute them.

drawkbox3• 12 years ago

Humans are imperfect, they will buy drugs and try them. I don't recommend it or want people around me to but stopping them with force and violence is the same black/white problems we have all the time.

Dishonesty? Being dishonest is having the attitude like your position isn't directly creating armies/cartels to be more powerful and concentrated. Which is a bigger problem to you, 'dishonesty' about medical marijuana or active cartel creation? According to your logic, the violence/mafias of the prohibition era were caused by the people wanting a drink and to have fun. There was nothing wrong with that if done safely, it was made unsafe by policy and created more problems than it solved and a bigger problem than the initial problem.

Yes the medical marijuana thing is mostly people wanting to smoke weed but there is also actual patients of it. If you were in immense pain everyday and didn't want to eat or smile... sorry, @paulhauggis doesn't want you to smoke a joint grandma because you are being 'dishonest' about it. Grandma just wanted to be happy but I guess she has to be in pain first.

The first person to buy marijuana in Washington was a 60+ year old lady -- a grandma -- she said it made her happy (http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024022679_storesopen...). The first person in Colorado was a soldier back from Iraq who had PTSD (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/01/sean-azzariti-marij...). I guess they are both 'dishonest'.

I didn't want to get into this but, a large majority of Americans have smoked marijuana. As our police and oversight get better or more militarized and everything is tracked, we are going to have to man up and remove laws that are silly and harmful. We don't want to ruin college kids lives or take grandma's plants from her and throw her in jail.

In prohibition you had to get alcohol from an illegal bar or from the mafia, was that a better situation? That is what we have now with weed that grandma and possibly your kids in college want to smoke and nothing you do will stop them, not even force/laws/shaming. But you can make it safer where people slip up. What we need is to man up and deal with that reality and create structures to help people, and most importantly, reduce the concentration of funds going to cartels. Even if legal and the cartels turn into corporations that is better than black market/highly armed operations to fight the War against them.

Your xenophobia about the 'dishonesty' of it is the problem creating a war south of the border. It will continue as your attitude is prevalent as the US sees black and white not gray which it really is.

AnthonyMouse7• 12 years ago

Fix the corruption..and you fix the cartel issue.

You have the cause and effect inverted. Everyone has a price. The reason there is so much corruption in Mexico is that we've made corruption so profitable.

If I were the cartels, I would continue selling my product, this time legal (similar to how companies are outsourcing to China..drug companies will outsource to Mexico). My power would continue or increase, because I could just buy off any cop and/or government official and the violence would continue (ruling by fear).

If drugs were legalized then competition would increase and drive down margins. Meanwhile the government would collect taxes, preventing the lower margins from actually lowering prices and increasing demand. All of which means less money for the cartels.

It will be taxed and regulated, which means much higher prices. Many people won't want to pay those higher prices and there will still be a demand for a black market (just like software and music piracy).

Tax evasion is a felony. The cost of continually having your employees arrested and assets seized can easily exceed the cost of just paying the taxes (which is kind of the idea).

The sensible thing to do with drugs is to make possession legal but impose high taxes and then significant fines and mandatory rehab for using drugs or being high in any public place. Meanwhile use 100% of the money from the taxes and fines for anti-drug campaigns and free rehab for anyone who wants it and otherwise doing whatever possible to encourage people to voluntarily give up drug use.

deciplex2• 12 years ago

If drugs are legalized tomorrow, what do you think would happen? If I were the cartels, I would continue selling my product, this time legal (similar to how companies are outsourcing to China..drug companies will outsource to Mexico). My power would continue or increase, because I could just buy off any cop and/or government official and the violence would continue (ruling by fear).

So, why don't farmers do this? That's pretty much all most drug production is. Perhaps, that a bale of hay isn't worth millions of dollars, has something to do with it?

The comparison to alcohol prohibition is spot-on. You are correct that legalizing drugs would not solve the problem overnight. But again, look to alcohol prohibition as an example: ending prohibition did not destroy the American Cosa Nostra, but it did deprive it of a primary source of funding which, along with some new laws and law enforcement techniques, and time (measured in decades), enabled law enforcement agencies to reduce those organizations to a shadow of their former selves.

So it will go with the Cartels. Yes it will still take time, but you have to start somewhere.

I'm not against the legalization of drugs, I'm against the dishonesty.

Frankly, the ends justify the means. 20 years ago people would still get hysterical about something as benign as marijuana. If the only way to correct that in the face of a federal government that does (or did, at least, at the time) spend heaps of money reinforcing it, is to introduce 'medical marijuana' at the state level, as a trojan horse, in the hopes of getting people to recognize that, no, in fact, weed will not turn you into a devil and force you to go out and rape women or whatever the fuck else, then I say do it.

I'll point out that marijuana legalization is itself such a trojan horse as well. Just as twenty years ago the mere legalization of marijuana nationally seemed hopeless, right now the full legalization of all psychoactives seems a bit far-fetched. Yet, observing the effects of marijuana legalization (i.e. basically nothing at all happens) will help drive home the lesson that drugs are generally about as big a deal as you want them to be, and not one bit more.

shkkmo7• 12 years ago

I would also like to point out that legalizing drugs would not solve the problem. The problem is corruption, not the drugs themselves. Look at Miami in the 1970s. It was a war zone, just like Mexico is today. The reason is because you could buy off any cop or government official in the city (check out the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" for some real news footage from the time).

Really? Your evidence is a movie described as: "The film explores the rise of cocaine and resulting crime epidemic that swept the American city of Miami, Florida,"

The incentive for corruption is greatly increased by the power held by, and amount of money available to criminal organizations.

If I were the cartels, I would continue selling my product, this time legal (similar to how companies are outsourcing to China..drug companies will outsource to Mexico).
MJ will not ever be legal in the sense that you can just grow it and sell it out of your house with no government intervention.

So... your claim is that the US government will prevent locals from growing marijuana but will be just fine with the drug companies outsourcing production to criminal cartels with no regulatory oversight? At least try to be consistent in your argument.

I'm not against the legalization of drugs, I'm against the dishonesty. Supporters were dishonest about "medical marijuana"..which is quite honestly, a joke. There are 10 doctors in my area that will give you a prescription for MJ for pretty much anything..it will just cost you $70. The majority of people that I know that have their prescriptions just want to smoke weed.

The abuse of medical marijuana prescriptions does not make use the use of medical marijuana prescriptions a joke. Similarly, the extremely high rates of of abuse of other types of prescribed medications does not make them a joke.

About dishonesty, please indicate the claims that you believe were dishonestly made by supporters of medical marijuana? Please contrast those with the honesty of claims made by the FDA that drugs such as marijuana or MDMA have "No accepted medical use"

Please stop blaming the mexican government for failing to control the cartels that the US has been funding through several decades of failed drug policy.

enoch_r• 12 years ago

Well, drug consumers can stop purchasing drugs that you know that involve the cartels. But most people that talk about the "War on Drugs" would rather blame the US drug policies instead, rather than the own up to the fact that they are contributing to the problem.

That is not a reasonable strategy to reduce the power of cartels. Not that I disagree with you. But it's not a reasonable strategy.

I would also like to point out that legalizing drugs would not solve the problem. The problem is corruption, not the drugs themselves. Look at Miami in the 1970s. It was a war zone, just like Mexico is today. The reason is because you could buy off any cop or government official in the city (check out the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" for some real news footage from the time).
If drugs are legalized tomorrow, what do you think would happen? If I were the cartels, I would continue selling my product, this time legal (similar to how companies are outsourcing to China..drug companies will outsource to Mexico). My power would continue or increase, because I could just buy off any cop and/or government official and the violence would continue (ruling by fear).

Can you explain why no cartels have stopped producing illegal drugs, and started producing, say, quinoa, corn, and wheat instead? If legalization would have no effect on their profits, why do they choose to specialize in illegal markets like drugs and gun-running?

Look, after legalization, cartels would suddenly face a huge amount of competition from companies that don't burn large amounts of cash fighting wars, which are generally quite expensive. Ordinary agricultural production is not generally associated with beheadings, torture, and assassinations. This is not because producers of quinoa are inherently virtuous, but because the incentives faced by black market "companies" are extremely atypical.

Please..just stop the fucking dishonesty and I might support your cause.

I agree that the legalization of MMJ was to some extent a dishonest attempt to get de facto legalization (successfully, I might add). But it is entirely irrational to base your support for a policy on the actions of some proponents of that policy.

psykovsky3• 12 years ago

Thank you, at least for showing me Miame Vice wasn't all fiction, after all ;)

paulhauggis3• 12 years ago

suppression of free speech only shows the world that I am right and you are afraid of the truth. When your argument is based on pure emotion and little to no logic or fact (like the responders below)!know I already won anyway.

I suppose it's now time to find and report all of the MJ doctors giving out fake scripts.

judk4• 12 years ago

The US has drones. Why don't they firebomb every drug plantation and capo hacienda in L Latin America?

afro88• 12 years ago

Because the US isn't the world police

mjfl2• 12 years ago

We live in a surveillance state.. I don't understand why the CIA can't find the leaders of these organizations and slip arsenic in their morning coffees.

javert2• 12 years ago

The US should not play world police.

The US properly has jurisdiction in Mexico only when necessary to protect Americans, and we seem to not have crossed that threshhold.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

The US properly has jurisdiction in Mexico only when necessary to protect Americans

Wait, what? Does Mexico have jurisdiction in the US when necessary to protect Mexicans?

tn134• 12 years ago

The blame rests on her. She was rich, able to afford college education and unnecessarily painting the poor equal-opportunity lacking folks on street as thieves.

Instead of tweeting against the cartels she should have tried to build a bridge to their hearts, reach to the root cause of crime and should acted like a responsible citizen. She instead chose adventurism.

US is doing a great service to these people by continuing to have a drug-prohibition and letting their uneducated/unskilled labor get safe citizenship and welfare money at the expense of American taxpayers. She should have learned something from USA.

^^#sarcasm

I hope that she is safe.

handle_bars5• 12 years ago

According to the article, she's dead.

tn134• 12 years ago

The body is not found.

sidcool• 12 years ago

Many people here are thinking of this as a technical problem than a social one. I know we are HNers, but we do think of stuff in different perspectives too, don't we? I mean technology is not the farthest we can look.

GhotiFish• 12 years ago

I'm a tech, I can suggest tech solutions. I have no idea how to deal with cartels.

Use batman?

jacquesm3• 12 years ago

Mexican cartels will become much less of a threat when the US decides to treat drug addiction like a disease instead of a crime and will legalize drugs to the point where the street value will drop to where crime is too high a price to pay for the profits that can be made with them.

This will probably take longer than I'm going to be around for but in the end that and only that will get the drug 'war' over and done with. It's politically hard because it would be in the eyes of some admitting defeat and in the eyes of others admitting being wrong. Those are both hard things for politicians. But if that doesn't happen the war on drugs will be the US equivalent of the war in Afghanistan for the Russians. Unwinnable, a continuous sapping of funds and energy that could go to better uses.

In the meantime we rely on people like this extremely brave woman that stood up for what was right, and I sincerely hope that those that are on the consuming side of the equation ('a man that needs a little help to dream') wise up and see that they are very much part of the problem and that they and everybody else fractionally kill people (sometimes even themselves) on a daily basis.

The drug trade is supremely ugly.

Shorel• 12 years ago

I offer myself as a proxy for such twitter accounts.

Let's see what happens.

She Tweeted Against the Mexican Cartels. They Tweeted Her Murder

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