Not uncommon in some cities in Canada to find out you're working for a criminal outfit if writing point of sale/restaurant software where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Profitek was busted once, InfoSpec Systems, zappers are in high demand
My first sale of my selfwritten software (about 35 years ago) was for a car driving instructor. The initial sales conversations where difficult. I thought they did not see the advantages of having their planning & bookkeeping in a computer...
How wrong I was. It was their "creative bookkeeping" that worried them. When I offered to make that all possible ('zapping' as it is called now), they loved it. Based on their referrals I sold it many times over.
Come next customer / market: bookshops. Guess what the most important selling argument was, besides easy cataloging, inventory, searching, website publishing and reporting? Right: zapping.
Thought me an important rule: do not underestimate what your customer is NOT telling you.
I know that taxes ultimately don’t result in lost schools and hospitals, as it’s never that 1:1, but do you ever think you could have cost your country a hospital, a new road, or a new warhead or whatever?
It's odd how the people that think this are generally the same ones most likely to argue that “positive rights” that impose a cost on others are an incoherent concept, and positive entitlement can at most be a limited privilege granted by others based on available resources and expected utility of the grant. But they fail to recognize that the “right” to wall off goods from the commons and exclude others by force—i.e., property—is very much a positive right that has a cost for others.
Property is not a positive right. Property ownership is derived from the self-ownership of the person who created the property by combining their own labor with unowned land. The exclusive right to decide how the property is consumed is a negative right; others have no obligation to provide anything to the property owner, only to leave the owner (including their property) alone. Homesteading imposes no cost on others for the simple reason that these others have no claim to the unowned land being homesteaded.
Your error is starting from the assumption that land is owned in common by everyone, rather than unowned. If land were actually owned in common then you would need to obtain permission from every single person on the planet before using any of it. You would starve to death long before you obtained even a small fraction of the necessary consent. And no, the government cannot grant that consent on behalf of others who never deliberately and voluntarily agreed to permit the government to represent them. You would need the consent of each and every individual.
You're using some words that I do not know if I understand them correctly, but let me just say that I personally think of rights as something that is either given to you by someone or taken by force and the only rights you truly have are the ones you can personally defend with your own force, since the other ones can be taken from you at any time. If you think you should have rights that you cannot take with your own force, that is the definition of entitlement.
Taxes are dues for being part of a club. You're free to move to somewhere else if you don't want to be part of that club but you don't get to freeload.
If it were just a "club" (as opposed to a protection racket) then joining would involve consent and you wouldn't have to move to quit. Also, it's not as if there's anywhere you could move to that hasn't been infested with its own "club".
Merely wanting to be left in peace in the place where you were born without being compelled to pay for things you never asked for is not "freeloading".
this is sort of like the "wage slavery is consensual because both sides agreed" argument. what realistic alternative does someone who doesn't consent to taxation have? renouncing US citizenship triggers a large tax on the total value of your assets if you are wealthy. even if you're not wealthy, the US charges a flat fee of about $2000 for the process. you might literally be unable to afford renouncing your citizenship.
even after that, the IRS can come back and harass you at any time if they suspect you of tax fraud, and most foreign countries will cooperate with them.
If you're looking to leave the country over taxes, why the hell would them trying to tax your assets bother you? You're leaving. You are welcome to leave, no one is forcing you. It's the same argument with bringing jobs to dead small towns. No one ever promised everyone could get any job anywhere, sometimes you have to move. No one ever promised you could live in any country without help paying for the upkeep.
pragmatically, I don't object to the idea of taxation. the government provides some useful services and it needs a way of funding them. I'm also not actually interested in renouncing my citizenship, as I personally find US citizenship to be worth the tax obligations.
what I do object to is the common "social contract" argument for why taxes are legitimate. in particular, I strongly object to the idea that I "consent" to taxation merely by having been born here. I haven't consented to anything; I submit because an overwhelmingly powerful entity compels me.
"I submit because an overwhelmingly powerful entity compels me."
This is also the "I don't want to be told what to do" argument, which PERSONALLY I find immature. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not calling you a name, we're having a reasonable discussion, I'm just saying that no one likes being given orders, but it's a part of life. You DO have the option of leaving and going somewhere without taxes. You're submitting because you have to in order to be where you want to be.
Yes, you are submitting because you have to, hence nobody is losing sleep over dealing with it in an appropriate way. You wouldn't submit if you didn't have to.
Your parents consented on your behalf, as guardians are legally capable of doing for those in their care, when you were born. You affirmed that by remaining here, enjoying the privileges of citizenship, when you reached the age of majority.
There is no written contract when you sit down to eat in a restaurant, and yet you are obliged to pay after your meal.
It's a funny one because it's potentially one of the most serious crimes. You're stealing from everybody, undermining the basis of trust in the entire system in which we live and probably in the long term eroding the basis of democracy. You're creating a non-level playing field.
On the other hand, black and grey market activity are also I think quite an important counter-balance to the possibility of totalitarian government. It creates "gaps" let's say for more diverse human and economic outcomes. Which is also potentially good.
I think it's one of those indefensible things that we should tolerate a tiny amount of. Kind of like a vaccine in the body.
> It's a funny one because [Tax Evasion is] potentially one of the most serious crimes. You're stealing from everybody, undermining the basis of trust in the entire system in which we live and probably in the long term eroding the basis of democracy. You're creating a non-level playing field.
This is true, and in addition, it's a very unequal crime. To properly evade taxes and get away with it, you need professional help. Most standard W-2 employees can't afford it, i.e., for most, the cost to hire professional help evading taxes is larger than the taxes they could save.
However, if you're very wealthy, then the calculus changes: saving 20% taxes on $50M/yr income is a lot more attractive than saving 20% on $200k/yr income. Effectively, the wealthier you are, the easier it is to evade taxes, further exacerbating at least the perception (and quite likely the reality) of inequality.
>Most standard W-2 employees can't afford it, i.e., for most, the cost to hire professional help evading taxes is larger than the taxes they could save.
.
>than saving 20% on $200k/yr income
Erm, that's not a standard W2 employee's income. Not even close. The median U.S. household income was $63,179 in 2017.
Many on HN think everyone in the United States makes a 6-figure salary because they do. It's a common theme, I pointed out another potential instance.
40k of 200k doesn't make a big difference, 3016 of 15,080 (federal minimum wage @ 40 hours a week for a year) makes a HUGE difference as does 12,635.90 of 63,179.
Why do you think waitstaff and the like prefer cash tips? because they feel that no one will know if they don't report some or all of that income. Go ask any waiter, waitress, bartender, etc if they want you to give them that tip on credit card where they get taxed or cash where they don't. The same goes for electricians, plumbers, handymen, etc as they'll happily take cash first because they can fudge their numbers some.
In the US, incomes between $9,701 to $39,475 are taxed at 12%, so the tax on 15,080 is actually $1,810 or 40% less than your estimate... at 63,179 the tax rate is 22% which is $13,899 - only a little higher than your estimate.
At $200K, the tax rate is 32%, so the tax is really $64K, 160% of your estimate.
(all for single filers or married filing separately; married filing jointly has wider bands, and the rates are less overall at the given combined income levels)
Tax evasion is not even a real crime. Tax is stealing from someone. Tax evasion and avoidance are great for society and we would be poorer if people didn't do it. Virtually all tax money usually goes to wars, warmongers, and the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats. Virtually nothing returns to society as services.
When people find a way to pay fewer taxes, it means money is not only not going to wars, but also being able to be used for better things for everyone.
In theory, sure, but reality is a bit of a prisoner's dilemma.
Consider:
Person A is evading Taxes.
Person B is not evading taxes.
Government says 'Well, we aren't getting enough money', So they raise taxes on those who can't realistically evade. By a second order effect, Person A is causing Person B to get 'stolen from' twice instead of once.
I'd say it doesn't work like this. Instead, the state will try to charge as much as possible taxes from both of them while providing the least amount of service possible so someone not paying tax has a really low impact overall on the services the state is able to provide.
They charge tax way higher than any of the services they provide truly cost (even if we put any efficiency concerns aside).
I'd even argue this impact is positive given that now money is freely circulating in society for other stuff. For me, society will eventually have other ways to finance infrastructure and social benefits that are not based on taxes, as it happens today – but this doesn't even mean something entirely new. Let's remember most fire companies, schools, hospitals, and other stuff we rely upon are either privately maintained (for-profit or not), the concept started like so, or both.
> black and grey market activity are also I think quite an important counter-balance to the possibility of totalitarian government.
I don't really buy this: plenty of totalitarian regimes have illegal black markets, that governments often tolerate because they don't see a threat to their power.
A better way to counter a totalitarian government is via open communication and coordination of the government's subjects. Government's are far more afraid of this, which is why strict censorship and propaganda are the "go-to" tools for any totalitarian regime.
> governments often tolerate because they don't see a threat to their power
I would say it is often even opposite of it - black/grey markets help to stay in power. When everybody is breaking some law, buying something [almost] illegally, everybody wants to stay quiet.
> that governments often tolerate because they don't see a threat to their power.
You think for example the North Korean government happily tolerates the black markets there? No way. If it would be easy for them to control them they would close them down. The black/grey markets happening in totalitarian countries are more like compromises - it would be too difficult to stop the activity without murdering half of the population or so.
> You think for example the North Korean government happily tolerates the black markets there? No way.
They most certainly do. There are tons of articles based on satellite based cameras that track the rise and fall of small black markets in North Korea. Some markets lasted years, before being abruptly shut down for unknown reasons.
You'll find that when an authoritarian government has a black market, the (brothers, cousins, etc of the) authoritarians are the ones running it. Police raids happen under the same kind of circumstances as corruption charges: you annoyed the wrong authoritarian, or they needed to make an example.
Also, lower level officials tend to make a lot of profit out of black markets, and selective tolerance of them doing so helps convince them that maintaining the regime and demonstrating loyalty in all other regards is in their interests.
Psychologically it's hard to see the victim, so people don't count it. It's a terrible thing about human nature, but it is what it is. The person you're replying to will never see themselves on the same level as someone who mugs someone or robs a liquor store, not because the damage they've done isn't worse, but because it doesn't feel wrong. We invent all sorts of ways and reasoning that allow us to do awful things without feeling guilt. It's just a sad fact about us.
> It's a funny one because it's potentially one of the most serious crimes.
No. How about serial killers, real theft etc.
> You're stealing from everybody
No, tax evasion is not theft. It is primarily your earned income where you pay taxes from. Tax evasion is tax evasion, no reason to confuse it with other crimes.
Think about it this way: easiest way to avoid taxes is not to work at all. Are all those who are slacking off with government benefits, or living off from savings or inheritance stealing from us? No, they are just not working.
> You're creating a non-level playing field.
The playing field will always be non-level, you gotta deal with it. What about those who have a job at the government and are not doing any work? Are those also stealing?
Trust in society is a complicated issue. Often the industries where tax evasion happens are low-income jobs. I'm not saying it is right thing to do, but I don't think it is as serious crime as many others.
> It is primarily your earned income where you pay taxes from.
Income you were able to earn because infrastructure allows businesses to operate, police forces protect their property, physical safety and the shipment of goods, a court system allows peaceful resolution of conflicts, armed forces protect you from invasion, fire departments prevent entire cities from burning down by putting fires out early etc.
Taking the benefits without paying the democratically set price for a wide array of services is not that different from stealing.
The "benefits" were forced upon you without your consent, though. And some of those are blatantly misleading. For instance, most of the defense budget isn't spent on protecting the US from invasion. Most companies protect their property by hiring security guards, not calling the police.
> The "benefits" were forced upon you without your consent
That's not how democracy works. Many of these benefits only make sense if a whole area is covered (if your neighbor isn't serviced by to the fire brigade, that puts you at risk), so we instituted a voting system where people can elect representatives who set a tax rate and a budget detailing what that money is spent on.
If you feel like the selection of services is to your disadvantage you can also always go to another country. I hear Somalia has pretty cheap taxes, along with an accordingly small selection of services.
>> The "benefits" were forced upon you without your consent
> That's not how democracy works.
That's exactly how democracy works. Unfortunately, a democratic society is not inherently a just society. It's just a bit more stable than autocratic societies due to integrating periodic small revolutions in lieu of less frequent but more severe transfers of power. The better versions have certain protections for minorities, which makes them less democratic but more just.
Moving to another country isn't a solution. That other country (yes, even Somalia) will already be infested with its own form of protection racket, and anything you could do to defend yourself against governments and wannabe governments in some other country you could do equally well right where you are. Moreover, why should you be forced to move away from the place where you were born just because someone else has drawn some arbitrary borders on a map and thinks it's too much work to create the system they have in mind without forcing everyone in that area to participate? How does their inability to exclude you from whatever benefit they think they're creating suddenly become your problem?
The reality is that pretty much everyone these days facilitates some kind of crime or unethical conduct in one way or another. Either intentionally or unintentionally and either actively through collaboration or passively through inaction. Aaron Swartz was spot on when he wrote about "The intentionality of Evil" - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/intentionalevil - This has become the biggest problem of our age.
Even a lot of the things that are legal these days are extremely unethical. The system is a mess. Capitalism is destroying society, rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior.
All the good companies/projects I worked on over the years (e.g. education) are struggling in this economy while all the evil ones (gambling, finance) are thriving.
Communism is looking better with each passing day. Especially with the level of automation we have today.
Every day, automation is getting better but people are getting worse. The systemic inefficiencies caused by fraud and other unethical behaviors under capitalism has outpaced the inefficiencies of a communist society whereby everyone gets paid the same and each person does as little work as possible.
I’m not saying what OP did is right, however, is creating tools that could possibly bypass a governments’ laws always an ethical issue?
Would the creators of VPN software need to consider ethics since it could break government censorship? Or if the government requested I create a backdoor for them, would that also be an ethical issue?
Creating a tool that can theoretically be abused to break laws? No.
Selling a tool with a law-breaking feature, in full knowledge that its main selling point is that feature, that your customers are buying it specifically to break the law? That ought to raise some ethical concerns. You can say that it depends on the particular laws being broken - but here we're not talking about ethical minutiae of censorship or surveillance. We're talking the usual defrauding of the commons through tax evasion.
Creators of VPN software definitely need to consider ethics when deciding who to sell to, what uses to tolerate, what information to store, and how to navigate local laws. Such a business has to deal directly with conflicting needs of citizens, criminals and governments, and thus whatever it does, it's making an ethics choice one way or another.
There's plenty of such people. Most that I met are simultaneously unhappy about giving their government the money, and very happy to use all the services provided by the government from that money[0]. I would appreciate their views more if their argument involved pointing out that nobody asked them to sign the social contract, and that they have no meaningful way to opt out. But very few of such people I talked to raised that point. The argument seems to always boil down to "me getting service good, me paying for it bad".
(I've also seen people argue that they pay for more than they're using, but somehow the concept of derisking and variance reduction doesn't escape these people when it comes to buying insurance.)
--
[0] - Ranging from healthcare and schooling to laws, defense and ensuring a safe and stable environment in which everyone can conduct their business.
On the other hand there are lots of people happily receiving all their money from government, and also using all the public services as well. For example those having a job* at government or receiving benefits from government.
Note that it is still pretty much impossible to run a business without paying any taxes, in the end you have to pay some but you might be able to evade some. In the end it is just endless debate about what level of taxes is felt fair. Changes from individual to other. When people don't feel their taxes are fair, they start to evade those. They might be also just greedy bastards, but I don't think that's necessarily commonly the case.
(* Having a job doesn't necessarily mean doing beneficial work, just receiving the salary.)
> When people don't feel their taxes are fair, they start to evade those. They might be also just greedy bastards, but I don't think that's necessarily commonly the case.
No, normal people do not. Tax evasion is a serious crime. People don't start doing criminal acts when they just feel something "isn't fair".
Yeah, look, ethics is great and all but when you risk being homeless or hungry, it quickly goes out the window. Especially for "victimless" (i.e. no one is directly affected) illegal activity.
Assuming this is the truth, I think that's fair enough tbh. IMO your ethics have to change depending on your safety. I apologize for the initial assumption of your well being. I hope (given the context of the website) it is evident why I jumped to that assumption!
Years ago the Portuguese government encouraged consumers to submit their receipts in a portal and each submitted receipt was a entry to a raffle where the prizes were luxury cars.
This way they could match the receipts from consumers with the ones reported by the shops. It felt wrong to put citizens policing the shops but it worked.
I remember visiting Italy and we were warned repeatedly to always take and keep receipts, even if just getting a gelato -- that after the transaction the police could demand it, with punitive measures if you don't have it. This system was to ensure that shopkeepers were actually keeping receipts.
The GST/HST system in Canada sort of serves the same purpose. It is an overarching tax system that seems redundant in that every business then can claim back every bit of GST they've paid out. But to do so you have to have receipts for everything, from every source, and when they randomly do an audit they aren't checking you as much as they're building a profile of every other business you interacted with.
At a different level that's part of the reason receipts exist, and why you occasionally see things like "if we don't give you a receipt your order is free."
In those cases it's typically about preventing the employees from not ringing up the sale and just pocketing the cash. The receipt proves that the order was entered into the system. Same idea, just a difference of who's stealing from whom.
Hm, I suppose that scam is less of a problem in the era of credit cards.
The system still in place, if I'm not totally mistaken. (I haven't checked, because I usually don't give away my tax number for sheer laziness - I still don't know it by heart.)
They did that here in Belgium too. Didn't take very long for one of the few official manufacturers of said terminals to jailed after presumably installing a few custom features.
Here in Norway there are special provisions for tax fraud and money laundering. It doesn't apply to "normal" crime only those. But it does apply for everyone not just civil servants.
>> So if for example I know that my uncle is not paying all his taxes I'm a criminal too unless I report him? Or is it only for bigger frauds?
> Yes if the government can prove that you knew about it without telling, you can be charged with it.
That's not generally true. In the vast majority of cases, simply knowing about a crime and not reporting it is not a crime in itself. You only become liable when you aid-and-abet or join in a conspiracy to commit the crime.
However, it depends very much on the specific crime. Tax evasion may be entirely different than say selling drugs.
The U.S. revenue-side of government isn't encouraging you to start illegal businesses to improve tax receipts, they probably get almost no taxes from that form-box ... it's just much easier later when authorities find out about your illegal activities to convict you of evading taxes that were clearly and easily payable in the past than to convict you of your particular illegal behavior.
Also the case in Canada, to my knowledge. A few years ago, a TV show called the tax agency anonymously, claiming to be drug dealers and asking how to report their earnings. The tax agency person was helpful and cooperative, and said they can't report it to police.
I’d assume tax fraud is much more common than money laundering. Maybe drug dealers and the like create enough of a market for “reverse zappers” to exist; not sure.
This is anecdotal but when I was involved with an "Ultra Lounge" (upscale club) the owner had, on several occasions, individuals approach him wanting to buy a % of the club with cold hard cash.
I was there for one instance, 2 guys had asked him for a meeting to get some advice on opening a pizza place or something and wanted the input of a non-competing experienced business owner in the area so he agreed to meet with them and I was there so I sat in just to see if I could learn anything from the exchange. Like we're in some cheesy movie, these guys make small talk before one sets a briefcase on the table and opens it to reveal gobs of what appeared to be 10s and 20s and proceeded to tell him they actually wanted to buy a percentage of the club cash and he shut them right down and asked them to leave. After they left he told me he was approached multiple times in the first couple years of business with such offers. People wanting to dump a bunch of cash in his lap that, presumably, he would then trickle into the coffers via fictional sales as a way for them to launder some money via their cash infusion and potentially get far more back if the club remained successful. At the time I legitimately thought they were friends of his and he was pranking me or something, it was so absurd. I came to realize though that those selling drugs definitely love clubs as we'd have kids in their early 20s coming in 1-2 times a week and buying bottle service at 300$+ a bottle to impress friends/girls week after week with no realistic way of having that much disposable income.
This guy was super shady in general, and his shadiness is why we ultimately parted ways, but even that was too much for him.
It would not surprise me in the least if there was a market for this for bars and clubs that had "creative" income streams on the side. He would regularly have the bartenders pour house shots (An "IV" of OJ/shot of soda water/cheapest well vodka) for free for a group of people to get them to stay (often it was bridal parties) to make the club appear busy and doing stuff like that would certainly be a way to legitimately burn through some cheap liquor that you could ring up as premium-priced cocktails. I could see restaraunts that do free refills on drinks also being able to do this by ringing up some extra drink/burger/fries sales and fudging the numbers several percent, if not ten percent, to similarly sneak illicit money in.
I resigned from a software development job after being asked to write this dual receipt system for an AdTech company. Works for a lot more than tax avoidance in an industry where standard terms are revenue share agreements.
>where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'.
Isn't this super easy to discover if you use any sort of electronic payment? Salons and restaurants might be cash based, but who pays their mechanic in cash?
A lot of non-regular-maintenance jobs are easy & quick to do but break the law - for example, deleting the catalytic converter or EGR from the exhaust system will give your engine better performance and economy, but is illegal since it increases emissions.
Lots of places will do it anyway on a cash job if they think they can get away with it, because it's relatively easy money. A shop replaced my failed catalytic converter ($1200+ replacement) with a straight pipe ($20 pipe and $200 of time) many years ago because they (correctly) assessed me to be a broke-ass student who wouldn't tell on them.
> A shop replaced my failed catalytic converter ($1200+
> replacement) with a straight pipe ($20 pipe and $200 of
> time) many years ago because they (correctly) assessed me
> to be a broke-ass student who wouldn't tell on them.
The mechanic may have even made even more money by scrapping your catalytic converter.
In the UK, swapping the exhaust out for a straight pipe is a common (illegal) modification for greater performance and sound. To get the car through the MOT, you either need to find somebody willing to "look the other way" or re-weld the original exhaust in place.
I've seen in many scenarios "boy racers" dipping the clutch and coasting the car by the police. If your car is making a sound resembling a Spitfire you're sure to get pulled over, where they'll use a road side test kit and confiscate your car.
Some other popular cheap modifications include completely removing the air-filter (dangerous), stretching tires to create low-profile wheels (extremely dangerous if they let go [0]), putting the car on a diet (ripping out all interior, seats, etc), running contaminated fuel (either diesel/petrol mixes [1] or running farmer's diesel) - the list goes on.
There are also some processes for purposely causing the car to backfire regularly (especially on a down change, with quite large flames) and getting more "bang" from the fuel. At one point we were also experimenting with the idea of using the starter motor strategically to aid engine acceleration - but nothing ever came of it.
[0] We had a car crash on the motorway into the central barrier, which then caused all of the tires to instantly disintegrate - all at ~90 mph (~145 kph).
[1] We once had a vehicle literally explode when unburned fuel collected in the catalytic converter/exhaust and suddenly decide it wanted to be on fire. This in itself wouldn't have been an issue if a) somebody noticed and b) it didn't then ignite the fuel lines.
>The mechanic may have even made even more money by scrapping your catalytic converter.
Oh, certainly. Not to mention that removing it would have been a larger & more difficult job, which I'd have to pay for... OR they can get less money but it's (very) easy money.
>completely removing the air-filter (dangerous)
Good god... Who the hell does that? What ricer would willingly risk killing their motor from eating some leaves (or a piece of gravel!) for a minuscule performance increase? The risk:reward scale there is just bananas.
I should probably add, at one time I had a throw-away car, it cost <£100, it's scrap value was £100+ and at the time the MOT and tax was registered to the car itself and it had a few months left of road-legal use.
Before scrapping it I decided to drive it around as a "risk free" car. The exhaust fell off (so not even a straight pipe), the battery was dead (had to push start it everywhere), the clutch was teetering on death, brakes were merely a suggestion to your speed (it had drums), the radiator leaked, the oil was probably as old as the car, tires were barely legal and it had no working headlight bulbs.
We ripped out all of seats, removed the air filter, filled the tank with contaminated petrol (had diesel in it - added a small amount of nitro-car fuel to balance it out) and drove it very hard.
I ended up using it for quick 20 minute journeys (that's about how long it took for all the coolant to leak out). We would leave it unlocked with the keys in the ignition - I think it was more hassle to whoever tried to steal it. The car survived long enough to drive itself onto the back of a flat-bed lorry to be taken to the scrap dealers once the MOT and tax ran out.
This is not uncommon either, many people get "traders plates" just so that they can drive barely legal cars around before getting rid of them.
> Good god... Who the hell does that? What ricer would
> willingly risk killing their motor from eating some leaves
> (or a piece of gravel!) for a minuscule performance
> increase? The risk:reward scale there is just bananas.
A lot of people do it. In the UK you've also got tonnes of rain regularly too, meaning all sorts of crap is sprayed into the engine bay area, both dry and wet.
The performance gain is surprisingly high given how simple the action is, the throttle becomes more responsive and you can audibly hear the engine taking gulps of air. Of course that comes with the associated risk. If you're a student with a £300 car and you want to pretend it's a race car, little tricks like this cost nothing for a little speed boost.
Also, Sheetz is a regional gas station (once) popular with street and track racers. I guess it still is, but their food quality has gone through the floor.
>Good god... Who the hell does that? What ricer would willingly risk killing their motor from eating some leaves (or a piece of gravel!) for a minuscule performance increase? The risk:reward scale there is just bananas.
Statistically nobody but every mechanic remembers the story of "that one idiot".
> At one point we were also experimenting with the idea of using the starter motor strategically to aid engine acceleration - but nothing ever came of it.
Frustratingly, removing your catalytic converter has a very tiny effect on performance, and an enormous effect on emissions. Kids into car culture tend to hold very superstitious ideas about cars and performance. (eg, the manufacturer intentionally hobbled your car with a restrictive cat-back exhaust, and replacing it with something loud and terrible will "unlock" a significant amount of hidden horsepower.)
The reason for the superstition is that it is true ...in the 70s when the latest in emission technologies was clogging the exhaust with platinum balls. Now-a-days converters are built intelligently & removing it just reduces performance by fucking up the O2 sensor readings unless you also dump a grand on a new ECU
In my experience when doing illegal modifications the transaction is not only in cash but also 100% off the books; there's no need for POS receipt shenanigans.
But how exactly are you going to discover it? If transaction is deleted from the local log, you need to subpoena all payment processors and cross-reference, which takes non-trivial amount of effort.
I new a guy who was developing hacked firmware for POSes in the 90ies. One of the cool features he had is that at the end of the day the owner could unlock secret mode, enter amount of sales he wanted, and POS would create entire fake log spaced through the day and print it on tape, update electronic counters and then lock, and again behave like normal terminal ready for inspection.
I read that as the OP saying they had specific experience/knowledge of it happing there, rather than intending to imply it happens there more than anywhere else.
Man, screwing with ARIN seems like a really dumb idea. They're located in northern VA and their leadership team has direct contacts at places like the US district attorney's office, and FBI. Some of the internet grey beards who know the ARIN leadership are well connected in the parts of the US government responsible for "cybersecurity".
People at ARIN also have 20+ years of experience identifying shell games.
May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ? Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can. A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley.
Is having shell companies a crime ? I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize the brand damage. Ask.com and other toolbar companies are great examples where they will just rebrand the same toolbar as X and sell it to 10 companies which were owned by same entity. Half the companies with "explosive" growth were using mass mailing techniques than involved spamming. Many used foreign companies to skirt US law related to spamming.
Am I the only one getting depressed with all the excuses and rationalizations in this thread? It's the same with "adtech" and the like... "Hey, I'm not killing anyone, what's the harm?"
Technology has the potential to raise humanity above its current conditions and limitations. But we can't have it, because we are selfish and short-sighted monkeys. Take a big dump on all the ideals if this delivers the paycheck. "Business" justifies everything. Fuck humans.
A global instantaneous network of information exchange? Let's turn it into a dystopic market of bullshit covered in distasteful advertising, Idiocracy-style. AI breakthroughs? Will help make the Skinner box much more effective! A search engine capable of finding any public piece of information in human record? Replace the entire thing with ads in disguise! Still, autocratic regimes want to censor some of the ads? Can do, they are a huge market!
Space programs? Canceled. We now have a Rube-Goldberg machine made of human suffering that can deliver whatever trinket you want the next day to your door, nicely package in a cardboard box with a corporate grin printed on it. But don't worry, some guy who sells cars is taking us to Mars or something.
I find especially baffling the rationalization over the type of crime. You don't need to physically harm someone to be committing a crime, and there's a lot of different crimes that happen in paper and/or bytes that don't (directly) physically harm people.
That doesn't make them right or okay by any means.
The issue is when people try to stack-rank the "badness" of crimes. "Is bankrupting a thousand people through fraud worse than killing someone?" The answer is: it doesn't matter which is worse. Both destroy lives in different ways.
Fraud and spam are crimes that ruin lives in their own ways.
> The answer is: it doesn't matter which is worse. Both destroy lives in different ways.
Though it is very natural for people to think "how bad I am" or "how bad is that company compared to the other companies" and so on. Also in the end the justice system has to sentence these crimes and there has to be some kind of "badness" metric that should be seen as fair by the general public. I don't think this "they are all just crimes" approach works.
Sure, I understand why people want to. I just think it's a futile effort. In order to determine whether bankrupting 1000 people is worse than killing 1 person you have to quantify all those variables, including the value of a human life (an actuary will gladly do that for you). By some measures, say economic impact, killing a single person may not matter at all, depending on who they are. What people want is to quantify morality. Good luck.
However what we do see that correlates to some "badness" metric is the punishment we mete out for crimes. Years of imprisonment is a simple, linear measure that can be used to measure crimes against one another.
You see it all the time. So and so killed a person and got X years in prison, but this other guy ran a Ponzi scheme and got Y years in prison. Whether X is greater than Y, and your viewpoint, will determine if you think that's fair or not. But my original point is I think it's a rather pointless determination to begin with because it isn't really telling you anything. It doesn't answer the question of whether one crime is worse than another because that's fundamentally a philosophical question that I don't think can be measured.
Similarly, people often conflate something morally good with something morally bad and ask/argue ”If I mix the two is it overall good or bad?". Which similarly doesn’t matter.
The good should never be conflated with the bad. Otherwise, the good will just be used for rationalizing the bad...
(That’s not to say morality is not somewhat ambiguous. I just often see people trying to justify immoral behavior by doing this)
> Fraud and spam are crimes that ruin lives in their own ways.
I never denied that. I wanted to know what exactly is the fraud that the company is causing. Also, spamming is all about matter or perspective. All major consumer companies send billions of emails. I would love to know what this company was doing differently .
Agreed. If you account for second-order effects, the result could look pretty grim. That's why I'm of the opinion that some white-collar crimes can absolutely be worse than violent ones - including murder - and that they should be punished accordingly.
Excellent blog post. You mention several things that we are so used to, that we don't even notice the abuse, such as the polluting of culture by association of works of art with commercial brands through relentless advertising. To this day, I associate Carmina Burana with cheap male cologne.
Another one for you: in Berlin, buildings under renovation are allowed to place gigantic ads on the scaffolding. I imagine the original ideas was benign, to sort of subsidize the loss of revenue by business owners and renters, and thus encourage maintenance for the good of the city. Of course, there is nothing that marketers won't try to pervert, and this is an easy one. In the most desirable advertising locations, buildings tend to enter states of perma-renovation. This got particularly horrible during the last Word Cup, with historical buildings in my area covered with gigantic ads with tacky things written on them in gigantic letters, such as : GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! BUY THE NEW XYZ VR HEADSET
What depresses me to no end is how apathetic everyone is to this relentless erosion of culture and quality of life.
I've heard opinions that something similar is happening in my country too (Poland), and it would explain some strategically placed buildings in Kraków that can never seem to finish being renovated, and that also happen to feature ridiculously large ads on the scaffolding.
> I remember reading about cases of scientific papers that were advertisements pretending to be research work. I'll update this point when I find some actual examples.
Not exactly the same but related: soda manufacturers have been stressing the correlation between inactivity and diabetes, and in the process sliding in the message that sugar intake is not that big of a factor. That messaging goes with ads of healthy people in movement enjoying life and drinking sugar water.
Advertising companies also act as censors. If some advertiser takes issue with something, it will be deleted. Therefore, every community ends up being sanitized so as to avoid offending advertisers and their policies. I've seen site administrators purge their own community after Google turned off their ads because someone complained about one page.
To be clear, my comments were pointing out that what's described was not criminal. I didn't take a position on what's ethical or not.
That said, I think helping VPNs is a good thing ethically. If he'd been arrested for running a Tor node that was used to download child pornography (which has happened), I suspect most people here would defend him.
Helping spammers is bad, but, at least as described by OP, not illegal.
Thanks so much for calling this out, including the coarse language used, because in my opinion, it's really warranted.
We could do so many good things with technology, instead we use it more and more for bullshit to maximize profits instead of maximizing social value. It really is depressing really.
Imo, the basis of the problem is that we look at the GDP as a major health indicator of the economy, while this works against the idea that we should be consuming less, not more. From this follows adtech, and indirectly people being rewarded for doing stupid stuff.
> Let's turn it into a dystopic market of bullshit covered in distasteful advertising,
I mean absolutely no disrespect to you and I understand your feelings are probably coming straight out your heart. However I would like to point out that when you say that the world does not meet your expectation and that somehow is a problem with the world and not your own self is very arrogant.
> But we can't have it, because we are selfish and short-sighted monkeys.
These distasteful comments about fellow humans are nothing but the same arrogant thought process that has caused havoc around the world through ideologies like communism and colonialism. It reeks of Rudyard Kipling's disgusting poem "White man's burden". Without knowing you are claiming that you have the power to know what is good for world and you only need power to fix it. In this process you actually get depressed. You are describing the world as "Fuck all this."
> I would like to point out that when you say that the world does not meet your expectation and that somehow is a problem with the world and not your own self is very arrogant.
Notice that this kind of argument could have been (and probably was) used against the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, universal suffrage, gay marriage or religious freedom. If you have a minority position against the status quo, you can always be accused of arrogance. "Who are you to think you know better?". However, sometimes the arrogant are right.
> These distasteful comments about fellow humans are nothing but the same arrogant thought process that has caused havoc around the world through ideologies like communism and colonialism.
And capitalism, don't forget. The ideology of infinite growth is destroying our habitat.
> I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize the brand damage. (...) Half the companies with "explosive" growth were using mass mailing techniques than involved spamming. Many used foreign companies to skirt US law related to spamming.
Yes, I think we all know some. And it's true, skirting the law and abusing the commons gives one a competitive advantage. But that doesn't make it OK. The market isn't the arbiter of ethics. It only means that not enough is done to stop that behavior, that the border between legal and illegal is too low, or too misaligned with what's actually happening. That people still underestimate the extent to which money trumps ethics in everyday decision making.
> skirting the law and abusing the commons gives one a competitive advantage. But that doesn't make it OK. The market isn't the arbiter of ethics.
Sadly, this is a bit naive, market have become the arbiters of ethics, namely: if it successful, it's good.
This isn't a traditional moral code from, e.g., Kant, Bentham, or Locke. Rather, it's an ethics based on capitalism.
Sure, wonky economics professors justify capitalism by saying it's the most efficient or provides the most utility, arguably grounded in traditional Bentham morality.
But capitalism has never simply been an economic policy, there has always been an ideological component to it (see for example, Ayn Rand). Maximizing returns on investment isn't just "efficient", it's "right".
None of the things mentioned here are crimes, as far as I can tell. The crime they were actually charged with was using these shell companies to get more IP addresses than they were "entitled" to get. See the indictment at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.scd.250342/...
"As Micfo amassed VPN clients using the illegitimately-obtained IP addresses, a lot of traffic — some being criminal — filed through its network without a trace, according to government subpoenas directed at Micfo and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Golestan and Micfo are not charged with being part of or even aware of illegal activity transmitted via VPNs across Micfo’s servers. The DOJ charged him and the company with “defrauding the internet registry to obtain the IP addresses over a period of several years.”
Prosecutors said Golestan’s alleged scheme was valued at $14 million, which was based on the government’s estimated value of between $13 and $19 for each address in the secondary market, according to the court complaint.
> None of the things mentioned here are crimes, as far as I can tell
The fake “Channel Partners” addressed in the article are paragraph 4 of the indictment. The article addresses some of the mechanisms by which they were used to evade legal process for the purpose of concealment, the indictment deals with the fact that they were used for that purpose. It seems preposterous to view those as unrelated.
>The article addresses some of the mechanisms by which they were used to evade legal process for the purpose of concealment
No, it doesn't. It says they responded to subpoenas for each entity.
>the indictment deals with the fact that they were used for that purpose.
Nope. The indictment is about using the shell companies to get additional IP addresses out of ARIN. It has nothing to do with any deficiency in responding to subpoenas, or any illegal use of the IP addresses by spammers, etc.
The article lists a bunch of things and either implies or explicitly says they are crimes, when none are. This includes having multiple shell companies, which is perfectly legal. Submitting false documentation for those shell companies is illegal, but is not mentioned by OP, presumably because they would not have been in a position to observe any of that documentation.
> It says they responded to subpoenas for each entity.
It says that when a parent company agent was in possession of a warrant addressed to the parent company at the location of one of the fraudulent “Channel Partners” they were ordered to interact with law enforcement as if they were exclusively an agent of the “Channel Partner”.
Now, I suppose that could be argued to not be primarily intended to evade compliance with the warrant but instead to maintain the fraud of the independence of the “Channel Partners”, but either way it's a deliberate act in furtherance of a crime that could be separately prosecuted.
>the fraud of the independence of the “Channel Partners”
You still don't get it. The fraud was submitting false documentation to ARIN. Operating multiple shell companies is perfectly legal, as long as you don't submit false sworn affidavits and otherwise lie in the course of your activities.
Responding to a subpoena as the entity it was sent to isn't lying. It says there was one occasion where the subpoena had both Micfo and a channel partners' info on it, and he says he wasn't permitted to reach out to LEO to clarify.
Regardless, it's not an act "in furtherance of a crime" - the crime was committed at the point they obtained the IP addresses.
> Operating multiple shell companies is perfectly legal
Sure, what's not is:
Having the registered principals of those shell companies be fictitious (as in this case).
Having agents of your company who have received a warrant addressed to your company pretend that your company has not received it, whether the purpose is to evade the warrant or to avoid drawing attention to your fraudulent front companiest (as, again, in this case.)
> Responding to a subpoena as the entity it was sent to isn't lying.
A subpoena or warrant is a command. Receiving it and not obeying the command fully is a crime.
> It says there was one occasion where the subpoena had both Micfo and a channel partners' info on
No, it says a warrant was addressed to Micfo but received by Micfo employees at the “Channel Partner”. It does not say it has both companies info on it. Even if it did, directing employees to pretend your firm has not received a court order naming your firm when in fact your firm has received it is not legal.
> Regardless, it's not an act "in furtherance of a crime" - the crime was committed at the point they obtained the IP addresses.
If the intent was to preserve the illusion of the distinct identity of the channel partners tonorent discovery of the fraud, it absolutely was an act in furtherance of the crime, and a knowing participant (that is, knowing of the purpose, not just the act itself) in it would, even if they had no other connection to the concealed crime, be an accessory after the fact.
>Having agents of your company who have received a warrant addressed to your company pretend that your company has not received it, whether the purpose is to evade the warrant or to avoid drawing attention to your fraudulent front companiest (as, again, in this case.)
It never says they pretended not to receive it, or that they didn't obey the "command" fully. If they had not obeyed any subpoenas, I assume they would have been charged with doing so.
> It does not say it has both companies info on it. Even if it did, directing employees to pretend your firm has not received a court order naming your firm when in fact your firm has received it is not legal.
It says it was sent to the Channel Partner - it's not clear how but I assume it came through an email to the Channel Partner.
"Even if it did, directing employees to pretend your firm has not received a court order naming your firm when in fact your firm has received it is not legal."
I don't understand your theory where responding to a subpoena and signing it as one entity is "pretending" you haven't received a court order.
We'll have to agree to disagree on whether the set of facts in OP represents a crime. But even if so, it remains the case that everything described in OP, if it happened at a company that hadn't committed fraud but was using shell companies legitimately, would have been perfectly legal.
Every time I sign up for any kind of banking service (loan,credit,checking,etc), there's a note about by signing the document I am acknowledging that providing false information would be a bad idea. How is it not fraudulent to deceive potential investors by using false user data/stats? I've never read any investor agreements, but I'd assume there's some sort of similar statement/clause.
Thing is... you don’t “get” an IP address. Having ARIN reserve you a netblock in their database doesn’t get you anything that you didn’t have prior to them doing that.
It does get you something, though: the service of ARIN telling everyone that you "own" those addresses. Lying to someone so that they will perform a service for you is fraud even if you're not receiving any property. If you're running your own closed-off private network you can use whatever addresses you want, and I would agree with you that IPv4 addresses, as such, are not property. However, if you're connecting to the public Internet then your peers are going to care about whether the address ranges you claim were officially assigned to you by ARIN.
It appears the law in this case feels differently.
The owners claimed under legal penalty that they had certain assets (paying customers, needs for IP addressing, etc). These statements appear to have been completely false. Thus, the trial.
And yes, lying to ARIN (or any RIR) about your customer base (need for IPv4 addressing) is just plain crappy. IPv4 addressing is a common resource - a 32-bit fixed address space - similar in concept to physical frequency allocation by the FCC.
There are 4.2B IPv4 addresses (minus some for RFC1918 and MCAST, etc). To lay illegitimate claim to them is really wrong, and more importantly, legally risky now.
> No, they were not charged for any of the things claimed to be crimes in the article.
Both a fraudulent system of shell companies and knowingly profiting by enabling spam are alleged on the article, and both have been the subject of criminal charges against the firm and it's CEO. [0]
The only criminal case I can find is the one from last May. Googling "fbi wire fraud amir golestan" doesn't turn up anything relating to wire fraud against banks, and searching courtlistener for his name only turns up civil cases and the same May case. Do you have any links? Or is this based on personal knowledge that isn't public yet?
You sound extremely defensive with regard to this article — to the point that I am speculating whether or not you have vested interest in shooting down legitimate commentary.
You have responded to multiple comments with baseless FUD-like claims.
I have no relationship to any of the entities involved. I'm just pointing out how clueless OP is.
And I was somewhat taken aback at how much pushback I got based on people completely misreading the article. It's one thing to disagree with me over what exactly is legal, it's another to start asserting that the company itself was running spamming services in the absence of any evidence. That surprised me. The government hasn't asserted it, the OP doesn't assert it, I can't find that claim anywhere but this thread.
This entity was a known spam shop. It took a while but someone finally put together a model showing the (what were thought to be) hidden relationships.
I'll defend whoever I like when someone makes incorrect claims.
Although here I'm mainly trying to clarify the law. People taking OP at face value will come away with a very incorrect impression of what's legal and not.
Also, OP didn't "put together a model" exposing hidden relationships. Every company they named was already in the indictment from last May.
No, I'm not. OP is substantively wrong on their claims, not just semantically. The difference between illegal and legal is not semantic.
You're the one defending someone who's wrong.
Also, I'm not defending the fraud, but the (legality) of the parts of this that aren't fraudulent. I understand that you believe it's ok to smear anyone as long as they've done something else you dislike. I disagree.
Ok chief. I'll wait to see the outcome of the legal case. That has 10000x more weight than a random internet commenter that appears to be continually injecting FUD.
Also, just incase you missed my prior comment: Don't defend fraud artists.
Which law is being broken? Also (in my personal opinion) criminality should be obvious to a general person, some kind of complex technical illegality may not make the whole company a "criminal organization". A lot of reputed companies like Google get fined on regular basis world over does not make them criminal organizations.
A lot of companies would also willingly break the law depending on the risk tolerance they have, many of those laws result into civil penalties and not jail time for CEO so that also matters.
I was genuinely hoping OP worked from some underground enterprise that provided hitmans to rich people or something. La John Wick style. But thats just the romantic in me.
Misrepresentation when money or other tangible things are at stake is fraud. There are civil frauds and criminal frauds.
Say you needed to have a room added to your home. You approach a contractor, who talks about his past experience, and offers up several customer and trade references to corroborate this experience. You sign a contract, pay the 50% deposit, and the person disappears and doesn’t respond to your inquiries, nor those of the police.
You later find out that the customers were family members of the contractor, the trade reference was a Delaware corporation owned by the same Nevada corporation that cashed your check. In other words, the entire enterprise was a criminal enterprise constructed to defraud customers, not deliver.
That contrived example is an obvious series of frauds that is obviously a criminal enterprise. It’s easy to understand because the money was stolen. A case like this is a little different because the fraud was basically a scheme to get a constrained resource by lying about material facts to commit the fraud. IANAL, but my guess is the deliberate construction of these legal entities with no meaningful purpose elevated the matter.
That's related to Frankfurt's definition of bullshit[0]. If you purposefully say something that's not true, you're lying, but if you don't care at all whether what you say is true or not, you're bullshitting.
Complexity seems indeed very good at enabling bullshit - bullshitters caught spreading lies can just plead ignorance and point towards complexity.
> May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ?
From the description in the article, obstruction of justice, at a minimum, possibly also with the intent of furthering other crimes and civil wrongs by the firm or it's customers.
> Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can.
Many companies will do anything within the law to do this, which is, of course, not a crime. But “whatever way they can” is a crime.
> A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley.
Yes, obstruction of justice is a different crime than murder or kidnapping. It's just as real of a crime.
> Is having shell companies a crime ?
No, but using them fraudulently can be a crime and/or a civil wrong, and which has been involved in both civil liability already established against the firm and CEO in question and which is seems to be a key part of the mechanism of the fraud involved in the 20-count federal criminal indictment against them. [0]
I read a few other posts on the authors blog and I think overthinking is a common issue for them.
The strangest one was they flew in for an interview the night before, got settled in at 11pm and decided not to sleep because they had to check out at 9am.
Doesn't say why that's illegal. At best it says they had customers that broke the law.
>Often both the CEO and Vice President would talk openly about how one of our clients was violating the TOS of several companies.
Not criminal even for the client, at least assuming the HiQ v Linkedin case is upheld. And not illegal for the company. Maybe civil liability under tortious interference? Pretty high bar there, though. And that's all assuming there's an actual ToS - the one example given is of Google search results. Manipulating your own website in the hopes Google treats it favorably can't be seen as violating any agreed ToS.
The stuff Micfo was accused of in court, and the stuff OP is claiming are criminal acts, are disjoint.
>At best it says they had customers that broke the law.
Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.
Flipside: This criminal enterprise spotted those same exact attributes, but the mitigating factor was technical competence and submissiveness. And if it came to be where they thought it would never end up (the situation today), someone would discredit them as crazy, given their background.
"Within a week I was convinced Micfo encompassed more than just Micfo, but a handful of shell companies:
This was later proved to be true when the CEO(Amir), admitted in the ARIN(American Registry for Internet Numbers) trial, he was really behind these entities."
As far as I can tell, those shell companies were to get additional IP addresses out of ARIN. It's not been alleged that they were customers of Micfo running spamming etc services, by anyone except you.
>But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.
Now you're misreading both OP and the response to my comment. ghostbrainalpha claimed that the OP says the CEO was the same as the customers that were allegedly committing crimes like spamming. The OP does not say this.
>That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.
OP never mentions this as one of the crimes he's listing. He lists:
1. Mishandling of warrants
2. Child endangerment
3. Enabling spamming
4. Enabling ToS violations
None of the things OP says are crimes are actually illegal, and none of them were at issue during the trial. That's what I pointed out.
I'm sorry, you've completely lost me. The core allegation in the Micfo case is that the company fraudulently obtained 800k IP addresses from ARIN using fake companies. The author of this post corroborates handling large quantities of the the PTR record changes for these companies in exactly the manner described at trial. I mean, this is quite clearly related behavior.
And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?
(Also: I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.)
>The core allegation in the Micfo case is that the company fraudulently obtained 800k IP addresses from ARIN using fake companies. The author of this post corroborates handling large quantities of the the PTR record changes for these companies in exactly the manner described at trial.
What? He says it was done for customers. Not for shell companies.
>And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?
My main point is that nothing alleged in OP is actually illegal. OP implying otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Unethical, perhaps, although I'd defend at least some of the stuff described. The fact that it mentions the trial and mentions the (legal) practice of having multiple shell companies doesn't change anything. They weren't charged with having shell companies, but with using those companies to commit fraud. OP mentions none of that fraud.
>I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.
I'm saying the actions alleged in OP are not illegal, including the actions described in the child endangerment section.
> What? He says it was done for customers. Not for shell companies.
The "customers" that just happen to be the very same shell companies described at trial, engaged in the very same shenannigans with "their" IP addresses? Those customers?
I mean, come on. I think at this point you're just retreating into pedantry, arguing that the linked article doesn't meet appropriate evidentiary standards when presented in a blog post and therefore we need to assume that Micfo is innocent in the sense of this one article not meeting a sufficient burden of proof. So... OK.
But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.
>The "customers" that just happen to be the very same shell companies described at trial, engaged in the very same shenannigans with "their" IP addresses? Those customers?
Where are you getting this from? I admittedly have not watched the trial or read through trial transcripts. Are you asserting that the trial produced evidence that the shell companies mentioned were involved in spamming (as opposed to renting out the IP addresses to customers who ultimately used them for spamming?) I haven't seen this allegation in any of the articles I've read about the case. The blog post doesn't identify any customers.
>But anyone with a brain can see that this is a personal story about exactly what was going on, and thus that it's clearly describing related activities. Some of which, again, were clearly illegal.
No need for personal attacks. It's far from clear that anything described in the blog post is illegal. I already went point by point in my initial comment on this. You're making allegations the blog post never made that Micfo was itself involved in spamming. I doubt this, being as it wasn't charged and nobody but commenters in this thread have alleged it.
OP appears to be saying that the "channel partners" were the shell companies. Hence why Micfo was responding as the channel partners and why subpoenas went to them.
He also says:
>Our largest customer would submit PTR deletions, additions, and changes to our channel partners, I would log into the channel partner portal, and recieve them then act on them.
It's clear he's not saying that this customer was a channel partner/shell company. I don't know how you could possibly read the post and come off with that impression.
In many, if not most companies, taking legal matters into your own hands without involving your company’s legal team will surely get you reprimanded if not fired.
Just like how you would get fired if you sent out a legal demand letter to another company without legal being in the loop. Law enforcement is no different: they are not your friend.
You employer isn't your friend, but there are aligned incentives when it comes to the business continuity and your continued employment as affected by general business health (even if not necessarily aligned when it comes to your benefits and salary).
Law enforcement doesn't even have that aligned incentive. You might say you are aligned in that you want the law to be followed, but their incentive is more along the lines of making sure they bring in and prosecute cases. If the only way to make the case work is to throw the company that reported it (and by extension, its employees) into the grinder because that's all they think they can successfully do, then that's likely what they'll do.
The only substantial difference between this company and, say, Facebook, is that Facebook generally knows how to budget properly. Facebook and other large successful companies try to only commit crimes when they know the profit from doing so exceeds the risk of being caught and punished.
> Facebook and other large successful companies try to only commit crimes when they know the profit from doing so exceeds the risk of being caught and punished.
While this statement is often true (big companies make these cost-benefit decisions), I don't think it really captures what is happening to Facebook. Doing a cost-benefit analysis like this requires having data on potential costs and benefits. In most cases, Facebook didn't have this data.
When an individual, company, or institution is faced with a decision, but lacks data to properly evaluate it, they fallback on other decision making tools, including instinct and principles.
Facebook almost certainly didn't know the consequences of the many decisions they made, they didn't know the potential costs or benefits. But they did have some underlying principles, namely: maximizing platform engagement, convincing people to share more personal data on their platform, and exploiting user data for better advertising.
With these foundational principles, you can end up making some really bad decisions even without a proper cost-benefit analysis.
Facebook and other large successful companies try to only commit crimes when they know the profit from doing so exceeds the risk of being caught and punished.
Indeed; when I clicked the story I expected it to be about working for a FAANG.
A few years back i used to work for a porn company and they are not.
There is an old protocol still creeping around smartphones known as WAP Payment (yes that WAP) which was/is used to buy stuff on the mobile web and the purchase shows up on your phone bill.
They buy all type of mobile ads (banner, text, popup, modal, etc.) and when you open the ad you get billed 4€, 5€, 6€ per week or month, without any confirmation whatsoever. Some phone carriers ask for user input (mostly the user has to click a button "I agree") but that's where click-jacking, CSRF and other kind of exploit comes in, very few ask for a confirmation code.
The sad thing is that they know, the carriers know but they don't care, until enough people complain about it then they shutdown the service to that website for a few days (in some cases they shut it down permanently) but they always come back online.
Sometimes I find myself thinking that working in porn could actually be pretty interesting - what with massive caching needs, video encoding etc etc... Unfortunately the few job ads I’ve seen were for super-boring stacks like PHP or Perl, which I’d rather avoid.
Definitely, I'm convinced that a lot of people that made youtube and other video hosting sites work in the early days actually came from the online porn industry.
