Meet The Company That Poached The FBI's Entire Silk Road Investigation Team (dailydot.com) 133
Patrick O'Neill quotes a report from The Daily Dot: The FBI team that brought down Silk Road has a new home. After headline-grabbing investigations, arrests, and prosecutions on some of America's highest-profile cybercriminals, five of U.S. law enforcement's most prized cybercrime aces have all left government service for greener pastures -- a titan consulting firm called Berkeley Research Group (BRG). BRG's newly hired gang of five includes former federal prosecutor Thomas Brown, as well as former FBI agents Christopher Tarbell, Thomas Kiernan, and Ilhwan Yum -- names that punctuated many of the biggest cybercrime stories of the last decade including Silk Road, LulzSec, Liberty Reserve, as well as the hacks of Citibank, PNC Bank, and the Rove Digital botnet; and the prosecution of Samarth Agrawal for stealing crucial code for high-frequency trading from the multinational, multibillion dollar bank Societe Generale. "Private industry provides a lot of opportunity," NYPD intelligence chief Thomas Galati told Congress earlier this year. "So I think the best people out there are working for private companies, and not for the government."
I for one am shocked. (Score:2)
Not.
"So I think the best people out there are working for private companies, and not for the government."
Re: I for one am shocked. (Score:1)
Some of the best people in todays economy can't even find jobs at all. Few companies want to pay well or even have much demand for people who know what they're doing. This is why today's blight is people going to college and not finding jobs. If quality experienced talent has trouble finding jobs, what hope does a green behind the ears college grad have?
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"So I think the best people out there are working for private companies, and not for the government."
I wonder what percentage of the best-of-the-best are working for organized (or freelance) crime.
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whom do you thing hires "titan consulting" companies
Re:I for one am shocked. (Score:5, Insightful)
So before they jumped to private industry, these guys were not the best?
If you take a minute to think about, you'd see this is bullshit, like all such glib statements./p?
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It depends. Smart, capable people will continue to work for the government in exchange for stable employment and fringe benefits (shorter work hours, more vacation time, cheap health / life insurance, good pension). The best of the bunch obviously will go private sector because getting more than double the salary means you can spend half the year unemployed and have the same quality of life as the government folk.
Duh (Score:2)
"Private industry provides a lot of opportunity," NYPD intelligence chief Thomas Galati told Congress earlier this year. "So I think the best people out there are working for private companies, and not for the government."
Remove the competition. (Score:2)
A great strategy. If you can't do it better than your competitor, get rid of the competitor.
I have to wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
.
So much of what I hear about government ineptitude is due to the underfunding of those people by the very people who consistently vote to cut the budgets. If I didn't know better, I would say that thier voting patterns are in a positive feedback loop that does not result in a good solution.
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Not for managers or highly specialized workers such as these. Not by a mile.
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The U.S. government does not need more money. It has plenty. It takes a huge, huge amount of the entire U.S. economy to pay for itself. The last thing it needs is more money.
Increasing the amount of money the government has will never stop government employees from being hired away by private industry. What WILL stop it is strong anti-corruption laws. This revolving door is well-known and well-appreciated by the DC elite. Obama - the man who has repeatedly pledged to crack down on Wall Street wrongd
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The U.S. government does not need more money.
You aren't concerned about the debt, I suppose?
I wouldn't worry about it. There's a lot more debt than there is money. If they were to take every single dollar in in tax and pay it to the debt there would be literally no money and still a shitload of debt. The whole thing is a scam to keep itself going. Just go with it.
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" It takes a huge, huge amount of the entire U.S. economy to pay for itself."
Would this be the 2/3 of the budget that goes for entitlements? That 2/3s? You do recall the entitlements, yes? SS so Grandma doesn't move in with you, Medicare so she's not siphoning your bank account to pay for her prescriptions. With respect to the other 1/3, about 1/2 of that is military. Their job is not to cede the sea lanes to those nice Chinese. Keeping Iran from causing even more havoc in the mideast, keeping Israel from b
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Underfunding? Hey, maybe the individuals who work the public sector are getting paid less, but the institutions themselves spend several times more than private sector businesses to run. It is not tax payers fault that the government chooses to underpay its more valuable staff, and then pay $600 for a hammer, or $2000 for 5 year old PCs with 10 year extended warranties (that somehow do not cover any broken parts that are no longer manufactured [which is all of them]).
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Well I worked for public high school in North America, and that second example is accurate and was what the entire school district paid for every one of its tens of thousands of antiquated computers. Right now the US Army might not be using hammer purchases to funnel billions of tax payers dollars into private bank accounts, but I am sure you aware of projects going on right now that are doing just that.
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Yeah, GSA schedules are pretty cheap. They're utterly ruthless during purchasing negotiation since the government is such a huge customer. And the GSA often insist on those "most favored customer" pricing terms that they find so utterly unreasonable when someone else (like Apple) tries to negotiate the same.
But as you allude to, a huge part of the waste is in handouts to government contractors, not in the GSA schedules. I briefly worked for Lockheed Martin right out of college. And one of my projects in
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Nope, the problem is because you cannot FIRE any govt employee that has made it much past the evaluation period, it is basically a job for life.
And God help you, if you are female or a minority, you are even more golden...'cause if you even hint you want to try the multi-year effort to oust them, they will hit you with some sort of racial/sexist lawsuit which will cost them much more money than just simply keepin
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And God help you, if you are female or a minority, you are even more golden.
I call BS. Women in government are close to 50%. It would be hard to prove gender discrimination in those cases.
Does this include ... (Score:2)
Does this include the investigator who tried to steal rather a lot of bitcoin?
Ah, a bit of googling and it appears he was sentenced to several years in prison, so, I guess the "entire team" wasn't hired.
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Well maybe it would be more correct to say "the entire team went into private enterprise" ?
Opportunity? (Score:5, Informative)
Is "opportunity" a new euphemism for money?
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No, it's the same old euphemism for money that it's always been.
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Good and Bad (Score:2)
Bad: FedGov will just hire these goons by lucrative contract (with the understanding they themselves will be rewarded with an early retirement golden parachute) to assist the DOJ to yet again subvert the Rule of Law with more Parallel Construction tyranny.
They won't have as much success... (Score:1)
without the blanket of state authority to pull unethical BS. I have heard first hand accounts of SR users being intimidated into giving up SR logins. Which in itself wouldn't be suspect BUT; none of them were charged with anything, no paperwork was ever served and no warrants were ever seen except at arms length like some sort of conman flashing a fake badge. One report I heard had the person flatly refuse the first request, where apon his house was swarmed by "sheriffs", "cops", and "feds" picking over his
Re:Jacob's Ladder (Score:4, Interesting)
You've obviously never worked in any government office or with police. Rather than spew misinfotainment myths, try a ride along with a peace officer on a Friday night. It'll open your eyes.
Re: Jacob's Ladder (Score:4, Funny)
Most cops are scum. Ive lived in plenty of cities where I wasnt sure if I was in the US or the USSR
Which language were they speaking?
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That looks an awful lot like a dangerous generalization.
I don't live in the US and I've never met a US police officer. Also, I do not support or defend police brutality in any way, it is crime and should be treated as such, however looking at the numbers of police officers in the US (around 1.1 million personal allowed to conduct arrests) you'd think that if they were ALL "scum" as you put it that you'd have a significantly higher rate of incidences of police brutality and deaths in police custody.
According
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Check your math. Your 2013 example implies that every man, woman, and child in the country had been subjected to a violent crime more than once a day.
Re: Jacob's Ladder (Score:5, Insightful)
Most police officers who die in the line of duty either have a car accident or a heart attack - only about 1/3 are actually victims of homicide.
Beyond that, yes, police don't actually kill that many people. But what we've found is that when they do, the others tend to cover up their bad behavior. A staggering number have killed multiple times. Given that half of all LEOs in the US don't ever draw their sidearm during their entire career, you get the picture that some guys just don't need to be police officers.
I didn't understand it until I went to a mixed-race church with a black preacher years ago. One Sunday he gently explained it to us white folks in the audience. This is a guy with no criminal history, college educated, etc. He started out by explaining that every single time he had been pulled over he had a gun pointed at him, sometimes touched to his bald head.
We have a pretty big problem with that stuff in this country, and the Tamir rices are just the tip of the iceberg.
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...Beyond that, yes, police don't actually kill that many people. But what we've found is that when they do, the others tend to cover up their bad behavior. A staggering number have killed multiple times. Given that half of all LEOs in the US don't ever draw their sidearm during their entire career, you get the picture that some guys just don't need to be police officers.
The media in the US does seem to be pointing out a problem with some police officers. I imagine that the police force is likely to contain similar levels of unstable individuals as the public at large does. In other words, some bad/brutal/improper behaviour is inevitable and needs to be dealt with appropriately when it occurs.
Sweeping brutality under the carpet or trying to cover it up is indeed wrong (possibly criminal in itself) and should be robustly discouraged. However the culture of secrecy is by in l
Re: Jacob's Ladder (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me explain this really simply. Every single cop who pulled over the preacher that I talked about is a violent felon. Yes, it's that simple.
It's not legal to point a gun at someone unless you have a reasonable belief that they are going to immediately cause great harm to you or someone else. Period.
It's frightening how easily you ignore that.
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"Sweeping brutality under the carpet or trying to cover it up is indeed wrong (possibly criminal in itself) and should be robustly discouraged. However the culture of secrecy is by in large a direct consequence of trying to avoid the inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows"
If some police cover up brutality, including when they kill someone without legal cause, the right word for their behavior is criminal and you can't justify their behavior by saying they did it because they feared
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"Indeed, that is exactly what I said. Police brutality is wrong and criminal and should be treated as such. I was very clear about that."
Yes, I wanted to emphasize that it was more than "possibly criminal"
"I ALSO think however that it is incorrect to judge ALL police on the actions of a few criminal individuals."
Yes, of course I agree. The proportion of blame that can be attributed to the police force is most concentrated on a small part of the force.
"However the culture of secrecy is by in large a direct c
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I disagree, I think that "inevitable, derogatory, riot-inciting media frenzy that follows" is "a large direct consequence" of both the few cops that partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the few people who claim all cops partake in criminal behavior and coverups, and the latter group tends to make less sweeping claims when the former group tends to be smaller or partakes in less criminal behaviors
I totally agree with your above comment regarding the "large direct consequence", I will also say that plenty of evidence exists to suggest that some police deserve to be in prison as they are criminals. I also think we have similar feelings when confronted with evidence of crime being committed by the police. I would add to this though; All the negative press about the police whether accurate or exaggerated, real or imagined amplifies and encourages negative feelings in the public mind. While I think it is
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"While I think it is right that we the public should get to hear about this sort of news, I think that the media tries to turn everything they report into as big a story as they can in order to make money out of us rather than to report cold hard (often boring) facts"
I agree.
"The negative image does not benefit the public, or the police"
Yes, but at the same I think there is a link between media coverage intensity and a willingness to remedy the problems.
"I think it's fair to say that in order to remedy the
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Considering that "police officer" ranks in the top ten jobs for the most psychopaths, I don't trust your assessment.
Citation: http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
http://time.com/32647/which-pr... [time.com]
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367.9 crimes / 100,000 people * 315,100,000 people = 1,159,000 crimes. Not 116 billion!
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More people die in traffic accidents over the Easter weekend DRIVING to the coast in South Africa between Johannesburg and Durban than are killed by the cops in the US in a year
Really? 419 people dead from traffic accidents on a single highway on a single weekend? I'm not saying it's wrong, but a lot of your other statistics certainly stretch credibility.
Incidentally, around 143 US police are killed each year in the line of duty.
Most of which are car accidents.
Considering 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive
About 2/3 of which were suicides.
I think it's a safe assumption that being a cop in the US is a dangerous job
That's only valid if you don't compare it with other jobs. I think the most dangerous right now is logger. It used to be convenience store clerk. Police don't even make the top 50.
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You realize that "skater" is a self-organized counter-culture which has anti-authoritarianism as one of it's core tenants right? Complaining about getting hastled by the cops while wearing the uniform of someone who is uneducated on their civil liberties while 60% of the time is guilty of possession of contraband(underage tobacco/marijuana) is totally the First Ammendment Hill you want to die on apparently...
If skateboarders weren't all pot smoking punks from bad homes and single mothers maybe cops wouldn't
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I moved to another state that allowed privately owned offices to handle routine things like license plates (DL testing still were state run). I was in and out in 5 min
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In California most of the DMV functions are available online. I haven't been inside the DMV office for more than 5 years. Unfortunately, lack of exposure to the DMV bureaucracy has caused a lot of millennials to believe that socialism is a good idea.
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I recently read an interview by Danny Elfman [boingo.org] and he had a great answer to a question:
My attitude is always to be critical of what's around you, but not ever to forget how lucky we are. I've traveled around the world. I left thinking I was a revolutionary. I came back real right-wing patriotic. Since then, I've kind of mellowed in between. It affected me permanently and totally.
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Thanks, that was a perfect commentary. I've also spent a dozen years living overseas, and been to over 50 countries. We (Americans) have plenty to be critical of inside our boarders, but much more to be thankful for. If you disagree, talk it over with an immigrant, there are many more of those than people leaving.
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New York DMV has improved significantly now that most things can be handled on line or via mail. Even getting plates for a new car is done right at the dealership.
I suspect a lot of this was due to necessity - NYC DMV offices don't have much space and have to serve a lot more people than the the ones elsewhere in the state, but all branches benefited from the reduction in walk-ins.
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Patty and Selma?
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It depends on the job. I see more dead wood in Fortune 500 companies than I ever saw working for the Feds.
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I never witnessed that.
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They were hired away from the FBI, and are now employed building Silk Road 3.
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Disclaimer: US Govt employee who was looking at cybersecurity.
Legal, commercial enterprises can offer both more money and better training than the US Govt due to the highly structured wage-to-grade locks than the shady places. Most US Govt employees do have a good sense of morale fiber (NSA has had personnel problems due to their data retention problems, and these started before Snowden and for the same reasons). That being said, if its at least debatably legal (and definitely in the interests of the USA
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"I think these guys are smart enough to avoid helping out drug addicts and other undesirable trash."
If only you were smart enough to know that on a darknet, you have no idea who you might be helping out. Those encrypted bits could be an open-source research paper, or they may be child porn.