Mexican Cartel Provided Wi-Fi To Locals - With Threat of Death If They Didn't Us...
source link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/01/05/1256226/mexican-cartel-provided-wi-fi-to-locals---with-threat-of-death-if-they-didnt-use-it?sbsrc=md
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With Threat of Death If They Didn't Use It
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by conorjh ( 6311812 ) on Friday January 05, 2024 @09:16AM (#64134013)
you wait til youve got aunty kicking your door in at 3 in the morning, raging incoherently about bake off
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by Ormy ( 1430821 ) on Friday January 05, 2024 @09:44AM (#64134079)
I think you need to relax a little. It is possible to make a relevant joke AND be conscientious of the horror of the situation in Michoacan, they are not mutually exclusive.-
"Up north" at my parent's tree farm that I operate, the governing elites think we need fiber optic broadband to every farm house.
They already started the process with a "town hall" to solicit comments, and the next step is putting this to a vote in a local election where my voter registration is in another county by my day job.
Geez Louise. I am going to get stuck with a special property tax assessment for the build-out, even if I don't subscribe. Don't these mouth breathers know that for this low den
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So you're getting FTTH to a rural low density area, and complain about it?
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This is clearly the mouth-breathing governing elites fault for infringing on... something. But I'm sure it's important!
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She's complaining about paying for the infrastructure, not the benefit of the service. Two related but different things. Rural people are used to being subsidized by people in the cities, not paying their actual costs for infrastructure.
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We really do not know the real situation in Michoacan. What we know is that on Slashdot a news article claims that somebody says that the situation in Michoacan is not good in some sense. So, I guess, it is OK to make a joke about it.
Not all jokes are great, nor they have to be. Black humor is a nice thing to have. And... I doubt that we need some humor police here to remind us to be conscientious.
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Reasonable from an American perspective. I don't live in Mexico, so it's possible Internet service is cheaper then that. Here in the states, about the cheapest I can find is $50 a month. I'd love to pay $25 a month but I want that to be an option not a requirement.
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Once again the brit*sh can't handle the bantz
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I live in the UK, I do not have a TV license as I do not watch it neither broadcast nor over the Internet. They send me a letter once a month with blood curdling threats about what they are going to do to me all over the envelope; inside, on the second page, a mention that I do not need a license if I do not watch it. They know that I do not watch TV - I told the man who came to visit some 4 years ago. I find what they are doing threatening, if I were to do the same to someone who used to be a customer I su
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BBC NEEDS the money.
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But seriously, that sucks and shows there is still a lack of an effective police and judiciary Mexico. Also, it's likely the cartel also used the backhaul of this "service" to conceal their own criminal activity.
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The Mexican civilian population isn't allowed to have guns and so as Americans say "when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns."
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Cartels exist not because citizens can't have guns.. but rather the police don't want to get involved.. and are in many ways, just as corrupt.
And this same behaviour is how the American Mafia, and other criminal organizations in the US exist as well.. Citizens with guns just make a mess of things.. and if anything, what has reduced the large scale criminal organizations in the US has been police accountability and increased transparency making it harder for such organizations to exist in the shadows.. so many just became "legit".. and instead of a gun, enforced their rules/policies/money with lawyers and police (who have guns).-
one of the major reasons the mafia lost poser was the legalization of alcohol. Gun nuts think everything fix everything, but what happened at the El Paso mass shooting and Uvaldi?
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Dan667 keep in mind some of the worst violent tragedies are in countries that have poor gun control laws. Like Rwanda, Afghanistan, South Africa and Syria. To address the root issue of violence you need to adopt more of a European culture. Live and let live, mind your own business instead of looking to be offended, etc.
The United States has had a second amendment for centuries. The violence only started happening in the last 30 years, as the culture changed.
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The right to bear arms is article 10 of the Mexican constitution. They have more process than in the US but that’s about it.
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That's not "about it." This massively downplays the difference between Mexico and the USA. That Mexican right to bear arms needs a heavy, bolded asterisk with a long footnote.
There are only two civilian gun stores in the country and the process is very long and extensive to get a gun. You're not allowed to bear arms unless your job requires it. Mexican civilian gun ownership per-capita is far lower than, say, Canada, which doesn't have any constitutional right to arms.-
Where do the cartels get their guns?
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Mostly the corrupt Mexican.mil, who gets a bunch of them from directly from the US Govt through FMS (foreign military sales) - gov-to-gov stuff.
Others they get from global dealers out of Russia or South America, a bunch they get from corrupt or sympathetic governments in South America, some from terrorist network connections, and some they just straight up make. Smuggling weapons from the US civilian market across the border is a small fraction because the risk / benefit ratio is small - takes a lot of tim
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But lets go back to the earlier post where you lied and made things up on the spot and then did a quick google search to find new talking points to keep your narrative going.
Doesn’t seem very honest to me. We need honest people in America.
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When there's a lot of violence people look for solutions for that violence. Religion is a common solution for violence in general, and gun control for gun violence in specific.
That means wherever you find a lot of gun violence you're likely to find gun control and religion.
To figure out if either gun control or religion is effective, irrelevant, or counter-productive in stopping that gun violence is a job for actual researchers.
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Birth control and viagra. Easier availability of those means less violence. Make love, not war!
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More guns doesn't stop organized crime. You're talking about the folks that would take over all the gun shops and imports. More guns doesn't save the narcos and other criminal groups from each other, why would it save some rando civilian?
Every militia you start is checked by a larger cartel militia, and regardless would be infiltrated by the cartels because they have money.
It's as ridiculous as suggesting Afghanistan just needs more good guys with guns, then through the natural goodness bus of guns they will prevail over evil, that will totally not accumulate more guns more wealth and more of whatever else they want because, well they are evil you dumbass.
Ooh more guns would have fixed the Wild West too I bet! Because the gangs of bad guys with guns would think twice about the possibility of every rancher having guns before stealing their cattle, yessir. Wait..
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Thanks to the drug war in America the cartels are so ludicrously well armed that they're practically a military. The sort of firearms that a Mexican civilian could afford to buy wouldn't stand a chance against the cartels. You might just as well ask them to go up against the United States army and overthrow our government so that they can end our stupid and pointless drug war themselves....
There really is only one solution to ending the cartels and that's totally legalization of all drugs so that hard d-
You really think the cartels would be bothered by legalization? Of course you do. Stop being stupid. They have money, henchmen, and vast supplies of what drug users want. Nobody in the US is prepared to compete directly against them.
None of the state legalization or decriminalization efforts have stopped the cartels so far. They are stronger than ever.
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"Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution entitles the country’s citizens to own guns" https://www.as-coa.org/article... [as-coa.org].
Just because civilian gun ownership is more limited down South doesnt mean it doesnt exist.
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Just because technically civilians can own guns doesn't mean the government won't just ignore that law or attach so many conditions that the right is effectively denied.
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Is it really?
Is it the ONLY effective deterrence?
If that was even remotely true, don't you think we'd be seeing this happen elsewhere as well? Or maybe you're full of shit and pushing an agenda that the citizenry of Mexico isn't even close to interested in?
Pretty sure they don't want to trade cartel violence for right wing psycho school shootings.
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It's hard to have effective public services when the legitimate government is in a war with what is effectively a rival government. And the cartels are winning that war in Mexico. The Mexicans have deployed the military, without success. The cartels often outgun the troops that have been deployed.
Mexico is slowly becoming a Pancho Villa country again, only much more brutal than before. Essentially a bandit republic.
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Nah - I wouldn't consider it good if it can only stay up for 4 hours.
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Stop making jokes about us, or else a customer service agent will be with your shortly.
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Insulting dear leader is the only way you'll fix the crappy internet?
Intimidation hardly screams Anarchist utopia - any charismatic revolutionary would get the locals on side by providing quality services at a massive discount. i.e. Capitan Jorge was a lovely guy, he may have murdered dozens of people in the narcowars but he lifted thousands out of poverty by connecting entire villages with his cheap wifi!:)
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Makes me wonder. Why put up the wifi antennas? Just tell them to buy the service under threat of death, then don't deliver any service. Profit! That's how the big telecoms do it.
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They're an older gang.
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Hardened criminals
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What datarate, latency, reliability, and quality did they get for $30/month?
Might dump my $75/month monopoly cable company crappy internet if it's very usable.-
Since the average income in Mexico is about half what it is in the US, and the monthly fee is about half what you're paying, I'd guess the service will be similar.
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People in Mexico could be killed if they don't buy $25-30/month internet service. Meanwhile, people in the United States would kill for $25-30/month internet service!
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I've had the T-Mobile home internet service for a year and a half now and 100Mbps is the minimum I usually get, typically 150Mbps, have peaked over 200Mbps at times. Downside is only 10-20 Mbps up (but no worse than what Midco does for twice the price). I have the box and stuff ready to send everything back when it starts not working to our satisfaction at home, but it's been good!
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That is so slow it's worth maybe $15. Anything more than that is a rip off for that speed.
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Normal folks have no need-4-speed on WWW connections. Whatever allows streaming a movie... which I was doing 10 years ago on Bell South. Current price is damnsilly high.
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It's not about the speed specifically. It's the speed per money spent. T-Mobile home internet costs around $30, give or take. And 100Mbps/$10 is terrible.
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by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday January 05, 2024 @09:49AM (#64134091)
I'd guess the Cartel wants cover, they want a lot of regular traffic to hide their own.
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150K a month is jack shit to any cartel worth a fuck.
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which is why they got busted. The federals are afraid of the cartels that worth a f***
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150k/day is probably peanuts to a murderous drug cartel. 150k/month isn't worth wiping their asses with, unless there's added non-dollar value.
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They likely also want the ability to see whoâ(TM)s robbing them in to the cops.
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Cover for what? They are already untouchable. If they can set up an ISP and force subscribers under the penalty of death I don’t think internet traffic is a concern.
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Residents should just start downloading Disney movies. The USA will send in the marines to shut the cartel down.
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Now there's a good idea; this is exactly the type of operation that the Marines have always been trained for and they would probably love to have a chance to take on something like a cartel. Not only that, but the Marines have access to more and better weapons than the cartels could expect to get their hands on in their wildest dreams. Fortify a house and use it for a strong point? That's not going to last long against a tank, that's for sure. And, as Michoacan is on Mexico's Pacific coast, you could ex
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It's what we did [youtube.com] for the United Fruit Company 100 years ago.
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Yes, we did send Marines down to Central America at least once back then. However, if I understand correctly, their mission wasn't primarily combat it was preventing damage to United Fruit's factories and/or warehouses during revolutions or civil wars. The Marines guarded the plants and didn't engage in combat unless the property they were guarding was attacked, and they didn't care which side attacked. Everybody understood that whatever the Marines guarded was Off Limits and that was that. This would b
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Honestly this is probably just the cartels getting into other businesses like the Yakuza did in Japan because their traditional revenue sources were drying up a bit. So many places in America have legalized marijuana that it's having a significant impact on there finances.
It doesn't get a lot of press but Joe biden's administration is very slowly going through the process of the scheduling marijuana at the federal level. It's a very very slow process because there are dozens of things you have to do to take months and months and months in order to deschedule a drug as opposed to how quickly you can throw something on the schedule if you want.
But make no mistake it's going to happen and when it does it's going to be a huge blow to their finances. Psychedelics will probably follow after that. It's entirely possible that long-term will finally end Nixon's drug war and just legalize everything. There's plenty of evidence that shows treating drug addiction as a medical condition instead of a moral one is cheaper, more humane and infinitely more effective. As the evidence continues to mount it's harder and harder to argue in favor of locking people up for addiction
So what I think we're seeing here is the drug cartels trying to get into new lines of business. It didn't work for the Yakuza because they bring violence and that disrupts business and sooner or later there's a massive crackdown. The cartels have so much money though that they can literally outgun the Mexican army, so in the short term it won't happen but in the long term as more and more drugs are legalized and the drug war shuts down they'll have less and less money to purchase those weapons. So they're going to try to pivot and go legit before they lose everything.-
Again with the nonsense. You present no evidence that legalization efforts have hurt cartels.
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You know you've got Google you could easily find multiple studies showing that it's worth about 1.5 billion dollars a year. That number seems small compared to the cop math numbers they're out there claiming it's half a trillion or some nonsense but 1.5 billion dollars a year buys a lot of weapons.
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Still $1.5b in profit a year, and that was after a ton of states legalized it and started growing it themselves...
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Most of their weapons are stolen from the Mexican government.
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Marijuana is a low profit, bulky commodity. These are your cocaine (heroin, fentanyl) dollars at work.
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The group charged approximately 5,000 people elevated prices between 400 and 500 pesos ($25 and $30) a month, the Michoacan state prosecutor's office told the Associated Press. That meant the group could rake in about $150,000 a month. People were terrorized "to contract the internet services at excessive costs, under the claim that they would be killed if they did not,"
American broadband companies are envious of their business model, and have subscribed to the Cartel's newsletter.
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1. Distribute antennas in villages for WiFi Internet.
2. Threaten to kill anyone not paying the "subscription" fee.
3. . . .
4. Profit!
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As is to be expected for a group called 'Los Viagras';-).
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The moment I read 'los viagras' I wanted to make this joke:-)
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Xfinity and shareholders are watching the bottom line of this situation closely to see where else this model could work...
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The dark humor in all of this is that they were actually providing the service. Back in the day, you could just mug 5000 people a month without having to give them anything! I guess there is competition in this space. Hopefully they will be gearing up for a Series A real soon.
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Income is income. The equipment was stolen to begin with so having a guaranteed $150k a month a nice bonus.
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Itâ(TM)ll only give US ISPs business ideas.
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This sounds like taxes to me. I'm told these are desirable, so I don't see any problem with this.
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by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday January 05, 2024 @12:14PM (#64134435)
How can I get them to expand into my town?
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Don't worry, it seems they're a-coming, bus-load by bus-load.
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Because Cox, Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon are doing the same thing, functionally, to Americans.
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What an excuse-maker you are for the cartels and a sniveling Pussyville pouter for denigrating self-defense. Look at the butchery of unarmed peoples... and look at the manly survival of the heavily-armed Ukraine against the worst of Trotsky-slut armies. Kill a cartel member.. kill another... kill another... we're talking John Wick butchery. Wonder if this post gets censored by/. like the 1st post I made on this topic. The swimpy-swists prolly MsMash refuse to a
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I feel a hot wind on my shoulder
And the touch of a world that is older
Turn the switch and check the number
Leave it on when in bed I slumber
I hear the rhythms of the music
I buy the product and never use it
I hear the talking of the dj
Can't understand just what does he say?I'm on a mexican (wi-fi) radio
I'm on a mexican (wi-fi) radio
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