IP Technical question

[Ian Batten]

On 29 Jan 2009, at 16:41, ken wrote:

> Ian Batten replied to Roland Perry:
>
> >>> But surely, anyone up to no good would take
> >>> precautions roughly like mine?
> >> It seems not. Living like a character out of
> >> "Mission Impossible" is just too much hard work
> >
> > Or, alternatively, they make a rational decision
> > that their chances of  being impeded in the pursuit
> > of their dastardly plans (TM) is not reduced by
> > the privacy or otherwise of their electronic communication.
>
> Or (I strongly suspect on very little evidence) the purveyors of  
> Dastardly Plans prefer to communicate face-to-face and when they  
> can't they typically use  cheap pay-as-you-go phones (second-hand,  
> stolen, borrowed, swapped, picked up for a fiver down the pub, found  
> in the street) and (if they have any sense) discard them after the  
> Dastardly Deed is Done.
>
> Until recently it was very common to see dodgy characters selling  
> cheap phones and SIM cards in pubs in south-east London...


Along with `law abiding criminals', may I introduce `criminals in  
striped jumpers with bags marked SWAG' into our menagerie?

You're right.  If I'm in the East End, there are probably still crooks  
who,  looking down on scag addicts stealing video recorders, see  
themselves as hard men in the mould of the Krays.  Protection, loan  
sharking, that sort of thing.   They look after their dear old Mum and  
only hurt their own kind, too.   And they probably have rather harder  
and slightly more psychopathic friends who, when not round Guy  
Ritchie's giving him tips for his next film, are ready to throw the  
readies in the back of the motor and make off with the shooters after  
a botched bank raid.

For all these, one-time mobes and meetings in the back room of pubs  
are probably the order of the day.    They're dangerous, violent  
criminals, but they ultimately are interested in stealing things.   
Physical things.  From physical places.  They're pretty good at it,  
but they succeed through being a bit quicker, a bit sharper and a bit  
more violent than the people protecting the physical things.  Their  
manors are small, and they're usually known to the police as local  
faces.  They tend to get caught, because ultimately they don't have  
plausible denial for the money they have, and they don't have access  
to the skills required to keep the money and the evidence trail  
quiet.  And there's more falling out amongst themselves than is  
healthy for them.

But I doubt Bernie Madoff had much truck with this sort of thing,  
nipping out from his brownstone to score a moody SIM.   I doubt that  
the competent, didn't get caught IRA bomb makers were quite so ready  
to sit around in pubs looking shifty.   I'd be surprised if it turned  
out that the radioactive poisoning of Russian dissidents was planned  
over eels and mash.  People like that don't plan to get caught, and to  
quote a quotable quote, are unlikely to be found doing thrill-seeker  
liquor store holdups with a "Born to Lose" tattoo on their chest.     
They aren't stealing physical things, they have complex motives and if  
those include money there'll be a lot of it with complex laundering  
requirements.  They'll have complex relationships with other  
criminals, too.

We don't know the scale of this sort of thing.  The criminals that get  
caught aren't necessarily representative of those who present the  
greatest risk.   It's worth assuming that they either are competent or  
have access to people who are competent, because it's hardly news to  
suggest that there are people who will bend their talents to helping  
dubious causes for sufficient money, and high-grade criminals have  
access to a lot of that.   Wasn't it one of the east-coast (New  
Joisey, not Norfolk) crime families that turned out to have built a  
Faraday cage in their basement?

Watch The Wire?  Think of Stringer Bell.

ian

Tonight I have been listening to Solid Air and Grace and Danger.  John  
Martyn, RIP.