<story><title>Anonymous Cancels Operation Cartel as Los Zetas Track Hacktivists</title><url>http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/report-anonymous-cancels-operation-cartel.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdl</author><text>The only way to fight criminals at a scale where they threaten the state is through intelligence and military techniques, not law enforcement.&lt;p&gt;Find them, build up decent evidence, kill them; don&apos;t try to prosecute.  The risk is turning into a star chamber or right wing paramilitary, but I would trust the professionalism and morality of an organization like the us military to resist that.  Plan Colombia worked out ok, compared to Peru vs shining path, for instance.</text></item><item><author>forensic</author><text>It&apos;s difficult to wage an information war with gangsters. The ones who get to the top by killing and torturing are not likely to be threatened by having a few emails released. All the shit runs downhill to the relatively innocent civilians being extorted by the gangsters.&lt;p&gt;If knowledge of who the crime bosses are was enough to take them down, they would not exist in the first place. Organized crime does not require secrecy to operate when the police are corrupted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gyardley</author><text>Decent evidence often isn&apos;t. Remember those &apos;weapons of mass destruction&apos; in Iraq? 4,482 dead American soldiers and counting.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not saying these gangs aren&apos;t full of horrible people, and I&apos;m not saying all branches of the US government and military aren&apos;t perfectly good intentioned and well-meaning people, but mistakes &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; get made - which is why we need some judicial oversight here.&lt;p&gt;We&apos;ve already got one war on an abstract concept where the president can order the extrajudicial execution of a US citizen based on secret evidence. That&apos;s more than enough for me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Anonymous Cancels Operation Cartel as Los Zetas Track Hacktivists</title><url>http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/report-anonymous-cancels-operation-cartel.php</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdl</author><text>The only way to fight criminals at a scale where they threaten the state is through intelligence and military techniques, not law enforcement.&lt;p&gt;Find them, build up decent evidence, kill them; don&apos;t try to prosecute.  The risk is turning into a star chamber or right wing paramilitary, but I would trust the professionalism and morality of an organization like the us military to resist that.  Plan Colombia worked out ok, compared to Peru vs shining path, for instance.</text></item><item><author>forensic</author><text>It&apos;s difficult to wage an information war with gangsters. The ones who get to the top by killing and torturing are not likely to be threatened by having a few emails released. All the shit runs downhill to the relatively innocent civilians being extorted by the gangsters.&lt;p&gt;If knowledge of who the crime bosses are was enough to take them down, they would not exist in the first place. Organized crime does not require secrecy to operate when the police are corrupted.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jfoutz</author><text>Has that ever worked? In the U.S. anyway, gangs only seemed to disappear after pretty intense FBI work. I&apos;m thinking of stuff like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/organizedcrime/italian_mafia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/organizedcrime/itali...&lt;/a&gt; but maybe there&apos;s much more militarized approach that&apos;s been effective that i&apos;m forgetting.</text></comment>