THis column is kill list. it’s a journalist Author Karl Miller It was discovered on the dark web, the slimy basement of the internet. The site essentially operates what is known as an “assassination market” or murder-for-hire service. Customers identify the person they want to kill, create a profile, and pay (in Bitcoin, natch) for the services they need. That’s the title of the podcast series.
The story begins in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic lockdown. Chris Monteiro, a talented IT professional and hacker, was browsing the site when he discovered a security vulnerability that, when exploited, gave him full access to the site. In it, he discovered a “kill list” of 175 people around the world that his client wanted killed. It was like an Excel spreadsheet. Each target typically had a number of details such as address, photo, habits, and routes they regularly travel. On the surface it seemed commonplace until you read the “instructions” that probably came with each target. “How much should I pay for Bitcoin?” “Please tell me the execution time in advance. I can’t be there.” “I want you to shoot this person. Where, how, what?” I don’t really care whether you do it or not. You see.
In fact, the website was a scam run by Romanian fraudsters who stole cryptocurrencies and had no intention of providing the requested services. So far so predictable and criminally fraudulent. However, in a sense, this was a fraud that revealed something. many What’s darker is that there are people all over the world who may be in real danger, perhaps unaware of the fact that someone wants them dead. The danger is that if some of these villains realize they’ve been scammed, meaning the killer isn’t coming, they might volunteer to do the job out of anger or resentment. It was. It happened at least once — to a Minneapolis woman whose suicide was faked by her ostensibly God-fearing husband.
But the sinister spreadsheet presented Miller with ethical challenges most journalists have never faced. The question was what to do with the list of people whose lives were definitely at risk. His first reaction was to go to the police. The Metropolitan Police sent two officers in a van, who listened politely but also asked if he had a history of mental illness. Eventually, the Metropolitan Police told him that they had given the list to Interpol because many of the people on it lived in other parts of the world. This was useful in principle, but in practice it only meant that Interpol would pass it on to the national police authorities, and probably nothing would be done in most cases.
Eventually, Miller decided he needed to find a way to contact everyone on the list. He assembled a team of journalist colleagues and devised a method. They decided it was impossible to convey the message over the phone. If someone called you out of the blue and told you that your life might be in danger, you had very good reason to hang up. Ultimately, they used local journalists to meet their targets face-to-face, hoping this would persuade them to talk to Mr. Miller and his team. And it proved even more successful.
It’s been a long journey, but it’s a fascinating story, and choosing to tell it in a podcast series was a smart move. Podcasting is a medium created for this type of storytelling. If journalism is the “first draft of history,” as someone once said, then podcasting is probably the second draft. As a medium, podcasting has a wider intellectual bandwidth than broadcasting, which must cater to a mass audience, but podcasting caters to niche interests and makes more assumptions about the listener’s desire for details. You can. People listen to podcasts on their own time, not to a broadcast station. And with so many people listening to podcasts on headphones, the relationship between author and audience can become more intimate.
kill list A graphic reminder of how the Internet is a mirror of human nature. “This has always been the case. In the early days of the web, when there was a moral panic about online pornography, I naively thought that maybe the proliferation of pornography was telling us something useful about human nature. After all, pornographers are not philanthropists, so there has to be a market for their work. (Readers were not impressed with this view.) Similarly, on social media. A torrent of horrifying misogyny tells us something useful about men. Incidentally, it also appears on Miller’s list. he said“Men targeted women, often their wives and girlfriends. This work explores modern masculinity and what happens when a person loses control of their partner and even loses control of themselves. I think that says something about what happens.”
In one case, an estranged American doctor ordered and paid for his wife to be kidnapped, tortured, and injected with heroin until she agreed to return to him. Welcome to the worst demon of our nature.
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what i was reading
A date with a soulmate
Increased profits and a new world of business This is a truly original essay by the great economist W Brian Arthur. harvard business reviewAugust 1996 w.
talking heads
David Calf’s It’s time to stop taking Sam Altman’s word for it. A stunning blow against OpenAI’s baby-faced Savonarola.
heated discussion
Here’s an incisive essay published on the Register’s website: AI’s thirst for power keeps the coals burning brightly About how the technologies that “solve” the climate crisis are warming the planet.
Source: www.theguardian.com
