as i understand, this is what bellingcat uses as a major source of data when reporting on russian activities
“It is one of the paradoxes of modern Russia: on the one hand, these services are illegal and rely on leaked data, yet on the other, they are far more convenient for day-to-day police work than the multitude of official departmental databases,”
gaben on piracy: “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,”
Nothing more Russian than police giving someone their database for a bribe.
And it’s even more Russian that police then pays for convenient service to someone who’s bribed enough policemen to assemble enough data.
It’s a common banality to say that Russian culture is somehow deeply authoritarian, but actually it’s suppressed anarcho-capitalism all around. LOL.
(And it makes perfect sense that Ukrainian special services are working the same way. Shouldn’t have invaded such a similar country.)
Bellingcat is a CIA outlet.
Oh no!
How do you figure?
Funny how what is a black market underground economy in Russia because of the danger is “market research data” legally sold in the US.
That’s a question similar to legalization of sex work.
I mean, selling data on someone is not cool. But what’s completely illegal, but in demand by everyone, becomes something completely unregulated in practice and still a huge market. While otherwise it could be at least partially constrained by some norms. Similarly sex work is very much not cool. But at least in some countries it gives smaller chance of being murdered to workers.
So - I live in Russia, I’m not sure I like the way it happens here more. Especially when combined with slow encroachment of mandatory centralized services for everything connected to government, municipal services, utilities, documents. They want control like in China, but can’t be bothered with security at least like in China.
People are starting to realise that the biggest survilliance state in the world is the US.
And they want you to think it’s China or Russia to deflect attention.
I think it’s still actually the UK. Just in terms of cameras.
It’s all three of them.
Good
