>As an aside, for as long as my fake escort page was up, I was getting text messages to the GV number from guys in this other state trying to set up dates. would run their phone numbers and find out who they were, it was amazing how much some of them stood to lose if they were caught.
It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
That screenshot was really high on the "weird dude power fantasy" scale. I find it very hard to believe that a cop could waste that much effort trying to burn a single prostitute.
Being a cop is a job, and at your job your boss is on your case about productivity and numbers. "I'm setting up a fake john in a different state to try to snare a single lady for prostitution" just does not move the needle enough to justify the effort
But as a "I hate whores and dream I was a cop with the power to mess with them" fantasy that screenshot works really well
It's not a "a job". As an institution police spend a lot of effort and resources to make sure that the stuff they do is perceived as a kind of calling and very special, which is important to foster loyalty between cops and helps them psychologically endure exposing vulnerable people to violence and incapacitation.
Legally they're in a protected category and 'above the law' in many ways. They get to break into other people's homes, dig through their stuff, spy on and hurt them. Commonly they're told that these actions are what keeps society from hurtling into barbarism.
Being told you are superior to others is not psychologically innocent.
They might be above the law, but nobody is above middle management. Even cops are subject to "you spent HOW much hours trying to burn one internet prostitute?"
They do that kind of thing all the time. The institution as such does not get money based on some performance metric or other, it's usually politicians wanting to look one way or another in the press that determine their budgets.
He explains she was in the Chief of Police's neighborhood with irate neighbors, so he clearly had leeway to expend all resources needed to get it done.
Most cops do not see their job like this, and mostly just want to get home at the end of the day. Yes, they probably have more than their fair share of weirdoes (in the same way most uniformed institutions disproportionately filled with young men tend to), but you know, mostly it's a job (though the US is weird).
I've rarely met a cop who didn't believe they were in a special profession, above most of the rest of us.
I know from prostitutes that cops routinely abuse them in many different ways. They use intimidation to coerce "freebies" (which is rape, plain and simple). They "befriend" them and become their "boyfriends", which is of course just a lie to get a side piece. When they arrest them, they sneer and insult them as "whores".
It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people and decided against becoming social workers, medical practitioners or somesuch. Instead they joined a paramilitary force in peace time.
> It's not a job. Every cop is a weirdo, they looked for opportunities to exert dominance over other people...
Stereotype much? Crime is actually a thing that happens. There are definitely cops that have the wrong attitude, but the function is necessary and warrant that kind of stereotyping especially if you want it to be better.
Like, here's a recipe for making policing worse: heap on so much steotyping and abuse onto the profession that you scare away all the people who aren't "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." Don't create a filter that only selects "bad apples."
I have trouble figuring out what argument you're making. My position is that every person who wants to be a cop has "the wrong attitude". It is a mid- to late modern phenomenon so the claim that it is necessary seems rather weak.
Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
My point is you don't want cops with "the wrong attitude," so don't do things that exacerbate that, like wanton stereotyping.
> Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
No, I believe: 1) Your "position ... that every person who wants to be a cop has 'the wrong attitude'" is wrong (it's got a strong smell of overgeneralization and black-and-white thinking). 2) The actions you're taking are (in a small way) encouraging and perpetuating the situation that neither of us want.
You and I want cops who are not "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people," but that's exactly what you'll get if you create and spread the impression that policing is only a job for people who are "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." To actually fix the problem, you need to encourage other types of people to become cops. Like protests against police brutality should have a booth for protesters to sign up for the police academy.
There's too much counterproductive cathartic anger going on in this society, where people get mad and say and do things to just express that anger and actually make the problems they're angry about worse.
I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Do you seriously think that cops spend more time being affected by their feelings regarding stereotypes than the structures and ideology of the institution? They're trained to not care what regular people think about them, because they have to learn this to able to execute violence against vulnerable and ill people.
I'd say there isn't enough anger. Contemporary states, like the US, UK and Germany, engage openly in genocide, neo-colonial endeavours and hybrid warfare against their own populations. This should reasonably cause a deep rage in any sane person.
> I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Trump and MAGA thank you for helping them win elections.
I don't think the European cops are all that much better people, even if not as murderous.
Living in Paris a couple of years ago I used to regularly see cops street racing to a local restaurant for lunch with their sirens on. Their driving style was basically exactly what you'd expect street-racer kids in Eastern Europe.
That kind of casual abuse of power is very telling.
I live in northern Europe. It's not uncommon that our cops carry submachine guns and their cars are massive. Your generic middle eastern or african paramilitary would be rather jealous of their equipment.
> It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.
How is it abusing access? They setup an ad for prostitution, which I presume is illegal, and were getting contacted by people interested in committing a crime. It seems legitimate investigative activity to look up the numbers. Even if the johns were in another state, I suppose they could forward the information onto the police in that area.
I don't know who these "people" are, but it's logical that people who have a dislike for police would call them bastards, no matter if the police are bastards or not...
When did "healthy parenting" become a full-time cybersecurity job with no training, adversaries backed by infinite capital, teams of PhDs optimizing for addiction, and sexual predators from around the globe dialoguing with your child through any glass surface your child can get their hands on?
This is riddled with fearmongering. You don't need to be a cybersecurity expert to take interest in your own child. It doesn't take a PhD to enable parental controls or tell your child "no" if they want something that is inappropriate for them.
You might as well have said that you need to be a police officer to make sure your child isn't hit by a drunk driver, kidnapped by creeps or attacked by someone on the street. Children are under the care of parents or guardians for a reason. It's not to fist fight criminals or design their own security system.
Your analogy about drunk drivers actually makes my point: we don't just tell parents "be vigilant". We have DUI laws, road design standards, and enforcement--systemic solutions, not just individual responsibility.
With tech, we've largely abdicated that, placing the entire burden on parents to defend against industrial-scale manipulation.
Expecting individual parents to successfully counter industrial-scale behavioral engineering is a systems failure, not a parenting failure.
Wireguard is explicitly designed to not allow unauthenticated users to do anything, whereas SSH is explicitly designed to allow unauthenticated users to do a whole lot of things.
The article you linked contains literally nothing supporting your accusation. Instead, it talks about an investigation targeting the aid recipient:
>The USAID Office of Inspector General, Inspections and Evaluations Division, is initiating an inspection of USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine. Our objectives are to determine how (1) the Government of Ukraine used the USAID-provided Starlink terminals, and (2) USAID monitored the Government of Ukraine’s use of USAID-provided Starlink terminals
If you're a member of the 1%, you can pay to use the private terminals and have a completely different airport experience while flying commercial.
This isn't a very common product in the US, but it is available at most big airports elsewhere.
I find it especially useful during arrivals. Typically there'll be a sedan to pick me up next to the plane, many airports will have co-ordinated with the airline, my luggage will have been loaded separately and the crew will make sure I'm the first off the plane. After exiting the aircraft, I'm driven to a private terminal for possible border formalities and there'll be a car waiting for me right outside with my luggage already loaded.
At some airports, you might save hours off a trip like this. Prices run between crazy at places like heathrow and a few hundred dollars at less fancy airports.
>As an aside, for as long as my fake escort page was up, I was getting text messages to the GV number from guys in this other state trying to set up dates. would run their phone numbers and find out who they were, it was amazing how much some of them stood to lose if they were caught.
It's incredible to see cops just openly bragging about abusing the access they have.