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A comment on Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers.

Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by dannyobrien on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @01:35AM (#3760179)
There's nothing in this article to confirm that headline, apart from the sentence "Recent claims that computer programmers are being forcibly recruited by Mexican drug gangs, if true, suggest that these groups are acquiring the ability to reap the potential profits of cyber-crime", which has no citation.

I'd be very interested to hear of corroborated incidences of such kidnapping or recruitment occurring. I was in Sinaloa, Mexico this month actively looking for such evidence as part of my work. There's some indication that the cartel have reasonable IT infrastructure (which isn't surprising, given their size), and some growing involvement in physical piracy (counterfeit items in markets have to be marked with a cartel symbol, which is purchasable). But I've yet to see strong evidence that they are involved in "cybercrime" in any organized fashion.

They certainly take discussion forum flamewars pretty seriously though: http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/03/online-news-sites-as-bat...

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Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by sebastianavina on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @01:39AM (#3760194)
From what I understand, drug cartels need software for running their bussiness, and because they can't take a call to SAP and have a representative build a custom solution, they just kidnap programmers, extortion them and make them build the software they need for bookeping and all the stuff made by computers on this days.
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Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by adambyrtek on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @10:47AM (#3761764)
This doesn't seem very convincing. Simply paying programmers lots of money would be a simpler and more effective solution. They could certainly afford that, and bookkeeping is too critical to their business to risk. Would you suggest that they kidnap lawyers and doctors as well?
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Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by sebastianavina on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @11:06PM (#3764540)
Well, they don't kidnap them... They just hire them, and when they want to quit or resign the job, they just can't.
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Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by zby on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @04:35AM (#3760601)
Slave is not a good worker - with tedious manual tasks you can force someone and measure his performance - but I cannot imagine how this could work efficiently for any professional work.
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Re:Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers by einhverfr on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @08:41AM (#3761149)
Why don't they use open source accounting software? I am sure we could recommend a few packages ;-)
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