“Don’t work harder, work smarter” – illicit narcotics division

 

Aesop describes how he dealt with an illicit marijuana outlet that established itself in his neighborhood, causing him and his neighbors no little inconvenience.  I won’t steal his thunder by repeating any of it here, but it was (IMHO) a very clever and sneaky piece of work to get them out of the neighborhood in short order.  Even after they’d gone, his revenge wasn’t over, as you’ll see.

Click over there and read it for yourself.  It’s a masterpiece of thinking outside the box.

Peter

12 comments

  1. Only, of course, it didn't happen. The "FBI Surveillance Van" WiFi name thing is so old that no one believes it, if they ever did.

  2. Here's the original news article about the teen: https://web.archive.org/web/20120407145449/http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2011/aug/17/21/tampa-police-say-theyve-thwarted-school-violence-p-ar-251078/

    Here's the Slashdot story reporting his Facebook comment about finding a "FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN" Wi-Fi hotspot in the days leading up to his arrest. He just thought it was some weird thing. https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/08/17/1937232/Accused-Teen-Bomber-Finds-FBI-Surveillance-Teams-Wireless-Network

    The arrest after seeing this could be just a coincidence.

    I myself, inspired by this, have had my Wi-Fi point named accordingly for some years now. Even got a mention on the radio one time after someone else had noticed it. It's extra hilarious when you're in Australia.

  3. Never wipe your backside with dry mortar mix…the mix will not absorb the intended matter and instead will collect in the basin or receptacle where eventually the mix will contact a wet medium and then a chemical reaction will occur causing said mix to harden and prevent flow of wet medium. If this occurs in the system owned by your enemy, your enemy will experience difficulty in moving the wet medium into his bacteriological disposal system rendering said system inoperative. Since the disposal system will be inoperative, the upstream source of wet medium will necessarily need to be restricted. Civilization is built upon one and only one hallmark…clean water.

    Thank you.

  4. A different "Unknown" than the person above:

    The first SSID name that I chose (when I learned that 'hiding' one's SSID was counterproductive) was "DEA Surveillance".

    I was living in an area full of apartments and frequent "wardriving", and discovered that the log of attempted logins got big really fast. So I changed the SSID to something more innocuous, and the unauthorized access attempts dried right up.

    I know gwalchmai munn said above that "no one believes it", and it was already an old joke when I used it. But it sure attracted (unwanted) attention from wannabe hackers when I used it. Were they trying to verify whether it was a joke or not?

    I can picture one of the weed shop customers saying to the knucklehead proprietor something like "You are pretty bold to name your WiFi that" in reference to the "unlicensed pot shop" SSID, and then the knucklehead trying to find the source of the offending WiFi network.

    So I've no reason to doubt that Aesop did as he said, and while I can think of unrelated plausible explanations for the "phone as direction finder" act and quick decamp at the end of the month, I can't rule out that they might have been precipitating factors in causing the move.

    And of course the presence of the WiFi names may have drawn the presence of the operation to the notice of people who were friendly with the property owner, thus bringing about an end to the lease.

  5. @gwalchmai munn,

    The only problem with the speculative gainsaying in your clever riposte is that it did happen, exactly as described, and the painters are there today refurbing the newly vacant unit for the next tenants.

    "Unlicensed pot shop" may have had more effect than "DEA Task Force 17", but I assure you, they were both in regular rotation, and visible to everyone looking at their wi-fi routing page for approx. a block in all directions, times all last month.

    Maybe not assuming that dopeheads stupid enough to set up an unlicensed pot shop in a strip commercial lot would have IQs over 80 would work out better for you. The number of Ph.Ds and actual rocket scientists apprehended on "COPS" should have been the tip-off there.

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