119 replies
10h4m
I hate that it kicks off with "DISCLAIMER: This is not my work. I would never and don't condone illegal hacking of scammers"
You know what? I do. We all should. These scammers are awful people and deserve to be attacked. I am tired of toothless authorities like CISA and the alphabet agencies in the US doing next to nothing about it unless some YouTube scam baiter does the work for them. Scammers destroy people, not just financially, but emotionally as well, even driving some victims to suicide. As far as I am concerned, any wannabe hacker out there should be using these scammers for target practice.
vigilantism can spiral out of control. While it makes sense in this scenario, it's because the scammer is obviously breaking some law and is criminal. What happens if it wasn't so obvious?
I’m fine with a war on scammers getting out of control to the point where bombs are being dropped on scammers call centres.
They are the modern Hostis humani generis
Seems you didn't know that lots of people in scam call centers aren't there voluntarily. Trafficking and threats
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/08/human_trafficking_for...
and:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hundreds-thousand...
Mm.
For what it's worth, I can get them to hang up immediately if I recommend they join a trade union.
Hmm what's your point? I'd think they're under time pressure, and if they see they can't fool you, they'll immediately proceed with the next target instead. (Regardless of if they're working for themselves or being trafficked & forced)
If they're a good person in a bad place, a union can help — and I suspect that if the calls are monitored, the villains who coerce them will want to avoid future calls to a number that regularly undermines their authority over those they traffic.
On the other hand, the examples people commonly share of where someone contacts a knowing scammer to appeal to their humanity, is that the scammers laugh at their victims — so if the people on the phone are the villains, then I think them hanging up immediately may cause more emotional pain than the stream of expletives they're used to.
Regardless, it saves me time.
This approach may not be so useful now that GenAI, both LLMs and synthetic voices, are getting good.
A union cannot help them. They generally are in places where there isn't a better option. Go on strike, we will just find someone else to replace you. Unions work when you are hard to replace. (hard is a trade off between many things, not just the cost of training someone new; but also things like the legal climate or future strikes)
Unions also give you a team that is rooting for you (even the mere psychological aspect can be surprisingly valuable), and potentially access to a legal fund.
You are really arguing that slaves in a region with no functioning legal system should join a union?
That's a description of the Russian revolution, I think? Wasn't that serfdom at the time?
Also literal slaves working together, even if you'd not call it a union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
They are getting REALLY good, it is the old "it is photoshopped" except with sound. The problem though is not being able to differentiate, especially not the people scammers usually target (the elderly).
You cannot believe your own eyes AND ears now, sadly. It might sound dramatic, but it takes "trust no one and nothing" to a whole new level.
Mm, indeed.
I expect that, at some point in my lifetime, bio-printing and tissue culture will probably reach the point we can't even have trust in real life, not even with fingerprints and a DNA test.
Will this happen before or after we become post-scarcity? I don't know.
People who are the victims in a controlling relationship will usually say things that the controller wants them to say, even when the controller is not there. Ask me how I know.
I can well believe it, and my sympathies to you.
Hopefully the suggestion gave them an idea to reflect on later — I don't know of anything better that can be done when on the receiving end of a phone call.
I think you're probably right. I came to the opinion a while ago that one of the very best things you can do to help someone who is a victim of a controlling relationship is to tell them things that are indisputably true in such a way that they can ignore you if they aren't ready to hear it or are unable to respond, but so that their mind will have something to chew on and slowly form the roots of a rediscovery of truth.
This is what I did with a scammer. He kept rationalizing his theft, claiming he's just taking "a little" from many people who are well off and wouldn't miss it. Of course, not only is that bullshit, but it wouldn't justify the theft even if it were true. I appealed to his conscience, sternly, and didn't give him an inch. I ended the conversation by wishing that he will come to renounce his evil ways.
The very fact that he didn't hangup, that he felt he had to explain away his guilt to me (a few times) shows that he himself wasn't convinced of his rationalization and that he himself believed he was doing something wrong. I can only hope that the guilt gnawed its way into his conscious and that the worm that never dies led him to rethink his life and to pick up some honest work.
May the guilty lose sleep, and may their ill-gotten goods taste of ash, and thus be led to remorse and reform and the righteous path. This is love of neighbor.
chii wrote: "What happens if it wasn't so obvious?"
Is Musk a scammer? Bitcoin? The commission Apple charges on the App Store? The Fortnight monetisation system? Facebook's claim to be able to accurately target adverts? Vaccines and masks? OpenAI?
People on this website have said so about each of those examples.
That is why it's bad to go down that path.
To answer your question, No they aren't.
Until the REAL scammers are brought down, people will take actions into their own hands.
I think the point they’re trying to make is that determining who is a criminal and what kind of punishment they deserve is a very difficult task that depends largely on perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
If the question's answer was obvious and resolving false then none would have been described thusly, if it was obvious and resolving true then you wouldn't be denying it.
Merely asserting that they are not, in your opinion (though hey, look at those legal cases they have between them…) does nothing to remove the fact that they have been called this.
It also does nothing to help with the lack of legitimacy of vigilantes. Nor, in this case, jurisdiction: part of the problem here is international cooperation, because right now the USA (where the victim is) and China (where the gang is) are a bit chilly towards each other.
Amateurs sending a bomb their way? That's one way to describe how WW1 started.
The existence of a gray area in between "obviously fine" and "obviously wrong" doesn't mean that there is nothing in those outer categories.
It is, at least hypothetically, possible to define "scammer" clearly enough that the more egregious and clear-cut types are taken care of more expeditiously.
Not sure if there's a way to actually enforce that better, but "it is possible to disagree over whether some things are scams" is not the same as "there's no way to agree on whether anything is a scam".
In principle, when the legal system handles the cases, I agree: don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
In this specific case, when it comes to vigilantes in particular? Then no. I think that a society which allows it will end up somewhere between lynching and anarchy.
Better law enforcement, which does not even have to mean "more laws"? Good. Batman wannabes? Bad.
Really, really sounds like you don’t have many real problems in your life and don’t know who to blame for societal issues.
People here will lament about the exploited H1Bs causing literal genocides at Meta until the cows come home, but literally other any person working a job they don’t necessarily like and in a living situation that’s undoubtedly worse deserve to be literally bombed because they sent you a text message.
Jesus Christ.
Do you… know what the word literally means?
You have never seen war first hand if you would be fine with starting a war over online scammers.
Maybe I have and the calls aggravated my ptsd?
If society doesn't want vigilantes than it must take an active role in pursuing and punishing criminals.
Society does take an active role through police, fbi, etc etc
Vigilantes are criminals too so society takes an active role in pursuing and punishing them as well.
That only works if you aren't in a:
Anarcho-tyranny
A stage of governmental dysfunction in which the state is anarchically hopeless at coping with large matters but ruthlessly tyrannical in the enforcement of small ones
https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64594123
Then you get your door kicked in for not paying taxes on $50 venmo transaction, or saying the wrong thing online but when there is a school shooter (or presidential assassin) the cops wait for them to finish while they play with their phones.
While it is true that the justice system is often used to disproportionately hurt the poor, nobody is getting their door kicked in for not paying taxes on a venmo transaction.
Civil forfeiture is roughly similar.
Civil asset forfeiture is indeed horrible and often used to basically just steal from the poor. It is also totally different than having your door kicked down for failing to pay taxes or being arrested for saying the wrong thing online.
Sure, but it does match the GP’s point about tyrannical enforcement against small violations. The examples GP provided weren’t apt, you pointed that out, I’m providing another one.
Red light ticket revenue funding small town budgets is another. Brake-light rationales for traffic stops…I could go on.
The key is what you pointed out, that these are never used against the elite class.
thanks for that example, it really paints a picture of the impotence of the state, tho watching the video it's easy to blame the failure on the hundreds of individuals that didn't take action, but they are meant to be the vangaurd; we handed the monopoly on violence to these people and for what?
We deem vigilantes criminals because we have no way to hold them accountable if they infringe on someone's rights.
Society is supposed to take an active role, but sometimes they have other priorities.
Big companies getting hacked or scammed make headlines and generate FBI action. People like me, not so much.
Unless I'm mistaken, we vigilantes are deemed criminals because it is, ironically, against the law to enforce the law on someone else without being granted that authority by the state.
Its still not quite accurate to deem vigilantes as criminals though. Unless they've been charged and convicted they aren't technically a criminal.
Precisely correct. People have a natural right to receive justice, so IF the government abdicates its assumed responsibility to provide justice people have every moral and ethical right to enact justice themselves.
People with every moral and ethical right to enact justice are the types that can acquire clearance and join various authorities in the pursuit.
Vigilante’s don’t abide by the laws so aren’t well positioned to dispense justice in a non hypocritical way.
Maybe carve out a low level clearance that gives grey hat types a little room for counter red team activity.
People have a duty to defer the enactment of justice to the government only if there exists a government which fulfills their end of the deal. If no such government exists, then people are ethically and morally free to do it themselves.
Because the real world is a Batman comic book.
I never read any comic book, sorry..
In absence of a government willing or able to enforce laws, vigilantism creates a public pressure to fix the government. Either way though, people are entitled to justice. If the government doesn't provide it, then the government is responsible for the harmful consequence of the resulting vigilantism.
At least here in the US, I can say one of the last things we need is more people in jail or prison.
The parent commenter said "pursue and punish", not "put in jail".
There are other forms of punishment besides jail time. But really I'm more concerned that the scam organization is shut down, even if the main scammer isn't put behind bars. If nothing else, it'll slow down and reduce the scams.
Fair enough. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but at least in the US you will almost certainly spend a bit of time in a jail when being charged, booked, and arraigned.
Given that we're talking about legal, rather than extra judicial, pursuit and punishment I would expect jail to be a part of that process.
You are saying it as if there was only one society with one juridiction.
It’s difficult when the authorities over you have no jurisdiction over the criminals harming you.
If we're going to invoke "vigilantism" (as opposed to notions of reasonable and proportionate self-defence) let's acknowledge how U.S. American culture at least in the 80s and 90s is drenched in a deep love of vigilante justice... The A-Team, Knight Rider, The Equaliser, even Batman! Who doesn't dream of a secret base inside a mountain, filled with surveillance gear, an anti-crime computer and a personal Apache attack helicopter waiting on the pad to rain fire down on miscreants?
Let's say that's more than just individual morality but a concrete cultural relation to wealth, power, justice and social contract of the state.
The trouble with vigilatism is that it involves a usurpation of state authority that one does not possess. State authority can be deputized under certain conditions, of course, and self-defense is an example (I can shoot someone trying to commit murder, for example; or consider citizen's arrest), but it isn't arbitrary and isn't vigilatism.
Of course, when the state demonstrates a dereliction of duty and becomes feckless in its ability to punish criminals in proportion to their crimes, this creates outrage and a strong temptation to engage in vigilatism. The state then shares responsibility for the resulting vigilatism.
Then society would quickly condemn the vigilantes. Vigilantism works precisely in those cases where the criminals being persecuted is obvious. It seems to me that there is an optimal amount of vigilantism and it's greater than zero in those rare cases where there is a person skilled enough to carry out the retribution.
For people that ransomware hospitals, I want Navy Seals (or equivalent) falling out of the sky and renditioning back to the appropriate country to stand trial.
There’s a demonstrated inhumanity in attacking hospitals and children that really should earn special attention.
So what about crowdstrike?
Grey area. I reckon Navy Seals fall out of the sky and give the CEO an atomic wedgie.
This violates the constitution because it is unusual (the constitution bans cruel and unusual punishments). So, we'll have to normalize this punishment.
It can be unusual as long as it is not cruel. It bans "cruel and unusual" not "cruel or unusual." That's why a judge can order, as punishment for shoplifting, that the perpetrator stands in front of the store with a sign saying "I shoplifted here."
By that token, it could be a cruel punishment as long as it's not unusual. Hmm...
Some may see usual punishment such as customary fines and jail time as cruel, but the usual-ness making the arguable cruelness moot is convenient as it eliminates the need to argue it.
Here's the test the Supreme Court established in 1972:
Have you heard of American prisons?
Maybe do the board of directors as well?
As consequential as the crowd strike outage was, there is still a moral difference between an epic fuck up and deliberately hijacking people's data for money. Especially when it affects people's health.
Crowd strike immediately pushed a fix for the problem once they realized what happened. No, that didn't prevent the global economic costs and general chaos that was caused. But they clearly weren't deliberately trying to cause all that damage.
It doesn't matter, the effect was still the same. Intent is important, but it's not everything. And at this point, I'm really tired of professionals with responsibility playing dumb. "Oops, sowwy!" doesn't work for engineers when a bridge collapses. Why do programmers and executives alike get away with it?
Sure.
They're still not as bad as ransomware hackers.
Crowdstrikes actions are akin to manslaughter while ransomwaring hospitals is more akin to murder.
They accidentally outsourced QA to save a buck.
If you cut corners while still being wildly profitable it's negligent at best.
corporate death penalty
Or russia
regardless who, whom, and how, right ?
Yeah. I’m not picking sides nor am I advocating for an inhuman response. Just that it deserves the full attention of the media and state departments every time.
Disclaimers exist for legal reasons, not for moral ones or a personal opinion.
I think we all agree that hacking scammers is a net positive for society.
I don’t think disclaimers really work. I think it’s just urban legend that they do.
I find it hard to believe if some scammer is hacked and the evidence shows the hacker learned everything from solely this video then this disclaimer won’t mean anything legally.
I think disclaimers are just a bit of noise that people put in out of an abundance of caution.
Out of curiosity, are you a lawyer or is this comment missing the IANAL disclaimer that is customary when opining about legal matters?
At least some disclaimers aren't just noise—they add context that would otherwise be missing to help the reader navigate the subtext. The "this is not my work" portion of that disclaimer is highly relevant and useful information for interpreting the blog. The afformentioned IANAL disclaimer helps readers to understand whether your opinion has any stronger basis in law than their own.
I also strongly suspect that some disclaimers would have legal value in the event of someone misusing information being dispensed, but IANAL.
When a lawyer posts on a forum topic related to the law they usually tell you they’re a lawyer, but not your lawyer and it’s not legal advice.
Safe to assume everyone else is not a lawyer.
Probably safe, yes, though it's still polite to leave the marker for other people to follow later.
And, to the topic at hand: if lawyers consistently do that, that again speaks to the legal value of at least some disclaimers.
Appeal to authority is considered a courtesy nowadays? Fascinating.
Like the previous commenter points out, actual lawyers are quite clear that their statements in this kind of non-professional capacity hold no more weight than any other random Joe. There is no situation of authority. IANAL/IAAL may have once been a funny meme – albeit one quite tired at this point – but doesn't add anything, and may be a detractor if one falls prey to the logically fallacy it potentially introduces.
Defering to an Expert =/= Appealing to Authority
Concluding that a statement holds greater significance because it was stated by an expert === appeal to authority. The person is irrelevant. Just as lawyers regularly point out, their work done outside of a professional context is no different than work done by anyone else. Their expertise is only significant in that when work is done in a professional context they promise to go over and above to put in the proper care to ensure that the work stands up to scrutiny. But even then the work must stand alone! They cannot just throw down whatever gobbledygook and call it something notable just because they are acting as a lawyer. The person is irrelevant.
As before, it used to be a funny meme – albeit one that has become tired – but there is no significance to it. Who the person is tells absolutely nothing about the rest of the comment.
They usually don't stick "DISCLAIMER" in all caps in front of that note, as if the word itself was some kind of magical incantation.
I am not a lawyer, but didn’t include the disclaimer because I don’t think it’s relevant to my comment.
Even were I a lawyer, it should carry the same weight. Some random, kind internet stranger sharing ideas.
I think it distracts from the conversation as I wasn’t giving legal advice but just thinking about how useful and relevant disclaimers are.
The comment is more about too much bullshit language used in our lives, so I think minimizing (or at least intending and attempting to) bullshit in my own comments is something I can control.
merely being a lawyer still isn't enough. They would have to be licensed in the state in which the potential action took place, and fully informed about the circumstances.
This reminded me the commercial "I am not a lawyer, but I did stay at Holiday Inn last night".
Disclaimers can be shown in court if it comes that far. If you seem to be an expert on something but make a mistake you can get into trouble for practicing [law/medicine/...] without a license. By putting in a disclaimer you make it clear that while you seem to know something you are not claiming to be an expert which can protect you. If you actually are an expert it is even more important because someone might take your generic advice as specific even though there is some complex detail about their situation that makes it not apply.
Most of the time this won't matter. People and courts generally know advice isn't to be trusted, if this goes to court it will probably be laughed out before they even see your disclaimer. However since there is trusted advice on the internet and courts/the law hasn't figured out where there is always risk and a disclaimer helps protect you against the court deciding you were playing an expert.
Of course I'm not a lawyer, I'm only guessing as to what will happen. I'm reasonably sure no lawyer will comment on this for reasons above.
> Disclaimers exist for legal reasons, not for moral ones or a personal opinion.
In other words, a scam towards the reader?
How so? They inform the reader not to misinterpret the information as advice specific to their situation.
Until we find out later that the scammers masked themselves using someone elses identity and they hacked an innocent person.
We have all received email from a legitimate place where a scammer uses your email to spam and then legitimate company thinks your email sent it.
"Joe job": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job>
Some of them are being held prisoner and are being forced to run these scams under threat of torture. There was a Search Engine episode about this in the last year.
John Oliver did a great segment on it.
I won't link to it, because he seems to piss some of the folks, hereabouts, off.
since he only pokes fun at one side, it's hard to tell what the truth is.
This is anecdotal and not at all representative. He points out issues on both sides. It's not his fault "one side" tends to warrant that kind of scrutiny so often lately.
What is the 'other side' to people being scammed that you think he should have covered?
This was 100% apolitical. A lot of his stuff is, and his team really does their homework.
The stuff he says before the main story, tends to be quite political, but the main story, itself, is often apolitical.
Not sure why the chilling effect for linking to it, you have 26k karma, but here it is:
John Oliver: Pig butchering scam.
https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg
It's not a karma thing. It's a basic desire to play well in the community.
I'm quite aware that not everyone is on the same page, and this just helps to indicate a basic respect for others that may not like him.
As you can see, that didn't actually work, as just the mention of his name, got a ding.
The problem with John Oliver is that his stuff can be really good, or it can be incredibly one-sided and inaccurate, and the viewer can never tell because his over the top style just kind of relentlessly overwhelms you and is engineered to elicit strong emotions. It's good entertainment but as an informational source his show is very fraught.
"19th century cotton growers were awful people"
"but the people growing the cotton were enslaved"
"the enslavers, generally known as cotton growers, were awful people"
Do you think the slaves would be happy if you set fire to the awful enslaver's cotton field while they were working?
Some might, but it's their choice to make, no yours.
Related: on NPR yesterday, “How criminal syndicates traffic, torture and enslave people to send scam text messages”
“https://www.npr.org/2024/08/08/nx-s1-5058798/how-criminal-sy...
Audio and transcript.
As far as I can tell, these scammers were in China.
Nothing illegal until they sign an extradition treaty with the US.
Which they won't, lmao.
Isn't it?
Like if I fly from China to US and offer you a bridge in exchange for $20 and take the $20 and don't give you a bridge, it's a scam.
What's the difference between that and doing it online? The offer is still posed on US soil; if anything it should expose you to the legality of both countries.
The difference is if I'm still in the US the US police will arrest me. If I'm in China the US police has to ask China to arrest me - if China refuses to arrest me than no crime was committed as far as I'm concerned since my government let me get away with it.
Technically the US can start a war with China, which could reach the point of the US military capturing me and bringing me to the US thus ensuring I don't get away wit it. Realistically that isn't happening though. There are also trade-war options which sometimes happen in high profile cases, but often they are seen as losing more than gained.
Note that most countries will arrest me and send me to the US if presented evidence. If you used France as your example country and so I'm exposed the the legality of both countries. Russia and North Korea are most well noted as protecting their own people against crimes like this committed elsewhere, so if you can get protection from those countries for this crime it isn't a crime because nothing will happen (war of course is an option but it seems unlikely). China is a grey area - they sometimes protect their own, but often they will not, in general for this scam I'd expect they would arrest you for this scam, but not all of them.
Sure, the US might not be able to arrest you if you're not within it's territory. But that's still the same as selling you a bridge for $20 and just hoping on a flight to China.
It doesn't make it legal though; it just means you aren't arrested. The DoJ may still issue indictments [1].
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=doj+warrents+for+russian+hac...
"Possession is nine tenths of the law."
The laws aren't universally the same in all countries. Copyright/product counterfeiting can vary from country to country for instance, so you can do something legally in one country but the importation of such a product into another country would be illegal. China makes all kinds of knock-off DVDs and products, while US resellers can get themselves in a bunch of trouble for importing and selling such products. Large scale US resellers get arrested for selling these Chinese knock-offs, but it doesn't mean that the Chinese manufacturers engaged in a legal activity in their own country are at risk of being arrested and deported to the US even though they're the bigger fish.
With your bridge example different countries and jurisdictions could have different requirements for the purchase of real estate or that you even were buying real estate rather than like an NFT, toy model, etc. A scam in the US might not be considered a scam in a foreign jurisdiction and even within the US it might not be considered a scam, like if someone offers you a quit claim deed for whatever interests they have in a bridge for $20 that could be considered legal depending on what representations were made. In fact a person buying a quit claim deed for way below market value could find themselves in hot water being investigated for like elder abuse with them being seen as the one trying to pull a scam on a potentially vulnerable property owner.
An extradition treaty doesn't define what is and isn't legal, it defines under what circumstances a country who is party to the treaty will surrender someone who is currently sheltering in their territory to face prosecution in another country.[1]
So for example some GRU agents came to the UK and attempted to murder a couple of Russian expats using a nerve agent called Novichok[2]. As well as the original targets, three further people were poisoned and had to be hospitalised, one of whom died.
Unsurprisingly perhaps Russia won't extradite their millitary intelligence officers back to the UK to face justice. This doesn't change the fact that murder and attempted murder are definitely illegal in the UK.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-extradition
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...
Why is the author afraid of getting sued by scammers? I think there should be some legal protections for people like them. Better yet - a licensing program to allow them to do this without legal repercussions as long as it’s done within the guardrails of the framework.
Being civilly sued by scammers isn't the fear, it's being prosecuted by the state for committing CFAA (or similar) crimes.
Because, believe it or not, the system is better at inflicting pain at someone honest than someone crooked.
I don't because some scammers will find ways to frame their enemies. If you attack the person/organizations doing the scam fine - but don't attack an innocent organization. Most of vigilantes are not careful to tell the difference.
back around 2007, the scam: "send you a check for a mistakenly huge amount and ask you to refund the difference" was in full swing. In their email they said they'd overnight a check, and I thought "good, overnight shipping is very expensive, at least if I scam them I'm costing them $20 in fees", but no. Brought the envelope to a friend at UPS, he gave it to their fraud department, and behold the letter was sent using a stolen corporate shipping account. Maybe I helped by getting that account shut down, but I also ended up costing them money.
Exactly! People are not trained in gathering and interpreting evidence. And when they are “investigating” something that is personally affecting them there is probably even greater chance of them jumping to conclusions and acting rashly. Emotions will cloud judgement. And judgement was lacking in the first place because they are not trained in how to investigate matters and they are not familiar with tactics that criminals use to make it appear like they are someone else.
Several years ago when I still had a Facebook account there was a guy that DMed me yelling at me and accusing me of trying to “hack him”. His evidence? The reverse DNS record for a server was pointing to a domain I owned. I replied and told him the reverse record was out of date. I had previously rented a VPS with that IP address and I had had the reverse record point to my domain. I had since cancelled the rental of that VPS and now the hosting company had assigned the IP to someone else. Apparently the hosting company had not bothered to remove the reverse DNS record from their systems so it was still pointing to my domain. The guy that was yelling at me was of course too stupid to understand this when I explained it to him so I gave up on trying to educate him and blocked him from being able to send me any more DMs.
Now imagine if this guy had started a full-on retaliation campaign based on his misguided “evidence”. Luckily for me I never heard or seen from him again.
But yeah, that kind of thing is exactly why “vigilante justice” is such an incredibly dangerous and stupid idea.
Same could be said for self-defense, though it is effectively banned in most "civilized" countries.
Self-defense isn't banned anywhere, the kind of 'self-defense' murder that some people in the US occasionally get away with is, though.
(For example, if your idea of self-defense starts with 'I'll be following someone around in my truck...', most other countries would let you hang.)
I don't no which countries you're referring to, but the US is not one of them.
Ah yes the classic SWIM defence.
It "doesn't condone it" but shows the exact recipe for doing it, and even distributes a dump of their PHP files. Just a CYA statement.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41198724.
They have to or they may get in trouble due to our stupid laws. From the article: "Initially, Smith says, he was wary about going public with his research, as this kind of “hacking back” falls into a “gray area”: It may be breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a sweeping US computer-crimes law, but he’s doing it against foreign-based criminals."
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them.