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Reddit bans communities trading firearms and drugs
Reddit's bid to clean up its communities now includes what those communities trade. The social site has updated its policies to ban the trade of firearms, explosives, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), services with "physical sexual contact," stolen goods, personal info and counterfeits. Accordingly, Reddit has shut down numerous subreddits that either directly traded in these goods or were clearly meant to enable those exchanges, including r/gunsforsale, r/stealing (yes, it existed) and r/darknetmarkets.
Irish court orders accused Silk Road admin's extradition to US
Silk Road's saga hasn't ended just because some of its primary architects are behind bars. An Irish court has ordered the extradition of Gary Davis, an alleged key administrator for the Dark Web-based black market, to the US. Davis reportedly both handled customer questions and organized Silk Road's many items (including drugs and hacking tools) into sections. He's poised to appeal the ruling, and for good reason: he could face a life sentence if the US convicts him.
UK grants new powers to remotely block illegal prison mobiles
Mobile phones have to be one of the most valuable kinds of prison contraband, where they're used for keeping in touch with loved ones all the way through to running criminal empires from behind bars. According to the UK government, close to 15,000 handsets and SIM cards were confiscated last year alone. But thanks to new powers granted to prison and police officers, they can now be disconnected remotely, removing the need to physically find the things to take them out of circulation.
Drone smuggling prison contraband gets stymied by stupidity
Smuggling contraband into prison via drone is a bad idea, even if you toss morals out the window: the aircraft are noisy, flashy, and require a good amount of skill to fly in undetected. However, some British crooks didn't get the memo. Police report that unidentified suspects tried using a drone (a DJI Phantom 2 Vision, to be exact) to sneak drugs, phones and weapons into Bedford Prison, only to be foiled when the machine got caught in barbed wire. Prisoners supposedly paid an inmate to accept a delivery from friends on the outside -- if so, there are quite a few people in hot water right now.
Woman tries, fails to smuggle 44 iPhones into Israel
Sigh. We don't know whether to congratulate the enterprising spirit of this venture or to bemoan the sad state of a world where a 60-something-year old lady feels compelled to turn into an iPhone smuggler. Either way, Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport has given us a pretty good reason for the use of full body scanners, which revealed the woman in question was strapped with 44 iPhone 4s all around her body. Dressed in traditional Georgian attire, the lady had some struggles walking around, which raised suspicion and got the officials to run her through the machines. Guess this gives us a whole new definition to the phrase "stocking stuffer," eh? [Original image credit: buystoreshelving.com]
House passes Cellphone Contraband Act of 2010, prisoners go back to writing letters
Oh, we know all about doin' time. We watched both Oz and The Wire in their entirety, and have seen Let's Go To Prison, like, eight times. For instance, we know that you only do two days in the joint: the day you go in, and the day you go out. And we know that tattoo guns are readily available (if you have access to an old walkman or Playstation).We also know that cellphones are contraband, and rightfully so: you wouldn't want an inmate ordering a hit on someone, or running their record label from in "the stir." That's why we stand with the CTIA in support of S.1749, or The Cell Phone Contraband Act of 2010. Approved in April by the Senate, and passed by the house yesterday, this amendment to title 18 of the United States Code prohibits "possession or use of cellphones and similar wireless devices by Federal prisoners." And once it's signed into law by the President, we're sure that the no-goodniks will stop sneaking handsets in and we can forget all that silly talk of prison cellphone jamming once and for all.
Joystiq at the Ninja Gaiden Band concert
The concept is simple: a four-piece band recreates the soundtrack to the original Ninja Gaiden for NES while one skilled player runs through the game with little effort. You may have heard about this before when they previously performed as Contraband (Contra, natch), Megaband (Mega Man II) and Zeldaband (the first two dungeons of Legend of Zelda). On Friday, Joystiq attended the Ninja Gaiden Band concert, playing at the Caledonia Lounge as part of Athens, Georgia's annual music festival Athfest (the night prior, Contraband won Cover Band of the Year at the awards show). The band, comprised of the members of Cinemechanica and deft gamer Noah McCarthy, is now a two-year project of splicing classic gaming with musical performance. Work on the Ninja Gaiden Band began about a month ago, said guitarist Bryant Williamson, speaking to us before the concert. During practice, McCarthy had never had to use a continue, though Williamson said they were prepared in case he had to start over. McCarthy played on stage using via television while the signal was simultaneously projected onto a screen for the audience to watch. At 1:07 a.m. to a packed crowd, the console was turned on, the title screen came up, and the band counted in. %Gallery-4227%
Games rank low on worldwide contraband chart
The pirated video games market might be valued at $3 billion, but that figure is paled by the gobs of cash circulating the pirated movies ($18.2 billion) and software ($34 billion) trades. Indeed, pirated games rank a lowly 25th among the world's leading illegal markets; perhaps a testament to gamers' respect for game makers.Then again, if today's pirated games were as easy to play as pirated films are to view -- or as simple to install as pirated software -- we'd likely see a shift in the contraband rankings chart. Remember Dreamcast? There's a reason why console security has tightened over the years.[Via The Last Boss]
