this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
277 points (97.9% liked)

World News

46074 readers
5082 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

Messages from his burner phone, too, matched the number Payne had listed in his personal contact info while applying for unemployment benefits in February.

If you put your real name on it or associate that phone number with your name, then doesn't that stop meeting the definition of a burner phone?

EDIT: I re-read the wording of the article, and I don't think he used the burner phones number associated with his name as I posted before. The article says this:

"Messages from his burner phone, too, matched the number Payne had listed in his personal contact info while applying for unemployment benefits in February. "

It sounds like he used is REAL phone/number to apply for unemployment, but then at a later time he used is REAL phone to text a message to his burner phone. So the article is saying the "messages found on his burner phone" contained his REAL phone number. This would mean authorities would have had to have the burner phone in hand. So this wasn't the way he was found, simply a way that it was confirmed it was him.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah they try to paint the guy as some tech genius but frankly he was sloppy af

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, not really a burner phone if you don't burn it. Then it's just a second phone.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure he’s dumb but his failure gives an interesting insight into how wide the US dragnet on its citizens is. A mail address used to apply for unemployment has been indexed somewhere « just in case ». Nice.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Storage and indexing is cheap. From a usability perspective indexing makes sense: call centre staff can tell someone why their unemployment application has been denied/delayed etc.

From a security perspective, Google, Proton, and friends want to track failed login IPs so they can assign (internal) reputation scores to incoming requests.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

It’s the sharing & cross enrichment that would bother me. That your unemployment office keeps a CRM with the info makes sense. That LEA has it all and more together with the gods know what else is what I would object to. Same for how service providers store that info; there’s a fine line between storing enough and too much. Or too long. And not everything needs to be tied forever to the customer ; sometimes a hash or whatever does wonder for the legitimate purpose. Storing more is often « just in case I can market the data later » which I’m personally not agreeing with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"No b-because he was a bad guy so we can accuse him of other bad guy stuff too!"

Inb4 police find "a mysterious white power" and never mention it again

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I guess you mean white powder

White power is clearly very openly rampant in police institutions worldwide - although, I guess, the white powder isn't far away either...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago