Lurkers in Aus:Drugs - and the individuals in Aus for the drug war

[opi8]

There are many ways to mine data from websites. Proxies is the most obvious, also posing a search bot, even simply limiting the time in between each request. Any first year programmer or less could do it.

 

[virostatiq]

Thanks. No doubt Bluelight has saved many lives however though you raise a good point. If one individual was able to rip bluelight of all of its data, then how many times has the NSW Intelligence Directorate downloaded our data?

Why didn't the servers block it Admins? How many times have the logs shown massive downloads?

Using this data, combing our posts, key word searches and other high data analysis techniques could easily result in the cops mining huge amounts of information out of this site. I'm not arguing that Bluelight doesn't have a place educating people and users however damn it we make it far to easy for the fucking enemy to hunt us down.

Hi,

I'm the guy that made that visualization. I can tell you that grabbing data from the forum was the easy part. I went really easy on the server. I deliberately timed it so that it took two full days instead of two hours.
Anyway you go, you end up with a massive database full of text, which you have then to make sense of. Natural language processing is tricky. I grabbed the posters' names too, but didn't use them.

In fact I didn't even experiment with them, but I suppose I could do some things really fast, for example build a drug profile for each member, showing what drugs one uses and periods when one does it. Or analyze all posts for town names or specific words that could give an idea of that user's location. Or even analyze interactions (post replies) between the user and other users to build a social network, then crossreferencing it with location info from previous step to see if these users maybe know each other in real life. There are many possibilities. And I'm just an amateur with very limited experience in computational linguistics.

The point is that the bigger the dataset, the more one can infer from it, even indirectly. But I don't think the cops can get the names out of it, if they don't subpoena Bluelight for server logs, then go to individual ISPs with that info. NSA, on the other hand ...

 

[virostatiq]

But then you have to figure out who is telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but but the truth so help them god
Got a bullshit detector program?

Not everyone lies, and those who do, might not lie all the time. It's hard to keep track, especially over longer period. Also, why participate in a forum and tell only lies. Nevertheless, it's a serious linguistic and statistical challenge.

 

[Azron]

I would wager 99% of lurkers are curious people seeking genuine harm minimisation/information. I lurked for 4 months before joining here & in those 4 months I would have done permanent damage to my body had it not been for bluelight & the ability to read the forums without registering.

I agree and I think there are many people who are/were in the same situation and had it not been for open easy access there could/would be a lot more people out there taking unnecessary risks.

Also I would imagine there would be a lot of people not sure about becoming a member due to their perceived possible LE consequences and anonymity issues.

 

[Azron]

Bit I do find it strange that there are always so many guests 24/7.....

 

[thestudent14]

^ Doesn't surprise me at all, I think most people who view this site wouldn't bother posting, I know a couple in RL. Plus no reason for LE not to bother making an account if their intention is to target people, more likely there's some from LE and Media to follow drug trends oppose to targeting people specifically from bluelight.

 

[JeanJM]

I love this site

 

[Divine Moments]

Bluelight shows up fairly high in internet searches for a lot of drug topics so some may well just be people who have stumbled across the site

 

[maddyboy]

It just struck me that we seem to have far too many lurkers in this forum - for example as of 4:05pm EST, there are 1 members & 78 guests (guess who the member is). I understand that we share these pages in a bid to help ordinary people find help on how to use drugs safely however we know forces that opposed to legalisation (what should be the real aim of our community) regularly browse our threads seeking to rape these forums for information to create intelligence, research, policies and operations that further their own selfish careers and the overral War on Drugs.

Law Enforcement are inherently selfish and evil when it comes to the drug war. They know they cannot win this war. That drugs on the table of the media room after a bust aren't there to do anything but improving the odds that the office in charge makes the next round of promotions. Oh look at Detective Sergeant he busted that evil Lebanese crime syndicate. With that sort of performance he'll make Inspector. Lets pay for lavish travel to conference to hob-nob with others about their pointless achievements.

This isn't just about the cops. The employees, bureaucrat, researchers and members of the National Drug Strategy, National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, National Advisory Committee on School Drug Education and dozens of other state and federal departments, agencies and such are basically funded by the Australian people to find ways to fuck us up. These groups research various places like BlueLight to identify trends, opinions and effectiveness of their strategies and operations.

Yet they are responsible for the biggest failure, and prison population that western society has ever seen. Has anyone from LE, or those aforementioned groups ever been punished for the fact that drugs are so easily available. For fucks sake I used to know one gang that would have an employee outside of the NSW parliament house dealing! Yet just this year was a conference at Luna Park where hundreds of people involved in this community, some of the very lurkers on these forums, sat around, drinking the finest Australian wines (oh the irony) and had fancy pointless speeches on ways to stop, proscute, attack and "cure" us poor ole addicts of our diseases.

Even the pro harm miminisation crowd are either cowards or for the most part against legalisation. Maybe decriminalisation but always from a context of reducing harm and never from the point of view that drug use should be a intrinsic freedom and that freely available, cleanly produced and affordable narcotics and psychedelics would reduce the vast majority of problems associated with drug use. With a properly funded health and education system supporting this system there would be massive improvements in our lives.

Many people on Bluelight discuss consistently and constantly the inability to find accessible Medically Assisted Treatment for Opioid Dependence (MOTAD - bupe and metahdone) and other programs for other forms of addiction.

These fucking lurkers ignore these stories and instead look for intelligence to further their own careers.

So Bluelight why haven't you take steps to stop these lurkers, these groups from raping our forums of our lives, our stories? A few things off the bat you could do

- assert copyright on all material published by users on bluelight. In turn any agency that uses this information in publications, policy and other areas could be sued for breaching copyright (without permission).
- blocking the IP addresses of every single Law Enforcement and government department in the country. For that matter this should apply for other forums in BL for the countries involved. sure they can use a non-blocked service but surely you can make it harder for them.
- require people to sign up to access the forums. Require people to sign a policy undertaking that they are not law enforcement or an agency or research group that seeking BL information to further the war on drugs. At least when it comes to researchers ethics committees can stop post grads from using our information to create propaganda research.

Many things could be done to stop these fuckers and yet nothing has happened. Lately I feel like BL has gotten closer with the enemy then the community they're meant to be supporting. So many new rules and strict enforcement of polices that limit users and nothing whatsoever to stop Law Enforcement.


Hell I'll put my money where my mouth is and personally find the IP addresses.

I haven't logged on or posted here for a very long time.... But years back it wasn't the lurkers you had to worry about.