Tag Archives: google

Why is Google Picking a Fight with the Mafia?

InSight Crime reporter attended Google Ideas conference and reports from the scene… At the link are speeches from the conference.  Note that Public Security minister Alejandro Poire represented the Mexican government.  I recall that last year at the border security conference at UTEP, Poire refused to answer questions about the violence in Juarez and denied (on video) that there were refugees from the violence. None of these google ideas even deal with the question of high level government complicity with criminal organizations.  molly
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Response to Google executives visiting Juarez-WP Article

A couple of people sent me this article on google executives visiting Juarez in order to study some sort of techno fix for the violence…below is a comment from Tim Dunn…

I admit to being a little more cynical about this than Tim…  I had to laugh when I first read it…especially this at the very beginning:
 The officers were “policía federal.” Like the ones you hear about, they carried machine guns and wore masks to hide their identities. They hung off the backs of their trucks, alert, constantly swiveling as they surveyed the landscape.

They were looking for violent criminals. 

So, the techno-wizard billionaires who created GOOGLE think the federal police in Mexico are the good guys. When every man woman and child (maybe especially the kids on the street) in Juarez and the rest of Mexico know that the federal police are the kidnappers, killers, torturers and thieves, etc …  If google thinks they can keep this technology away from the bad guys…who of course, ARE the police and have much more $$ (thanks to the Merida Initiative and our US tax dollars, not to mention their own HSBC and Wells-Fargo laundered narco-dollars) to acquire whatever technology they want… well, if I had Google stock I would sell it in a flash.  Sadly, I think that the narco-rich of Mexico and the world already probably have a lot more google stock than you or I can imagine….

Here’s Tim’s comment:

Molly & Listeros,

 

See Washington Post article by 2 senior Goggle executive who recently visited Juárez, with an idea for how to reduce violence there. They propose some sort of ill-defined, yet hopefully better method of anonymously reporting crime problems and generating some sort of justice response. Seems to rely on a bunch of (seemingly naïve) assumptions that may not apply to Juárez context, though. But who knows, maybe they are on to something (& not just technological fetishism)?

 

Key paragraph:

“In a sense, we are talking about dual crowdsourcing: Citizens crowdsource incident awareness up, and responders crowdsource justice down, nearly in real time. The trick is that anonymity is provided to everyone, although such a system would know a unique ID for every user to maintain records and provide rewards. This bare-bones model could take many forms: official and nonprofit first responders, investigative journalists, whistleblowers, neighborhood watches.”

Would “crowdsourcing” include or promote vigilantism? Would “official first responders” respond if they were made more aware of crime incidents? Lack of awareness among Juárez authorities of crime is not the problem many times, as Molly et al.’s posts have made abundantly clear for years now…

Tim Dunn

Denise Dresser on Guadalajara plaza … POLICE arrested in the rape/robberies near Mexico City..

For those who may have objected to my comments about the ludicrous Google tour of Juarez with the Federal Police, see this translation from Borderland Beat of a Proceso article by Denise Dresser… and also, Several POLICE are among the perpetrators in the rape and robbery attack on the church camp outside of Mexico City. I received a complaint yesterday from a person on the list [I asked permission to post the complaint but got no reply] saying that I was wrong to place all responsibility for the Juarez violence on the federal police…something I did not do. However, since the google piece opens with a breathless description of their fearless and skilled escorts–policia federal–I mentioned the PF in my commentary.  I never said, nor do I believe, that the PF are the only killers…nor do I blame them for anything more than their share of the violence. As I’ve said in numerous postings on the list:

“…though the military sits at the pinnacle of the impunity pyramid in Mexico, it is one of many powerful groups that abduct, torture and kill Mexicans. Drug trafficking gangs kill. Street gangs kill. Municipal, state and federal police kill. And drug cartel operatives often kill from the inside of these security forces. As former Chihuahua governor, Jose Reyes Baeza, declared in March 2008,

“”All of the public security agencies are infiltrated—all of them, pure and simple…” The governor predicted a “return to normalcy” as soon as these agencies could be cleaned up. Five years on, more than 10,000 people in the city of Juárez alone are dead and so far this year, another 3.4 people are added to the tally each day.”

Note that it is the former Chihuahua governor stating that ALL of the agencies are corrupt…I’ve talked to so many people, both in Juarez and now living in exile in the US who have experienced or been witnesses to corruption and killing by the federal police, the army, the municipal and state police, that I find it the height of gullibility to assume that the federal police are the good guys–as the piece about the Google visit does. I think that the Google execs were probably invited to Juarez by powerful people who think it will give them some cachet… The Juarez press did not cover the Google visit hat happened two months ago, but Diario de El Paso did have an article about the Washington Post piece on their front page today: Surgió en Juárez sistema de denuncia vs narco de Google