[HN Gopher] Ericsson workers were kidnapped when telco sent them...
___________________________________________________________________
Ericsson workers were kidnapped when telco sent them to negotiate
with ISIS
Author : titoCA321
Score : 209 points
Date : 2022-03-01 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Should probably have done what this swedish chemistry professor
| did
|
| https://www.thelocal.se/20181213/lund-professor-freed-studen...
| kenjackson wrote:
| That's a great story. But who is this university security
| chief? I for some reason picture Bruce Willis, who just retired
| from being some CIA/Navy Seals operative and just took up this
| job wanting to quietly live out the rest of his years at the
| university.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Right, until something from his past came back to haunt him.
| hideo wrote:
| https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/per-gustafson
|
| Bruce Willis wishes he looks like this dude
| moritonal wrote:
| Every part of this is insane.
|
| The student Jumaah (an adult) returned willingly to Iraq to
| protect his wife and texts the professor to essentially
| apologise for the high likely-hood he wouldn't be able to turn
| in his homework (cos, you know.. beheadings).
|
| The professor chats to their Uni Security Chief who leaps to
| attention and hires his "go-to" mercenary force to rescue the
| student and his family?!
|
| They then happily give him a seemingly smallish bill for the
| whole job and no mention of visa problems. Wtf Sweden, is this
| normal?
| sterlind wrote:
| I want a PhD advisor like this! If they could defend me from
| ISIS, defending my thesis would be a cinch.
| felhr wrote:
| This is Weiland-Yutani levels of corporate evil
| glonq wrote:
| Worse than Zorg Industries?
| CleaveIt2Beaver wrote:
| All the Zorg oldies but goldies.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > One told German public broadcaster NDR that he was sent to
| Mosul with a letter on behalf of Ericsson seeking permission from
| the terror group for them to continue working there.
|
| Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go deliver
| something to a terrorist group for any amount of money.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| > Some people have zero self preservation. I wouldn't go
| deliver something to a terrorist group for any amount of money.
|
| Is this victim blaming, or am I misreading it?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The victim is not to first to be blamed, but the result is
| predictable and avoidable.
| netcan wrote:
| Yes, but no.
|
| You need the ability to distinguish between a bad social
| cliche like "short skirt, asking for it" and this.
| Supermancho wrote:
| In some cases, a victim is to blame. There are even awards
| for this sort of thing.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Self preservation is a concept which extends beyond scenarios
| with a victim and a perpetrator.
|
| Don't pet feral animals.
|
| Don't run with scissors.
|
| Don't wear a fur coat in the desert.
|
| Don't drink bottles labelled "poison".
|
| So, it should reasonably follow:
|
| Don't hand yourself over to violent, hostile people.
| 55555 wrote:
| "She shouldn't have worn such a short skirt" is not quite "He
| shouldn't have gone unarmed and alone to a meeting with ISIS
| in ISIS-held territory."
| vmception wrote:
| princeb wrote:
| it's a company like ericsson. if this person didn't have too
| much an idea of the world i can imagine he'd just think
| negotiating with what the US calls "terrorists" is just BAU in
| this part of the world.
|
| i mean, i can imagine large swathes of human habitation where
| society is organized around deadly force. literally one country
| exists right at the border, where cartels manage the economy.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you're doing infrastructure for the old regime and you're
| not particularly attached to the old regime and a new regime
| shows up it's completely normal to send some reps to figure out
| if the project is to be continued and the details thereof.
|
| Obviously there are situational judgement calls that can't be
| captured by slinging stupid internet rules of thumb around but
| this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing basic
| infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state needs.
| That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in. It's not like
| they are a defense contractor who were supplying the people
| shooting at the new regime a week ago. And in this case it was
| a local contractor so that adds a potential layer of baggage.
| kodah wrote:
| ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd
| like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups as
| political entities. It has been known to vendors that operate
| in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics they
| employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups. This is all
| common intel that vendors would have and obviously intel
| someone in their legal department bothered to read.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are not "regimes" and I'd
| like to caution you away from normalizing terrorist groups
| as political entities. It has been known to vendors that
| operate in those areas who terrorists are and what tactics
| they employ. There is no "neutrality" to these groups
|
| Oh piss off with the rhetoric. The Taliban did and does run
| Afghanistan. For a brief moment Isis was running parts of
| Iraq and Syria. Both are trying to perform typical state
| administrative functions (courts and rule of law, taxes,
| defense, controlling borders, etc). One way just way more
| violent and way less successful than the other. Neutrality
| is not a foriegn concept in the middle east. They just have
| way different concepts of "non-neutrality by association,
| group membership and history" than most of the west does.
|
| Edit: What constitutes a state or government of a state
| doesn't change because we don't like the specific policy
| decisions of said state or government or because said
| government maintains power through a level of violence we
| consider unacceptable.
| kodah wrote:
| This is an odd take. I was in Afghanistan for a total of
| a year. The Taliban courts that you're talking about
| executed a woman for having two forced relationships
| between two rival men, they would extract young men from
| their homes and make them into forced fighters, they
| enslaved local populaces for poppy season, just to name a
| few. Kidnapping and ransom is like a side business to
| them.
| logifail wrote:
| > they would extract young men from their homes and make
| them into forced fighters
|
| Yesterday a senior German politician floated the idea of
| reintroducing (or, more accurately, "reactivating")
| compulsory military service. It previously ran from 1956
| until 2011.[0]
|
| As someone else has already pointed out, pretty much all
| of this stuff can be viewed as shades of grey. Apart from
| the facts that war is awful, and that that despite that,
| certain people are happy to get rich from it.
|
| [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/killing-
| time-fo... see also
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-military-
| and-...
| kodah wrote:
| "Compulsory military service" is not even in the same
| vicinity as being dragged out of your home at gunpoint
| and being told to fight or your family dies.
|
| Also worth pointing out what the Taliban has been
| condemned for in the last decade:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Condemned_practices
|
| I forgot they also conscript children.
| treis wrote:
| Please explain the shades of grey in executing a woman
| for getting raped by two men
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| These are terrible things being conducted by the state.
| There still very much was/is a Taliban regime, even if
| you consider them a terrorist group. I believe the US
| would refer to them as a "rogue state."
| toss1 wrote:
| NO
|
| It does not matter that they are 'merely performing
| "typical state administrative functions". The great
| accolade for Mussolini was that he kept the trains
| running on time.
|
| Dealing with such people is a losing game - they always
| deceive and always take more until stopped.
|
| The only proper response to authoritarians, despots,
| fascists etc. was provided by the Snake Island garrison
| to the Russian destroyer: "Go F*k Yourselves".
|
| And the same goes for apologist-type responses like
| yours.
|
| If you have not figured this out from this week's events,
| you need to seriously rethink your life.
| vmception wrote:
| The Taliban got demonized by the US 20 years ago but they
| were not "pursuing political outcomes" - the relevant
| definition of terrorist - as they had already achieved
| them. Just because we don't like them or respect them
| doesn't mean we can warp the definition of terrorist to
| include them, the US' mission was only to ensure that Al
| Queda was not leveraging Taliban military infrastructure.
| Obviously we know that any superpower saying "we're just
| targeting military" is bullshit. But it happened there too,
| and then the scope increased to ousting the Taliban and it
| failed.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm really confused by this take. From the use of the
| word "demonized" to your direct assertion that the
| definition of terrorist is somehow "warped" to make it
| fit the Taliban. Can you take a look at this non-
| exhaustive list and let me know what you believe is
| "warped" based on public record?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Condemned_practices
| vmception wrote:
| It should be pretty clear that the post is about a
| specific definition of terrorism and not my opinion on
| their practices, the only thing being warped is the
| definition. If its not clear, compartmentalize it and
| reapply everything said until it is clear.
| kodah wrote:
| I am asking _how_ you can justify using those words in
| light of their documented behavior. If it 's not clear,
| I'd like you to put your argument in plaintext with clear
| citations as to how the Taliban was demonized (eg: how
| things that people fear them for are not true) and how we
| changed the definition of "terrorism" to fit them.
| vmception wrote:
| By their political aims already having been met in 2000.
| They already controlled Afghanistan. They control it
| again.
|
| The US went on a war with a group that was hoping for
| political aims. It was very clear about that, and then
| eventually went on a 10-20 year war with the Taliban
| anyway. Here is Vice President Joe Biden affirming that
| in 2011. Their domestic policy in Afghanistan is not
| terrorism, while their external policy needs to be
| reconciled.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/vp-biden-
| says-...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-
| afgha...
|
| Try to find a source you happen to respect that says the
| same thing.
|
| Subsequently President Trump continued direct
| negotiations with them, which never broke our "not
| negotiating with terrorists policy" because.............
| I think you're starting to get it. With now President
| Biden fulfilling the pullout deadline that Trump
| negotiated, giving their country back to them because
| turns out there was ... _a_ ... group trying to fulfill a
| political aim - something I 've avoided saying as to not
| dilute and distract from my point.
|
| The US campaign against the Taliban required demonizing
| them as terrorists under the definition of terrorists
| which is simply inaccurate, this observation has nothing
| to do with their human rights record it has to do with
| political aims that they hadn't already have achieved,
| the US was required to leverage its media and general
| islamophobia that allowed for the public to not
| distinguish between distinct groups. This was successful,
| while on the ground the people that mattered had to treat
| them separately for diplomacy, which continues to this
| day with an outcome that isn't surprising at all when
| understanding why we shouldn't have attempted
| marginalizing the Taliban to begin with. Now they have
| Afghanistan back, the way it was before we got involved.
|
| I'm not sure if any of this information is new to you,
| but ultimately this is purely semantics. The human rights
| record isn't a factor.
| kodah wrote:
| Another interesting take.
|
| 2011 is when I was in Afghanistan and I can attest that
| both Joe Biden and Barack Obama lied to the American
| people about the progress in the war during that time
| because they ultimately wanted _out_. Let me juxtapose my
| experience with Mr Biden 's words:
|
| > "We are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and
| desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and
| have as a target the United States of America and their
| allies, that's good enough. That's good enough. We're not
| there yet.
|
| To be clear, the Taliban is the _only_ force we were
| fighting in Helmand and Nimroz provinces.
|
| > Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's
| critical. There is not a single statement that the
| president has ever made in any of our policy assertions
| that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S.
| interests.
|
| The only thing I can think of during that time that this
| correlates to is the fact that they wanted out so bad
| they were willing to make peace with the Taliban. The
| Taliban's guerilla techniques and crafty use of IEDs and
| VBIEDs were having a huge impact on US troops and were
| dessimating the local population. To the extent that the
| Taliban figured out that if they just bombed places we
| went that local populaces would blame us for attracting
| the Taliban to their area.
|
| > If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the
| existing government, which is cooperating with us in
| keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us,
| then that becomes a problem for us."
|
| This is almost a complete reverse course in what he had
| just said. Basically, the Taliban is not a threat until
| they are. He's basically trying to coax the people guilty
| of a series of heinous war crimes that they can also be
| regarded as a political entity. I'm reminded of the
| whitewashing of the IRA, who shouldn't have been a
| political party either.
|
| Human rights has everything to do with their connection
| to the word "terrorism".
| vmception wrote:
| Its just not our place to bother with organizations
| already in power. And I'm glad this is the not an "edgy"
| take anymore.
|
| Due to a third party, we went in to deal with the third
| party and used the opportunity to oust the first party.
| We took their state and designated them as non-state
| enemy combatants, colloquially calling them terrorists.
| That's kinda messed up. It also didn't work.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| A terrorist group doesn't stop being a terrorist group
| because they control some territory. Their lack of state
| apparatus in the areas they controlled prevents them from
| being called a state, and the continued use of terror
| tactics like public beheadings and rapes. Maintaining the
| objectives they had already achieved is still political.
| vmception wrote:
| There are regimes we respect in that region that do
| public beheadings, as detailed in law. Like I said, once
| you have sovereign immunity the standard for criticism or
| even airtime changes. Practically dissipates from the
| collective conscious, aside from a footnote in an obscure
| right's group annual report.
| titoCA321 wrote:
| > The contractor was kept under house arrest, and claimed
| that the Ericsson manager then stopped answering his calls.
| "He abandoned me, he turned off the phone and disappeared."
|
| In some organizations it's also typical to throw the
| contractor and underlings under the bus when the project
| turns to sh*t.
| krisoft wrote:
| That was the perception of the employee. Clearly the whole
| thing is way out of normal, but what do you expect from the
| manager when they are informed that one of their employees
| are taken hostage? Become a trained hostage negotiator and
| one-man-army?
|
| Later the article says:
|
| > But the report says that one of the company's partners
| "made arrangements" with IS to secure his release and let
| the company continue its work in Mosul.
|
| So no, the person wasn't abandoned.
|
| There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct
| before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up
| there? But first thing I would expect from the manager
| after the kidnapping is to find a professional to handle
| the situation. And the professional very well might advice
| the manager to cut communications.
| toss1 wrote:
| What do I expect from the manager?
|
| Not to become a hostage negotiator darmy, but to hand the
| phone and the matter off to a proper hostage negotiator
| and army.
|
| Not to just forking ghost the guy.
| posterboy wrote:
| > There is a lot of questions about the manager's conduct
| before the kidnapping. How the heck did things end up
| there?
|
| Ali's brother runs with the crew and will keep an eye
| out, something like that I imagine.
| lazide wrote:
| Doing business with someone implicitly supports them. There
| is no way around that.
|
| As an infrastructure provider, it makes it tough because
| pulling out of a country is going to harm normal folks at
| least as much, if not more, than whoever is in charge you are
| refusing to do business with.
|
| But that doesn't mean providing critical infrastructure
| services to _literal terrorists_ is ok.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| > but this is Ericson we're talking about. They're providing
| basic infrastructure stuff that anyone seeking to run a state
| needs. That's a pretty neutral thing to be involved in.
|
| I totally disagree that Ericsson could be considered a
| neutral party as a foreign corporation doing business in
| Iraq. There is nothing neutral about doing business with a
| hostile foreign government. That's just not normal in any
| way. It's not like they had never heard of ISIS and were
| oblivious to all the Sharia law and violence going on in
| Iraq.
| causi wrote:
| You could possibly make an argument for some groups considered
| terror groups for actions against governments, but ISIS throws
| gay people off building and puts civilians in cages before
| burning them alive. You must feel for the unaffiliated
| residents but there's no way I'd set foot there for any reason.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Negotiate over zoom. With the video off. Using a VPN.
| toss1 wrote:
| NO
|
| You just forking do not negotiate (except for the release
| of hostages, while ensuring that all other potential
| hostages are moved out of harm's way).
|
| If you do, you can expect nothing but a continuously
| escalating stream of demands.
|
| It is a fool's game - the only winning move is to not play.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is like nuclear power plant construction projects,
| that way.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, at least for standard-type plants, only way to win
| is not play.
|
| I'm hoping that newer designs designed from the start to
| be inherently safe, and often smaller and more modular,
| and/or using different elements such as Thorium, will
| result in designs that can win, but they do seem to have
| stalled a bit
| octopoc wrote:
| Reminds of one time I was interviewing someone and I asked why
| he had left his previous job. He said they were building a
| device to block cell phone usage in prisons, and the inmates
| figured out who was making the hardware and slipped word out to
| their enforcers outside the prison with the name of the
| manufacturer. Soon all the employees started getting death
| threats. So, he quit.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am always shocked to learn just how porous prisons are and
| why nothing seems to be done about that.
| [deleted]
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| After watching some documentaries about foreign prisons it
| often seems that the jail is run by the inmates and that
| the guards are just there to make sure nobody escapes.
| vkou wrote:
| It's not ran by the inmates, the guards just have a small
| source of side income if they 'bend' the rules.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| If the inmates employ the guards, they are running it
| then. Why are inmates allowed currency?
| lazide wrote:
| They usually aren't allowed direct currency. But if they
| are trading and have a means to reach the outside (guards
| or visitors), that is rarely a major barrier. If they're
| pimping, arranging 'free visits' for guards is one way.
| having a designated money guy outside who handles
| payments and they just need to authorize so and so to get
| $10k, that kind of thing, is another.
|
| And once you have guards on the payroll, the rules
| generally have a lot more flexibility.
| Clubber wrote:
| Prisons give a sweet exclusive contract to the phone
| company who charges a unethical amount to the families to
| talk to prisoners.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/high-cost-prison-
| communicati...
|
| Just another example of absolute corruption and how our
| representative democracy doesn't work for us.
| burkaman wrote:
| Inmates need to be able to talk to people outside of
| prison, nothing should be done about it.
| cbg0 wrote:
| This allows various crime overlords to stay in power by
| ordering underlings outside to do their bidding. There's
| a good reason why phones are not allowed in prison and
| why phone calls to the outside are monitored, otherwise
| it would just be a vacation home you can't leave.
| burkaman wrote:
| That's true, but it also allows human beings to stay in
| touch with reality, their families, an outside world that
| they're eventually going to reenter. Cutting off
| communication would be a disaster for people inside and
| outside prison - it would increase recidivism, increase
| suicide, break up families, mentally destroy prisoners,
| and likely increase crime overall. It's a terrible idea.
|
| I also don't think phone calls are the only thing
| separating prison from a vacation home.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Nobody in this thread mentioned cutting off
| communication, aside from you. One poster mentioned they
| worked on a "device to block _cell phone_ usage in
| prisons ".
| burkaman wrote:
| The thread was a story about inmates communicating to
| people outside prison, then someone saying "I am always
| shocked to learn just how porous prisons are and why
| nothing seems to be done about that." I interpreted that
| as "why isn't anything done about inmates being able to
| talk to people outside", but I could be wrong.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I took that as the a ability to get prohibited items into
| prison.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| This is what happens when hackernews commenters try to
| flex their vocabulary instead of just spelling out what
| they mean like a normal person.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I saw a documentary where an inmate was scamming people by
| placing ads in men's gay magazines. They would ask for
| money and/or extort them after finding out who they were
| and where they lived. He amassed hundreds of thousands of
| dollars using letters and the prison phones in this scam.
| He had already purchased a house and a car in preparation
| for his release and saving up to buy his way out prison.
|
| A lawyer stole his money and blamed it on his friend and
| law partner, a judge, who the inmate had murdered
| (including his wife who was a shoe-in for mayor)...from
| prison. The lawyer snagged the mayoral seat after she was
| killed--for a short period until getting caught and sent to
| prison himself.
|
| Apparently prison offers few barriers to conducting
| business.
| dehrmann wrote:
| In the US, isn't the legality of jammers very questionable?
| It might be less bad somewhere federally owned, but a state
| prison interfering with signals might be violating FCC rules.
|
| Alternatively, you could build the prison like a Faraday
| cage.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yelling_cat wrote:
| There aren't many reasonable use cases for sending a fax these
| days but this is definitely one.
| newmac wrote:
| Ericsson announced it was going to acquire Vonage for over $6bn
| in late November, at the peak peak of tech stock multiples.
| https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2021/11/ericsson-...
|
| You really have to wonder if that deal is going to close with
| this hullabaloo and the cratering of multiples in the time since.
| stef25 wrote:
| Lafarge, the world's biggest cement producer did something
| similar. They pad millions to ISIS to be allowed to keep
| operating in Syria
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210907-french-firm-lafa...
| grammers wrote:
| _The revelation comes after Ericsson was forced to admit it had
| paid ISIS to allow it to operate and travel through land
| controlled by the terrorist group. After it admitted to the crime
| earlier this month, shares in the company fell more than 14
| percent._
|
| It's all about the money. Human rights only matter on paper.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The thought of contract workers wearing off-color Ericsson badges
| parading into a building where they might end up beheaded while
| on a mission to install 802.11ac routers... is quite dystopian.
| xbar wrote:
| I salute your bravery, kidnapped contractors.
|
| I would rather a bunch of Ericsson contractors get kidnapped and
| ransomed, and local evil terrorist goons bribed by Ericsson (a
| greed-driven, evil telcom), and then have local Ericsson towers
| installed and operating than have it all done by Huawei to the
| same effect.
| johnwayne666 wrote:
| The source of the linked article seems to be the following BBC
| article which I find contains more information:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60507831
|
| See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60406119
| steve76 wrote:
| EE84M3i wrote:
| Could someone explain what these workers were actually doing? It
| sounds like they were setting up cell networks, I guess cell
| networks contract with Ericsson to essentially run their
| infrastructure for them?
|
| I was under the impression that Ericson mostly made
| hardware/software and sold it to companies running cell networks,
| but I guess I was wrong.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The network hardware manufacturers are pushing heavily into
| becoming basically "networks as a service". And many networks
| are happy to decide that their core competency is not actually
| running a mobile network but marketing or something.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Mobile telecom companies have near-zero in-house engineering
| capability. It's all outsourced and they're even proud of it.
| toast0 wrote:
| Cell networks are a mix of run by the company with hardware
| purchased (or leased, maybe) from Ericson, Huawei, etc; run by
| a contracting firm (IBM, etc) with hardware from whoever; run
| by Ericson or Huawei with probably the same company equipment,
| but they can probably operate the other stuff too.
|
| Some networks run part of the business and contract out other
| parts, etc. I worked with a fair number of international
| carriers at my last job and couldn't figure out the pattern of
| when I'd get a contact with an email at the carrier domain or
| at a big global consultancy (telco or general) or at
| hotmail/gmail. Even the large international carriers would be
| different on a country by country level.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| Local Telco purchased a bunch of gear from Ericsson including
| installation, Ericsson subcontracted it to a local partner on
| the ground, whose staff got kidnapped.
|
| This kind of thing is quite standard in telco. I was briefly
| involved in one project in Iraq myself, but due to the risks
| involved stayed in Kuwait and VPN'd into Baghdad, where our
| local partner had set up and ran the data center.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I don't how much Ericsson is paying but it can't possibly be
| enough to deal with Islamic terrorists...
| Maxburn wrote:
| Maybe this was one of those mercenary groups? That's the
| nearest I can figure.
| causi wrote:
| _The company is also believed to have bribed the terrorist group
| to allow it to use a fast route through ISIS territory that
| avoided government checkpoints.
|
| The telco used sham contracts, inflated invoices, and falsified
| financial statements to funnel millions to ISIS and local power
| brokers, with millions still unaccounted for._
|
| Oh damn. That's going beyond just trying to maintain your
| infrastructure for the sake of the populace.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Companies that are willing to pay terrorist groups will have no
| qualms about doing business with Russia, which is why all of
| the talk of sanctions is usually pointless. Nobody keeps to
| them on things that matter. If there's money to be made,
| companies will deal with terrorists no problem and as we've
| seen from past sanctions on nation-states, governments will
| carve out all kind of exceptions for the well connected and
| turn a blind eye to even more, only giving a slap on the wrist
| to those who get caught.
| acdha wrote:
| This isn't a given, and your stating of it as a certainty
| seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those things only
| happen to the extent that voters let them and telling
| everyone that it's inevitable is exactly what keeps
| corruption running.
|
| Tyler Cowen refers to this as the libertarian vice:
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/08/th.
| ..
|
| There is an enormous range of tolerance for this and
| portraying it all in the most cynical light is actively
| harmful.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Those things only happen to the extent that voters let
| them
|
| I don't know how it is in other places, but in the US the
| only people who can effectively make change in government
| are the extremity wealthy, corporations, and industry lobby
| groups. The average citizen and mass-based interest groups
| have effectively zero impact on policy.
| (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...)
|
| It's one thing to say "Let's not be cynical", but we can't
| ignore evidence either. As disheartening as it may be,
| voters are not able to effectively influence policy against
| the interests of a very small number of very rich people.
| As much as I'd like to think it's still possible to change
| things within the system we have, that same system has been
| captured and manipulated to make that increasingly
| difficult over centuries.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > Those things only happen to the extent that voters let
| them
|
| To be fair, the Achilles heel of democracy is that most
| voters are easily manipulated. Demagogy, fake grass roots
| movements, infotainment, religion, gerrymandering, etc.
| Unless one of the small parties gets better at
| manipulation, USA will vote for two candidates of the same
| two parties forever.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm not saying it's easy but we have had plenty of
| elections which came down to minor variations in turnout.
| If your message is "they're all the same, why bother?"
| you are not going to get people to turnout as much as "we
| can do this, here's how!" and since you know that there
| are billions of dollars pushing falsehoods it's pretty
| much certain that things will go a way you don't want in
| the absence of counterpressure.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I mean... Italy carved out exceptions for luxury goods.
|
| People will be easily manipulated and will trade a life of
| child in the next city for an extra $1 in their pocket.
|
| It's morbid, but constant pressure is the only way.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Those things only happen to the extent that voters let
| them...
|
| Voters have to be aware of things in order to influence
| them. This is why a free press and government (and
| corporate) transparency are critical. All 3 of those seem
| to be in decline lately.
| acdha wrote:
| No argument. My point is simply that this is not the
| natural order of things and we can consciously correct
| for it.
| elliekelly wrote:
| We have laws (like FCPA) to address this but it's quite
| difficult to "police" and there aren't a lot of incentives
| for someone to blow the whistle.
| from wrote:
| There is now. You can get 10-30% of the settlement the
| company makes with the government. If anyone reading this
| has any information about their company making bribes to
| foreign governments and does not particularly care about
| their company then they should contact a lawyer who
| specializes in corporate whistleblowing and begin the
| process of collecting their settlement bucks.
| ct0 wrote:
| nothing has changed.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| no company, especially of the multi-national and/or publicly
| traded variety, has any qualms about doing business with any
| body.
|
| if you think otherwise, youre kidding yourself.
|
| companies are incentivized to have qualms through a mix of
| legal measures and risk assessment of backlash.. then once
| the "correct" choice is made, they make big PR statements
| about their allegiance to utilize it to empower their brand.
|
| every company who has supported green endeavors or BLM would
| support a party of Nazis if it was in their benefit. The line
| from Amazon to IBM isn't that far.
|
| they are not your friends. theyre not allies in your cause.
| they are not conservative or liberal. they are not moral or
| immoral.
|
| they are amoral and greedy.
|
| period. the end
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You cannot be amoral, when morality isn't part of the
| equation.
|
| Companies are not "greedy" as they are defined - they're a
| wealth making organization.
|
| Majority of American enterprises are owned by various
| funds, including pension funds. Which makes the
| beneficiaries the source for these demands to be "greedy".
| ganzuul wrote:
| Many voices die in silence. It is hard to gauge motivations
| when it comes to the right to have a voice, because it is an
| appropriate arena for fanaticism.
| [deleted]
| nivenkos wrote:
| Were the CEO, COO, etc. punished at all?
| from wrote:
| This is a particularly egregious case but reports about FCPA
| cases like these (and the ensuing calls to imprison
| executives) neglect the fact that most major multinationals
| do _not_ want to pay anyone. Governments in about half the
| world require you to pay to get anything done, especially in
| highly regulated sectors like telecommunications. The
| government employees in charge of licenses, permits etc in
| these countries will literally refuse to do their jobs unless
| you pay them. Walmart just recently had a [$300
| million](https://apnews.com/article/latin-america-us-news-ap-
| top-news...) fine for paying a local "expeditor" to get
| construction permits in Brazil. They didn't pay for a
| monopoly on supermarkets, they didn't pay prosectors to
| investigate their competitors, they paid so they could build
| a Walmart in Brazil. Is that evil?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Hence the saying that the only difference between the
| government and the mafia is that when the government does
| it, it is legal.
| Jiro wrote:
| The reason we have to have laws about such things is that
| paying the bribe is always beneficial to the individual
| company. Refusing to pay bribes only helps if every company
| refuses to pay the bribe.
|
| If you can't do business without bribing someone, that's
| like not being able to do business without using slaves;
| what you should do is stop doing business, not start using
| slaves.
| from wrote:
| >The reason we have to have laws about such things is
| that paying the bribe is always beneficial to the
| individual company. Refusing to pay bribes only helps if
| every company refuses to pay the bribe.
|
| That's great in theory and that was the intent of the
| people who wrote foreign bribery laws but it never works
| out this way. What happens in practice is that American
| companies leave the country and companies from places
| like Russia and China who are willing to pay get the
| business. Or it goes to local companies who also still
| pay.
|
| >If you can't do business without bribing someone, that's
| like not being able to do business without using slaves;
| what you should do is stop doing business, not start
| using slaves.
|
| Except paying the bribes doesn't cost anyone except the
| company paying them. You've got it reversed here: the
| company paying the bribes is often the victim. Do you
| think Telia really wanted to pay $320 million to the
| Uzbek president's daughter? They probably would rather
| have had Uzbekistan have a telecom licensing system that
| actually worked like the FCC.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > Except paying the bribes doesn't cost anyone except the
| company paying them.
|
| It also establishes a norm of pay-to-play and increases
| the overall cost of entry into a market. This can
| decrease overall investment/entrants into the market and
| subsequently services and employment from being offered
| to residents.
|
| The company can be a victim and retain some culpability.
| robotnikman wrote:
| For a Swedish company I would have expected better of them.
| coastflow wrote:
| The original source, published by the International Consortium of
| Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that includes an interview with
| a kidnapped worker (and a copy of a letter requesting contractors
| to continue work in Mosul), is at:
| https://www.icij.org/investigations/ericsson-list/iraq-isis-...
| alkaloid wrote:
| We were detained in Mozambique for arriving to work on their
| cellular network without a pre-authorization letter from the CTO.
|
| That was quite an experience; not every nation is friendly to
| Western nations, turns out.
| titoCA321 wrote:
| Sometimes parts of the world expect "under the table" payments
| to get things moving.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| i was involved in the setup/config of new Sun servers for a
| Morgan Stanley office in India in the late 90s. everything
| was done ahead of time in the London HQ and shipped over to
| India. it was well-known by everyone on that project that
| there was a cash slush fund that our couriers and the
| employee who shepherded the gear over to India had to use at
| various levels to grease the wheels.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If I pay a bribe or facilitation payment to the local
| warlord, I, personally, break laws in my own country.
|
| This even applies if I pay a taxi driver to take me to the
| site, and he pays the bribe.
|
| If I'm paying a bribe for safety purposes (say giving a
| bottle of scotch to pass a checkpoint to get back to the
| hotel before night), then if I'm lucky I won't be prosecuted
| when I return to my home country.
|
| The great thing is I don't feel guilty about not tipping in
| the US.
|
| "Facilitation payments, which are payments to induce
| officials to perform routine functions they are otherwise
| obligated to perform, are bribes"
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > The great thing is I don't feel guilty about not tipping
| in the US.
|
| Wow, that is a real stretch of logic, and a great way to
| make wait staff hate you
| 988747 wrote:
| The US are probably the only country where tipping makes
| sense, because it is kind of recognized by law (i.e.
| waiters have no minimum salary, because it is assumed
| they would make most of their money from tips).
|
| In every other country a tip is indeed just a bribe.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I get that, but if GGP is not from the US then it is
| incredibly rude to come into the country with that kind
| of attitude. And if they are from the US, then it makes
| them look even worse.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > not tipping
|
| Not paying people after they perform a service that it's
| implicitly understood you will pay them for is stealing.
|
| You may not like the particular way in which it's
| structured, in which case, you're free not to consume the
| service.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > that it's implicitly understood you will pay them
|
| Clearly isn't. If you want the money, put it on the bill
| - add it as a service charge or whatever.
| posterboy wrote:
| why though would anyone choose that option when the other
| option is also free, don't offer service for payment
| optional.
|
| The GP was implying the entire system is dysfunctional.
| Your counter point is, don't participate in this system.
| Such type of statement comes typically followed by the
| likes of _go away_ if you don 't like it here. If that's
| the level of friendliness implied by your service ...
| meroes wrote:
| Waiters are officials now?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Not tipping in the US is a detestable position to defend.
| Not compensating workers according to their customs because
| of your foreign ideology? What do you have to say?
|
| Sorry if I seem so outraged. I don't mean to do that on HN.
| But this is one of most arrogant things I've ever read -
| and a response might help clarify.
| renewiltord wrote:
| FCPA actually allows facilitating payments for things like
| this. No one will prosecute you for it in the US.
|
| Of course, Ericsson did get FCPA sanctioned for other stuff
| since they paid kickbacks etc. It's actually quite
| fascinating. The real victim here is the foreign state that
| is suffering from the corruption but US law protects them. I
| suppose it's anti-trust sort of law. It retains competition
| for fair-playing US companies.
|
| Definitely an interesting positive-externalities US law.
| alkaloid wrote:
| Funny you mention that -- when our liaison came to the
| airport he called the CTO and hand-wrote out an authorization
| form . . . then paid the border security people MPesa (and
| cash) lol . . .
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| This is another reason I have reservations about the expansion of
| contract labor in the modern workforce. Far too often, it creates
| a conflict of interest between the contract company and contract
| hire.
|
| Tangentially related but much more banal, I have a relative that
| works in the payment processing industry, overseeing an
| engineering team. One of his best employees was an overseas
| contractor that spent many years with the company, brought his
| family to the states and laid down roots. After 7-8 years with
| the company, his contracting firm wanted him to move to another
| company in another state where he could earn more. He didn't want
| to go, but his contract stipulated that my relative's company
| could not hire him under any circumstance, so his firm wound down
| his contract to essentially force him and his family to move.
| This was in a smaller city without a lot of other IT jobs, so he
| didn't have many other options.
|
| The fact that huge corporations have that kind of power over
| people makes me really uncomfortable and to see a huge telecom
| company use contractors to negotiate with terrorists doesn't
| surprise me in the least.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| That persons contract is very non-standard and likely
| completely unenforceable. Contractors are generally far less
| susceptible to coercion than permanent employees are. Employees
| believe they have something to lose (their mostly imaginary
| "job security"). Contractors know their employment is temporary
| and they routinely need to look for new work without much
| notice.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Seems worth mention that such a contract is often not
| enforceable. In typical cases, all it takes is a written note
| saying you are terminating the contract, at the time or any
| time after you leave. If they are not paying you anymore, there
| is no "consideration" so (anyway under US law) no remaining
| basis for a contract.
|
| Sometimes the contracting company has a deal with the de facto
| employer forbidding them to hire anybody who was once
| contracted to them. Those also can often be set aside, even
| without notice to the former de jure employer. Governments are
| often hostile to contract provisions interfering with
| somebody's right to have a job in their field.
|
| I am not an attorney. Consult a local attorney in every case,
| because case law is all over the place, laws likewise, and
| judges moreso.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Another thing on the contractor note. I just got off the phone
| with a company that refused to consider me for a position
| because everyone is required to have a Bachelor's degree. This
| was after being recruited and referred by a VP after working
| for them as a contractor for over a year. These big corps keep
| burning bridges.
| warent wrote:
| Of all the reasons to be against contract labor, being
| kidnapped by terrorists seems like a SUPER EDGE case
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| It's not the being kidnapped by terrorists part, it's that
| companies ask people to do all kinds of stuff that falls into
| legal gray areas, which provides them a buffer if something
| goes wrong.
|
| I think we need to redefine how we think about contracting to
| protect contractors and reduce the amount of power companies
| currently have over them. Thinking about sending a contractor
| to negotiate with a terrorist should scare the pants off of
| companies.
| lazide wrote:
| They'll just farm it out to another company by setting the
| goals 'get service working in country x' and leave the 'and
| bribe the terrorists you need to bribe to make it happen'
| off the paperwork.
|
| At the end of the day, either they did what they did (and
| service worked), or chances are no service would work and
| they wouldn't have a business.
|
| They should have said 'can't work, sorry' and walk away,
| but that's tough to do when a lot of money is at stake for
| anyone.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > They'll just farm it out to another company by setting
| the goals 'get service working in country x' and leave
| the 'and bribe the terrorists you need to bribe to make
| it happen' off the paperwork.
|
| You're saying that we shouldn't make a particular law to
| protect workers because companies will look for ways to
| get around it.
|
| Yet, companies violate basic workplace safety regulations
| all the time. Should we not have basic workplace safety
| laws in place if companies get around them? If Chipotle
| has another E Coli outbreak, should we just throw out
| commercial food handling and safety laws?
| dchftcs wrote:
| Edge cases in ideal conditions happen at random. When there's
| a conflict of interest, or any other systemic problem, so-
| called edge cases happen more often, because the situation
| consistently gets pushed to the edge, so to speak.
|
| There's no shortage of workers getting pushed to take risks
| much bigger than any potential reward.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I think he's making a joke. Super Edge is a cell
| network/speed.
| warent wrote:
| I retroactively take credit for this joke
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think a more common example of the same moral hazard is
| delivery workers who have quotas that can only be met if they
| violate traffic laws.
| lazide wrote:
| 100% - even if the parent company didn't know the details,
| the same problem is likely to occur.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's the mentality. Contractors are viewed as expendable...in
| more ways than one.
| 3np wrote:
| It's quite telling to me that this has not been meaningfully
| covered or even mentioned at all in Swedish news media (at least
| from what I can tell).
|
| Propaganda (which I like to think of it as) works differently in
| different places, I guess. In Sweden it's perfectly fine to be
| critical of the sitting government and politicians, but
| information about corruption, unethical, and illegal activity in
| staple companies like Vattenfall (their greenwashing and coal-
| expansion is probably more known in Germany than Sweden),
| Ericsson, Volvo, Telia, Bofors, and ABB are usually just swept
| under the rug and more often than not most reporters aren't even
| aware.
| lawn wrote:
| For a bit of contrast, I've been reading quite a bit of it. But
| you're right that it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves,
| maybe because it's been crowded away by other news, or by the
| unwillingness (conscious or not) to not assign so much
| importance to it.
| aWidebrant wrote:
| Swedish public television has covered this story quite
| extensively:
|
| https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/
| 3np wrote:
| It's peculiar how this works. I have been staying home with
| my folks for a couple of months (and therefore taking part of
| the daily TV news (OK, not 100% coverage but more often than
| not) as well as reading the daily local newspaper). Been
| glued to the radio (mostly P1, some P3) for the last week.
| First time I hear of this. A cursory scroll- and click from
| SR, DN, and SvD before my first comment yielded nothing. And
| yet I can now see that you are right.
|
| Good on SVT
| LightG wrote:
| What's the hazard pay on something like that!?
|
| And can that is that covered in your job contract where they say
| "... and any other reasonable duties!"
| vkou wrote:
| Not enough. You'd get paid as much, if not more, to go work
| setting up telecom infrastructure for the US in Iraq or
| Afghanistan, or, well, the modern Taliban [1] (which, unlike
| ISIS, is not actively trying to be an at-war-with-the-world
| pariah state). And while you might certainly be killed or
| injured by a mortar attack, or an IED, or by gunfire, or a
| suicide bomber at the market, or any of the other ways bad
| things can happen to you in an active warzone, at least the
| people you were working for were unlikely to kidnap you.
|
| [1] U.S. Eases Sanctions to Allow Routine Transactions With
| Afghan Government -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/politics/us-sanctions-...
| bilekas wrote:
| I worked with Ericsson as a contractor and was treated really
| well but I've heard of some stories in other areas and companies
| where they're treated like printers basically, but never before
| heard of cannon fodder for bribes to terrorists!
|
| This is wild
| thesaintlives wrote:
| So business as usual then?
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