Christopher Soghoian over at Cnet is reporting that Turkish police may have used violence to get the encryption keys of one of primary ringleaders in the TJ Maxx credit card theft investigation. The suspect, Maksym Yastremskiy, is apparently a “major figure in the international sale of stolen credit card information.”
Chris says:
According to comments allegedly made by Howard Cox, a US Department of Justice official in a closed-door meeting last week, after being frustrated with the disk encryption employed by Yastremskiy, Turkish law enforcement may have resorted to physical violence to force the password out of the Ukrainian suspect.
Mr Cox’s revelation came in the context of a joke made during his speech. While the exact words were not recorded, multiple sources have verified that Cox quipped about leaving a stubborn suspect alone with Turkish police for a week as a way to get them to voluntarily reveal their password. The specifics of the interrogation techniques were not revealed, but all four people I spoke to stated that it was clear that physical coercion was the implied method.
The Turkish interrogation seemed to have worked as Mr Cox was even able to share Yastremskiy’s encryption password with the audience.
Eek.
Turkish police may have beaten encryption key out of TJ Maxx suspect [CNet]
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Probably another CIA rendition.
…And this is a problem somehow.
They should leave the T.J. Max execs who knew about this for months but failed to say anything with the same Turkish Police officer. It might jog his memory for next time.
Thats great !
I think considering the MILLIONS he stole that a beating is in order.
@AMetamorphosis:
Failure in module ‘Human_Rights.dll’.
Try again …
@Quantenmechaniker: Nicely put.
Doesn’t say they beat him. They could have used countless ways to make him give up the info. Sleep deprivation, playing Barney songs, not giving him food, making him watch Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, etc… IIRC, beating is not very effective anyway.
@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy–>: I’d argue that “enhanced interrogation techniques” aren’t that effective.
They’ll probably get some information. However, the information isn’t likely to be truthful.
@ameyer: Funny thing, those computer encryption keys, is that you find out rather quickly whether it’s good or not.
@Applekid: You would think that just the threat of leaving this guy as a VIP in a Turkish prison for a week would be enough to get the correct password from the guy. Since the information can be verified almost immediately then the guy only goes through as much bad treatment as he wants to.
Yeah I’m having trouble rustling up any pity here
@friendlynerd:
I’m with you.
This soft stance we have on crimminals and idiots who are willing to do harm to us, is a figgin’ joke. I wish the U.S. would clamp down a little harder on the scum that taints our society. We’ve played this “give ‘em a second chance game” long enough. We all can see where that got us. Nowhere.
Torture? I don’t care. If we know they’re guilty, rip their nails out, and peel the skin off their face for all I care. Set an example that overrides the one the crimminals set for our youth these days.
@Raiders757:
That’s a really creepy comment. Don’t agree with me anymore, k?
@Raiders757: One could argue that by beating/peeling the skin off their faces/pulling their nails out we as a society become just like the people we’re supposedly protecting ourselves from.
There are a bunch of cases where supposedly guilty people are freed after years of being in jail after DNA evidence proved them innocent. If we were to institute punishments as you’ve described… I don’t want to be in a country that’s OK with that.
@howie_in_az: You say DNA evidence proved them innocent…I say It proves they had a partner.
@trk182: You mean like the Duke Lacrosse Rape case, where DNA evidence proved that the accuser was pulling the whole story out of her ass?
[en.wikipedia.org]
Fortunately for the existence of justice, both the law and sane people disagree with you.
@trk182: Then I can only hope one day you are accused of something and have to fight to prove your innocence to people that think just like you.
@Raiders757:
Perhaps you should consider moving to a country more in line with your politics. Like Iran or North Korea.
@friendlynerd: Would your amount of pity differ if this story was instead about a suspect who was beaten and turned out to be innocent?
Obviously, not the case here, but how many innocent people suffering is fair market value for the number of bad guys you’ll catch this way?
@Red_Flag:
If it’s not the case here then why ask?
@friendlynerd: Because innocent people have been released from death row before. Because law enforcement doesn’t always do the right thing. Because torture has been and is being used to coerce false confessions.
Just because the specific case involves a guilty party doesn’t mean that the next suspect or the suspect before were guilty. And if innocent people are tortured, can you say that the guilty one found vindicates the methods?
@Red_Flag:
Kind of conflicts with your cute rubber hose comment down the page.
@friendlynerd: You are confusing “effective” with “right”.
@friendlynerd: Because we don’t do it here, we shouldn’t accept those tactics from others. You don’t change from “he’s guilty, lets kick his ass” to “he might be guilty, but we don’t know, so lets play Barney songs” just because you think you know. When does it turn out that the sure thing isn’t as sure as you thought?
You set a standard, and you follow it.
I’m not taking sides, but this seems like one of those stories that the “internet” jumps on and says “hell yeah!”
Then when it’s the U.S. government doing it, everyone says it’s inhumane.
@AlteredBeast: well, we’re supposed to be better than this.
…which is why i fully support “outsourcing” our interrogations. isn’t that what allies are for?
@mac-phisto: Amen. After all that is what Turkey, Egypt and Isreal are for.
Well frankly if it was my credit card that got ripped off by this guy I’d want him beaten too.
@TakingItSeriously: I was just thinking that his card # was probably one of the ones that was stolen.
@TakingItSeriously: I would want him beaten, too. However, that is exactly why the victims should not be able to hand out the judgements.
to quote the new deniro/pacino movie, “some respect the badge, everyone respects the gun”.
i don’t normally condone police brutality, but the mobsters that control the carding market have their own breed of violence that pales in comparison to anything that might occur in a turkish police station. live by the sword & all…
@mac-phisto: yeah, that sentence is all mish-mashed. strike that & reverse it. should be – “anything that might occur in a turkish police station pales in comparison to the violent nature of the carding mobsters.”
Coincidentally, the towel that was shoved down Yastremskiy’s throat down to his stomach and then was pulled out was a FABULOUS clearance deal from TJ Maxx!
@BuddyGuyMontag: Whoa, there is a visual I never needed, ever.
@Burgandy: Not familiar with Jack Bauer, are you?
@BuddyGuyMontag: Nope. I prefer my Kiefer Sutherland mid-80s vampire style. (We are talking about his role on 24 right? Never watched it.)
“Eek.”
There’s one way to dance around taking a stance on this one
I don’t want to condone violence either, but it bothers me when people are too afraid to say that violence is appropriate at times. If you caught someone stealing your card, you’d want to personally administer a butt kicking, wouldn’t you?
This is one of those situations that proves the average citizen, no matter what country, really doesn’t have a problem with a little torture. As a group we seem to be appalled by torture but when you seperate each individual and ask them, their tune changes and they will say that the person got what they deserved…at least I’m guessing the majority would.
As someone who had to spend a couple hours talking to the bank, getting a new card, filing affidavits, ect ect.
I’m really trying to muster some indignant outrage…..
Nope. Sorry. Got what he deserved.
He’s lucky he wasn’t outsourced to Saudi Arabia.
But torture doesn’t work…right? I think in reality, when you know you have the right guy, you find out very soon whether the info is good and if not…
I think there is a difference between torture- physical abuse and inducing stress. Especially when you have something as simple as a password. I think it’s pointless when you don’t have an answer you can verify.
Ah, rubber-hose decryption. Most effective method of password recovery in existence.
I’ve thought about this a few times before… not being in law enforcement, I can’t really say how I’d react, but on one side, there are rules to follow. There are rules in place for a reason, and to consistently violate them and get away with it would make rules entirely ineffective. On the other side, there is a case to be made for survival. No one faults a hiker for killing the bear that attacks him, no one faults the soldier for opening fire when he/she is being fired upon. I don’t condone violence, but these people aren’t innocent. They’re thieves, they don’t care about others, they are looking out for themselves and their own greed.
I think that capital punishment is fitting for cases of identity theft. A beating for someone who committed millions in credit card theft? As far as I’m concerned, they can beat that useless piece of crap until he screams. Then they should do it again.
@Jon R.: What should the punishment be for illegal torture?
@strathmeyer:
legal torture…
As someone else who has had his identity stolen: I am not only comfortable with beating the suspect, I am pretty happy about it.
@esqdork:
I feel the same way too!
Police using strong arm tactics to get information from suspects? How shocking. Well, shocking in that it didn’t involve the NYPD or LAPD this time.
@ThickSkinned:
This is another country and culture in which they have the right to do as they please. In Turkey any American or Westerner who goes over there and flirts or whatever will know fast his place when he cries brutality they will knock out their teeth
I wonder if the workers of the City of San Francisco wished they could do it to that IT guy.
Anyone seen Midnight express, one thing you don’t want to do is commit crime in turkey. I recommend everyone rent or buy midnight express
International Crime 101:
If you commit a crime in the US, you can expect to not be beaten.
If you commit a crime in Turkey, you can’t expect to not be beaten.
@Canino: Who said this guy committed a crime in Turkey?
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison, Maksym Yastremskiy?
To the headline – GOOD.
Turkish police “may have used violence”
MAY HAVE USED?
MAY HAVE USED?
Oh geewhiz, the only time the Turkish police don’t use violence is when the suspect is already dead…. even then I would not completely trust the flunky hauling the body to the morgue.
And I am not speaking ill of the Turkish Police. Substitute just about any country in the world in the place of Turkey and the results would be just about the same…. motivated law enforcement can always eztract a confession…. sometimes there are bruises, sometimes not.
Wait a minute…
It’s OK to beat this guy to get his encryption key that could be important in a credit card fraud case, but it’s NOT OK to do the same to get information that could *prevent* a terrorist attack?
What if a prisoner in Gitmo had encryption keys that could prevent a huge credit card theft? Would it be OK to beat them to get the key then?
Poor guy! If only he had come here the ACLU would protect him!!!
@Hyman Decent: What the hey? That was supposed to be a reply to SoCalGNX‘s comment.
@Hyman Decent: [sigh]
Very funny (not).
IANAL, but I suppose what might’ve happened if he had been captured in the U.S. is, the U.S. authorities would’ve gotten a search warrant and he would have been required by the warrant to give up the password. If he refused, he would’ve been jailed for contempt of court.
I would assume that if I jaywalked in Turkey, their would beat information out of me. Who would commit credit card fraud over there? The guy is lucky if he escapes with both hands still attached to his arms.