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September 6

Online review sites for human smuggling services ?

The humanitarian crisis in Syria and the rest of the Middle East combined with the xenophobic attitude of many European governments has led to human smuggling as the only way for refugees to get their families to safety. Many of these are found online. Some provide the service they promise, while others beat, extort, or kill their customers.

It seems to me the best way for would-be refugees to find the good smugglers would be a web site that reviews smuggling services. I'm not sure if such a web site would be legal, but if the servers were in some nation sympathetic to the plight of the refugees, I imagine it would be difficult to shut it down. So, does such a web site exist ? StuRat (talk) 02:04, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sturat ....

Even the United Nations UNDOF has stopped updating their website with quarterly status reports.

If armed, trained, well-equipped military stations under a United Nations mandate are unable to provide internet-status-updates, from a region that is quite distant from the worst parts of the fighting in Syria... how do you expect ordinary civilians to provide such status?

The Department of State advises citizens of the United States to avoid travel to Syria. Telephone and internet are notoriously unreliable. American citizens with emergencies in-region are encouraged to contact the embassy of the Czech Republic in Damascus for assistance, or to visit the American embassy in Amman in person.

The oft-touted power of "social media", the awesome power of the internet, does not withstand assault by Kalashnikov. If you'd like a dramatization of this effect, the film West Beirut does right by this idea: in a pivotal scene, the character Omar offers to demonstrate the power of technology, lobbing his friend's Super 8 video camera into the middle of a green line. "Technology? The technicians are waiting."

Nimur (talk) 06:01, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised you put more faith in "experts" like the UN. After all, Wikipedia succeeded where the previous "expert written encyclopedia" failed. The same logic applies here. StuRat (talk) 14:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to writing encyclopedias, I am a great proponent of free information. When it comes to matters of public safety, I am a shameless institutionalist. The same logic does not apply to both situations. Irksome though it may be, incorrect information on Wikipedia is neither a tragedy nor a travesty.

Unlike most charities (not to mention, every internet activist), the United Nations actually has a physical presence in trouble-spots, including Syria. That detail matters a lot.

Nimur (talk) 04:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the UN evaluating smugglers. More likely they will say everyone should avoid all smugglers equally (and if that means you die because you can't get out of a dangerous area, that's just too bad). They didn't do much for Rwandans, and I don't see them doing much for Syrians, etc., either. StuRat (talk) 21:53, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Expert written encyclopaedia didn't fail any way. They were a decent source of information for a lot of people for a long time and are still surely better than wikipedia in certain areas, particularly when you consider more specialised encyclopaedias let alone other general information sources. General encyclopaedias just couldn't compete with wikipedia in the modern internet world for numerous reasons in most areas. And we know that wiktionary still doesn't compete with good dictionarys in many areas, and wikinews is frankly nearly a complete failure. Blogs and similar "citizen reporting" sources can provide useful info in some cases, but generally you're still far better sticking off to a reputable news source for news even with the problems of sensantionalism and funding. While some people like to treat wikipedia as a news source, this creates numerous problems, including with the maintence of highly news like articles even to today, let alone those from ~10 years ago. Nil Einne (talk) 13:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this is rather moot because AFAIK there aren't any experts lining up to evaluate human smuggler operations anyway. That makes user evaluations the only remaining option. StuRat (talk) 21:53, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Such a service is certainly doable. To work, it would have to be a public service, not an attempt to get rich (a discrete donate link leading to a disclaimer that you don't want money from refugees or their families, only from like-minded individuals willing to share the cost of running the servers, nothing more).

As Nimur correctly pointed out, the awesome power of the internet does not withstand assault by Kalashnikov. This means that you would have to put your service on the dark web and use Tor to access it, and all donations would have to be via bitcoin. They can't shoot you if they can't find you. You could include instructions on how to reach it using the Tails operating system (so simple even an unskilled refugee can use it). Also, you could release everything under CC BY-SA 3.0, and include a downloadable zip file that anyone can unzip into a directory on their webpage and thus make the information available on the open web.

I would be glad to assist you in any way that I can. If you are interested, drop me a line on my talk page and we can talk about the details. CypherPunkyBrewster (talk) 08:39, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking human smugglers who get bad reviews will try to track down the web site administrators and kill them ? Somehow I doubt it, as they would have to travel to another nation and take some serious risks with their own lives and freedom. They are fine with risking the lives and freedom of others, but not their own. And hopefully they wouldn't even know where the web site originates.

As for a lack of technology, many Syrians are middle class, and either have access to the internet directly, or can contact friends and relatives outside the nation to gain access indirectly. Many actually find smugglers via the internet. StuRat (talk) 14:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have never seen residential internet service in Syria. Now that there is widespread warfare, it's hard to even get telephone service and electricity. Nimur (talk) 14:33, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note that many Syrians are outside of Syria, say in a Turkish refugee camp, when they look for smugglers to get them out, say heading to Germany. From the refugee camp access to phones, etc., may be easier. StuRat (talk) 14:44, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The CIA World Fact Book publishes an estimate that 26.7% of Syrians had internet access in 2014. I find that to be an unbelievably high number, but I defer to their statistic.

Here is UNRWA's Report Website, and here is their 2014 Syria Response report.

I have a sneaking suspicion that you misapprehend the luxuriousness of a refugee camp, and in particular the unofficial transient layaways that are the stop-overs for many displaced people. Here's a website, The Levant, which has a great amount of information - not just on the wars that plague the Middle East, but on the whole environs. Here is a non-fictional account by Rosemary Sayigh on her experiences in Shatila. Here is a host of links to help enlighten you.

Nimur (talk) 14:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Probably many of the more dedicated smuggling operations have underworld contacts in numerous locations, and of course it's not hard to buy some DOSing wherever you are if you have internet access. But anyway, more likely they will kill anyone who gives them a bad review, or force them and other people to give a good review. Mind you, I'm unsure how you plan to ensure only genuine users of the "service" can give reviews, when even Yelp and similar sites have major problems it's hard to imagine reviews of criminals would have great success, but I digress. Nil Einne (talk) 15:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I don't think it's particularly easy to install Tails on most phones. If refugees have access to the internet at all, it's much more likely to be on a phone than a desktop or laptop computer. Nil Einne (talk) 07:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC) Edit: And even if they are using a desktop or laptop computer, there's a good chance it may not be their computer and they will have little ability to use Tails, no matter how easy it may be. Nil Einne (talk) 13:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They could even use snail mail to contact friends or relatives already in Germany or some place with internet access. So, the refugees themselves don't need to have direct internet access.

As for the accuracy of online reviews, I wouldn't look at the average alone, but read the individual reviews. The presence of negative reviews should be worrying, especially if you only have extremely positive and negative reviews, making me suspect that the positive reviews are fake. Also, fake positive reviews tend to all look the same, be submitted in a narrow range of dates, etc. Of course, the smugglers could always change the name of their operation to avoid bad reviews, but then there would be no reviews under the new name or they would all be extremely recent. So, smuggling operations with just positive reviews going way back would be the safest choices.

On the positive side, the smugglers might actually improve their operations in response to reviews. For example, a smuggler who gets generally positive reviews but several that do comment that they weren't given enough water and became dehydrated might make the business decision to provide more water, since it doesn't cost much and can bring in more customers. StuRat (talk) 12:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be assuming the smugglers are stupid. Well I'm sure some of them are, clearly the more successful ones are not, even if they're smart in a evil sort of way. There's no reason why they have to do anything of the things you're described for fake reviews (it's not like they only have a few short days we're they're allowed to force people to write fake reviews or they can only force a few people). And any smart smuggler would know there's nothing wrong with threatening people to write fake negative reviews for the competition, it's not like a highly criminal organisation that's allowed to operate with relative impunity that is forcing people to write positive (ranging from highly positive to slightly positive) reviews on themselves is going to worry about governments coming after them for forcing people to write negative reviews on the competition. Using snail mail sounds great, until you realise many probably don't have a way to even mail something let alone receive something back, and may very well be either be dead, somewhere else in Turkey (or wherever they are), or in Europe somewhere by the reply even arrives. Nil Einne (talk) 13:54, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Although to be clear, I'm not actually saying this would happen. It would happen if there was a need for it, but in reality all that's likely to happen if you try to set up such a service is to give a smuggler a laugh at how stupid the idea is before they move on to today's black mail, threats and whatever else. And for those refugees who come across the service, another reminder of how weird the developed Western world they're trying to get to, is and how great lives the people there must have that they can come up with such wacky ideas. Nil Einne (talk) 14:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note that many refugees currently find the smugglers online, such as via Twitter. So, they, or someone who will help them, have access already. As for making convincing fake reviews, many restaurants, etc., don't seem able to pull it off. Not that they are stupid, it's just very difficult to do.

Even if they forced refugees to make fake reviews, they probably only have access to the internet and time to do them at short periods, so you would see many reviews come in at the same time, and they would still all look similar, as they would copy each other or what they were told to say. You aren't going to get the unique personal stories that tell you they are genuine, under such circumstances.

And those refugees could always log on when they are free (assuming they survive) and write that they were forced to make the earlier review. Or, if they don't survive, their relatives who were waiting for them could put in the bad review.

Again, it's similar to Wikipedia, where you could argue that anyone can come in and vandalize it, and that does happen, but there are more people devoted to fixing it than those devoted to ruining it. StuRat (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, if you don't offer a way for a refugee to post reviews anonymously (or, more likely, a relative posting the review on their behalf) some of them will not post negative reviews for fear of reprisals. Also, it won't just be human smugglers who will be investigating your operation. It will also be police agencies.

As for fake reviews, don't look at yelp, amazon or ebay for an example to follow. Look at the sites that review prostitutes and brothels or the sites that review drug dealers on the dark net. See how they address the problem. ("Honest, honey, I was just doing research!") CypherPunkyBrewster (talk) 17:09, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely they would need to be able to post anonymously, although the system should keep track and flag people who attempt to use multiple reviews from the same I/P address. StuRat (talk) 21:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]