cryptovariable

I ran several TOR exit nodes for a couple of weeks last year and I sniffed the traffic the entire time.

After analyzing the data I determined that the benefits do not outweigh the harm, and shut my nodes down.

I'm not talking about piracy or child pornography or anything like that. 90-95% of my exit traffic was IRC-related, and nearly all of that was clearly botnet C&C.

Some people report percentages in the teens, some report 50-60%, my personal investigation was near-total usage by botnets and I'm just curious as to why there is such a disparity in the published results.

Have you looked into how your exit relays are being used?

Edit: most of the rest of the throughput was torrent traffic.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I would like some feedback on the role of the media and the influencing of public perceptions.

The whole concept of the militarization of police is a bit confusing to me. It seems to hinge on several factors, including the use of uniforms that resemble military garb, a perceived increase in police violence, the "uparmoring" of the police, and a perceived increase in the use of SWAT teams.

The first factor, uniforms, is a non-starter. Since the 1700s the uniform of America's constabulary has closely resembled police uniforms, with rank insignia and award ribbons and medals being worn. From the double columned brass button overcoats worn by police forces compared to civil war officer's uniforms to the "Car 54 Where Are You" and "Mayberry" slacks and shirts that emulated contemporary military Class B uniforms, the police have adopted military garb as it became fashionable. Nowadays they wear cordura pants just as the military does.

The second factor, increases in police-on-civilian violence, is not borne out by the numbers. According to the NYPD, by way of the Village Voice and the NYDN, in 2010 police shootings were at a 40 year low. The lowest on record, in fact. Those are absolute figures, on a per-capita basis, in New York at least, police shootings can be considered to have dropped even more. Also, the response to mass protests seems to have taken a shift in the last 30 years. Whereas in the past riots and protests would have been met with lethal force, present-day tactics focus on containment and arrest. A "occupy" protestor in the 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, and before would have been met with bullets, now they are met with pepper spray and flexi-cuffs. Hard data is sporadic at best, but it seems that the nationwide trend is for fewer police shootings and the FBI's uniform crime data report category "Justifiable Homicide by Weapon, Law Enforcement" has remained steady for over 10 years, failing to keep pace with population growth.

Next up is "uparmoring". The use of armored vehicles and automatic weapons is not new. Armored vehicle equipped with firing ports, racks for machine guns, and storage areas for hand grenades were used by the police in the 20s and 30s so that the police could meet the prohibition-era gangsters on an equal footing. Lawmen spanning the decades have used tommy guns, browning automatic weapons, and even heavy machine guns and explosives to fight crime. There used to be motorcycle policemen who had belt-fed machine guns mounted on sidecars, and going back even further lawmakers in the "old west" were armed with the most advanced and up-to-date repeating firearms, often purchased from or supplied by the cavalry.

So finally we get to SWAT use. The Cato institute maintains a project that maps botched police raids. Since the majority of them were no-knock "SWAT-esque" raids I used them as a surrogate to stand in for "SWAT" raids. Combing through the decades, you find that despite an increased awareness and media spotlight, raids that Cato categorizes as "botched" have either remained constant (again being outpaced by population growth) or slightly decreased over the last several decades. It all depends on how you categorize the data.

The first page of your book recalls the founding fathers. I think this is very dangerous. President George Washington would have sent the militia to disperse, using lethal force, the "Occupy" protesters. In fact, any President or Governor from 1789 to the late 1960s would have sent the National Guard/Army to plow right through them, gassing them (Bonus Army) if necessary.

Now they just get pepper sprayed, paddy-wagoned and released after a night in jail. This is preferable by any stretch of the imagination to a coffin.

As an aside, there was recently a man who had planned a march of armed men from Virginia, across the Potomac river, ending at the White House. It is highly likely you heard of it. Can you imagine the response by government in the 1700s, 1800s, and early-to-mid 1900s? Those fellows would have been machine-gunned into hamburger at the Arlington Memorial Bridge!

So this is too much rambling. My question:

• Bearing in mind the no-knock equivalent behavior of Treasury Department agents during prohibition, when, precisely, were US law enforcement personnel (or their conduct) less militaristic than today?

I'm not saying the situation is ideal, good, or acceptable, I just happened to lose my rose-colored nostalgia glasses 20 years ago and your book is titled "Rise of the Warrior Cop".