To the many talking about legalization in favor of this kind of approach, I think you're missing the point. I am entirely in favor of legalization, and I think it is a necessary component of fixing things, but things have gotten seriously broken. The drug trade has built massive criminal enterprises which have built themselves infrastructure and organization and connections that can be used toward ends other than just shipping drugs. It keeps pouring money into these enterprises, and making things worse, but if we turn off (or down) that spigot we still have to deal with these organizations. And as someone put it, they're not in drugs because they have a deep interest in agriculture, it's just profitable, and their competitive advantage is that they're willing to do illegal things. Most of them already deal with other things as well, and I'd expect them to try and ramp up income from those to supplement a loss of drug related income.<p>All of this to say, we have a problem we need to deal with. An important part of that is to stop making the problem worse, but then we still need to fix it - something like this could be valuable to that end.
"Vortex uses network-analysis algorithms to construct diagrams for court cases that show the interactions between cartel members, governors and law enforcers. These reveal links that are not otherwise visible, what Salcedo-Albaran calls "betweeners" - people who are not well-connected, but serve as a bridge linking two groups."<p>Has anyone done any work on using this kind of network analysis in legal and productive organisations to see who has the most impact on innovation or changes in practice?
In my opinion the only way to win this war is to start from the bottom.<p>There are tons of farmer in Colombia who can only survive by growing those drugs, but they would like, in most of the case, to be able to grow crop or bananas or whatever is legal.<p>However they can't because a mere economic reason, they won't get enough money to survive from traditional culture.<p>If we invested the money we are actually using to violently fight against the cartel to develop the infrastructure and the education in those country we all be better off; we would have way less drugs in our world and we would have launch a new economy (more market for American brands like apple, google, IBM)
Drug prohibition is immoral and violates the political and ethical sovereignty of the individual. I own my body and I despise anyone who seeks to enslave it.<p>Of course, America's "liberty" is really just a facade for their nationalism.
The infamous group Anonymous pledged war against The Zeta cartel in 2011 with announcements that they had names, and even personal information about the cartel members. Unfortunately, anonymous decided to back down due to threats of aggravation. Though, in the end the hostage was released the cartel has killed numerous internet bloggers/reporters, and has kidnapped hackers to perform black-hat cyber attacks against targets...<p>It all seems to come down to the amount of resources one has to invest in such an effort. The various law enforcement communities are fighting with the "latest" technology but, the cartels are right there with them if not below or above them...<p>In the United States, the latest defense may be the use of various autonomous robots such as, submarines, boats & drones.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-confirms-seeking-us-drone-help-in-drug-war/2011/03/16/ABbSEZg_story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexico-confirms-seeking-...</a><p>Unfortunately, similar techniques are being applied by the cartels to thwart the deterrents. It seems only obvious because, its less weight, and less people = cheap.<p>Like Autonomous ultralight UAV.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508</a><p>Autonomous ROV/USV
Submarines without life support systems must be cheaper.<p>Just mischievous robots in general,
<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.unh.edu%2F~it666%2Freading_list%2FPhysical%2Ffinal_ieee_robot_crime_august_2010.pdf&ei=p6aWULf1DO3liwKwmoHwCQ&usg=AFQjCNFNAlhEKuVRCyDEZ-ywqg54NJpl-Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&...</a><p>Think on it.
Sorry guys, I am seeing so many "legalize" that I really need to say that we cannot really legalized everything.<p>If we legalized so powerful/bad drugs like heroin or cocaine we build a business, if we legalize those drugs then we need to legalized newer drugs, if we let corporation to make money out of drugs, well the first scenario that I can think about is a big pharmaceutical corp. who is investing in order to build super addicted drugs, super cheap drugs (free for the new-consumers ???) and commercial like "Try fancy-cool-drug-name you will get smarter, more beautiful and every woman will want you" (and at the very end a little voice will said very very fast "It <i></i>can<i></i> give you dependency")<p>I mean, I already hate the commercial of antidepressant (that are about the same stuff) and I am sure you do the same, legalize everything will be too much.<p>There is only one single scenario where it would be possible, when we will Educate (note the capital E) every single person, then no one will use such powerful drugs (heroin, cocaine and acid, i don't know anymore).
Legalization is the best way to end it. The network analysis needs to occur about politicians in the rich countries, how to manipulate them into legalizing drugs. It's a lot easier to collect data on them and it's the actual root cause.
Evolution will defeat this strategy in short order. Some organizations practice better communications security and will thrive in the vacuum created by the loss of their competitors.