Putting someone on a (most) wanted list is "doxing"?
[Edit] "An international search is underway for Daniil Maksimovich SHCHUKIN on suspicion of numerous counts of gang-related and commercial extortion using ransomware to the detriment of commercial enterprises, public facilities, and institutions."
Yeah, I’m not okay with this. Doxxing is a term with an extremely negative connotation and is often done to people who, bluntly, weren’t hiding or doing anything wrong. The correct term for the same act here is either “accuse” or “unmask”.
So basically it's like Terrorism or Genociding, where if it's against the team you are rooting for, it is that, and if it's not against your in-group it's just War?
I'd rather "doxxing" just mean "de-anonymizing" because that's 1) how I already read it, 2) removes the whole "who is the more moral side in this dispute therefore has the right to make the accusation" problem
So it is doxxing if the doxxed committed wrongdoings from the perspective of... the doxxer? Ideals, morality, alignment, goals and purpose are and have always been a static constant for all humankind. There is no pineapple pizza, it is a lie, for I don't like it, and therefore nobody else ever did either.
doxxing is a term that is commonly reserved for private information that the doxxed individual has an expectation to be treated as such, that is to say, it's not in the public interest.
Someone who breaks the law and is actively searched for obviously has no expectation of privacy, or do you think the people visiting Epstein's island were doxxed?
I know, that's exactly the point I'm trying to make.
Yesterday I drank a beer out in public - a perfectly legal and culturally/morally acceptable thing to do here in The Netherlands, but deemed wrong to such a degree that it is apparently punishable by death in Iran[1].
I have actively broken Iran's moral stance, societal norms, and laws/jurisprudence against public alcohol consumption from without their jurisdiction, and as being a person unbeholden to their societal norms in any way, shape, or form.
Do I obviously now have no expectation of privacy? Is it now okay for these peoples finding themselves to grievously offended by my actions to collect and publish my private data with damaging intent? Is it then doxxing? Am I really a bad person now? Or maybe it depends on the color of your glasses, maybe there exists an entire world outside of ones own cocoon?
You have understand that we're dealing with Morals™, if you're an enemy of the States, anything is on the table. Even some of the things the States is actively calling other countries out for, see Iran for example and how silent the EU, ICC, and NATO is when its "Daddy", as Rutte put it, commits atrocities.
If someone wasn't previously known, only an alias or alter-ego, but you then link those together with a real-life identity, that's very much the definition of "doxxing", at least the original definition, maybe it's different today? Positive or negative doesn't really matter, just like "shooting" or "jumping" in itself isn't positive or negative, it's just a verb.
No, if I kidnap someone it's kidnapping. If the police based on probable cause receive and execute a warrant for someone's arrest, it's an arrest. This is how the state monopoly on violence works.
More to the point, if the police or whoever shoot someone in self defence, that someone is "killed". If I, or the police shoot someone for fun, it's "murder". In both cases the victim is "killed"
True, self defense isn't called murder. But if the government drone strikes an American citizen without a trial or anything, that's "extrajudicial killing", not murder.
Murder is a universal concept. There are also varying criminal laws that are called murder, but just because these exist, one must not be thrown off track: the moral, pre-legal concept of an act known as murder remains unaffected.
'Extrajudicial killing' is just an apologetic euphemism. An indirect term, since murder is usually considered to be a bad thing.
And if the police actually catches the accused and puts them in jail, is that kidnapping? Most verbs have far more semantics than just the most basic before/after state diff.
Well, no, kidnapping is unlawful abduction. But abduction is always abduction, regardless of who does it, police can abduct people too, but when criminals do so, we call it kidnapping, since it's illegal. Not sure what point you were trying to make, but I think it failed to land properly.
Its almost always associated with a private person (ie not police or anyone of a judicial system) releasing personal information with malicious intent.
As the person above you said, semantics are important. This is a judicial system specifically searching for a person they believe to have caused severe criminal harm.
While I don’t think this case is accurately described as Doxxing I also reject the definition that the state can’t commit Doxxing. The reason this situation doesn’t count is because of due process, not simply state action. The state is not infallible, regardless of what immunity may try to establish.
That's a fair point and I agree with you on both counts.
As you said, in this particular case, the respective judicial entities purposefully released the personal information with the intent of arresting both. Whether that is successful or not remains to be seen but that's a different story.
For me personally, I understand doxing to be the release of personal information with malicious, indirect intent. For example, hoping that an angry mob will find the home of a person and attack them, send the person death threats through the post, etc.
Assuming a decently functional justice system, I don't consider an arrest warrant a malicious intent.
The point is the outcome and magnitude of "kidnapping" and "abduction" are the same, so it's not fair people are treated differently if the terms are virtually synonymous. The impact is the same. If it was a truly just system, the people in power would subscribe to the same rules they codify into law.
I have, admittedly, only been on the Internet for thirty-five years or so, but I seem to recall that a long time ago reading about people "doxxing" guys who posted pictures of them torturing cats and dogs.
"Doxxing" certainly doesn't carry a negative connotation in that usage. Unless you live in a culture where torturing domesticated animals is a good thing.
ANd I recall that, before that, hackers would doxx other hackers in the 90s in order to get them arrested. Again, that seems like the exact same usage as here: tying a pseudonym to an IRL for purposes of law enforcement.
There is still an inherent negative aspect to the "Don't Fuck with Cats" doxxing. Vigilantes publicly revealing the identity of (suspected) perpetrators can enable further vigilante action, and this can cause harm to innocent people if the identification was incorrect, or unwittingly impede law enforcement. And that's before considering whether vigilantism is inherently good or bad.
See the canonical example of this going wrong: the Reddit 'investigation' of the Boston Bomber, where someone was misidentified, doxxed, and their family was harassed.
Of course, law enforcement is capable of making the same mistakes. But ideally they have better safeguards, and victims of their negligence have much better recourse.
> that seems like the exact same usage as here: tying a pseudonym to an IRL for purposes of law enforcement.
I disagree. Tying a pseudonym to an IRL persona for purposes of law enforcement is a part of an official investigation.
Doxxing is specifically non-government unmasking and dissemination of that tie for extrajudicial purposes, almost always for harassment. There is a world of difference between them and we should not fudge them together with terminology. My 2c.
What if the government reveals the name of a victim of sexual assault? Is that doxxing? What about a political rival in connection with a made up crime? What about a true but benign crime such as accessing reproductive healthcare?
Most people who dox for a reason they think is justified will nonetheless reject the label of doxing for what they did. They'll say "I didn't dox him, I just discovered publicly available but obscure information about him and posted it."
This does seem close to the original intent of "doxxing", where information ("dox") is publicized that connects a real-world identity to a previously anonymous online persona. These are hackers in the classic sense who were going out of their way to stay anonymous.
The dilution of the word doxxing has been interesting, though. Some of the recent "doxxing" controversies have been about figures who weren't all that anonymous to begin with. The pop culture meaning has been extended to cover any mention of someone's real identity at all, even if it wasn't a secret.
Beyond diluting it also seems that people are increasingly under the impression that internet rules are also the same in real life.
I’ve been seeing it come up in discussions about court cases where people are under the belief that requiring online personalities real names in the court documents is somehow illegal because it’s doxxing.
I grew up on the internet but early enough that the phrase “the internet isn’t real life” was bandied about, which I think made it easier to understand the different set of rules existing.
The Internet is real life, that's why the judicial documents will cite the real names of the people, wherever they want to or not.
There aren't different sets of rules, the real lifea rules apply everywhere. You may just also have additional conventions some people may follow online, too. Entirely optional and liable to go out the window as soon as there is a conflict
> Putting someone on a (most) wanted list is "doxing"?
No, if they just put UNKN on the most wanted list, then it wouldn't be doxing. But then they also tie UNKN together with "Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin", and that's the doxxing, regardless or not if it's on a most wanted list.
I think this is not how wanted lists work, here in Germany at least. Do they work this way where you are living? The goal of wanted lists in Germany is to find the person the police is searching for to put them in front of a court if the prosecution can make a case.
Perhaps this goes back to leftist terrorism in Germany in the 1970s, they would not use the code names of terrorists on the wanted lists but their real names to find them, because this is what they wanted - but I don't know.
What do you mean "this is not how wanted lists work"? The goal everywhere is to find the people on the wanted list, that's why they're called "wanted" in the first place. Is there something in my comment indicating I don't believe wanted lists are for finding people?
Would be good to not depend on the US that much any longer, since they have proven to be such an unreliable "partner". Even in a non-Trump future one cannot rely upon some future election not resulting in some similar disaster. Better to pull out, before some hothead gets weird ideas about that gold.
Maybe the fact that US soldiers and military bases exist inside Germany's borders is slightly more important than where the gold is. First regain your sovereignty, I'd say.
I am guessing that these bases are one of the last things to go. Would be a major diplomatic incident. But then again Trump creates those for breakfast, so who knows when we finally have had enough.
I’m pretty sure Trump thought or heard mention of Minchin (first Trump Treasury Secretary) visit to Fort Knox in 2017 recent to that comment and just blurted out the first thing that came to his mind - like most of his off the cuff remarks, it doesn’t make any sense on close examination but appeals to MAGA supporters.
Like most off the cuff Trump remarks - it made headlines for a while but nothing came of it, it’s not in Project 2025 and Musk fell out of favor with Trump for whatever reason. The combo of Musk and Trump was just dry kindling for the forest fire of baseless conspiracy theories with no founding in reality - like “omg, government incompetence lost the gold, Biden stole the gold after Trump didn’t lose in 2020” since Minchin told Trump what he saw in 2017 and Minchin posted interior photos of Knox with his wife at the time on social media. Since it disappeared from news after the remark and there is no one in current Trump admin who would pass up an opportunity for internet karma, a reasonable person can conclude it was just another bit of flooding the zone with information - credit where credit is due - several strategies executed by Trump that were outlined in Jacques Ellul seminal book - Propaganda.
I don't get that "Strait" discussion. Where does the Strait begin and end? If somehow the US Navy "opens" the Strait, what stops Iran to attack every ship moving in the direction of the Strait? Where does the "protection zone" start and end?
Much further than that. At least 200nm using drone ISR to cue Shaheeds, 500nm with satellite ISR. (With a 90kg warhead.) There are also many fishing vessels in the region, originating from a number of countries (e.g. Oman, Iran, Pakistan) which can report sightings of VLCCs.
Once you have sighted the ship it is an undergrad project to implement target classification and recognition using off the shelf algorithms. It doesn't need a fast GPU because naval engagements are very slow, a cheap mobile phone can do it.
How many innocent fishermen are you willing to murder? And of course, the famine in Balochistan that would follow. Maybe not a great idea if you want an uprising of the Balochi against the Persians.
Oman is a regional ally, but they would not stand idly by while their citizens are killed.
Agency:
"Social Security initially denied Borges’s allegations and said the data referenced in his complaint is stored in a secure environment walled-off from the internet."
Ah walled of the internet, so no one can get there and copy the data to a flashdrive. Move on, move on!
If I recall, that was exactly what happened early on in DOGE's tenure. Senior personnel were explicitly directed to grant admin access to DOGE personnel, and auditing/logging were disabled. This was widely reported at the time. I don't remember whether there were threats of termination, but it would not surprise me.
The "fun" thing was when some agencies started then seeing access attempts from Russian IPs sometimes as soon as 15 minutes after this happened, using credentials that were valid and created by/for DOGE people...
Honest question. Why isn't stuff like this a bigger deal? Why isn't anyone being held accountable for what is undeniably a national security incident?
I can understand why the administration would try to bury it. But I wouldn't have heard of most of the shitty stuff Doge employees have done were it not for HN. Why isn't this getting more media coverage?
Right? And many of the DOGE people who were outed were shown/known/had convictions for being involved in cybercrime gangs and such. I get it, in a controlled manner, for some cybersecurity jobs, but even at face value, that was nothing about what was DOGE was doing.
Unfortunately it seems quite believable. This is the same outfit that fired a bunch of people responsible for overseeing the US Nuclear Arsenal. [0] The combination of arrogance and stupidity was breathtaking.
Contemporaneous reporting was that DOGE people demanded root-level access across multiple systems (disallowed by federal policy, so political appointees had to demand the access) and without background checks or onboarding, after which they extracted protected data and shoved it in some S3 buckets. Just blew a hole right through the entire federal data protection model; you can't plan for "the President orders everyone to ignore all privacy and security controls" as a threat model.
It was absolutely a secure environment prior to DOGE laying waste to all the layers of security in place. Presumably those safeguards are now back in place post-DOGE razing.
While it's hard to overestimate the clownishness of this administration, I'd want to see the original wording of this denial before concluding that they said something that stupid, versus the author of this article paraphrasing it in a stupid manner. I'm not sure if this is what they're referring to, but the only response from the SSA that I found with a brief search doesn't say anything so foolish: https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/02/social-security-administr...
Nothing nerve wrecking like that but come on. They claim "the information could not have been stolen because the security practices" but "evidence has been published online, is now available to anyone and therefore it is dangerous" is a clown situation. It doesn't matter how it happened, it happened. Them trying to dispute the method is a clown camp.
The agency's statement says that PII is secure but that the complaint included internal emails and documents with info about the agency's systems and employees. That's not contradictory.
I suspect the whistleblower is correct, but I don't think it's proven to the point where we can confidently state that "it happened." SSA isn't trying to dispute the method, they're trying to dispute the fundamental claim.
Hard disagree. How can it be “walled off” from the internet if it’s not connected? Despite the jokes, cutting access on its own is not the same as air gapping or a firewall. As soon as it’s plugged in there are zero controls.
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