Whistle Orga Archives

In October of 2017 a group calling themselves Cleaningress released screenshots and the membership list of a Resistance Slack called The Broker's Guild. According to Cleaningress, bots in some of The Broker's Guild channels accessed a database that had been compiled by scraping the Ingress intel site.

Predictably, a scandal erupted in the Ingress community. The information was used to harass the members of The Broker's Guild identified by Cleaningress.

This site contains the archives of the Telegram chat room where the members of Cleaningress collected, organized, and edited the website that published details about The Broker's Guild and it's members.

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This Is Undoubtedly Old, As Is Ours

- We can achieve three things here: 1) We can disrupt a bunch of influential RES on an individual basis. They'll either have to own it or deny it, and both will be sort of fun to watch. 2) We can change the gamewide conversation on issues that involve scraping. Like the individual bad actors, Niantic will either have to own it or ignore it, and both would be amusing to watch. 3) We can disrupt RES nationally for a brief period, and since we control the timing we can use that strategically.

- I love the idea of strategic timing, and taking measured steps. But I'd argue that, if the 900 members number is an accurate figure, our timeline of exclusive access might be short. That seems like an awful lot of people to keep something this toxic quiet for very long.

- If you leaked just what you know about the res, yes. When you start talking about enl also, the calculus changes dramatically

- Depending on who's a member in there, it's going to be ugly when the shit hits the fan

- This is undoubtedly old, as is ours

Smart, Resourceful People

- We're pretty smart, resourceful people. If we wanted to dig out a distributed ENL scraper engine, I think we could.

- But I don't know if I would. As much as I despise scraping, I don't know that it would be worth the trust I would have to gain and break to do that.

Getting All The Freaking The Fuck Out Of Our Systems

- Cactus does similar things and is as good, but to the best of my knowledge it is not used widely at the anomaly level. Can't speak for Asia.

- Alright, given that I dont use it, but dont feel its justifiable to burn, because almost no one in there is still using it, I have simply left POPTART.

- I'm out of Cactus as well, for anyone keeping score at home.

- I was briefly in Cactus too, before I realized how problematic it was.

- How does one get out of cactus? And how would one get in to it in the first place? I'm not sure if I'm in it?

- Everyone can authenticate to the client via V, but you can also setup a channel that sends you alerts when activity happens in a predefined area. I turned off everything on mine except new portals. Doing that makes you an admin for those channels. Everyone can just not use cactus. If you signed up for a channel, leave it, and remove yourself from the admin sheet.

- I was added to zone-specific telegram channels that yielded alerts relevant to fielding.

- and I was briefly in the developer chat

- So if I'm not in a channel with the cactusbot I'm good?

- Yea.

- I saw cactus mentioned in here. Tldr? I know of one person who was a big pusher for that bot. I left the person's area TG because of it.

- tg bot that does some handy things, powered by a sketchy sketchy scraper

- Oh I know what cactus does. Wasn't sure why it was brought up

- In anticipation of the "everyone does it" argument generally

- Any bot that can list every portal a person owns no matter where is more than iffy

- "ENL scrape to guardian hunt too"

- In terms of process, this is where we are: - We're populating the spreadsheet as well as we're able - We're getting all the freaking the fuck out of our systems - We're waiting for WB to finish pooping intel - We're thinking about the how, what, where and when of the release.

Yeah, It's Just A Question Of Access

- You can have a DM with the cactus bot but unless you're verified, it won't give you anything

- Cactus is V integrated. Anyone who is VL1 or VL2 can log in. Several TGR members are on their docs because they signed up to see and have left.

- We'd have to be careful.

- But it would make for good counterpoint to TBG

- something this side of the fence

- Yeah I'm probably listed on Cactus. I signed in once to see what it was.

- What I've been told, some of the functions need higher V level for access too

- As am I 😔

- {{FWD: :cactus:Cactus, 15.08.2017 00:38:37}} Error looking for your guardians. Please try back later.

- Probably cause I didn't own any portals 😂

- Idk if I have my dm still

- I dont think so, I dont have any more access than I did at V2

- I'd have to search back in a chat with nasshole. He said something about needing higher level and access granted because cactus wasn't acknowledging me

- If we wanted to do it but still protect our friends, we could start a rumor that it was leaked once we have all corroborating data in hand.

- I know that seems less severe than we did to the RES

- But might make it more palatable

- people would bail

- then we get remaining members

- Oh sorry, you guys are tlaking Cactus... I need a nap.

- This happens when you aren't verified for cactus lol

- {{FWD: :cactus:Cactus, 12.10.2016 21:44:45}} [[👿 Sticker, size 27'818 bytes]]

- {{FWD: :cactus:Cactus, 12.10.2016 21:44:45}} 💢 GO AWAY SMURF!

- Oh! You have to have your V profile linked to telegram to use it.

- Whoa.

- Anyone in V can do this? I was only ever in the radar equivalent channels

- you can look for your own

- yes

- Oh ok

- Still scrapy, but at least not the devil

- Though obvs if you can look for your own it's possible to look for others, technically

- I've got 50 ADAs burning a hole in my pocket. I'll go get myself! :)

- Yeah, it's just a question of access

We Could Have Done Great Things

- {{FWD: Tiernan (NVX) NQ AU, 21.10.2017 00:16:45}}
So there's been RES leaks, and as a result there's been a desire to expose the presumably similar ENL scrapers of the world as well in a similar manner. I don't run such a tool nor am I affiliate with them, but I do run some tools which, just like IITC, do violate the strict letter of the ToS. As operators we've set an arbitrary view on where that line should be and what tools we are and are not comfortable using and that's fine, however rumours of ENL agents wanting to blow open things is concerning to me because I don't know if your opinion on this matter includes eg flipcard databases and portal location information.

As I have absolutely no desire to get caught up in the middle of this sort of thing, anyone suspected of wanting to willingly leak any information on opsec tools as a preventative measure will not have access to any tools I develop.

- Huh.

- Reasonable.

- Sort of.

- oh that's interesting. That's my language.

- Also means anyone in here could be liable to be removed if that becomes known.

- " On the ENL side, there's enl.wtf, and cactus, and poptart. I don't know much about these things. Factionally, I'm not a cool kid. People know I'm awkward and moralistic. They don't invite me to controversial stuff. That's fine. If I knew more about them, I'd just blow them open. Everyone knows this."

- I'm pretty familiar with the part of my personal toolset that Tiernan developed and confident I can defend their use to a public audience if they receive scrutiny, and go without them if they become unavailable for any reason, or no reason.

- Nope, he's talking about me.

- He has removed me.

- yep. Here we go.

- From what?

- people in faction who are scared of what we are doing are now talking about what we're doing.

- this is the result of leaks, and that's fine

- Nv.io/ingress

- it was going to happen. Just be aware that it's happening, and make decisions accordingly.

- I can login, there are no tools

- So 30 minutes after we get an email from someone anonymous implicating an Australian guardian Hunter I get removed and we get a general warning from an Australian dev.

- No one outside this room knew.

- I'm not familiar with this link, or at least my new laptop isn't. What is it?

- Tiernans distribution point for plugins

- Someone else who had access login.

- Are any plugins listed?

- Jesus fucking Christ.

- I don't even know what that site is

- I'm not doing this. This is too sensitive to be done in this room now.

- classic cool kids club

- heh

- Yep. Fuck it

- Im out.

- We could have done great things.
.....21.10.2017 00:32:32, Erich Bacher (@thePrevaricator WI, US): >>left group<<