Whoa. I just read an article where 5 severed heads were found in front of a primary school in Acapulco. The killings are said to be drug-related and immediately I remembered a YouTube meme I came across about four years ago where scenes of killings were set to grupero narcorrido (drug cartel) country-style ballads. Back then North Eastern Mexicans connected to Gulf cartels were uploading gruesome murder scenes as a warning to rival cartels and the videos were going viral. Grupero musicians were targeted and killed and the bloody battle between the cartels had for the first time, moved online.



In recent years journalists have also been targeted for their investigative pieces, but real-time technologies have allowed concerned citizens to anonymously tip off police and authorities to narco activities without violent repercussions. Nevertheless, September 13 raised new fears for those updating online sites as two blogger/Twitter users connected to an anti-narco forum called Frontera Al Rojo Vivo were found dead, hanging from a bridge and labeled as “snitches” by the Zeta cartel .

Regular government and employee whistle blowers already have their challenges, but reporting on drug cartel activity is a whole other level of terrifying. Perhaps privacy both online and offline are for the most part dead as Steve Rambaum suggests, but we certainly can’t get over it. Between web profiling, cookies, or access at the ISP level, I have no idea how the murdered bloggers were tracked down, but clearly there is a need for greater privacy controls from those who might be harmed for their opinions. I’m not sure thatTor can do much when dangerous groups assert their reach and power, but it’s definitely worth a revisit.