[pascalmemories]

My guess is the 'new owner' was involved in trafficking people for sex exploitation (the overnight journey to the shelter in France - somewhere vulnerable people could be easily tricked with a work offer and easily moved within the EU due to the lack of internal borders).

Meeting the 'Russian' woman and going along with her irrational story and the suggestion of drugs being supplied and her 'loving' him all sounds like an exploitative relationship. Consistent with a sex trafficker.

Swapping SIMs (to change phone identity - albeit poorly) and only using for a few weeks indicates someone used to taking steps to avoiding tracking/identification. Not someone new to criminal activity nor evading detection.

Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there (I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him at the idea he was homeless - that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality).

Trying to confront him at the property and finding an aggressive person with a strong smell of drugs at least gave a reality check. This is a dangerous criminal and it was reckless to go near him.

[wheelerwj]

It's easy for you to make these assumptions the way the story was told, but your points are all completely unfounded.

An older homeless man fits the profile just as easily.

> I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him.. that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality

I think you should spend more time in society of this astonishes you. We're an incredibly empathetic species, often going out of our way to connect with people and help them out. Especially when they are members of our communities.

Developing a connection with people you are viewing isn't even uncommon. Media and entertainment exploit this (and we love that they do) by getting us to connect with characters in TV shows and movies. Analyst and investigators are often encouraged and evaluated to ensure their emotions aren't effecting their performance, and victims of kidnapping often learn to love their captors. A young student feeling a connection with a man who appears to be on the outs is anything but astonishing, it's called being a human.

[Justin_K]

And you should spend more time around criminals to know that when patterns emerge there is a high likelihood of the same outcome.

[wheelerwj]

Please, a significant portion of my job involves understanding criminals and their interactions with everyday people. For every criminal, there is a never ending line of good hearted people who are willing to have faith in their fellow humans.

Of all of my short-comings, understanding this is not one of them.

[shawn-furyan]

Human minds are heavily tuned to spot spurious patterns. 'Spotting a pattern' is very often misleading evidence because of this bias. Generally patterns that jump out at us really fit a large spectrum of possible scenarios, including that the seeming pattern is just an illusion of randomness.

[zepto]

That may apply to you right now. Perhaps the poster you are replying to actually knows more than you, but you are biased to see the pattern of someone mistaking randomness for signal.

[wheelerwj]

into the rabbit hole..

[tomjakubowski]

> Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there

How does his staying overnight at a shelter suggest this at all? If anything suggests that, it's his other behavior (which seems quite like circumstantial evidence, to me).

[megablast]

Nah, I am pretty sure he was a Russian spy smuggling uranium in to build a smartbomb.

The russian woman was just one of his contacts, and they keep cover because they expect to be observed at all times. Constant contact with small amounts of uranium often makes people confused and irrational.

And it is very common for spies to smuggle in small amounts of uranium among refugees, and this gets picked up from homeless shelters.

They also often use the cover of drugs to hide the unique smell of uranium.

[mdrzn]

I don't know if this was sarcasm or not, but the story is enjoyable. I'd watch the movie.

[milansuk]

Person who stole phone and then used it for months(without reset) is not a spy!

[tasty_freeze]

megablast was not being serious

[RandyRanderson]

Sounds legit. Someone should look into this.

[darpa_escapee]

And this is why surveillance is scary: devoid of context, a bunch of data points can be used to craft a damning narrative from innocent and unrelated speech and behavior.

> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

[aaron695]

Is this a Reddit style conspiracy theory we all know is not true but play along with cause it's fun thing?

I did like the Finland never existed meme for instance, but I don't think it's really a HN thing.

Sex trafficker steals phone to stay off the radar or just a general homeless person steals phone, what's more plausible?

A sex trafficker that can't afford bus fare let alone a car? I feel like you need a car to be a plausible sex trafficker.

Or was that code?

[hiram112]

The 'sex trafficking' angle has become a straw-man for the anti-prostitution crusaders. Does it exist? Of course. But most non-biased studies show that it is not involved in the vast majority of prostitution related transactions. Period.

What's interesting is that the same Girl-Power groups that push the trafficking narrative the loudest, are the exact same ones who will scream that it's 'her body, her choice' for pretty much any other situation including custody, abortion and reproductive rights, etc.

So the solution to the problem is to continue to maintain prostitution's illegality, or at least moral stigma, but just penalize and shame the men, while asserting that the women are just victims.

[Thimothy]

Which non-biased studies are you talking about? It's the first time I've heard this narrative and seriously have trouble thinking about a non sexual-exploitation related cause for human trafficking in the western world.

[Khaine]

Thats not what he said. He said that most prostitution does not use sex trafficked persons. He also said that sex trafficking is a topic used by groups to rail against prostitution. Neither of these points argue against your point that the majority of human trafficking is for sex exploitation.

[Thimothy]

Hum... Where you parsed "most prostitution does not use sex trafficked persons", I understood "prostitution and human traffic do not have much correlation". I will have to agree that your interpretation is more charitable, and probably closer to what the GP meant, but I still want to see those studies.

I couldn't find them in a google search, that is not surprising as is quite a topic, but a quick search brings that there are 40 million people involved in prostitution, and 4.5 million have been victim of sex trafficking. That gives a rough estimate of 1/10 prostitution related transactions directly involved with human trafficking, so the use of "vast majority" is called into question.

I'm just realizing, though, that what really irks me is that the GP is using himself some kind of straw-manning himself. I've never found an prostitution abolitionist that pointed to sex-trafficking as the "big problem" in prostitution. The big problem is always women who are drawn into it involuntary, or more precisely, would very much rather do any other thing in the world. Sex-traffic is not an straw-man, but an global expression of the worst face of prostitution, and some people would say that an incidence of 10% is enough reason for pushing for the complete banning.

The reason I didn't address the second point, or the rest of the comment, is that I'm not really interested in discussing what other people discuss on such a flamewar-baity topic.