[mrilhan]

... Wikileaks, anyone? I think the model Mr. Schmidt is advocating has been tried, and destroyed in front of our eyes by multiple collaborating governments (sweden, america, england) and corporations (paypal, visa, et al.), in the last 24 months. Perhaps Google would have a better shot at defending itself.

The article seems more written out of shock, the absurdity of his travel experience, rather than an actual long-term plan to disrupt the cartels by injecting (pun? maybe) technology into the problem. The onus at this point is on the governments, which have bigger pockets and more methods of organizing large groups of people, compared to the individual citizens involved who are as Mr. Schmidt himself puts it, 'overwhelmed by crime'. We can't simply treat this specific problem as if it appeared yesterday, it has a history and evolution of its own. Certain methods have been tried, there have been many scandals, people revealed to be 'on the take', thousands of innocent bystanders have been slaughtered. This isn't day #1, and that affects public reaction.

Something else to keep in mind is that this isn't Occupy Wall Street either, you're not just going to get slapped with a loitering ticket and walk it off, there's a very real x% chance that your wife or kids could be targeted (that means 'killed and (maybe) raped'), which isn't a risk you can expect anyone to stand up against out of their own will and the promise of anonymous packets tracked by a unique ID suggested by a guy who got off of a private jet.