Well I am completely against the apparent weak encryption and their lack of shielding but I think the big brother concerns are a little overblown. I don't think this is part of some massive systems to track us. Unless the U.S. is setting up this massive trackng network on cruise ships and all over foreign countries... I don't think it will suck in much.. unless of course they enjoy getting receiving data from my passport that always reports that I am 1) at home or 2) on my way to the airport. Seriously.. what U.S. citizen carries their passport everywhere they go domestically?

Maybe but I don't think advertising ruins everything. Look at all of the sites that are more popular than Craigslist. Show me which ones don't have ads. Hell look at the top of the screen as you read this.. what's that? An ad! Just make it small/low key and do more with it. Not might site, so who cares but it would be nice with their amount of traffic.

One thing that has always baffled me is that they don't put up any web advertisements for the purposes of bringing in income. They are pretty low budget in terms of operating and only really charge for certain [commercial] listings. Why not put up some ads though? Even if you want to be modest and don't need the money, you could at least donate it to charity or build a big stack of 100 dollar bills, put two eyes on them, and tell people this is the money you could be saving with Geico. Come on!

This is great news and I am happy it was a successful sting operation. Bringing these guys down is something we all like to see and it helps make a lot of hard work of different people pay off. However, there is one item that has been mentioned a few times in other articles that blows my mind on this. From the Wired article:

In other words they were completely outed, although unsuccessfully, prior to the German report. They were actually hacked and exposed two years ago. That's pretty bad operations security. Never run/manage your sting site from where you really are.. well at least if that plays ties back directly to law enforcement. That's kind of like if a DEA agent showed up to a drug buy and parked his marked police car behind the dumpster nearby. ::face palm::