With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible.
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
crystal_revenge 5 hours ago [-]
I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised.
To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resistance.
As a former government employee I had the same reaction to the Snowden leaks: sure the government might be collecting all of this (which I don't support), but I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
Incompetence might be the greatest safety we have against a true dystopia.
Eupolemos 2 hours ago [-]
Because Snowden, agree with him or not, showed us that reality blew away our imagination.
It may feel normal now, but back then, serious people, professionals, told us that the claims just were not possible.
Until we learned that they were.
14 minutes ago [-]
heavyset_go 1 hours ago [-]
Until that moment, the general sentiment about the government and the internet is that they are too incompetent to do anything about it, companies like Microsoft/Apple/Google/Snapchat are actually secure so lax data/opsec is okay, etc.
Meanwhile, the whole time, communications and tech companies were working hand in hand with the government siphoning up any and all data they could to successfully implement their LifeLog[1] pipe dream.
dont worry lifelog was cancelled in 2004 according to that wiki. Phew!
anonym29 7 minutes ago [-]
The very same day Mark Zuckerberg's "The Facebook" launched. A total coincidence, with zero evidence that the two are related in any way whatsoever ;)
XorNot 1 hours ago [-]
Which claims? HN around that time was taking anything and everything and declaring it conclusively proved everything else.
I honestly have no god damn clue what was actually revealed by the Snowden documents - people just say "they revealed things".
fao_ 1 hours ago [-]
Why are you asking here, versus going to Google and reading the original article from The Guardian? Or the numerous Wikipedia links that are on this page?
XorNot 1 hours ago [-]
Because saying "experts said things were impossible and then Snowden" could mean literally anything. Which experts, what things?
Like I said: I've read a ton of stuff, and apparently what people are sure they read is very different to what I read.
browningstreet 45 minutes ago [-]
You can read about PRISM, Upstream, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, NSA Section 215 (PATRIOT Act) in a lot of places. But essentially they collected all call records and tapped the Internet backbone and stored as much traffic as they could. It’s not all automatic but it’s overly streamlined given the promises of court orders. Which were rubber stamped.
XorNot 34 minutes ago [-]
Again: which experts were saying what was impossible, which was then revealed to be possible by the Snowden documents?
Is the claim that there was adequate court oversight of operations under those codenames which then turned out not to be the case? Are they referring to specific excesses of the agencies? Breaking certain cryptographic primitives presumed to be secure?
Why is absolutely no one who knows all about Snowden ever able to refer to the files with anything more then a bunch of titles, and when they deign to provide a link also refuses to explain what part of it they are reacting to or what they think it means - you know, normal human communication stuff?
(I mean I know why, it's because at the time HN wound itself up on "the NSA has definitely cracked TLS" and the source was an out of context slide about the ability to monitor decrypted traffic after TLS termination - maybe, because actually it was one extremely information sparse internal briefing slide. But boy were people super confident they knew exactly what it meant, in a way which extends to discussion and reference to every other part of the files in my experience).
What I learned in that revelation was that the NSA was deliberately tampering with the design of products and standards to make them more vulnerable to NOBUS decryption. This surprised everyone I knew at the time, because we (perhaps naively) thought this was out of bounds. Google "SIGINT Enabling" and "Bullrun".
But there were many other revelations demonstrating large scale surveillance. One we saw involved monitoring the Google infra by tapping inter-DC fiber connections after SSL was added. Google MUSCULAR, or "SSL added and removed here". We also saw projects to tap unencrypted messaging services and read every message sent. This was "surprising" because it was indiscriminate and large-scale. No doubt these projects (over a decade old) have accelerated in the meantime.
bdangubic 1 hours ago [-]
that takes effort :)
blurbleblurble 5 hours ago [-]
Incompetence could also be incredibly dangerous given enough destructive willpower.
They're not trying to use the data to act efficiently (or in the public good for that matter), and they sure as fuck don't want you to see it. They're trying to make sure that they have dirt on anyone who becomes their enemy in the future.
GPurePro 26 minutes ago [-]
You've never seen it because when it's efficient you won't see it.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago [-]
> I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
Someone else on HN said it would be nice if the NSA published statistics or something, data so aggregate you couldn't determine much from it, but still tells you "holy shit they prevented something crazy" levels of information, harder said than done without revealing too much.
rtpg 2 hours ago [-]
The NSA tried to do this during the Snowden leaks!
There were stories like "look at how we stopped this thing using all this data we've been scooping up"... but often the details lead to somewhat underwhelming realities, to say the least.
It might be that this stuff is very useful, but only in very illegal ways.
wil421 3 hours ago [-]
In addition to terrorist stuff, they are probably passing of bunch of stuff to the military or defense industry to do things like fine tune their radar to cutting edge military secrets.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago [-]
Would be nice if we had some form of statistics in a way that wouldnt endanger any of the intel that just tells the general public "we dont just sit here collecting PB of data daily"
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
Any statistics that didn't endanger the intel would also be unverifiable and easily falsified, and therefore not particularly trustworthy for the proposed purpose.
cyanydeez 41 minutes ago [-]
I see palntir as a techno whitewashing Mckinsey consultant. But the tech is there to make a much bigger problem than prior art, halucinations et al.
They are still dangerous even if theyre over promising because even placebos are dangerous when the displace real medical interventions.
heavyset_go 2 hours ago [-]
No, incompetence is terrifying. No one wants to get caught in a machine driven by imbeciles who don't care about truth or honoring the Constitution.
Competence is also terrifying, but for different reasons.
throwaway173738 30 minutes ago [-]
It sure would be convenient if they were always ineffective. Sadly there have been periods in history where governments have set themselves to brutality with incredible effectiveness.
asdfman123 4 hours ago [-]
If they throw out things like due process and reasonable doubt they can do a whole lot with the data they've collected.
That may sound hyperbolic but I hope it's obvious to most people by now that it's not.
radicaldreamer 2 hours ago [-]
They can do parallel construction or use "undercover" informants etc.
edoceo 2 hours ago [-]
Fuzzy Dunlop (it's from The Wire). Their CI was a tennis ball (with an unauthorized camera inside).
tempsaasexample 11 minutes ago [-]
I honestly tempt fate for fun to see how good police surveillance tech is the last few years.
I let one of my cars expire the registration a few months Everytime, because I'm lazy and because I want to see if I get flagged by a popup system Everytime a police officer passes near me. My commute car is out of registration 3 months right now. And old cop friend told me they basically never tow unless it's 6 months. I pay the $50 late fee once a year and keep doing my experiment for the last 6-7 years. Still no real signs they care.
My fun car has out of state plates for 10 years now. Ive been pulled over once for speeding, and told the officer I just bought it. I've never registered it since I bought it from a friend a decade ago. They let me go. It makes me wonder if one day they'll say "sir, we have plate scanners of this vehicle driving around this state for a year straight.. pay a fine." Not yet.
AndrewKemendo 3 hours ago [-]
>I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
As a former intelligence officer with combat time I promise you there are A LOT of actions happening based on that data.
GuinansEyebrows 5 hours ago [-]
doing Bad Things poorly is still doing Bad Things.
roenxi 5 hours ago [-]
> ... I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
It isn't usually a question of efficiency, it is a question of damage. Technically there is an argument that something like the holocaust was inefficiently executed, but still a good reason to actively prevent governments having ready-to-use data on hand about people's ethnic origin.
A lot of the same observations probably apply to the ICE situation too. One of the big problems with the mass-migration programs has always been that there is no reasonable way to undo that sort of thing because it is far too risky for the government to be primed to identify and deport large groups of people. For all the fire and thunder the Trump administration probably isn't going to accomplish very much, but at great cost.
newsclues 5 hours ago [-]
Because palantirs selling proposition is: you can’t find the answers in your own data, but we can.
alter_synapse 22 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
sixsevenrot 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shrubble 5 hours ago [-]
The algorithm was sorting punch cards and then putting the cards in different stacks on a table.
We can only hope that the surveillance state is still working with the same algorithm…
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
The NAZI rhetoric is beyond old at this point. If that were a thing today there would be exactly zero protestors, rioters, illegal immigrants, people looking at one of the SS, deportation. There would just be one big ditch in each city, many bags of lye and a bulldozer. All of these events would have lasted a few hours and we would instead be trying to figure out who is missing.
filoeleven 4 hours ago [-]
The nazi transformation didn't happen over the course of half an hour. Or one election cycle, even. The history is rhyming pretty hard right now.
Bender 4 hours ago [-]
Hitlers security group that transformed a small section of the SS into brutal killing machines happened rather fast and that is what people are talking about when they are digging up the Totenkopf wearing brown shirts. These never existed in the United States of America and never will. Not even the modern day skin-head neo-nazi's or the neo-nazi militias could be compared. They would have been extinguished by the SS nearly instantly for daring to wear the insignia.
rubyn00bie 3 hours ago [-]
The brownshirts were actually the SA, a police force Hitler originally used for years to brutalize people before the formation of the SS. The SA are very similar to modern day ICE being made up of militant supporters (like proud boys, J6’ers pardoned) who are willing to commit violence without provocation or any fear of being prosecuted for their violence.
The SA was eventually hung out to dry, because Hitler feared Ernst Röhm had too much power (among other reasons)— by executing SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives (die Nacht der langen Messer)…
To say the violence of the SS was quick to be extreme really forgets the ten plus year road they took to get there. I’d really suggest, as disheartening and sad as it is, to read about all this yourself. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the US right now are astonishing. It’s almost as if someone in the White House is using history as a playbook.
Which sort of goes full circle since Hitler took a lot from how brutal and racist the US towards slaves and non-whites.
gedy 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah if deportation is now Nazism, then the Allies after WW2 were Nazis too for the millions of mass displaced persons to match new borders.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
lol. came here to say pretty much the same thing.
forshaper 5 hours ago [-]
I've generally held this position, but assume a sufficient combination of models could do a lot more than was possible before.
fudged71 5 hours ago [-]
It's noteworthy at this point in time that there is a contradiction. The government is currently ramping up Palantir and they are using "precise targeting" of illegal aliens using "advanced data/algorithms". And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
Maybe now is exactly the right time to publicly call out the apparent uselessness of Palantir before they fully deploy their high altitude loitering blimps and drones for pervasive surveillance and tracking protestors to their homes.
(My greater theory is that the slide into authoritarianism is not linear, but rather has a hump in the middle where government speech and actions are necessarily opposite, and that they expect the contradiction to slide. Calling out the contradiction is one of the most important things to do for people to see what is going on.)
larkost 4 hours ago [-]
I think this is mostly because they don't care about false-negatives. They have forgotten the idea that our justice system was supposed to hold true to: "better a hundred guilty go free than one innocent person suffer" (attributed to Benjamin Franklin).
This can be seen in the case of ChongLy Thao, the American citizen (who was born in Laos). This was the man dragged out into freezing temperatures in his underwear after ICE knocked down his door (without a warrant), because they thought two other men (of Thai origin I think) were living there. The ICE agents attitude was that they must be living there, and ChongLy was hiding them. That being wrong does not cost those ICE agents anything, and that is the source of the problems.
strken 1 hours ago [-]
Do you mean false positives? A false negative would be "we checked to see whether Alice was in the country illegally, and the computer said no but the actual answer turned out to be yes".
freejazz 2 hours ago [-]
But they were wrong about the Thai people living there. That's the poster's point. Not that they don't care, but that they were wrong from the get-go because they don't actually have good information.
habinero 1 hours ago [-]
No, it's pretty clear they don't care and will never care.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe the wrong people are, in reality, precisely the people they intended to target.
diogocp 38 minutes ago [-]
> we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people
There is a difference between what you are seeing and what is actually happening.
99.9% of the time they are finding the right people, but "illegal alien was deported" is as interesting a news story as "water is wet".
ryandrake 4 hours ago [-]
> And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
If the end goal is that the broad, general public are intimidated, then they're not necessarily "finding the wrong people." With the current "semi random" enforcement with many false positives, nobody feels safe, regardless of their legal status. This looks to be the goal: Intimidate everyone.
If they had a 100% true positive rate and a 0% false positive rate, the general population would not feel terrorized.
tehjoker 1 hours ago [-]
ICE/DHS are not NSA, they probably don't share efficiently. All the intelligence services are rivals and duplicate capabilities to some degree.
mikkupikku 5 hours ago [-]
How does Palantir defeat Signal's crypto? I suppose it could be done by pwning everybody's phones, but Palantir mostly does surveillance AFAIK, I haven't heard of them getting into the phone hacking business. I think Israeli corps have that market covered.
autoexec 56 minutes ago [-]
My guess is that Signal has been compromised by the state for a very long time. The dead canary is their steadfast refusal to update their privacy policy which opens with "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." even though they started keeping user's name, phone number, photo, and a list of their contacts permanently in the cloud years ago. Even more recently they started keeping message content itself in the cloud in some cases and have still refused to update their policy.
>With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced
Palantir is SAP with a hollywood marketing department. I talked to a Palantir guy five or six years ago and he said he was happy every time someone portrayed them as a bond villain in the news because the stock went up the next day.
So much of tech abuse is enabled by this, and it's somewhat more pronounced in America, juvenile attitude toward technology, tech companies and CEOs. These people are laughing on their way to the bank because they convinced both critics and evangelists that their SAAS products are some inevitable genius invention
sosomoxie 1 hours ago [-]
You don't need sophisticated tech to cause damage, you just need access to data. Palantir is dangerous not because it has some amazing technology that no one else has, it's that they aggregate many data sources of what would be considered private data and expose it with malicious intent (c.f. any interview with the Palantir CEO). Reading my email doesn't require amazing programming, it just requires access.
deaux 27 minutes ago [-]
Postgres can aggregate many data sources of private data. So can SAP. So what is it about their tech that you think makes it different? SAP is a good comparison.
sosomoxie 13 minutes ago [-]
Like I said, their tech is meaningless. It's the deals they cut to gain access to data and the deals they cut to expose that data.
deaux 1 minutes ago [-]
Why would they be the ones cutting deals to gain access to data? The Party is cutting those deals and has been for ages. Deals like these:
> Spyware delivered by text
> In August, the Trump administration revived a previously paused contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to The Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto with expertise in spyware.
> Little is known about how ICE is using Paragon Solutions technology and legal groups recently sued DHS for records about it and tools made by the company Cellebrite. ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about its Paragon Solutions contract and whether it is for Graphite or another tool.
> Graphite can start monitoring a phone — including encrypted messages — just by sending a message to the number. The user doesn't have to click on a link or a message.
> "It has essentially complete access to your phone," said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and policy group focused on privacy. "It's an extremely dangerous surveillance tech that really goes against our Fourth Amendment protections."
Deals with Flock, and so on. It makes no sense for Palantir to be the one doing those deals rather than the Party. They've been doing so for a long time now. That's the whole point of data brokers, on this site alone there are hundreds of comments and posts about how the Party abuses those to get around laws on mass surveillance - can't legally (or are too incompetent to) gather data ourselves? Just buy it off a data broker. And Snowden showed us more than a decade ago that even without them they can just.. not care about the "legal" part.
billy99k 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
computerthings 50 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
q34tlR4y 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Meh. Palintir is optimized to sell data to the government. Said governments usually don't care about the quality of data about any one individual. Wear sunglasses when you go out and stay off facebook and it's amazing how little palintir signal you send up. Bonus points if you created an LLC to pay your utility bills. But... Palintir is not as good as you seem to be implying.
Is it? Seems like enforcing laws to protect the citizens of law enforcement from vigilante justice isnt something governments should or do mess around with, in general.
janalsncm 5 hours ago [-]
While we’re getting rid of the first amendment maybe we should also get rid of the fourth and fifth amendment too since they make law enforcement harder? I’m sure cops in North Korea have a much easier and safer job.
jatora 55 minutes ago [-]
So are you saying that the first amendment should protect government insiders leaking personal employee info to the public for the purposes of endangering those government employees, and to cause harm to their families? based on subjective opinions on whether the people think the actions of said employees are just or unjust?
That's wild if so. That's quite the precedent to set.
Note: I don't support ice or their actions. nor do i support vigilante justice.
bdangubic 1 hours ago [-]
4th amendment???! Osama killed that decades ago… they may as well take it off the books… Once we were OK having our junks touched to go from here to there the 4A effectively ceased to exist.
jjk166 5 hours ago [-]
Can't argue with their 110% conviction rate, North Korean tactics work.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
You only have rights you exercise. Don't let the cops trample on your rights. Though... this does seem to work better for white, rich, older dudes than for other people.
janalsncm 5 hours ago [-]
I’m reminded of (I think) people in Shanghai complaining that their posts about covid lockdowns were censored, saying “we have free speech”. And if you believe in universal rights, they’re right. They do.
The question is whether the government will respect and protect those rights or not.
freejazz 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks.
charcircuit 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
And protesting is not vigilante justice.
charcircuit 4 hours ago [-]
It could be depending on how the protesting is done. Saying that you are a protestor does not mean you are free to go full anarchist and do whatever you liked to whomever you please.
filoeleven 4 hours ago [-]
The protesters aren't the ones doing that. Have you not seen the news?
charcircuit 3 hours ago [-]
There are protesters that are obstructing law enforcement. It is undeniable that such protestor exist and this HN thread is about going after those people.
janalsncm 2 hours ago [-]
The thread is about going after people on Signal who are tracking officer locations. There are entirely legitimate reasons to want that information including exercising your first amendment rights at that location.
charcircuit 1 hours ago [-]
And there are illegitimate reasons too like going there to obstruct law enforcement operations. Since there are people obstructing law enforcement, the mechanisms that which such groups of people operate need to be investigated.
habinero 58 minutes ago [-]
Oh no, not civil disobedience. The horror.
plagiarist 3 hours ago [-]
I see the problem here. So, actually, the ones in masks who are randomly assaulting (sometimes murdering) nonviolent bystanders are ICE, not the protestors. Hope that helps.
charcircuit 3 hours ago [-]
I am talking about protestors who obstruct law enforcement and their operations. Protestors who threaten regular people and law enforcement. Protestors who damage other people's property. Protestors who violate noiseordnance. Protestors who are trespassing.
I am not referring to actual bystanders. Implying that I am is purposefully being ignorant of what I am talking about.
nielsbot 5 hours ago [-]
If ICE agents were actually in danger or subject to "vigilante justice", the administration would be CROWING about it SO LOUDLY we'd never hear the end of it. They're spending their entire working days searching for evidence of it. They can't hardly wait!
That's not what is happening here.
filoeleven 4 hours ago [-]
s/searching for/manufacturing
Remember, they're accusing the people they killed of heinous motives for their narrative. They can't find it, so they make it up. Keep filming, y'all.
nyc_data_geek 5 hours ago [-]
Seems like citizens are the ones who need protection from law and immigration enforcement, considering the public executions we've all witnessed in the past week or so.
1potatonagger 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
freejazz 2 hours ago [-]
Woof
lovich 5 hours ago [-]
“Citizens of law enforcement”
What a phrase
jatora 49 minutes ago [-]
you're aware that LEO are citizens right? with rights as well?
zem 2 hours ago [-]
the fine nation of law enforcement, which has only colonised the united states for its own good and to being civilisation to the heathen masses
1potatonagger 2 hours ago [-]
... that is correct.
awesome_dude 5 hours ago [-]
The whole premise of the second amendment is about citizens being armed in order to resist/overthrow a government
autoexec 39 minutes ago [-]
In which case it's no longer relevant because nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun. The idea was cute enough back when the firepower the government had to use against the people was limited to muskets and cannons, but currently the idea of guns being used to overthrow a government with a military like the US is a complete joke.
Today you'll still find a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters insisting against common sense regulations because they need their guns to stop government oppression and tyranny yet you can open youtube right now and find countless examples of government oppression and tyranny and to no surprise those guys aren't using their guns to do a damn thing about any of it. In fact they're usually the ones making excuses for the government and their abuses.
There are reasonable arguments for supporting 2nd amendment and gun ownership but resisting/overthrowing the government is not one of them. That's nothing more than a comforting power fantasy.
ubertaco 2 hours ago [-]
The text of the second amendment, as written, would seem to indicate that the premise of the second amendment is to arm "a well-regulated militia" (which was relevant to the government that adopted the second amendment, as it had no standing army).
It was basically crowdsourcing the military. We've been running through all the various problems with that idea ever since, including:
- oops, turns out not enough people volunteer and our whole army got nearly wiped out; maybe we need to pay people to be an army for a living (ca. 1791)
- oops, turns out allowing the public to arm themselves and be their own militia can lead people being their own separate militia factions against the government, I guess we don't want that (e.g. Shay's Rebellion, John Brown and various slave rebellions fighting for freedom)
- oops, turns out part of the army can just decide they're a whole new country's army now, guess we don't want that (the civil war)
- oops, turns out actually everyone having guns means any given individual can just shoot whomever they like (like in hundreds of school shootings and mass shootings)
- oops, turns out we gotta give our police force even bigger guns and tanks and stuff so they won't be scared of random normal people on the street having guns (and look where that's gotten us)
Honestly, the whole thing should've been heavily amended to something more sane back in 1791 when the Legion of the United States (the first standing army) was formed, as they were already punting on the mistaken notion that "a well-regulated militia" was the answer instead of "a professional standing army".
bluescrn 3 hours ago [-]
Of course, if you're taking up arms to resist/overthrow a government, then you should be entirely anticipating that the government will shoot back. Or shoot first.
If protest is approaching/crossing the line into insurgency, people need to seriously consider that they may be putting their life on the line. It's not a game.
awesome_dude 3 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that if people are taking up arms to resist their government, things have already gone far enough down that path that they feel their lives are in jeopardy.
> Just this week there were Catholic PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist ICE in Minneapolis
Episcopal (the US branch of the Anglican Communion), not Catholic, and it wasn't conditioned on going to Minneapolis, it was a statement about the broad situation of the country and the times we are in and what was necessary for them, with events in Minneapolis as a signifier, but not a geographically isolated, contained condition.
awesome_dude 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the feedback, you're right and I've (tried) to mark the incorrect stuff with what markdown would show as strikethroughs)
bluescrn 2 hours ago [-]
> How can you think it's a "game'?
Everything seems fueled by social media radicalisation, and the social media side of things is very much 'gameified', all about scoring likes/upvotes/followers (and earning real revenue) for pushing escalating outrage.
awesome_dude 2 hours ago [-]
Which is VERY different to the discussion at hand.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
[citation needed]
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
It's not exactly an unusual claim, and it was very much the loudly espoused position of the Republican Party until, well, last week.
> In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms"...
hollandheese 5 hours ago [-]
This was posited as the nice sounding reason for the second amendment, when the more accurate reason was to ensure citizens had guns to drive out the indigenous peoples and steal their lands.
We rather quickly saw the federal government rolling over the people even with weapons in the Whiskey Rebellion.
cmrdporcupine 4 hours ago [-]
Don't forget the very profound usefulness of a "well-armed militia" in putting down slave rebellions and catching escaped slaves.
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
I don't disagree.
But it's still very funny seeing the Right wrestle with "wait, the other team has guns?!" and "wait, Trump sounds like he wants gun control?!" right now when this claim has been the basis of their argument for decades.
awesome_dude 4 hours ago [-]
To be fair, the right struggle with the argument every time it's put to the test.
I recall the 2016 shootings of Dallas Police Officers and the right were apoplectic about the individual
Can I get one with a little, uh, less spicy, of an "about us" page?
I'm not asking for a primary source, just something without a political axe to grind.
cantalopes 3 hours ago [-]
Its really sad to see what kind of bottomless pit has the usa gotten into after that lunatic got into presidency. Years of effort burned by one fsb agent
jatora 36 minutes ago [-]
Wow Trump is an FSB agent? Can you point me to where I can learn more?
tgrowazay 44 minutes ago [-]
Yes, he is demented and corrupt and his son was on board of Ukrainian oil company Burisma, but I don’t think he is a FSB agent.
How many rights can Trump trample in one year? This is a big deal. I realize most of the problems started with the patriot act (most members of congress are culpable for that). We should all have zero tolerance for the erosion of our rights, zero tolerance for fake emergencies!
bs7280 8 hours ago [-]
A wise man told me, you know signal works because its banned in Russia. I also find it incredibly ironic that they have a problem with this, when the DoD is flagrantly using signal for classified communications.
bsimpson 3 hours ago [-]
My personal connections who are in the military use it for texting from undisclosed locations.
I've heard from people who have worked with the Signal foundation that it was close to being endorsed for private communication by one branch of government, but that endorsement was rescinded because another branch didn't want people knowing how to stay private.
joekrill 6 hours ago [-]
They aren't taking issue with Signal, per se... they are upset that people are sharing the whereabouts and movements of ICE officers. Signal just seems to be the medium-of-choice. And this just happens to give them a chance to declare Signal as "bad", since they can't spy on Signal en masse.
driverdan 1 hours ago [-]
I have full confidence in Signal and their encryption but this argument doesn't make sense to me. It could be the opposite, that Russia knows it's compromised by the US government and don't want people using it. I don't believe that's the case but the point is you can't put too much weight on it.
huhtenberg 5 hours ago [-]
It doesn't mean much. Roblox is banned in Russia.
They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.
cyberge99 7 hours ago [-]
You know it works because they banned it in Russia? Works for whom?
NewsaHackO 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, at best it implies Russia cannot easily get confidential information from them. Everyone else, the jury is still out for.
jjk166 4 hours ago [-]
There aren't a lot of things I would claim Russia is a leader in, but state sponsored hacking and spying on its own people would both definitely make the list. That's not to say no one has cracked it, but if the Russians couldn't do it there aren't many who could.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Sure, but using Signal for classified info is a violation of policy.
psunavy03 8 hours ago [-]
The DOD is not using "flagrantly using Signal." The Secretary of Defense, whatever his preferred pronouns are, is breaking the law.
kodyo 8 hours ago [-]
CISA recommended Signal for encrypted end-to-end communications for "highly targeted individuals."
The best part is that, in trying to comply with this guidance, the government chose Telemessage to provide the message archiving required by the Federal Records Act.
The only problem is that Telemessage was wildly insecure and was transmitting/storing message archives without any encryption.
paulryanrogers 6 hours ago [-]
Recommendations to the private sector don't condone violating security and retention laws for people working in the public sector.
sedivy94 5 hours ago [-]
Military personnel are currently only allowed to use Signal for mobile communications within their unit. Classified information is a different story, though.
thomasrognon 5 hours ago [-]
Come on, man. We're talking about classified information, not general OPSEC advice. I worked in a SCIF. Literally every piece of equipment, down to each ethernet cable, has a sticker with its authorized classification level. This system exists for a reason, like making it impossible to accidently leak information to an uncleared contact in your personal phone. What Hegseth did (and is doing?) is illegal. It doesn't even matter what app is used.
ddtaylor 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
causalscience 6 hours ago [-]
I've been hearing for years people say "Signal requires phone number therefore I don't use it", and I've been hearing them mocked for years.
Turns out they were right.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 5 hours ago [-]
They weren't though? Signal requires a phone number to sign up and it is linked to your account but your phone number is not used in the under the hood account or device identification, it is not shared by default, your number can be entirely removed from contact disovery if you wish, and even if they got a warrant or were tapping signal infra directly, it'd be extremely non trivial to extract user phone numbers.
In past instances where Signal has complied with warrants, such as the 2021 and 2024 Santa Clara County cases, the records they provided included phone numbers to identify the specific accounts for which data was available. This was necessary to specify which requested accounts (identified by phone numbers in the warrants) had associated metadata, such as account creation timestamps and last connection dates.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 5 hours ago [-]
Yep however that only exposes a value of "last time the user registered/verified their account via phone number activation" and "last day the app connected to the signal servers".
There isn't really anything you can do with that information. The first value is already accessible via other methods (since the phone companies carry those records and will comply with warrants). And for pretty much anyone with signal installed that second value is going to essentially always be the day the search occurred.
And like another user mentioned, the most recent of those warrants is from the day before they moved to username based identification so it is unclear whether the same amount of data is still extractable.
ddtaylor 4 hours ago [-]
I would think being able to subpoena records for all active signal users would be a cause for concern.
I was genuinely surprised when I went to Reddit and saw that as the most voted comment on the story.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 46 minutes ago [-]
I think that's a fair assessment on their part however it's worth noting that your phone number does not serve as your account ID. It can be used to look up an account but there are caveats to that.
The lookups go through a secure enclave, the system is architected to limit the number of lookups that can be done, and the system has some fairly extensive anti-exfiltration cryptographic fuckery running inside the secure enclave to further limit the extent to which accounts can be efficiently looked up.
And of course you can also remove your phone number from contact discovery (but not from the acct entirely) but I'm not sure how that interacts with lookup for subpoenas. If they use the same system that contact discovery uses, it may be an undocumented way to exclude your account from subpoena responses.
The rest of what they say however is pretty spot on. The priority for signal is privacy, not anonymity. They try to optimise anonymity when they can but they do give up a little anonymity in exchange for anti-spam and user-friendliness.
So of course the ending notes of "use a VPN, configure the settings to maximise anonymity, and maybe even get a secondary phone number to use with it" are all perfectly reasonable suggestions.
smeej 5 hours ago [-]
This was before Signal switched to a username system.
ddtaylor 4 hours ago [-]
Others mention you must still register with a phone, although you can remove it from your account after you go through the username stuff? Usually HN is pretty good about identifying that the default path is the path and that opt-out like behavior of this means very little for mass usage.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 55 minutes ago [-]
It's not that you can remove it from your account entirely. Your account is still linked to that number. It's that you can remove the number from contact discovery.
And re: defaults the default behavior on signal is that your phone number is hidden from other users but it can be used to do contact discovery. Notably though you can turn contact discovery off (albeit few people do).
gruez 4 hours ago [-]
Which of those links actually say that your phone number is private from Signal? If anything, this passage makes it sound like it's the reverse, because they specifically call out usernames not being stored in plaintext, but not phone numbers.
>We have also worked to ensure that keeping your phone number private from the people you speak with doesn’t necessitate giving more personal information to Signal. Your username is not stored in plaintext, meaning that Signal cannot easily see or produce the usernames of given accounts.
causalscience 2 hours ago [-]
> it'd be extremely non trivial
Extremely non trivial. What I'm hearing is "security by obfuscation".
rainonmoon 6 hours ago [-]
Absolutely nothing in this article is related to feds using conversation metadata to map participants, so, no they weren’t.
jvanderbot 5 hours ago [-]
If you follow the X chatter on this, some folks got into the groups and tracked all the numbers, their contributions, and when they went "on shift" or "off".
I don't really think Signal tech has anything to do with this.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah. It's notable they didn't crack the crypto. In the 90s when I was a young cypherpunk, I had this idea that when strong crypto was ubiquitous, certainly people would be smart enough to understand its role was only to force bad guys to attack the "higher levels" like attacking human expectations of privacy on a public channel. It was probably unrealistic to assume everyone would automatically understand subtle details of technology.
As a reminder... if you don't know all the people in your encrypted group chat, you could be talking to the man.
rainonmoon 5 hours ago [-]
That’s really interesting extra context, thanks!
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
My Session and Briar chats don't give out the phone numbers of other users.
overfeed 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, but they have their own weaknesses. For instance, Briar exposes your Bluetooth MAC, and there's a bunch of nasty Bluetooth vulns waiting to be exploited. You can't ever perfectly solve for both security and usability, you can only make tradeoffs.
ddtaylor 4 hours ago [-]
Briar has multiple modes of operation. The Bluetooth mode is not the default mode of operation and is there for circumstances where Internet has been shut down entirely.
For users who configure Briar to connect exclusively over Tor using the normal startup (e.g., for internet-based syncing) and disable Bluetooth, there is no Bluetooth involvement at all, so your Bluetooth MAC address is not exposed.
lynndotpy 3 hours ago [-]
Neither does Signal.
ddtaylor 1 hours ago [-]
Both Session and Briar are decentralized technologies where you would never be able to approach a company to get any information. They operate over DHT-like networks and with Tor.
Signal does give out phone numbers when the law man comes, because they have to, and because they designed their system around this identifier.
causalscience 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gosub100 5 hours ago [-]
We don't do the "duct-tape an insult to the end to drive your point harder" gimmick here. It will lead to loss of your account.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
whoa, losing access to a throwaway account created for specifically posting trolling comments? i'm sure they're shaking in their boots at the prospect
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
This throwaway account wasn't created specifically for posting trolling comments, this is just my personality :-(
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
BugsJustFindMe 5 hours ago [-]
Signal's use of phone numbers is the least of your issues if you've reached this level of inspection. Signal could be the most pristine perfect thing in the world, and the traffic from the rest of your phone is exactly as exposing as your phone number is when your enemy is the US government who can force cooperation from the infrastructure providers.
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
Your point is correct but irrelevant to this conversation.
The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.
The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
I talked to Moxie about this 20 years ago at DefCon and he shrugged his shoulders and said "well... it's better than the alternative." He has a point. Signal is probably better than Facebook Messenger or SMS. Maybe there's a market for something better.
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
I have no idea if that was true 20 years ago, but it's not true now. XMPP doesn't have this problem; your host instance knows your IP but you can connect via Tor.
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
OTR has been on XMPP for so long now
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
Is that good? According to the wikipedia page it seems last stable release was 9 years ago. Is anyone using that? Last time I had a look at XMPP everybody was using OMEMO.
Sorry, I don't pay attention to anyone who disses PGP. I don't care if it's easy to misuse. I focus on using it well instead of bitching about misusing it.
If there's one thing we learned from Snowden is that the NSA can't break PGP, so these people who live in the world of theory have no credibility with me.
ddtaylor 1 hours ago [-]
Before my arrest (CFAA) I operated on Tor and PGP for years. I had property seized and I had a long look at my discovery material, as I was curious which elements they had obtained.
I never saw a single speck of anything I ever sent to anyone via PGP in there. They had access to my SIGAINT e-mail and my BitMessage unlocked, but I used PGP for everything on top of that.
Stay safe!
zxcvasd 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
Briar and Session are the better encrypted messengers.
thunderfork 4 hours ago [-]
Session lacks forward secrecy, which isn't ideal.
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
I remember listening to his talks and had some respect for him. He could defeat any argument about any perceived security regarding any facet of tech. Not so much any more. He knows as well as I do anything on a phone can never be secure. I get why he did it. That little boat needed an upgrade and I would do it too. Of course this topic evokes some serious psychological responses in most people. Wait for it.
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
> He knows as well as I do anything on a phone can never be secure
I assume because of the baseband stuff to be FCC compliant? Last I checked that meant DMA channels, etc. to access the real phone processor. All easily activated over the air.
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
All easily activated over the air.
Indeed. The only reason this is not used by customer support for more casual access, firmware upgrades and debugging is a matter of policy and the risk of mass bricking phones and as such this is not exposed to them. There are other access avenues as well including JTAG debugging over USB and Bluetooth.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think the FCC requires DMA channels. That's done out of convenience because it's how PCIe works.
ddtaylor 1 hours ago [-]
The FCC doesn't require DMA channels, but the baseband processor may have access to it among anything else.
direwolf20 1 hours ago [-]
That's done for convenience because that's how PCIe works.
hsbauauvhabzb 5 hours ago [-]
Any citation on this? I’ve never heard that.
ddtaylor 3 hours ago [-]
47 CFR Part 2 and Part 15
FCC devices are certified / allowed to use a spectrum, but you must maintain compliance. If you're a mobile phone manufacturer you have to be certain that if a bug occurs, the devices don't start becoming wifi jammers or anything like that.
This means you need to be able to push firmware updates over the air (OTA). These must be signed to avoid just anyone to push out such an OTA.
The government has a history of compelling companies to push out signed updates.
Bender 4 hours ago [-]
There are hobbyist groups that tinker with these things. They are just as lazy as me and do not publish much. One has to find and participate in their semi-private .onion forums. Not my cup of tea. Most of it goes over my head and requires special hardware I am not interested in tinkering with.
giancarlostoro 46 minutes ago [-]
I could have sworn Signal adopted usernames sometime back, but in my eyes its a little too late.
gosub100 6 hours ago [-]
Suppose they didn't require that. Wouldn't that open themselves up to DDoS? An angry nation or ransom-seeker could direct bots to create accounts and stuff them with noise.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
I think the deal is you marry the strong crypto with a human mediated security process which provides high confidence the message sender maps to the human you think they are. And even if they are, they could be a narc. Nothing in strong crypto prevents narcs in whom ill-advised trust has been granted from copying messages they're getting over the encrypted channel and forwarding them to the man.
And even then, a trusted participant could not understand they're not supposed to give their private keys out or could be rubber-hosed into revealing their key pin. All sorts of ways to subvert "secure" messaging besides breaking the crypto.
I guess what I'm saying is "Strong cryptography is required, but not sufficient to ensure secure messaging."
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. Cheap–identity systems such as Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to this, and your only defence is to not give out your address as they are unguessable. If you have someone's address, you can spam them, and they can't stop it except by deleting the app or resetting to a new address and losing all their contacts.
SimpleX does better than Session because the address used to add new contacts is different from the address used with any existing contact and is independently revocable. But if that address is out there, you can receive a full queue of spam contacts before you next open the SimpleX app.
Both Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to storage DoS as well.
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of solutions to denial of service attacks than to collect personal information. Plus, you know, you can always delete an account later? If what Signal says is true, then this amounts to a few records in their database which isn't cause for concern IMO
charliebwrites 6 hours ago [-]
The steps to trouble:
- identify who owns the number
- compel that person to give unlocked phone
- government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person
Corollary:
Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read
SR2Z 6 hours ago [-]
Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their phone numbers.
midasz 6 hours ago [-]
> which prevents the government from bringing a case
Genuinely, from outside, it seems like your government doesn't give a damn on what they are and aren't allowed to do.
ncallaway 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, but I’m not going to unlock my phone with a passcode, and unlike biometric unlock they have no way to force me to unlock my phone.
The district courts will eventually back me up on this. Our country has fallen a long way, but the district courts have remained good, and my case is unlikely to be one that goes up to appellate courts, where things get much worse.
There’s an important distinction: the government doesn’t care about what it is allowed to do, but it is still limited by what it is not capable of doing. It’s important to understand that they still do have many constraints they operate under, and that we need to find and exploit those constraints as much as possible while we fight them
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
They are capable of putting you in prison until you unlock your phone, or simply executing you.
tclancy 12 minutes ago [-]
Feels like the latter would be counter-productive unless there's an app for that.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
Looks that way from the inside as well.
nyc_data_geek 5 hours ago [-]
Yes and all of the credulous rubes still whinging about how they "can't imagine" how it's gotten this bad or how much worse it can get, or how "this is not who we are" at some point should no longer be taken as suckers in good faith, and at some point must rightly be viewed as either willfully complicit bad faith interlocuters, or useful idiots.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
Learning about WWII in high school, I often wondered how the people allowed the Axis leaders gain power. Now I know. However, I feel we're worse for allowing it to happen because we were supposed to "never again".
causalscience 5 hours ago [-]
Worse, I often wondered how some people collaborated. Now I know that many people would rather have a chunk of the population rounded up and killed than lose their job.
nyc_data_geek 5 hours ago [-]
"Whoever can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
and
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
etc, etc. So it goes
nyc_data_geek 5 hours ago [-]
Agreed. To see "Never Again" morphed into "Never Again for me, Now Again for thee" has been one of the most heartwrenching, sleep depriving things I've witnessed since some deaths in my family.
Zak 5 hours ago [-]
Watching it in real time, I still don't understand it. I could see how Trump won the first time around; Hillary Clinton was unpopular with most people outside of her party's leadership, but the second just seems insane. The kinds of things that would happen were obvious to me, and I am no expert.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
Two party system. As many people didn't like Hillary, clearly there were a lot of people unhappy with Biden->Harris. When you don't like the current admin's direction and/or their party, there's only one other party to select. I think there were plenty of voters that truly did not believe this would be the result of that protest vote.
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
Protest votes are probably overstated, I think most of it comes down to people staying home. Everybody in America already knows what side they're on, and they either vote for that side or not at all. Virtually all political messaging is either trying to moralize your side or demoralize the other, to manipulate the relative ratios of who stays home on election day.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
> I think most of it comes down to people staying home
Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that motivating ability. I don't know that the Dems have anyone as motivating as Obama line up. The Dems seem to be hoping that enough people will be repulsed by the current admin to show up.
2 hours ago [-]
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
Newsom is an extremely strong candidate. Vance has several critical vulnerabilities that can demoralize right wing voters if the election is handled properly, and the Republicans really don't have anybody else. Rubio maybe, but Rubio won't be able to get ahead of Vance.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
Trump had more than several critical vulns as well which did not dissuade voters. The electorate isn't as predictable as many try to make it sound
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
Trump was able to moralize his voters, despite his weaknesses, by using a kind of charisma that Vance utterly lacks.
actionfromafar 3 hours ago [-]
I think Vance isn't planning on using charisma, but violence.
Zak 3 hours ago [-]
Prior to 2020, I usually voted for third parties so I do understand that kind of thinking. The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office; it seemed early on like congress and institutional norms would restrain him. To swing the popular vote in the 2024 election, almost all of the third party votes would have needed to go to Harris, so I don't think that's sufficient to explain it.
By the end of his first term, the danger was hard to miss, and the attempt to remain in power after losing the election should have cemented it for everyone.
I was unhappy with Biden and Harris. I voted for them in 2020 and 2024 anyway because I understood the alternative.
dpkirchner 1 hours ago [-]
> The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office
I don't get it, was there anything surprising about him after his inauguration? He sure sounded dangerous on the campaign trail.
Zak 3 minutes ago [-]
The norm in 2016 was that candidates didn't make a serious attempt to do the more outlandish things they talked about in their campaign. When they did, advisers would usually talk them into a saner version of it, or congress wouldn't allow it.
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
> The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office;
I just do not understand this sentence at all. The writing was clearly on the wall. All of the Project 2025 conversations told us exactly what was going to happen. People claiming it was not obvious at best were not paying attention at all. For anyone paying attention, it was horrifying see the election results coming in.
Zak 3 hours ago [-]
Project 2025 did not exist in 2016. We are in agreement about 2024.
mikkupikku 5 hours ago [-]
Not the second time, the third time. Remember that Biden whooped Trump's ass once and could have whooped his ass a second time, but the donor class (career retards) got cold feet when they were forced to confront his senility, and instead of letting the election be one senile old man against another senile old man, they replaced Biden with the archetype of an HR bitch. I hope nobody thinks it a coincidence that the two times Trump won were the two times he was up against a woman. Americans don't want to vote for their mother-in-law, nor for the head of HR. And yes, that certainly is sexist, but it is what it is.
I just pray they run Newsom this time. Despite his "being from California" handicap, I think he should be able to easily beat Vance by simply being a handsome white man with a white family. Vance is critically flawed and will demoralize much of the far right IFF his opponent doesn't share those same weaknesses.
ModernMech 5 hours ago [-]
You have to remember that "the government" is not a monolith. Evidence goes before a judge who is (supposed to be) independent, and cases are tried in front of a jury of citizens. In the future that system may fall but for now it's working properly. Except for the Supreme Court... which is a giant wrench in the idea the system still works, but that doesn't mean a lower court judge won't jettison evidence obtained by gunpoint.
cperciva 4 hours ago [-]
Evidence goes before a judge
What evidence went before a judge prior to the two latest executions in Minneapolis?
gruez 4 hours ago [-]
There's a pretty big difference between getting killed in an altercation with ICE, and executing someone just because they refuse to give up their password.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
Not really. ICE breaks into your home — remember they don't need a warrant for this. Demands to see your phone. It's locked. Holds a gun to your head and demands you unlock it. You refuse. Pulls the trigger.
Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
gruez 1 hours ago [-]
>Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
No, not really, because in the two killings you can vaguely argue they felt threatened. Pointing a gun to someone's head and demanding the password isn't anywhere close to that. Don't get me wrong, the killings are an affront to civil liberties and should be condemned/prosecuted accordingly, but to think that ICE agents are going around and reenacting the opening scene from Inglorious Bastards shows that your worldview can't handle more nuance than "fascism? true/false".
youarentrightjr 1 hours ago [-]
> but to think that ICE agents are going around and reenacting the opening scene from Inglorious Bastards shows that your worldview can't handle more nuance than "fascism? true/false".
Precisely.
There's no question that ICE is daily trampling civil liberties (esp 4th amendment).
But in both killings there is a reasonable interpretation that they feared for their lives.
Now should they have is another question. With better training, a 6v1 < 5ft engagement can easily disarm anyone with anything less than a suicide vest.
But still, we aren't at the "run around and headshot dissenters" phase.
direwolf20 1 hours ago [-]
> there is a reasonable interpretation that they feared for their lives
... Did you watch the videos from multiple people filming?
youarentrightjr 31 minutes ago [-]
> ... Did you watch the videos from multiple people filming?
Yeah, did you? Any more substantive discourse you'd like to add to the conversation?
To be clear about the word "reasonable" in my comment, it's similar to the usage of the very same word in the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt".
The agents involved in the shootings aren't claiming that:
- the driver telepathically communicated their ill intent
- they saw Pretti transform into a Satan spawn and knew they had to put him down
They claim (unsurprisingly, to protect themselves) that they feared for their life because either a car was driving at them or they thought Pretti had another firearm. These are reasonable fears, that a reasonable person has.
That doesn't mean the agents involved are without blame. In fact, especially in Pretti's case, they constructed a pretext to began engagement with him (given that he was simply exercising his 1st amendment right just prior).
But once in the situation, a reasonable person could have feared for their lives.
short_sells_poo 4 hours ago [-]
The courts may (still) be independent, but it feels like they are pointless because the government just wholesale ignores them anyway. If the executive branch doesn't enforce, or selectively enforces court judgements, you may as well shutter the courts.
mothballed 5 hours ago [-]
They haven't for a long time, just that most of the time they were doing things we thought was for good (EPA, civil rights act, controlled substance act, etc) and we thereby entered a post-constitutional world to let that stuff slide by despite the 10th amendment limiting the federal powers to enumerated powers.
Eventually we got used to letting the feds slide on all the good things to the point everything was just operating on slick ice, and people like Trump just pushed it to the next logical step which is to also use the post-constitutional world to his own personal advantage and for gross tyranny against the populace.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
If civil rights are unconstitutional, you don't have a country.
mrWiz 5 hours ago [-]
All they have to do is pretend to be a concerned neighbor who wants to help give mutual aid and hope that someone in the group chat takes the bait and adds them in. No further convincing is needed.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
social engineering for the win.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 5 hours ago [-]
If you aren't saving people's phone numbers in your own contacts, signal isn't storing them in group chats (and even if you are, it doesn't say which number, just that you have a contact with them).
Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.
thewebguyd 5 hours ago [-]
> it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
I'm sure the Israeli spyware companies can help with that.
Although then they'd have to start burning their zero days to just go after protestors, which I doubt they're willing to do. I imagine they like to save those for bigger targets.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
Cellebrite can break into every phone except GrapheneOS.
xmcp123 5 hours ago [-]
There are multiple companies that can get different amounts of information off of locked phones including iPhones, and they work with LE.
I’m also curious what they could get off of cloud backups. Thinking in terms of auth, keys, etc. For SMS it’s almost as good as phone access, but I am not sure for apps.
hedayet 6 hours ago [-]
or convince one member of a group chat to show their group chat...
ddtaylor 5 hours ago [-]
I'm confident the people executing non-complaint people in the street would be capable of compelling a citizen.
XorNot 1 hours ago [-]
Which is just a redux of what I find myself saying constantly: privacy usually isn't even the problem. The problem is the people kicking in your door.
If you're willing to kick in doors to suppress legal rights, then having accurate information isn't necessary at all.
If your resistance plan is to chat about stuff privately, then by definition you're also not doing much resisting to you know, the door kicking.
neves 6 hours ago [-]
Or just let the guy to enter the country after unlocking her phone.
This is accurate, but the important point is that threatening people with wrenches isn’t scalable in the way mass surveillance is.
The problem with mass surveillance is the “mass” part: warrantless fishing expeditions.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
hunh. we haven't even started talking about stingray, tracking radios and so forth.
fruitworks 5 hours ago [-]
it is difficult to wrench someone when you do not know who they are
pixl97 3 hours ago [-]
I mean they have a lot of tools to figure out who you are if they catch you at a rally or something like that. Cameras and facial identification, cell phone location tracking and more. What they also want is the list of people you're coordinating with that aren't there.
mrWiz 5 hours ago [-]
It's even easier than that. They're simply asking on neighborhood Facebook (and other services too, I assume) groups to be added to mutual aid Signal groups and hoping that somebody will add them without bothering to vet them first.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
I think disappearing messages only works if you activate it on your local device. And if the man compromises someone without everyone else knowing, they get all messages after that.
But yes... it does limit what can be read. My point is it's not perfect.
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
Is the message on storage zero'd out or just deleted?
Bender 5 hours ago [-]
compel that person to give unlocked phone
Celebrite or just JTAG over bluetooth or USB. It's always been a thing but legally they are not supposed to use it. Of course laws after the NSA debacle are always followed. Pinky promise.
tptacek 6 hours ago [-]
Presumably this is data taken from interdicted phones of people in the groups, not, like, a traffic-analytic attack on Signal itself.
plorg 4 hours ago [-]
It appears to be primarily getting agents into the chats. To me the questionable conduct is their NPSM-7-adjacent redefining of legal political categories and activities as "terrorists/-ism" for the purpose of legal harassment or worse. Whether that is technically legal or not it should be outrageous to the public.
tucnak 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder whether the protesters could opt for offshore alternatives that don't require exposing their phone number to a company that could be compelled to reveal it by US law. For example, there is Threema[1], a Swiss option priced at 5 euros one-time. It is interesting on Android as you can pay anonymously[2], therefore it doesn't depend on Google Play and its services (they offer Threema Push services of their own.) If your threat model includes traffic analysis, likely none of it would make much difference as far as US state-side sigint product line is concerned, but with Threema a determined party might as well get a chance! Arguably, the US protest organisers must be prepared for the situation to escalate, and adjust their security model accordingly: GrapheneOS, Mullvad subscription with DAITA countermeasures, Threema for Android, pay for everything with Monero?
It's worth noting that the way Signal's architecture is set up, Signal the organisation doesn't have access to users' phone numbers.
They technically have logs from when verification happens (as that goes through an SMS verification service) but that just documents that you have an account/when you registered. And it's unclear whether those records are available anymore since no warrants have been issued since they moved to the new username system.
And the actual profile and contact discovery infra is all designed to be actively hostile to snooping on identifiable information even with hardware access (requiring compromise of secure enclaves + multiple levels of obfuscation and cryptographic anti-extraction techniques on top).
tucnak 4 hours ago [-]
Perhaps you're right that they couldn't be compelled by law to reveal it, then! However, I can still find people on Signal using their phone number, by design. If they can do that, surely there is sufficient information, and appropriate means, for US state-side signals intelligence to do so, too. I don't think Signal self-hosts their infrastructure, so it wouldn't be much of a challenge considering it's a priority target.
Now, whether FBI and friends would be determined to use PII obtained in this way to that end—is a point of contention, but why take the chance?
Better yet, don't expose your PII to third parties in the first place.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah it should be technically feasible to do "eventually" but it's non trivial. I linked a bunch of their blogs on how they harden contact discovery, etc. And of course you can turn contact discovery off entirely in the settings.
Settings > Privacy > Phone Number > Who can find me by number > Nobody
Note that Threema has had a recent change in ownership to a German investment firm. Supposedly nothing will change but I can’t help but be wary
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
Just being owned by an offshore company doesn't mean that they still can't be infiltrated. But as you pointed out, just because Company A creates an app does not mean that Company B can't come in later to take control.
tucnak 5 hours ago [-]
The alarming extent of US-affiliated signals intelligence collection is well-documented, but in the case of Threema it's largely inconsequential; you can still purchase the license for it anonymously, optionally build from source, and actively resist traffic analysis when using it.
That is to say: it allows a determined party to largely remain anonymous even in the face of upstream provider's compromise.
spankalee 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's much of a problem at all. Many of the protesters and observers are not hiding their identities, so finding their phone number isn't a problem. Even with content, coordinating legal activities isn't a problem either.
fusslo 8 hours ago [-]
I would never agree with you. protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power.
The literal point of civil disobedience is accepting that you may end up in jail:
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
That's not the point of civil disobedience, it's an unfortunate side effect. You praise a martyr for their sacrifice, you deplore that the sacrifice was necessary.
mattnewton 1 hours ago [-]
This works when protesting an unjust law with known penalties. King knew he would be arrested and had an approximate idea on the range of time he could be incarcerated for. I don't know if it's the same bargain when you are subjecting yourself to an actor that does not believe it is bound by the law.
habinero 49 minutes ago [-]
What? No, he didn't. The police went after peaceful civil rights protesters with clubs and dogs. They knew they could be badly hurt or killed and did it anyway.
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that doesn't make it "not a problem."
EA-3167 6 hours ago [-]
It makes it a problem that's inherently present for any act of civil disobedience, unless you truly believe that you can hide from the US government. I'm pretty sure that all of the technical workarounds in the world, all of the tradecraft, won't save you from the weakest link in your social network.
That's life, if you can't take that heat stay out of the kitchen. It's also why elections are a much safer and more reliable way to enact change in your country than "direct action" is except under the most dire of circumstances.
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
Sure? Can't tell what the point of this comment is.
No one is arguing that people who practice civil disobedience can expect to be immune from government response.
mothballed 6 hours ago [-]
If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
Accepting jail over 1A protected protests only proves you're weak (not in the morally deficient way, just from a physical possibilities way) enough to be taken. No one thinks more highly of you or your 'respect for the law' for being caught and imprisoned in such case, though we might not think lesser of you, since we all understand it is often a suicide mission to resist it.
scoofy 5 hours ago [-]
>If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
My point is about civil disobedience, not disobedience generally. The point of civil disobedience is to bring attention to unjust laws by forcing people to deal with the fact they they are imprisoning people for doing something that doesn't actually deserve prison.
Expecting to not end up in prison for engaging in civil disobedience misses the point. It's like when people go on a "hunger strike" by not eating solid foods. The point is self-sacrifice to build something better for others.
If that's not what you're into -- and it's not something I'm into -- then I would suggest other forms of disobedience. Freedoms are rarely granted by asking for them.
theossuary 4 hours ago [-]
Using your 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment rights is considered civil disobedience at this point; keep up.
scoofy 2 hours ago [-]
If your point is to ignore the history and political philosophy of civil disobedience because "times are different now," then just grab your gun and start your civil war already... because that's where you've concluded we're at.
I'm not even really sure why I'm getting so much pushback here. I've thought this administration should have been impeached and removed within a week of the inauguration in 2017. I just am not sure where all this "why won't you admit that things are so bad, and shouldn't be this way" is helpful, when Trump was democratically elected. When you have a tyranny from a majority, the parallels to MLK are very clear, and you can't expect that change with come without sacrifice.
Civil disobedience is only nice and easy when you're sect is already in power, which -- when we're talking about people who generally support liberal democracy -- it has been since probably the McCarthy Era.
Amezarak 5 hours ago [-]
Materially impeding law enforcement operations, interfering with arrests, harassing or assault officers, and so forth is not 1A protected and is illegal. There’s lots of this going on and some of it is orchestrated in these chats. They may nevertheless be civil disobedience, maybe even for a just cause, but I have no problem with people still being arrested for this. You obviously cannot have a civil society where that is legally tolerated.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
peyton 6 hours ago [-]
Importantly this definition references an individual’s conscience. Seditious conspiracy is another matter. Here is the statute:
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
A group chat coordinating use of force may be tough.
snarky_dog 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ajross 6 hours ago [-]
> protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power.
They surely can. But the point was more than the people in power don't really need Signal metadata to do that. On the lists of security concerns modern protestors need to be worrying about, Signal really just isn't very high.
mrtesthah 8 hours ago [-]
This is the price we pay to defend our rights. I would also expect any reasonable grand jury to reject such charges given how flagrantly the government has attempted to bias the public against protesters.
cyberge99 7 hours ago [-]
How do you connect a strangers face to a phone number? Or does it require the ELITE app?
nicce 6 hours ago [-]
Palantir steps in indeed
ls612 5 hours ago [-]
Some of the signal messages I've seen screenshotted (granted screenshots can be altered) make it seem like the participants have access to some sort of ALPR data to track vehicles that they think are ICE. That would probably be an illegal use of that data if true.
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
> make it seem like the participants have access to some sort of ALPR data to track vehicles
The whole reason cops love ALPR data is anyone's allowed to collect it, so they don't need a warrant.
mikkupikku 5 hours ago [-]
The government falling victim to ALPR for once might actually be the push we need to get some reform. That said, they'll probably try to ban it for everybody but themselves. Never before have they had such comprehensive surveillance and I don't expect them to give it up easily.
ls612 4 hours ago [-]
It’s probably illegal for a state law enforcement official (presumably) to share it with randos on the internet though.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago [-]
I remember having to explain to you that the CFAA doesn't apply to German citizens in Germany committing acts against a German website, so I'll take that legal advice with a few Dead Seas worth of salt.
conspiracy charges are a thing, and they'll only need a few examples of manifestly illegal interference.
it will be quite easy for a prosecutor to charge lots of these people.
it's been done for less, and even if the case is thrown out it can drag on for years and involve jail time before any conviction.
spankalee 8 hours ago [-]
If they could arrest people for what they've been doing, they would have already arrested people. And they have arrested a few here and there for "assault" (things like daring to react when being shoved by an annoyed officer), but the thing that's really pissing DHS off is that the protesters and observers are not breaking the law.
missingcolours 6 hours ago [-]
Remember that most of the participants in J6 walked away and were later rounded up and arrested across the country once the FBI had collected voluminous digital and surveillance evidence to support prosecution.
SR2Z 6 hours ago [-]
Fortunately for us (or really unfortunately for us) most of the competent FBI agents have been fired or quit, with the new bar simply being loyalty to the president.
The FBI is weak now compared to what it was even two years ago.
mikkupikku 5 hours ago [-]
Most are probably just keeping their heads down, trying to wait out this administration. When you're in that kind of cushy career track, you'd have to be very dumb or very selfless to give it up.
spankalee 6 hours ago [-]
The J6 insurrectionists committed real crimes, and it's very good that they were rounded up, but afaiu most of the evidence had to do with them provably assaulting officers, damaging property, and breaking into a government building. Not that they messaged other people when they were legally demonstrating before the Capital invasion.
The real protection for the legal protesters and observers in MN is numbers. They can't arrest and control and entire populace.
missingcolours 5 hours ago [-]
People were also charged for coordinating and supporting J6 without being there, e.g. Enrique Tarrio of the "Proud Boys" was charged with seditious conspiracy based on activity in messaging apps. If people in these Signal chats were aware that people were using force to inhibit federal law enforcement, which some of the leaked training materials suggest is most likely true and easy to prove, and there are messages showing their support or coordination of those actions, I assume they could face the same charges.
spankalee 5 hours ago [-]
They had a lot more than metadata on Enrique Tarrio.
direwolf20 6 hours ago [-]
That was a different, Biden's, FBI
missingcolours 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, and I wouldn't bet money on this happening for that reason. But it is possible.
ruined 8 hours ago [-]
one person walking away from a police encounter doesn't mean police think that person did not break the law.
prosecutors may take their time and file charges at their leisure.
JohnFen 6 hours ago [-]
That may be true in the abstract (although it doesn't matter if the cops think you're breaking the law. What matters is whether or not a judge does).
However, neither Border patrol nor ICE have been exhibiting thoughtfulness or patience, so I doubt they're playing any such long game.
jjk166 4 hours ago [-]
Conspiracy requires an agreement to commit an illegal act, and entering into that agreement must be intentional.
Psillisp 8 hours ago [-]
Government intimidation of the practice of constitutional rights... what ever could go wrong.
spankalee 8 hours ago [-]
I was replying specifically to this:
> This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem
I was not saying it's not a problem that the feds are doing this, because that's not what I was replying to.
Psillisp 8 hours ago [-]
You are going to need to clarify more. I have no idea what you are for.
rationalist 8 hours ago [-]
Why does a person have to be "for" something?
Psillisp 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Volundr 6 hours ago [-]
The statement was made to point out that this is an example where a phone number is enough metadata to to problematic for privacy. It stands on its own. It doesn't need more context or purpose.
rationalist 4 hours ago [-]
"sleaze"?
UncleOxidant 6 hours ago [-]
Was starting to think about setting up a neighborhood Signal group, but now thinking that maybe something like Briar might be safer... only problem is that Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.
bsimpson 3 hours ago [-]
I spent a dozen years in SF, where my friend circles routinely used Signal. It's my primary messaging app, including to family and childhood friends.
I live in NY now. Just today, I got a message from a close friend who also did SF->NY "I'm deleting Signal to get more space on my phone, because nobody here uses it. Find me on WhatsApp or SMS."
To a naïve audience, Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother maintaining yet-another messenger whose core competency is private messaging?" Signal is reasonably mainstream, and there are still a lot of people who won't use it.
I suspect you'll have an uphill battle using something even more obscure.
not_a_bot_4sho 2 hours ago [-]
> Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother ..."
Aside: I see similar attitudes when I mention I use VPN all of the time
jaxefayo 5 hours ago [-]
What about BitChat?
adolph 5 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't you just use random abandoned forums or web article message threads? Iirc this is what teenagers used to do when schools banned various social media but not devices. Just put the URL in a discrete qr code that only a person in the neighborhood could see.
tehjoker 1 hours ago [-]
I highly recommend this book. It goes into who funds these things.
It should be clear at this point that the FBI is not a law enforcement agency, it's a tool of authoritarian suppression. Unfortunately many of the 2A people are on board with this anti-democratic putsch, and have forgotten their 2A principles.
nimbius 8 hours ago [-]
i suppose what he means is that the phones of protestors which have signal chat will be investigated.
Assuming they dont have disappearing messages activated, and assuming any protestors willingly unlock their phones.
craftkiller 8 hours ago [-]
> willingly unlock their phones
Or they are running any mainstream iPhone or Android phone, they've unlocked the phone at least once since their last reboot, and the police have access to graykey. Not sure what the current state of things is, since we rely on leaked documents, but my take-away from the 2024 leaks was GrapheneOS Before First Unlock (BFU) is the only defense.
[1] assuming standard security settings of course.
dvtkrlbs 5 hours ago [-]
Isn't latest iPhones also have similar security profile on BFU. The latest support table I saw from one of the vendors was also confirming this.
ActorNightly 6 hours ago [-]
>is the only defense.
Or you know, the 2nd amendment.
Id be willing to bet that ICE would have a much smaller impact if they would be met with bullets instead of cameras. In the end, what ICE is doing doesn't really matter to Trump, as long as MAGA believes that things are being done, even if nothing is being done, he doesn't care.
archy_ 5 hours ago [-]
Never fear, the 2nd amendments days are numbered too. Trump just said 'You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns' (the 'in' in this context being 'outside')
I really hope he implements this, because we are gonna see mental gymnastics on the Olympic level from the right wing commentators.
dpkirchner 51 minutes ago [-]
They already continue to support him after proposing (twice!) taking people's guns without due process.
nextlevelwizard 4 hours ago [-]
Fed
ActorNightly 2 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, there is the uncomfortable feeling deep in your gut that you suppress, but a part of you knows it can happen.
I hope you realize that civil unrest is coming. Maybe not in a month. Maybe not even in a year. But at some point, after Trump fucks with elections and installs himself as a 3d term president, and the economy takes a nose dive as companies start pulling out of US, peoples savings are destroyed, and states start being more separationist, you are gonna see way worse things.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
That's a strange take. It also feels like exactly what they are hoping to have happen. Encouraging gun violence is not something condoned, so not sure why you are posting that nonsense. Are you an agitator?
ActorNightly 2 hours ago [-]
Strange take? Are you kidding me?
The second amendment is literally in the constitution for the EXACT reason where if a governing entity decides to violate the security and freedoms of people, the people have the right to own weapons and organize a militia.
Plus nobody really needs to die. Having enough people point guns at them is going to make them think twice about starting shit. Contrary to popular belief, ICE agents aren't exactly martyrs for the cause. There are already groups of people armed outside protecting others, for this exact reason.
You are the actual fed lmao.
convolvatron 5 hours ago [-]
I wish we would stop using that word 'agitator', while I understand the subjective idea that someone is just trying to stir up trouble, it kind of undermines the idea that we should be able to express opinions no matter how distasteful.
and apparently it now a perfectly valid reason for the state to execute someone without being charged or a trial.
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
anyone promoting for people to start showing up and shooting at law enforcement, even if it is ICE, is what if not an agitator?
unethical_ban 3 hours ago [-]
I consider the term to be a label of a bad-faith actor vs. someone who holds genuine conviction that the "agitating action" is a good thing.
A Chinese bot farmer who says we should be shooting each other? Agitator.
A neighbor who says "If I see LEO murder someone, I'm taking them on"? Not an agitator.
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
> A neighbor who says "If I see LEO murder someone, I'm taking them on"? Not an agitator.
That's not what was said here though
convolvatron 5 hours ago [-]
where is the line? I was fine with the word until it started being used to justify killing innocents
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
Then be upset with them for misappropriating the word. I'm using it just fine, thank you very much!
mrguyorama 5 hours ago [-]
Nothing about the 2nd amendment legalizes shooting law enforcement officers.
This has always been the absurdity of the moronic claims of the 2nd amendment being to overthrow government tyranny: You may own the gun legally, but at no point will your actions be legal. If you've decided the government needs to be overthrown, you are already throwing "law" out the window, even if you have a valid argument that the government you are overthrowing has abandoned the constitution.
Why the fuck do you need legal guns to commit treason? Last I checked, most government overthrows don't even involve people armed with private rifles!
If you are overthrowing the government, you will need to take over local police stations. At the moment, you no longer need private arms, and what you are doing isn't legal anyway.
Meanwhile, every single fucking time it has come up, the gun nuts go radio silent when the government kills the right person who happens to own a gun. Every. Single. Time.
It took minutes for the "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" people who raised a million dollars for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend himself for driving to a protest in a different state while armed to the teeth to of course get to shoot someone to turn around and say "Actually bringing a gun to a protest makes you a terrorist and you need to be shot". Minutes. They have also put up GoFundMes for the guy who executed that man.
If you are too scared to stand up to your government without a fucking rifle, you have never been an actual threat to your government, and they know that.
32527823634 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
servercobra 8 hours ago [-]
Or has biometric login turned on and didn't lock their phone behind a passcode before being arrested.
spiderice 5 hours ago [-]
There are already people on X who have infiltrated chats and posted screen captures. Getting the full content of the chats isn't going to be difficult. They have way to many people in them.
politelemon 8 hours ago [-]
Unlocking isn't necessary, We've already seen that Apple and Google will turn data over on government requests.
Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links.
But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis
If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)
tremon 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure what difference that makes, it's not like the current regime limits their actions to respect constitutional bounds.
mrtesthah 8 hours ago [-]
Sure. Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
docdeek 7 hours ago [-]
One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
JohnFen 6 hours ago [-]
> Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
But that's not an example of something that would be illegal to say in a chat. It would be an example of something that's illegal to do regardless of the chat.
defen 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think the idea is that the speech in the chat is inherently illegal; it's that it could be used as evidence of illegal activity. Using that example - if someone in the chat asks about plate XYZ at 10AM, and if a phone linked to "Bob" posts to the group chat at 10:04 AM that license plate XYZ is used by ICE, and the internal logs show that Bob queried the ICE database about plate XYZ at 10:02 AM, and no one else queried that license plate in the past month, that is pretty good evidence that Bob violated the CFAA.
5 hours ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
> Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened.
Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
direwolf20 6 hours ago [-]
"ICE are at (address)" apparently
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
> Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted,
Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.
PrettiGoodDead 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
8 hours ago [-]
iamnothere 8 hours ago [-]
I have seen anti-Signal FUD all over the place since it was discovered that protesters have been coordinating on Signal.
Here’s the facts:
- Protesters have been coordinating using Signal
- Breaches of private Signal groups by journalists and counter protesters were due to poor opsec and vetting
- If the feds have an eye into those groups, it’s likely that they gained access in the same way as well as through informants (which are common)
- Signal is still known to be secure
- In terms of potential compromise, it’s much more likely for feds to use spyware like Pegasus to compromise the endpoint than for them to be able to break Signal. If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
- The fact that even casual third parties can break into these groups because of opsec issues shows that encryption is not a panacea. People will always make mistakes, so the fact that secure platforms exist is not a threat in itself, and legal backdoors are not needed.
biophysboy 5 hours ago [-]
The downside of opsec is that it breeds paranoia and fear about legal, civic participation. In a way, bullshit investigations like this are an intimidation tactic. What are they going to find - a bunch of Minnesotans that were mad about state-backed killings?
hnal943 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
biophysboy 4 hours ago [-]
The only reason you think this is because all of your opinions are predetermined by MAGA elites.
mcintyre1994 1 hours ago [-]
Also the current US government think it’s secure enough for their war planning!
cyberge99 7 hours ago [-]
Feds and ICE are using Palantir ELITE.
iamnothere 7 hours ago [-]
That’s only for targeting. From what I understand ELITE does not include device compromise or eavesdropping. If feds want to compromise a device that has Signal, they would use something like Pegasus that uses exploits to deliver a spyware package, likely through SMS, Whatsapp, or spear phishing URL. (I don’t actually know which software is currently in use but it would be similar to Pegasus.)
lugu 6 hours ago [-]
As mentioned by someone else, they just need to take the phone of a demonstrator to access their signal groups.
True, physical interception is probably the easiest method, at least for short term access. Once the captured user is identified and removed from the group they will lose access though.
mrandish 5 hours ago [-]
I suspect they're going to find it challenging to turn protected speech into something prosecutable like obstruction - assuming activists exercise even a modicum of care in their wording. Seems like just another intimidation tactic but in doing that, they've also given a heads-up to their targets.
elicash 3 hours ago [-]
For all the complaints about the previous DOJ, one thing nobody ever argued was that they weren't intending to get convictions. They only brought cases they thought they could win.
To see DOJ use its power the way we've seen (and I know the original story here is only with FBI at this point), it makes me think there should be some equivalent of anti-SLAPP laws but aimed at federal prosecutions. Some way to fast track baseless charges that will obviously never result in anything and that are just meant to either (a) punish someone into paying a ton of lawyer fees, (b) to intimidate others, or (c) grab some short-term headlines.
nextlevelwizard 4 hours ago [-]
Considering ICE is executing people in the streets and were already breaking laws before this something little like free speech won’t help
jatora 32 minutes ago [-]
'executing people in the streets' is such disingenuous phrasing. How about improperly trained ICE agents responding horrifically to stressful and dangerous altercations caused by citizens impeding lawful investigations?
tbrownaw 4 hours ago [-]
> Patel said he got the idea for the investigation from Higby.
This is confirmation that this wasn't being investigated until just now. This is surprising, I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.
kergonath 4 hours ago [-]
> I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.
You assume competence. Have you heard (or heard of) Kash Patel?
LastTrain 4 hours ago [-]
Why is it so obvious to you to investigate something that is perfectly legal?
tbrownaw 2 hours ago [-]
> something that is perfectly legal
The goal is to prevent ICE / BP from doing their jobs. Which I rather suspect is not actually legal.
Thinking they're incompetent doesn't change that. Thinking the specific laws they're (nominally) enforcing are evil doesn't change that. Thinking that national borders are fundamentally illegitimate doesn't change that.
Perhaps the FBI had been ignoring this out of incompetence. Perhaps they'd been ignoring it as a form of protest. Either is interesting.
mtswish 3 hours ago [-]
The current bias is so large for the administration that most people haven't even clocked that what they are doing is legal
chinathrow 5 hours ago [-]
The FBI should investigate the murders done by ICE and until done with that, remain silent.
epistasis 5 hours ago [-]
And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:
We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.
lateforwork 4 hours ago [-]
> unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.
You can demand answers from Congress, but until a significant portion of the GOP base demands answers, they are just going to ignore your demands. As of now 39% of Americans support the administration. Also, you can't hold SCOTUS responsible, only Congress can.
xeonmc 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
epistasis 3 hours ago [-]
Currently they are attempting to strip our second amendment rights. They murdered a man in the street, from hands up to shit in the back in under 20 seconds, merely for lawful possession and in direct violation of the 2nd amendment. The President is bumbling around today mumbling "you can't bring a gun to a protest" when yes the 2nd amendment directly allows that.
A lot of people that care a lot about the 2nd amendment saw the photo of Pretti's gun on the ICE rental car seat, and they saw a well-used, well-cared-for weapon that was clean and seen a lot time at the range. They saw that it can happen to somebody just like them.
pfannkuchen 3 hours ago [-]
As often happens these days, I’m confused at the hysteria here.
Police messed up and someone got killed. I feel like outrage is warranted if nothing is done about it, but after seeing the videos I’m fairly confident this won’t get swept under the rug. Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
jfengel 3 hours ago [-]
Because the people doing the investigating are on the side of the people who committed the crimes. And the people who voted for them seem predisposed to vote for them again, even if this gets swept under the rug.
News cycles go fast. Outrage is quickly forgotten. Now more than ever, as there are new outrages coming on the heels of the last.
anigbrowl 2 hours ago [-]
As often happens these days, I’m confused at the hysteria here.
No you're not. You're choosing words like 'hysteria' to delegitimize others' opinions while striking a posture of disinterested neutrality.
defrost 3 hours ago [-]
I'm an outsider, I can well understand the ever growing outrage.
In a nutshell, to date, US ICE & DHS interactions have resulted in 10 people shot **, 3 people killed, and established a pattern of high level officials immediately blatently lying and contradicting video evidence.
That pattern includes obvious attempts to avoid investigation, to excuse people involved, to not investigate the bigger picture of how interactions are staged such that civilian deaths are inevitable.
It's good to see the citizens of the US dig in and demand that federal forces and federal heads of agencies be held accountable for clearly screwed up deployments and behaviours.
** My apologies, I just saw a Wash Post headliine that indicates it is now 16 shootings that are being actively swept under a rug.
hedora 2 hours ago [-]
A lot of people would disagree with your use of the word “police.”
They wear masks, don’t get warrants before entering houses, regularly arrest American citizens, and are operating far from anything a reasonable person would call an immigration or customs checkpoint.
Also, they’ve been ordered in public (by Trump) and private (by superiors) to violate the law, and have been promised “absolute immunity” for their crimes (by Trump).
One other thing: Trump and his administration have made it clear (in writing) that ICE’s mission in Minnesota is to terrorize the public until Governor Walz makes a bunch of policy changes that the courts have declined to force. So, there’s no reasonable argument to be made that they’re acting as law enforcement.
habinero 45 minutes ago [-]
There is no investigation. They haven't even released the officers' names.
skissane 2 hours ago [-]
> Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
I doubt the Trump DOJ will want to prosecute this. Now, if Democrats win in 2028, maybe the Newsom (or whoever) DOJ will-but Trump might just give everyone involved a pardon on the way out the door. And I doubt a state prosecution would survive the current SCOTUS majority.
So yes, there are decent reasons to suspect “nothing to come of this” in the purely legal domain. Obviously it is making an impact in the political domain.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
> Police messed up and someone got killed.
ICE, a federal agency and not a state or municipal police force, had a man face down and unarmed. There were what, half a dozen of them? He was completely subdued. They then shot him in the back.
This was not a “mistake.” This was murder.
nawgz 2 hours ago [-]
Is your ignorance intentional? The FBI raided the ICE agents home to remove incriminating paraphernalia and blocked normal investigative processes. Heads of various agencies staffed by Trump loyalists called the victim a domestic terrorist while a video showed him being shit kicked and not meaningfully resisting before being executed by an agent who I would be doing a service to by calling undisciplined.
The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state with heavier illegal immigration on patrols performing illegal 4th-amendment violating door to door raids is already a complete abomination in the face of American’s rights and their constitution.
And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed in the face of all of this?
Let me know how the boot tasted so at least I can learn something from this
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
> you can't bring a gun to a protest" when yes the 2nd amendment directly allows that.
They conveniently forgot their excuses for Rittenhouse. Guess they all changed their mind and think he should be arrested.
epistasis 34 minutes ago [-]
The core belief of the Trump administration is that there are two groups: an in-group which the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group which the law binds but does not protect. --Someone far more insightful than me
RIMR 3 hours ago [-]
This is what I don't understand about American authoritarians. Historically speaking, if you try to take away the liberty of Americans, they respond with lethal violence.
Britain tried to tax Americans without government representation, and they started sending the tax man home naked and covered in tar, feathers, and third-degree burns. These stories are then taught to schoolchildren as examples of how Americans demand freedom above all else.
If the powers that be keep doing whatever they want without consequence, eventually there will be consequences, and those consequences very well could be the act of being physically removed from their ivory towers and vivisected in the streets.
fsckboy 3 hours ago [-]
according to urban dictionary, wolfenstein as a verb means
To kill or utterly destroy a large group of enemies with an extreme overabundance of weapons and items, including throwing knives to the head, poison, stabs to the neck or back, kicks to the chest, shoves off of high ledges, multiple headshots, artillery, panzer rockets, flames, dynamite, mines, construction pliers, airstrikes, or even slamming a door into someone's chest. Wolfensteining a group of enemies requires that every kill be performed using a different method
you are calling for extreme violence?
wizzwizz4 3 hours ago [-]
According to Urban Dictionary, cat as a noun means:
> an epic creature that will shoot fire at you if you get near it. you can usually find one outside or near/in a house. its main abilities are to chomp and scratch but they can also pounce, shoot lasers out of their eyes, be cute, jump as high as they want, and fly. do not fight one unless you are equipped with extreme power armor and heavy assault cannons. […]
Oh piss off with that nonsense, you know that is not what they are doing. Don’t be that guy. If you disagree then just say so, stop trying to be clever about it.
fsckboy 3 hours ago [-]
I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
I was informing the community what the word means after putting in the effort to look it up.
If you are not curious, if you can't handle differences of opinion, you don't belong here.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t object to you defining something.
> I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
It isn’t. It is like saying “you can do that but you will eventually get beat up.” That is not saying “people should beat you up.” There is a world of difference in those 2 statements. Your accusation hinges on the worst possible - debatably possible at best tbh - interpretation of their statement. It is bait, it is dishonest, and you’re being intentional about it.
This is not a difference of opinion, this is not curiosity, you are just being difficult.
donkeybeer 4 hours ago [-]
That's straight up corrupt third world country stuff.
xnx 4 hours ago [-]
"Sh*thole countries" was projection
e40 2 hours ago [-]
Everything is a projection with these people. Including the pedophilia.
lateforwork 4 hours ago [-]
It is going to get a lot worse. Trump's eventual goal is to send the military to all Democrat-controlled cities. Back in September Trump gathered military leaders in a room and told them America is under "invasion from within". He said: "This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within."
jimt1234 2 hours ago [-]
We went from the "War On Drugs" to the "War On Ourselves".
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
If those shooters don't get presidential pardons, they're going to get prosecuted sooner or later. No statute of limitations for murder, right?
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
Presidential pardons have no impact and their liability for state-law murder charges (though federal seizure of crime scenes and destruction of evidence might, in practice.)
skissane 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, but In re Neagle (1890) is SCOTUS precedent granting federal agents immunity from state criminal prosecution for acts committed while carrying out their official duties (and the act at question in that case was homicide). Now, its precise boundaries are contested - in Idaho v. Horiuchi (2001), the 9th Circuit held that In re Neagle didn’t apply if the federal agent used unreasonable force - but that case was rendered moot when the state charges were dropped, and hence the issue never made it to SCOTUS. Considering the current SCOTUS majority’s prior form on related topics (see Trump v. United States), I think odds are high they’ll read In re Neagle narrowly, and invalidate any state criminal prosecution attempts.
dragonwriter 1 hours ago [-]
In re Neagle (while, unfortunately, it does not state as clear of a rule as Horiuchi on the standard that should be applied) conducts an expansive facts-based analysis on the question of whether, in fact, the acts performed were done in in the performance of his lawful federal duties (if anything, the implicit standard seems less generous to the federal officer than Horiuchi’s explicit rule, which would allow Supremacy Clause immunity if the agent had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that he acted within his lawful duties, even if, in fact, he did not.)
But, yeah, any state prosecutions (likely especially the first) is going to (1) get removed to federal court, and (2) go through a wringer of federal litigation, likely reaching the Supreme Court, over Supremacy Clause immunity before much substantive happens on anything else.
OTOH, the federal duty at issue in in re Neagle was literally protecting the life of a Supreme Court justice riding circuit, as much as the present Court may have a pro-Trump bias, I wouldn't count on it being as strong of a bias as it had in Neagle.
2 hours ago [-]
b00ty4breakfast 2 hours ago [-]
I'll eat your hat if any of these goons ever see in the inside of a holding cell
Bender 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe not in the most recent case with the border patrol. Aside from their bad gear and bad communication the agent that cleared the Sig said "Muffled word Gun" and the guys holding the known agitator down clearly misunderstood that as "Gun!" so they repeated it and the agent in cover position fired. I'm sure it did not help that all these guys could hear is blaring loud whistles which is why I would personally hold the protestors partially responsible. I know I will catch flak for those observations but I stand by them as I am neither left nor right and these observations are just obvious. As an insufferable principal armchair commander I would also add that these incidents are primarily occurring in sanctuary cities where antifa community organizers are escalating non stop in hopes that someone dies and they can use it as political fodder later on and in hopes they can radicalize people. Just my opinion but I think it is going to backfire. The normies can see what is going on.
bonsai_spool 2 hours ago [-]
> cleared the Sig said "Muffled word Gun"
The person in front said "I've got the gun, I've got the gun", and I can tell that quite clearly in the videos.
> here antifa community organizers are escalating non stop in hopes that someone dies [...] in hopes they can radicalize people
I think this rhetorical frame highlights how many people don't believe in protest. Expressing disdain for trampling of civil liberties is not 'escalation' any more than the curtailment of fourth amendment rights that inspire the protests.
I am not attacking you (I believe we should all be able to express how we feel with respect to the government). I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
Bender 2 hours ago [-]
The person in front said "I've got the gun, I've got the gun", and I can tell that quite clearly in the videos.
That means there is an even better version that what I saw and heard which means normies will figure out fairly quick this was not malicious intent. Perhaps malicious incompetency but certainly not an intentional execution.
I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
I would accept that if these were just protesters, stood at the side of the road holding up signs but a number of them are far from it. They have formed military squads, dox agents and attack them at home and in their personal vehicles, coordinate their attacks between multiple groups of "vetted" agitators. They are tracking their personal vehicles and their family members. They are blocking traffic and forcing people out of their cars. At best this is an insurgency being coordinated from out-of-state agitators and at the behest of the state governor. They are egging people on to break numerous laws, obstruct federal agents, throw bricks at agents or anyone they think is an agent, use bull-horns at full volume in the ears of anyone supporting the agents. I could go on for hours regarding all the illegal shenanigans. So yeah these are people trying to radicalize others and trying to get people hurt or killed. This is primarily occurring in sanctuary cities where the government is actively encouraging their citizens to attack federal agents. That is not even close to anything that resembles protesting and is not anywhere near a protected right.
I also blame President Trump for not invoking the insurrection act and curtailing this very early on.
bonsai_spool 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks for your response, I think we disagree on a few things but I appreciate your arguments.
My main question is how you might frame the protests (comprising legal and potentially illegal behaviors) in the context of how the US was founded, or in the French revolutions. Were we in the 1750s, would your assessment about how to go about protesting be the same?
Here, I'm not making arguments about what is or is not similar, just trying to understand how you view historical political upheaval from the perspective of the people who lived in those times.
My main question is how you might frame the protests (comprising legal and potentially illegal behaviors) in the context of how the US was founded, or in the French revolutions. Were we in the 1750s, would your assessment about how to go about protesting be the same?
The founding of the nation was far more violent and laws were sparse but I am sure you know how complex of a question you are asking. There are multi-volume books and movies created around that mess. I would never want a return to those times and behaviors that we are purportedly evolved beyond.
What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants. I am told it is for voting purposes to get more delegates but it can't really be worth it. At least in my opinion it would not be worth it. All of that said I am not in favor of kicking people out that have been here for decades and that had properly integrated into our society. That I could see people protesting if they were in fact just protesting.
bonsai_spool 43 minutes ago [-]
> What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants. I am told it is for voting purposes to get more delegates but it can't really be worth it. At least in my opinion it would not be worth
My issue with the current tactics is a loss of our Bill of Rights privileges (note this doesn't depend on citizenship), which really can only go poorly from here.
> What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants.
There's an easy argument about maintaining Constitutional rights for every person—once we stop doing that, we're essentially finished as a democracy.
The majority of people being removed are not criminals of any sort whatsoever. It's tricky to get data about this as DHS is releasing very political statements[1] but many have been in the US for decades and have no criminal records in Minnesota. Also, Minnesota is not a liberal state—being a Democrat means different things in different parts of the country, and things are quite 'centrist' there; I say this to discourage porting sensibilities from other states.
1. DHS Highlights Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens Arrested in Minnesota Yesterday Including Murderers, Drug Traffickers, and an Illegal Alien with TWENTY-FOUR Convictions - (this is the title of the relevant webpage)
edit - To distill my perspective, I am worried that we will lose our rights, not because I am alarmist, but because this has happened in several democracies this century, notably Turkey (but also cf Hungary, Poland, the Philipnes). Even amongst undemocratic nations, strongmen are upending institutions (China, but also more recently in West Africa).
The only way the US can escape is by continually standing up for what rights we still have.
convolvatron 51 minutes ago [-]
I guess I'll bite.
ICE is not targeting violent illegal immigrants. They are targeting legal residents, immigrants with pending asylum cases that allow them to stay, US citizens that happen to look like immigrants maybe, people that are legally recording their activities in public from a safe distance, all kinds of people really.
they are protesting masked armed thugs running around their neighborhood smashing windows and dragging people out of cars because they happen to feel like it. running up to people and pepper spraying them in eyes for saying things they dont like. and yes, shooting them.
I think everyone can understand someone saying 'wtf, no' in those circumstances. except you.
wizardforhire 4 hours ago [-]
But pardons only apply to federal crimes… murder is a state offense.
toomuchtodo 4 hours ago [-]
Correct, state charges are mostly pardon proof and there is no statute of limitations on murder.
ldng 3 hours ago [-]
So ... you're saying that this militia as every incentive to overthrow democratie so that they never get prosecuted, right ?
See where this is going ?
toomuchtodo 3 hours ago [-]
The US couldn't win a war in the middle east with trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers dead, and tens of thousands substantially wounded. Hasn't won a war since WW2. Is everything going swimmingly? Certainly not. There are 340M Americans, ~20k-30k ICE folks, and ~1M soldiers on US soil. These odds don't keep me up at night. 77% of US 18-24 cohort don't qualify for military service without some form of waiver (due to obesity, drug use, or mental health issues).
I admit, US propaganda is very good at projecting an image of strength. I strongly doubt it is prepared for a civil ground war, based on all available evidence. It cannot even keep other nation states out of critical systems. See fragile systems for what they are.
jfengel 3 hours ago [-]
There are 340 million Americans, but 80 million of them voted for this administration, and another 80 million were not interested either way. Only about 20% of the population voted to oppose it.
If you're imagining a large scale revolt, figure that the revolutionaries will be outnumbered by counter-revolutionaries, even without the military. (Which would also include police forces amounting to millions more.)
toomuchtodo 3 hours ago [-]
I have no confidence in the gravy seals of this country, broadly speaking. What’s the average health and age of someone who voted for this? Not great, based on the evidence, especially considering the quality of ICE folks (bottom of the barrel).
They don't need to overthrow democracy, they just need to use jurisdiction removal to have the state charges placed in federal court, and then appeal it up to SCOTUS who will overturn the decision.
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
Well, they are entirely Presidential pardon proof, but each state usually has its own pardon provisions. Unlikely to benefit ICE agents as a broad class in any of the places where conflicts over their role are currently prominent, though.
3 hours ago [-]
lokar 2 hours ago [-]
They should charge it as a criminal conspiracy and use the state felony murder statute to go after leadership.
mothballed 4 hours ago [-]
That depends, the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired. And POTUS needs the civil service to execute his policy goals so his fellow party members and possibly himself can get re-elected.
Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution. I would expect especially DHS to basically become a non-functional (or even seditious) department if they prosecute those guys and they could purposefully make the president look bad by making his security apparatus look incompetent.
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
> Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution.
Won't help if the prosecuting sovereignty isn't the one they work for (state vs federal charges.)
Also won't work if the agency is disbanded and they are dismissed en masse before the prosecution happens.
4 hours ago [-]
DFHippie 3 hours ago [-]
> the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired
Unless, as Doge showed us, you ignore the law, fire them anyway, and the SCOTUS says, "Yeah, whatever."
3 hours ago [-]
trinsic2 3 hours ago [-]
congress isn't going to do anything. All it would take is about 20 republican sentors to bring this shit to a halt. They are not doing anything, they all have blood on their hands.
At this point I think the only thing that will work is organizing a month where the nation stops spending money and going to work.
touwer 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
aa_is_op 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jfengel 3 hours ago [-]
80 million Americans thought it.
throw0101a 4 hours ago [-]
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law” ― Oscar R. Benavides
2 hours ago [-]
hollandheese 5 hours ago [-]
The police (FBI and ICE included) are never your friends. They work to protect the rich and powerful and not us.
cucumber3732842 4 hours ago [-]
They work to protect the government. Now, for peasants there isn't much of a distinction, but the rich and powerful would do well to remember it.
Analemma_ 4 hours ago [-]
Cynical responses like this are meant to make the speaker sound smart, but actually what you're doing is making further tyranny more likely, because you're deliberately overlooking that-- whatever the existing problems with the FBI-- there is a significant difference between their behavior now and their behavior before.
Not even bothering to run the established investigation playbook when law enforcement kills a civilian is a major departure, and one worth noticing. But if all you do is go "same old same old", then you can safely lean back in your chair and do nothing as the problem worsens, while calling yourself so much smarter and more insightful than the people around you.
Cornbilly 4 hours ago [-]
I would disagree to a certain extent. "Law enforcement is not your friend" is a good mindset as a citizen. You should never hand them information without a lawyer and you should always push for oversight.
I agree that the "same at it ever was and always will be" attitude isn't great. It's defeatist and I choose not to live my life that way, even if it would be much easier mentally.
I think part of the reason I see this attitude so often is that, especially since 9/11, a large portion of the US population has decided that the police and military are infallible and should be trusted completely, so any large-scale attempt at reform runs into these unwavering supporters (and, in the case of the police, their unions).
trinsic2 3 hours ago [-]
I don't agree law enforcement is not the problem. Its the people in the system that are making these problems worse. You start blaming systems and then its a catch all that does nothing.
Cornbilly 2 hours ago [-]
I won't disagree that the people inside the system are making it worse but the system is currently setup to incentivize bad behavior.
- Overly broad qualified immunity
- The power of the police unions
- Lawsuit settlements coming out of public funds
- Collusion between prosecutors' and the police
These are all issues that need to be resolved to restore the sanity in policing.
At the federal level, the FBI needs to be reigned in...somehow. They all to often work outside the bounds of their defined role and powers. This isn't a new problem and one could argue it has been an issue since the beginning.
SauciestGNU 4 hours ago [-]
Furthermore, going back as far as I remember, if you take part in a protest the police personally disagree with they will use violence against you regardless of your occupation.
baq 4 hours ago [-]
Nothing cynical, that’s just the truth. They’re called law enforcement for a reason, not emergency hugs.
Whether they behave like civilized people or like thugs should be besides the point regardless of your political leaning in the matter of the system. Naturally from a basic human perspective civilized law enforcement is much more preferable than the alternative, but they aren’t your friends!
3 hours ago [-]
cess11 4 hours ago [-]
By before, what do you mean? COINTELPRO?
Analemma_ 4 hours ago [-]
This is exactly my point. Yes, COINTELPRO was really bad. But it was intelligence and disruption, they weren't executing people on the street and then bragging about how they'd get away with it. Do you not see the difference?
defen 2 hours ago [-]
They drugged and executed Fred Hampton and no one suffered any consequences for that as far as I know.
krapp 4 hours ago [-]
The only significant difference is that law enforcement is treating white people the way they've always treated everyone else. Which is a difference in degree, but not character.
cucumber3732842 4 hours ago [-]
They've always treated white nationalists and other weirdos like this. I mean, the whole "any infraction is a grounds for execution" ROE is very reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, for example.
But the kind of white people we have here have never really had anything in common with those people so now that the Feds are coming after people of the sort of political persuasion they identify with for the first time since, the 1970s it "feels" like they're just now going after white people.
kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago [-]
ICE just hired 12000 Ruby Ridge types as their untrained SA brownshirts. It is inevitable that they have no understanding of basic civics and rage against lawful protestors they see as the enemy.
watwut 3 hours ago [-]
Considerable amount of cops are white nationalists themselves.
cucumber3732842 3 hours ago [-]
Back in the 1980s we had jokes about the KKK being a barbecue club for law enforcement. The punchline of the joke invariably hinges on the ambiguity as to whether they're there on the job as informants or "organically".
api 2 hours ago [-]
The irony is that Ruby Ridge and Waco were big rallying points for the “patriot” right when it was precisely this mentality that led to those events.
Now a lot of those same patriot right types are cheering this on if not enlisting.
mindslight 3 hours ago [-]
I guess nothing matters and there's no point to expecting any sort of justice from the system. And at least now I can laugh at those other people being hurt. (</s>)
Software engineers are definitely among the class of people protected by the police
throwawaygmbno 4 hours ago [-]
Depends on the race of the engineer. If you're gay or live in a blue city/state then you also lose your protection
oklahomasports 2 hours ago [-]
911 informs the cops of your sexual preferences when they dispatch them?
Spivak 3 hours ago [-]
Sorta, if you live in a blue city—so really just a city at this point-then it wraps around a small amount and your local police are, at least when it comes to this crap, largely on your side. ICE is making huge messes and leaving it to the local PD to clean it up which is not exactly endearing. Nobody likes when a bunch of people come in and start pissing in your Cheerios. Especially when those Cheerios are "rebuilding trust with your local community."
4 hours ago [-]
tehjoker 4 hours ago [-]
It’s conditional on whether you are affirming the opinions of your employer or oppositional
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
Engineers are just workers
smrtinsert 4 hours ago [-]
There is no protected class from malevolent government. Everyone from oligarchs down to the have nots can be targets. Let's not keep relearning that lesson.
dolphinscorpion 4 hours ago [-]
They will, one day. No statute of limitations on murder.
I-M-S 4 hours ago [-]
Biology is definitely a limit.
paulryanrogers 4 hours ago [-]
The lack of a legal limit means they are never safe from justice catching up, even decades later. This lawless administration won't last. Some perpetrators may die of natural causes before that point, but 2026 and 2028 elections aren't far away.
I-M-S 4 hours ago [-]
And which opposition to the ruling class do you see appearing in the next 2 or 4 years that would purse anyone but the lowliest of perpetrators?
ncallaway 3 hours ago [-]
When the crime is murdering people in cold blood, I will take nailing the “lowliest of perpetrators” (e.g. cold blooded murderers) to the fucking wall.
Yes, I hope future administrators go up and down the chain of command looking at everyone who was involved in the cover-up, and charges them with conspiracy to commit murder, but a future Democratic administration will at least identify and prosecute the murderers themselves. While Republican administrations will conceal the identity of the killers and continue to have them out on the streets
I-M-S 3 hours ago [-]
Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly take any small victory. But thinking of it in terms of 2026 or 2028 just means you've kicked the can down to 2030 or 2032.
ncallaway 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, these will likely be state cases no matter what.
The question is, can the State of Minnesota put together enough evidence to convict these agents for murder and conspiracy to commit murder without the involvement of the federal government?
If so, we could see cases brought as early as this year.
If not, then the next question is can Democrats get them enough information by controlling one branch of the federal government. In that case, we could imagine a prosecution brought in 2027.
Otherwise, if we need Democrats to control the executive branch to get enough information it might be 2029.
I don’t think it will take long, because the State of Minnesota will have put the case together and be waiting to go. So the question will be how quickly can they get any necessary evidence, incorporate that into their case, and then bring charges.
cucumber3732842 3 hours ago [-]
>The question is, can the State of Minnesota put together enough evidence to convict these agents for murder and conspiracy to commit murder without the involvement of the federal government?
They'd have to fight the feds for jurisdiction and will unfortunately likely lose that fight.
direwolf20 2 hours ago [-]
They were hot blooded murders
andreygrehov 43 minutes ago [-]
No. They should investigate both.
DonHopkins 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jorblumesea 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dashundchen 4 hours ago [-]
In case anyone thinks you're kidding, Kash Patel's embarssing sychophancy includes publishing a election denial children's "book" portraying Trump as a king and himself as a hero.
51 senators voted to confirm this unqualified moron to lead the top law enforcement agency.
jorblumesea 4 hours ago [-]
It's literally not a joke, probably the most egregious example of a completely unqualified doormat that will do whatever dear leader wants. It's also by design, no roadblocks for the fanta menace.
wyldberry 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
epistasis 4 hours ago [-]
> the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East
This is a horrifying and very unpariortic thing to say about people who are trying to prevent their daycares from being tear bombed, prevent masked thugs from beating detained law-abiding citizens before releasing them without charges, from masked thugs killing law-abiding people for exercising basic rights.
King George would have used that language. We sent him the Declaration of Independence, and the list of wrongs in that document is mostly relevant again today.
If you are framing this as insurgency, I place my bet on the strong people fighting bullets with mere whistles and cameras, as they are already coming out on top. If they ever resort to a fraction of the violence that the masked thugs are already using, they will not lose.
2 hours ago [-]
spiderice 2 hours ago [-]
Their daycares, or their "daycares"? Not clear which one you mean.
epistasis 2 hours ago [-]
I was not aware of that fake daycare propaganda until someone else exposed its meaning later in the thread.
As a parent, you should know that believing this obviously false propaganda requires both 1) a weird and overly specific interest in daycares, and 2) not enough normal healthy exposure to kids to understand what daycares don't let weird freaks come inspect the children. Namely, repeating this obvious lie gives off pedo vibes, and I would never let you near my children after hearing you gobble up that propaganda uncritically and then even going so far as to spread it. Ick
Most child care centers are locked and have obscured doors or windows for children’s safety. Children are also kept in classrooms and would not likely be visible from a reception area. One of the day cares in the video told several news outlets that it did not grant Shirley entrance because he showed up with a handful of masked men, which raised suspicions that the men were agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least one of the centers was closed at the time Shirley arrived because it opens later in the day to serve the children of second-shift workers.
Is there a history of child care fraud in the state?
Yes, but it’s not as widespread as Shirley claims.
ascagnel_ 2 hours ago [-]
Not a MN resident, but both the daycare my child attended before starting school and every daycare in my area have a combination of tinted/obscured windows and strict access control, even for parents (eg: a parent isn't allowed to make a "surprise inspection" without a court order).
If anything, I'd be suspicious of (and not send my child to) any daycare that _didn't_ have those security features.
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
Please don't spread propaganda lies here pretending it to be a majority of cases to such an extreme. You saw some clips of people investigating doorway entrances and lobby areas and were shocked the lobbies aren't full of children hovering at the exit's threshold because you were told to expect them there. In fact what you saw was someone unable to find any of the evidence that has existed.
spiderice 2 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, Tim isn't running again because there is no truth to it. My god. Some of you are so obsessed with the "narrative" that you'll look at the sun and say it's night.
cindyllm 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
GuinansEyebrows 2 hours ago [-]
oh good, people on Hacker News Dot Com are taking Nick Shirley at face value.
e584 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
wyldberry 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
saubeidl 3 hours ago [-]
They're using IEDs and suicide bombings???
epistasis 3 hours ago [-]
I don't what you are talking about but it's nonsense and offensive, a bald faced lie so outrageous that people are supposed to be shocked into silence?
The tactics being used are:
* whistles
* recording with phones
* free speech
* communication with neighbors
* sharing with neighbors, ala potlucks
* training each other on legal means of resistance
* caring for people kicked out of detention centers in the dead of winter without their coats or phones
* bringing meals to families that are afraid to leave the house, since the political persecution is largely a function of skin color, as numerous police chiefs have attested when recounting what ICE/CBP does to their officers when off duty.
Calling this "insurgent tactics" instead of neighbors being neighbors is most definitely a perverse and disgusting values assessment. When the hell have insurgents used the whistle and the phone camera as their "tactics"?!
Saying that this lawful activity, all 100% lawful, somehow "impedes federal enforcement of laws" is actually a statement that the supposed enforcement is being conducted in a completely lawless, unconstitutional, and dangerous manner.
Keep on talking like you are, because people right now are sniffing out who is their neighbor and who will betray them when ICE moves on to the next city. Your neighbors probably already know, but being able to share specific sentences like "insurgent tactics" and how cameras are somehow "impeding" masked men abducting people, when days later we don't even know the identity of officers that shot and killed a man on film, who was in no way impeding law enforcement. And the only people who talk about "impeding law enforcement" also lie profusely when there is direct evidence on film contradicting their lies.
There is terrorism going on, there is lawlessness, there is a great deal of elevated crime in Minnesota, but it all the doing of masked ICE/CBP agents that face zero accountability for breaking our laws and violating our most sacred rights.
adamisom 3 hours ago [-]
>I don't what you are talking about but it's nonsense and offensive
This just reads as "I don't know whether you're on Other Team.. but, I'll assume you are, here goes:"
3 hours ago [-]
oklahomasports 2 hours ago [-]
Trump is morally obligated to deport felon illegals to protect americans. 70 million plus americans voted for it. Trump can't give up because a few thousand people are playing "im not touching you" with ICE.
darksaints 50 minutes ago [-]
No, felon illegals are supposed to go to prison and serve their sentence before deportation. You know, because they committed felonies.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor and overstaying your visa is a civil violation and not even a crime. Yet somehow those are the only ones he's targeting. Those, and actual lawful immigrants that say things that he doesn't like.
wyldberry 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
4 hours ago [-]
Jugglewhoa 4 hours ago [-]
Yes because the US was famously the good guy in its forays into the middle east.
I love this example because it demonstrates like 5 different levels of ignorance about American politics and foreign relations, plus a good helping of propaganda.
wyldberry 2 hours ago [-]
You're projecting a values claim on the American wars in the middle east on me that I didn't make. It's pretty clear that the ME wars were all around bad and evil.
It doesn't change the organization and tactics used to identify targets are the same methods and strategies used by insurgent groups to select targets and attack. AQI was very sophisticated for the technology they had. Their warriors were brave, cunning, and true believers with efficacious systems for what was available to them.
Twenty years of that, plus the rest of the middle east has now made it particularity common knowledge how to run insurgency cells worldwide. This combined with American expertise brought back and with people legally aiding these groups in setting up their C2 structures with what is effective and what works is no surprise.
This investigation should be no surprise to anyone. They use these techniques because they work. They are so effective at target acquisition, monitoring, and selective engagement that if they flipped from their current tactics to more violent ones it would be a large casualty event.
kergonath 4 hours ago [-]
You have an occupation force killing bystanders in your streets. Resistance is exactly what is needed.
HKH2 1 hours ago [-]
"bystanders"
wyldberry 4 hours ago [-]
What's needed is MNPD sharing their data around the criminal illegal aliens with ICE so that they can execute the deportation orders that have already been issued by judges.
The structure of your message implies you are not American. DHS posts the people they deport here:
It's really hard to go down that list and say "yeah i'd rather have these people here than have ICE deporting people".
ascagnel_ 2 hours ago [-]
MPD _is_ sharing and coordinating with ICE _when they're supposed to be_. MPD has already transferred ~70 people to ICE for deportation this year alone, after they completed prison sentences (which ICE claimed as their own arrests).
defrost 2 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing they would be 70 actual undocumented immigrants with actual criminal records then?
Not "brown looking" native americans or "foreign looking" US citizens that have been incorrectly identified and dragged without warrents from their homes and families barely dressed into the snow?
ascagnel_ 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure of the immigration status, just an article that called out ~70 transfers from MPD DOC to ICE following incarceration. I'd imagine it's a mix of documented and undocumented immigrants, as being convicted of a crime is a valid reason for the state to revoke a visa.
defrost 2 hours ago [-]
Good to see a subset of the system working as intended.
It's well past time whatever is left of DOGE got to working culling the over reach of the rest of the current ICE / DHS system.
kergonath 3 hours ago [-]
That would not be a problem if they deported these people, instead of what they are doing.
soperj 4 hours ago [-]
> agreed to allow
pardon my ignorance, but why would that be up to your President?
wyldberry 4 hours ago [-]
Not a lawyer, but there's a lot of back and forth around jurisdiction between local and federal enforcement. If the President directs the DoJ to not fight to own the investigation over local, then it is up to the Executive Branch.
bradleyankrom 4 hours ago [-]
Both can be true, but only one is.
megous 4 hours ago [-]
Equating civil resistance, even in heated forms like disrupting raids or blocking roads, with decades‑long insurgencies that involved organized armed groups, territorial control, foreign combatants, and protracted guerrilla campaigns is like comparing a neighborhood disagreement over lawn care to Napoleon invading Russia.
wyldberry 2 hours ago [-]
Like i've said over and over, the tactics used are the distilled what works from those insurgencies honed over decades. They are incredibly effective. The network that was built (several max signal chats, organized territory, labor specialization) has essentially created an effective targeting mechanism.
This isn't a bunch of people organically protesting, this is an organized system designed to "target" ICE agents. The only difference is the payload delivery between physical disruption vs weapon based attacks.
megous 48 minutes ago [-]
So what's the supposed goal of this "targeting" of ICE agents? Because that's a key to the insurgency vs protest thing.
We have chats, organized territory and labor specialization in a company I work for, too. It doesn't say anything by itself. It's just describing a means of human cooperation. Goal is to write software. You can have organized protest movement too. Unless the goal is to overthrow governing authority, or whatnot, it's not insurgency.
spiderice 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Eldt 2 hours ago [-]
They might not have the capacity to do more considering they still need to redact the rest of the epstein files that show their president is a child trafficking pedophile
shafyy 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wyldberry 4 hours ago [-]
They are running communications rings geographically distributed across the city via Signal. They organize into specialized roles for identifying suspected agents (spotters), tailing them, and moving to contact with ICE. They use the ARMY SALUTE[0][1] method to handle their reports.
Anyone who ran convoys in the Middle East, patrolled, or did intel around it will know this playbook. The resistance is impressive because it's taken lessons learned from observing the US Military overseas dealing with insurgencies.
So i wonder why he people of the city would act the same way as a group being invaded by a hostile force? Just like the Middle east its the people being invaded, they are the problem, not the invaders.
wyldberry 2 hours ago [-]
It's more like Minneapolis has been "chosen" as the battle point by people opposed to Trump in every step. It's the same person leading deportations as under Obama, they deport less than Obama did, yet they have been demonized almost immediately after the Trump administration took over. Why?
During the Obama administration, state and local LEO worked with ICE to deport. Now they are directed not to. Without that protection and cooperation from local officers, it becomes significantly harder and more dangerous to execute these operations. So they put masks on because the local agitators are doxxing them, threatening their families, and making life unsafe for the agents.
So now we have this lack of cooperation from local government that creates unsafe and dangerous operating conditions for ICE. What are they supposed to do? Not enforce the law because the local government says no? We already fought a war about Federal power versus state power. Heck, Obama (whom i voted for 2x) sued Arizona (Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387) over supremacy of the Federal Government with respect to immigration.
There would be no problems if Minneapolis and Minnesota leadership reacted the way other cities like Memphis did. Instead they've explicitly, or tacitly, endorsed this escalating resistance movement. I can't imagine ever putting my hands on a LEO and expecting it to go well, yet they do it freely. Officers are only human, and day-in day-out of this, combined with very real actionable threats against your life, and family life are only going to create more tensions and more mistakes.
This is no invasion hostile force, this is a chosen focal point to challenge the will and ability of this administration to enforce the democratically made laws.
curt15 3 hours ago [-]
You left out a pretty important detail. Your "insurgents" in America aren't shooting people or planting IEDs. Communicating and protesting, on the other hand, are sacrosanct rights in the US.
wyldberry 2 hours ago [-]
You're missing the forest for the trees here. The network and techniques used here are the same, but even more refined and tech enabled, of those insurgency groups. The power is the network of people in their specialized roles that can quickly target the enemy (ICE) and deliver a payload (obstruction).
The FBI has a long history of attempting to infiltrate and destabilize these groups. In the early 2010s there was a push to infiltrate right leaning groups. They especially called out in their published documents disgruntled veterans returning from the wars and unhappy with leadership noting a worry they would use the skills picked up at war at home.
It's absolutely no surprise that the FBI would investigate this behavior.
1potatonagger 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
adamisom 3 hours ago [-]
Alex Pretti's death should not have happened, and also
- he was carrying
- despite that, he involved himself in physical altercations with federal officers
- his group of disruption activists was quite successful; if you watch any video, it is very clearly difficult for the federal agents to communicate with one another
- one federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting one time, perhaps erroneously thinking Pretti had his gun out
- another federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting several times, perhaps thinking that the one shot was Pretti
basically, everything that could go wrong, went wrong, Pretti is not blameless, his group is not blameless, the ICE agents are not blameless, and it probably wasn't murder
lm28469 2 hours ago [-]
Stop acting like we're talking about two kids who did an oopsie
Small town cops in third world countries are more professional than any of these ICE clowns, these mistakes happened because they keep hiring the lowest if the low, both in term of intelect and morality
dimitri-vs 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like something for an investigation to figure out - wonder why they are fighting that so hard. Also sure sounds like a lot of victim blaming considering he died without ever doing anything warranting his death.
babblingdweeb 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hosel 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
babblingdweeb 2 hours ago [-]
That’s why I said “respectfully”, to keep it professional while commenting on their logic issue.
Next time I’ll add /s
sschueller 5 hours ago [-]
Interesting, this may result in showing how secure signal really is.
bsimpson 4 hours ago [-]
> “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way”
Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?
oceansky 3 hours ago [-]
This sounds like IMAX level projection
RIMR 2 hours ago [-]
For real, if you're legitimately worried about your officers being legally entrapped, you've got some really untrustworthy officers.
bigyabai 3 hours ago [-]
I remember a time when people were better at lying, at least.
nextlevelwizard 4 hours ago [-]
Three letter agencies do three letter agency things
hohithere 50 minutes ago [-]
Yep
plagiarist 4 hours ago [-]
The FBI should investigate the first item in the Bill of Rights.
4 hours ago [-]
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Couple of minor nits:
1. Some rando on X saying "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" doesn't mean said rando actually did infiltrate a signal group.
2. Signal was not the app Hegseth, et al. used. They used TM SGNL, which is a fork of Signal. But that's a minor nit.
3. Encryption is not the same thing as authentication. And authentication is somewhat meaningless if you let everyone into your encrypted group chat.
nextlevelwizard 4 hours ago [-]
Anyone organizing your neighborhood and events keep inner circle chats to only people you have personally vetted and use a new group chat for every event/topic and delete the groups for past events.
Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone
cdrnsf 6 hours ago [-]
They're going to give this more scrutiny than they did to Hegseth leaking sensitive government information.
EchoReflection 39 minutes ago [-]
good.
soupfordummies 5 hours ago [-]
Oh wow this article contains “ICE” in the title and isn’t flagged yet!
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
I’ve never seen a set of voluntary fall guys like Noem, Patel and Miller. (And Hegseth for when a military operation fails.)
ourmandave 5 hours ago [-]
Every one is a potential fall guy except the King. First sign you're a liability and under the bus you go. And unless you're on Truth Social you're usually the last to know.
metalliqaz 6 hours ago [-]
Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him. He's the most hard-core fascist in the bunch.
lenerdenator 6 hours ago [-]
I don't know if I'd classify Noem as a patsy or fall gal, either.
When you mention an anecdote about shooting a hunting dog in your autobiography, that shows something beyond just being a "true believer" or stooge. That is willingly pointing out that you are willing to act out your lack of empathy through violence towards an animal.
I'm not a clinician (and haven't met Noem) but that just seems to me to be something indicative of a personality disorder.
xmcp123 5 hours ago [-]
Noem strikes me as a loyalist and a team player through and through, so probably a fall gal.
Miller is different. He has his own agenda, a lot of which has becomes trumps agenda. But trumps agenda changing does not change what Miller’s agenda is.
cmrdporcupine 4 hours ago [-]
Trump has loyalty only to himself and in his first term was constantly throwing people under the bus after he decided they were a liability to the Main Character.
I could imagine we'll see the same thing again, before or after the midterms, and Miller and Bessent are two I expect to see have a dethroning at some point simply on account of Trump never taking responsibility for anything.
That and I've seen both try to speak "on behalf" of Trump, something the authoritarian personality doesn't appreciate.
However some of that logic is based on 1st round Trump not being as senile and insane as 2nd round Trump. It's possible his weakening cognitive faculties have made him even more open to manipulation.
xmcp123 4 hours ago [-]
Honestly Miller strikes me different. It’s not coincidence he’s survived so long.
He’s not an idiot. He knows how much damage he can absorb and how to position himself to not take more than that. He never positions himself as the implementation person who will take the hits. He’s the idea guy, and the manipulator/cheerleader. He doesn’t seem to expect trump to take care of him for his loyalty, so he doesn’t position himself to require it.
I think ultimately he won’t be thrown under the bus because his relationship with Trump is mutually beneficial, and they both see it as transactional. For both of them, the other is a means to an end. Soul mates in hell I guess.
metalliqaz 4 hours ago [-]
From the outside it seems like he is so far gone that his inner circle is actually making all the decisions now.
anigbrowl 2 hours ago [-]
She's complaining (via 'sources') that she's 'being hung to try' for parroting Stephen Miller's approved line, so I have a hunch she'll bite their ankles on the way out.
spprashant 4 hours ago [-]
She's an opportunist. For someone like her to be nationally relevant they have to latch onto MAGA and embrace the crazy. See MTG, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz.
lenerdenator 4 hours ago [-]
To me, those people you list are absolutely opportunists, but there's just something different about Noem. Like they're hedonists who are engaging in a grift and know that they have to sling arrows that will own the libs in order to keep the gravy train rolling. MTG seems to have, at least for a while a few months ago, found her limit on what she'll put up with. Gaetz had at least enough shame/self-awareness to realize that his continued career was untenable at the time he was being considered for AG. Boebert's the girl who told your science teacher to go fuck himself when he caught her smoking behind the high school gym with her age-inappropriate boyfriend.
Maybe I'm just really hung up on the dog thing, but that is the crux of it. There's basically no one who hears a story of shooting a dog for misbehaving and thinks, "yeah, that'll show the libs". That's not a story out of a politician's biography as much as it is a story out of a book profiling a serial killer's childhood.
71% of American households have pets [0] and there's a good chance that those who don't have had at least one in the past. There was absolutely no benefit to including that in the book, and I'd be stunned if the publisher didn't at least try to talk her out of putting it in there, given her political ambitions. If they didn't try to get it cut, they didn't do their jobs; if she ignored them, then she really does display a tendency to take pride in behavior that is recognized across the political spectrum in American society as cruel and antisocial.
Just a reminder that we're dealing with propagandists here.
As many have already stated, Signal is overwhelmingly secure. More secure than any other alternative with similar viability here.
If the feds were actually concerned about that, publicly "investigating" Signal chats is a great way to drive activists to less secure alternatives, while also benefiting from scattering activist comms.
quickthrowman 6 hours ago [-]
I’d be curious to know what they plan to charge people with.
netsharc 6 hours ago [-]
Jaywalking, misappropriating funds during a renovation? Whatever the police state wants...
Pwntastic 6 hours ago [-]
domestic terrorism, of course
q34tlR4y 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jihadjihad 6 hours ago [-]
Coming soon, treason.
advisedwang 6 hours ago [-]
The article subhead implies obstruction of justice.
5 hours ago [-]
mycodendral 6 hours ago [-]
18 U.S.C. § 372 — Conspiracy to impede or injure officer
If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.
Federal felony
6 hours ago [-]
nkohari 5 hours ago [-]
> by force, intimidation, or threat
You seem to be glossing over the key piece of that statute. Peaceful protest is protected by the first amendment (free speech, right to assembly).
sb057 3 hours ago [-]
If you threaten to kill somebody then follow them around for days at a time, is that intimidation?
mothballed 5 hours ago [-]
I heard a totally unsubstantiated rumor that the participants were sending (ICE agent) plate numbers to people with NCIC access to run the plates. If that's the case it would be a pretty easy felony charge for all involved.
I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.
sjsdaiuasgdia 5 hours ago [-]
If you have no reason to believe it's true, and understand the rumor to be unsubstantiated, why bother to spread it?
mothballed 5 hours ago [-]
Because the question was what they might be charged with, not what they did.
Did you expect the government to charge people in good faith? It doesn't matter it if it's true or not, even putting them in the slammer for a long time while awaiting trial and forcing them to hire expensive attorneys is a win.
sjsdaiuasgdia 5 hours ago [-]
No, I don't expect the Trump administration to operate in good faith.
The post you replied to didn't ask what they might be charged with. It asked what they "plan" to charge.
And you replied with internet rumor nonsense. It's actually fine to say "I don't know" or simply not reply at all when someone asks a question to which you do not have an answer.
andreygrehov 36 minutes ago [-]
Several undercover reporters have reported this. They are obviously lying. If the administration confirms the same, they are obviously lying. Who shall we believe then? The NYTimes?
plorg 27 minutes ago [-]
These "undercover" reporters have screenshots, surely they could show one of actual crimes instead of something that you keep willfully misinterpreting as such. We've already given you the mundane explanation, but it seemingly relies too much on people being able to work together as social creatures and not enough on a technological system.
What this reads as is a bunch of credulous X users trying to one-up each other and looking for reasons that Trump and his cronies are not once again lying to your face.
It is neither necessary nor particularly useful for them to be running plates for reasons you've already identified.
andreygrehov 15 minutes ago [-]
> surely they could show one of actual crimes
That's exactly what they have done - shared the information pointing to the organized attempt to interfere with the ongoing federal operation. This is a crime.
hsbauauvhabzb 6 hours ago [-]
They don’t need to if they just shoot them on the street.
6 hours ago [-]
missingcolours 6 hours ago [-]
Presumably Seditious Conspiracy, like many people involved in J6. Conspiracy to use force to prevent or delay enforcement of laws.
lenerdenator 6 hours ago [-]
Or, at the very least, what they want to try to convince a grand jury to indict people on.
That's another angle that needs to be discussed more often with respect to Trump's DoJ: if you're impaneled on a grand jury for charges coming out of these investigations, you don't have to give them a bill.
adrr 6 hours ago [-]
Terrorism seems to be their default claim if you're against the Trump admin.
q34tlR4y 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
2OEH8eoCRo0 6 hours ago [-]
I hope they're just looking for foreign influence I'm not sure what you could charge peaceful protestors with that would survive in court.
Not sure what the point of the service is. Given that it's more expensive than other MVNOs, and isn't even more private. You can still buy prepaid SIMs in store with cash, so it's harder to get more private than that. Not to mention this company asks for your zip+4 code (which identifies down to a specific street), and information for E-911. It's basically like Trump Mobile but for people who care about "privacy".
samename 2 hours ago [-]
Can prepaid eSIMs be used anonymously?
gruez 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, but it's harder than just buying an esim from silent.link (or whatever) and installing it. The biggest issue is that phones have IMEIs that you can't change, so even with an esim you bought "anonymously", that won't do you any good if you install it to your iPhone that's linked to you in some way, eg. bought in Apple store with your credit card, inserted another SIM/esim that has your billing information, or simply the phone has pinged cell towers near your home/work for an extended amount of time.
unethical_ban 3 hours ago [-]
I was unaware that you could buy a SIM with cash and no private data collected. I thought they had KYC laws like prepaid cash cards.
gruez 2 hours ago [-]
>I thought they had KYC laws like prepaid cash cards.
You don't. You could even order sim cards off ebay/amazon if you wanted to, which definitely doesn't have any KYC.
OutOfHere 3 hours ago [-]
Clearly there is no point in it for you. The stores would ID you. As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it. Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
gruez 2 hours ago [-]
>The stores would ID you
Source?
>As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it.
Why collect it then? Imagine having a service promising "lets people use phones without revealing identity" but for whatever reason asks for a bunch of info, then brushes it aside with "yeah but you can fill in fake information so it's fine".
>Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
Your inability to take any criticism without resorting to personal attacks is crystal clear.
OutOfHere 45 minutes ago [-]
The answer to that question is so obvious that anyone raising it must necessarily be doing it in extremely bad faith. It's because the government mandates 911 service, and that the 911 service must be given the user's primary "location" when required. Your "criticism" is hereby redirected at yourself.
8 hours ago [-]
dyauspitr 2 hours ago [-]
So more nonsense. How about tracking down the murderer first.
bediger4000 8 hours ago [-]
Why? That's unequivocally constitutionally protected speech. Why is our tax money being wasted on this?
afavour 6 hours ago [-]
To intimidate. They're probably quite aware they'll lose in court. But in the mean time they might discourage some folks from turning out on the street.
JoshTriplett 5 hours ago [-]
Are you under the impression that the current administration cares about what the law says?
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"
tptacek 6 hours ago [-]
They're "investigating", presumably with data gleaned from arrests and CIs; you have a right to speech, and a right not to be prosecuted for speech, but a much, much narrower right not to be "investigated", collapsing to ~epsilon when the investigation involves data the FBI already has.
janalsncm 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah whenever people say “the first amendment is not a freedom from consequences” it is only a freedom from certain consequences (and that freedom only goes as far as the government is willing to protect it). It is a freedom from being convicted. They can still arrest you, you can still spend time in jail, prosecutors can even file charges. A court is supposed to throw those charges out. And in extreme cases you can be convicted and sent to prison for years before SCOTUS rules.
tptacek 6 hours ago [-]
Nobody has been charged.
jakelazaroff 5 hours ago [-]
I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.
andreygrehov 6 hours ago [-]
No. According to the latest reports, while searching for ICE vehicles, the protesters are unlawfully scanning license plates, which strongly suggests they are receiving insider help.
anigbrowl 2 hours ago [-]
There is nothing unlawful about scanning license plates. You are allowed to photograph them in the same way you are allowed to stand around writing them into a notebook if that activity is your idea of fun. Where do people get these ideas?!
janalsncm 6 hours ago [-]
Can you rule out the much less technically advanced explanation that this information was crowdsourced? And people are simply observing the license plates that are plainly displayed?
Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
andreygrehov 5 hours ago [-]
No, I cannot. One of the undercover journalists was in their group for days.
> Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
None of that matters _today_, because _today_ the law is different.
janalsncm 5 hours ago [-]
What the law is, is a question for lawyers. What the law should be is a question for the people.
For example, a lot of people thought it was wrong that federal agents could cover their faces. Sacramento agreed. Now there is a law preventing it.
germinalphrase 2 hours ago [-]
That law enforcement is permitted to hide their faces, drive unmarked vehicles, not display name tags, badges, or uniforms is concerning. Anyone can buy a gun, a vest, and a velcro “police” patch. There is very little that marks these agents as official law enforcement. I’m somewhat surprised that none of these agents have been shot entering a home under the mistaken perception by the homeowner that it’s a criminal home invasion.
janalsncm 2 hours ago [-]
Or alternatively, that criminals haven’t simply claimed to be ICE as an excuse to break into someone’s house.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
Where was the outrage when Obama deported 3.1 million people? Why was there no media coverage? Trump has deported 300k and the MSM is turning upside down. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
No one is upset about the number of deportations. No one is complaining about the number of deportations. If you don't listen to what the complaints are about to start with, you can't argue that they are hypocritical.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
Ok. What are people upset about, and why are they only upset in one city?
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
> What are people upset about,
A wide array of policy issues related to the targeting and manner of execution of Trump’s mass deportation program, not the number of deportations.
Also, a number of specific instances of violence by the federal government during what is (at least notionally) the execution of immigration enforcement.
> why are they only upset in one city?
People are very clearly not “only upset in one city”
And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?
dragonwriter 1 hours ago [-]
> And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?
There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.
rhcom2 2 hours ago [-]
There were contemporary criticism of Obama's deportation policy on both the right and the left. I have no idea why you think that is some sort of gotcha that somehow makes the equivalency between Obama and Trump's immigration enforcement valid.
andreygrehov 1 hours ago [-]
No. The outrage now versus back then is day and night. There were pretty much no protests during Obama’s term, even though the scale of deportations was much larger. That contrast is highly suspicious.
rhcom2 1 hours ago [-]
Dragonwriter has already laid out some of the differences for you to research further beyond the single data point of number of deportations. You've asked the same question multiple times but seem to not want to actually engage with the answers so I'll leave it there.
janalsncm 1 hours ago [-]
People keep telling you that it has nothing to do with the number of deportations, and you keep insisting that it does. Why do you believe the number of deportations is the most important factor?
andreygrehov 51 minutes ago [-]
Copying my other response here:
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
chaps 2 hours ago [-]
When talking to someone at-risk of deportation earlier in the year, they asked me, "Why should I do anything differently? Obama and Biden did the same exact shit."
And there's a lot of truth to that which a lot of people need to reconcile with.
The fact that we don't have DACA solidified into a path towards citizenship by now is just sad.
andreygrehov 1 hours ago [-]
And I agree with you, but that's not what I'm questioning. Given the 10x larger scale of deportations during the Obama's term, why were there no protests?
defrost 1 hours ago [-]
During Obama's term the practice of warrentless entry into actual citizens homes wasn't widespread.
During Obama's term the leaders of DHS / ICE were not blatently lying about events captured on film and evading legitmate investigations into deaths at the hands of officers.
During Obamas term people with no criminal record were not being offshored to hell-hole prison camps with serious abuses of human rights.
Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?
From your linked article:
If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their jobs.
There's your difference. Thank you for playing.
andreygrehov 55 minutes ago [-]
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
defrost 50 minutes ago [-]
As many others have pointed out, the deeper issue is the size of the boot, the disregard for citizens rights, the extremes of the offshore gulags, the fevor with which the upper levels embrace the brutality.
I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
andreygrehov 48 minutes ago [-]
You are still missing the point. You were intentionally underinformed during the Obama's term.
derbOac 5 hours ago [-]
"Unlawfully scanning license plates"? What does that even mean?
Like searching a vehicle database? That's available to all sorts of people, like auto body repair shops.
Taking a photo of a license plate? Nothing illegal about that.
andreygrehov 5 hours ago [-]
You're confusing 'seeing a license plate' with 'querying restricted databases'.
Taking a photo is legal. Running plates through law-enforcement/ALPR systems is not, and auto body shops don't have that access.
Real-time identification != observation - it implies unauthorized data access.
anigbrowl 2 hours ago [-]
If that was what you meant, you should have said that. Do you have any actual evidence this is happening, or are you just confusing possibility with probability?
plorg 4 hours ago [-]
Journalists doing ride alongs have already identified the system and it doesn't really on "restricted databases", they rely on observation and multiple attestation. In any case, there are indeed commercial services for looking up license plate data, and they rely on watching the notices that are published when you register your vehicle. It's the same reason why you receive all sorts of scammy warranty "notices" when you buy a car.
In fact the first clue that they look for is having Illinois Permanent plates because that is a strong indicator that they are using rental vehicles. That doesn't take a database, it's just a strong signal that can be confirmed by other evidence.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
Do federal agents rent their vehicles?
plorg 1 hours ago [-]
The crowd sourced lists don't identify the owners of the vehicles, because that does not matter. They identify vehicles that ICE is using, and "likely a rental" is one good signal.
rhcom2 4 hours ago [-]
There is no evidence of this at all.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
There is enough smoke to at least perform an investigation. As I said, this administration has deported 10x less people than the previous administrations.
germinalphrase 16 minutes ago [-]
You seem quite narrowly focused on the number of deportations rather than the methods being implemented. The primary criticisms of the current ICE surge in Minnesota focus on the general aggressiveness and lack of professionalism of these agents, not the deportations numbers.
paganel 5 hours ago [-]
> through law-enforcement/ALPR systems
Were they doing that? I haven't read the article, that's why I'm asking.
Also, what is the outrage about? This administration has deported the least number of people compared to all previous administrations. Obama deported 3.1 million people, ten times more than Trump today. Same ICE, same border patrol.
rhcom2 4 hours ago [-]
It literally say it is a crowdsourced list... a completely legal activity. If you can't figure out what the outrage is about after Alex Pretti and Renée Good then you're being intentionally obtuse.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
1. The outrage had been there prior to their death.
2. Their death is the outcome of the outrage.
rhcom2 2 hours ago [-]
Their deaths are an outcome of the heavy handed immigration enforcement that has caused the outrage. The raw number of deportations is not the only metric. The enforcement tactics of the Obama admin are not the same as Trump's, this is obvious and incontrovertible.
You don't have to agree with the criticisms but to not even be able to understand why people are upset stretches believability.
andreygrehov 1 hours ago [-]
Duh... You're still collapsing cause and context. The protests preceded the deaths; the deaths occurred during confrontations created by the protests. That makes them an outcome of escalation, not the original trigger.
And 'different tactics' doesn’t explain the reaction gap, as i said, under Obama there were 3.1M+ deportations and at least 56 documented deaths in ICE custody (https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/re...) with nowhere near this level of outrage. What changed is media framing and amplification, not the existence of harsh enforcement.
plorg 4 hours ago [-]
I don't know what they think they're doing there. If the most interesting thing they found was the public website leading to a fundraising platform for mutual aid a) there is literally nothing illegal there, and b) you can find that website linked to publicly by conservatively 25% of the twin cities population. It's literally the most prominent fundraising website anyone has been posting.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago [-]
Wrong. The "protesters" were conducting counterintelligence to locate where ICE was operating. The plan was to disrupt the operation. Like it or not, this is against the law. Period.
plorg 1 hours ago [-]
I know you want to frame it a different way, but the articles you are posting don't describe anything that's illegal.
andreygrehov 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not framing anything. There are screenshots of the chats where people literally say "ICE vehicle has been identified, everybody, go there!". This is called interfering.
plorg 34 minutes ago [-]
The "interfering" this are describing is your framing. You want it to be interference in a legally actionable way, but it simply isn't.
18 U.S.C. § 1505 - Obstruction of Federal Officers (this includes ICE itself - obstructing or interfering with an ICE arrest is a crime)
18 U.S.C. § 118 - Obstructing, resisting, or interfering with federal protective functions
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
When has the constitution mattered to this administration?
6 hours ago [-]
Sparkle-san 8 hours ago [-]
Because too many people dismissed the claims that electing Trump would lead to a fascist administration as alarmist. Turns out he meant every word he said during his campaign.
PrettiGoodDead 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
spankalee 8 hours ago [-]
Yes - very, very dumb people did vote for him.
therobots927 8 hours ago [-]
The fascists won. That’s why.
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
No, they haven’t. This kind of advocacy crosses from lazy nihilism to negligence.
anigbrowl 2 hours ago [-]
They inarguably won the last election and control 2 branches of government.
6 hours ago [-]
dragonwriter 6 hours ago [-]
> > > Why is our tax money being wasted on this?
> > The fascists won. That’s why?
> No, they haven’t.
Yes, they did, that’s why they are able to use the executive branch of the federal government to enforce their wishes at the moment, with virtually no constraint yet from the legislative branch, and no significant consequences yet for ignoring contrary orders from the judicial branch.
They may lose at some point in the future, but something that might happen in the future is irrelevant to the question of why what is happening now is happening, and it is happening because they won. Unambiguously.
SR2Z 6 hours ago [-]
They are not able to enforce their will unchecked. The legislature is more than willing to turn on Trump when he crosses the line, hence the whole idea of "TACO."
The fascists haven't won because if they did, they would be killing a lot more dissidents in the street. They killed two and the public outcry is so angry that Kristi Noem might be impeached. Democrats are willing to shut down the government to starve ICE if they have to. Even GOP legislators are criticizing Trump, which is a dangerous activity for any Republican looking to keep their seat.
5 hours ago [-]
micromacrofoot 5 hours ago [-]
Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot. No one is being prosecuted for the murders, and in fact at least one investigator has quit their career position in the FBI for being asked to bury it.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of meaningful checks.
dragonwriter 5 hours ago [-]
> Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot
Bovino (Border Patrol “at large” Commander who may or may not have lost that title and been returned to his sector command), not Bongino (the podcaster-turned-FBI Deputy Director who resigned to go back to podcasting), and Homan didn't get Bovino’s job, only his spotlight (he was already the head of border policy for the White House.)
8note 3 hours ago [-]
i think it sets the framing that beating them back is from a losing position rather than equal.
if you want the fascists to un-win, you need to treat the world as it is: the fascists are ascendent.
therobots927 7 hours ago [-]
I should’ve clarified. They won the 2024 election. And the democrats are controlled opposition who take money from fascists. For all intents and purposes they have won. That may not be a permanent state of affairs.
JohnFen 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
dragonwriter 6 hours ago [-]
> I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
I don't think it makes sense to reject an explanation of current events grounded in a battle that is clearly over having been won and the victor using the ground they’ve gained to produce the events being discussed merelt because the broader war isn’t over and that victor may potentially lose some subsequent battle.
s1artibartfast 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, won that battle but not the war.
I think the dissent is about the latter. It's not over yet, so people should not give up.
The root comment clearly has ambiguity that people take both ways.
ActorNightly 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
deaux 25 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
thunderfork 4 hours ago [-]
Given that Newsom was on a podcast just last week caving to even the slightest pushback, I wouldn't count on him to be bombastic to anyone. He's 100% optics-driven-cowardice.
ActorNightly 1 hours ago [-]
Well see. Anything can happen. Maybe Im wrong and people this time around do want sanity. Or Trump drone strikes him if he sees him getting too much steam.
5 hours ago [-]
stronglikedan 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ActorNightly 5 hours ago [-]
Why even bother replying
flagged
5 hours ago [-]
MiiMe19 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
PrettiGoodDead 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
randallsquared 8 hours ago [-]
Conspiracy to commit a crime is typically not included in protected speech. Whether you think that's happening here will depend mostly on what side you take, I suspect.
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.
nkohari 5 hours ago [-]
You keep commenting to cite this statute when you clearly have not actually read what it says. Peaceful protest is explicitly protected by the first amendment.
JKCalhoun 8 hours ago [-]
Interesting that there would be people on a "side" that think there was a conspiracy to commit a crime. What crime?
direwolf20 6 hours ago [-]
Interference with a law enforcement investigation?
mycodendral 5 hours ago [-]
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
baerrie 5 hours ago [-]
This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech. If all info could be interpreted as impediments to federal officers then phones, the internet, the human voice, etc would be illegal
rexpop 5 hours ago [-]
It's a crime.
What do you have against crime?
Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.
mindslight 3 hours ago [-]
In the fascist's mind, anything that isn't supporting Dear Leader's vision of "greatness" is a crime.
PrettiGoodDead 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mrtesthah 8 hours ago [-]
We already know that "doxxing" on its own is not a crime, and moreover that [non-undercover] federal agents are not entitled to keep their identities secret.
We also know that legal observation and making noise does not constitute interference.
So those may be their stated reasons, but they will not hold up in court.
mycodendral 6 hours ago [-]
Federal felony, not free speech.
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
derbOac 5 hours ago [-]
There's been lots of legal writing pointing out these statutes basically refer to impeding an officer by threat or physical force, which that statute you cite states. It doesn't refer to anything about providing food to someone who is fearing for their lives and won't leave the home, or communicating about the publicly observed whereabouts of law enforcement.
kennywinker 4 hours ago [-]
Are these federal officers? They’re men in masks with camo and body armor kidnapping people off the streets and refusing to show identification beyond a patch that says “ICE”.
That is who is alleged to be impeded.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Sure, but you should read what "impede" and "interfere" mean both in the regs and court precedent. Following ICE agents around is neither impeding or interfering by current federal court definitions. But yeah... that can change quickly.
janalsncm 5 hours ago [-]
“Free speech” is a concept not a law. The first amendment protects certain types of speech. Whether something is free speech or not does not depend on the US government’s opinion or the Chinese government or your mother in law.
Publishing locations alone is not conspiracy to commit a crime. If ICE is impeded as a result of this information, that’s not enough. Conspiracy requires the government to prove that multiple people intended to impede them.
spiderice 5 hours ago [-]
Which is probably the easiest thing ever to prove, since people are openly trying to impede them
5 hours ago [-]
6 hours ago [-]
poplarsol 6 hours ago [-]
Coordinating roadblocks, "dearrests", warning the subjects of law enforcement operations, and intentionally causing the maximum amount of noise in neighborhoods neighborhood are not things you will be able to get a federal judge to characterize as "constitutionally protected speech".
kennywinker 4 hours ago [-]
The “arrests” are being done in a deeply unconstitutional way. Acting to uphold the constitution is beyond speech, it’s a duty of all americans.
OhMeadhbh 5 hours ago [-]
Actually... making noise in a neighborhood is constitutionally protected speech (as I have learned when my neighbors crank the sub-par disco up to 11.)
I'm convinced all this talk around Signal, including Hegseths fuckup, is to discourage "normies" (for lack of a better term) from using it. Even in this very HN thread, where you'd expect technical nuance, there are people spreading FUD around the phone number requirement as if that'd be your downfall... a timestamp and a phone number? How would that get someone convicted in court?
pjc50 3 hours ago [-]
They don't have to get a conviction if they know your address and have a gun.
BonoboIO 2 hours ago [-]
Perspective from Central Europe (Austria): I can tell you that essentially nobody here has any doubt that bad faith is at play.
Our mainstream news outlets are openly calling the "official" versions from the Trump administration what they are – lies. The video evidence is clear to anyone watching: this was murder. No amount of spin changes what the footage shows.
As citizens of a country that knows firsthand how fascism begins, we recognize the patterns: the brazen lying in the face of obvious evidence, the dehumanization, the paramilitarized enforcement without accountability. We've seen this playbook before.
What Americans might not fully grasp is how catastrophically the US has damaged its standing abroad. The sentiment here has shifted from "trusted ally" to "unreliable partner we need to become independent from as quickly as possible." The only thing most Europeans still find relevant about the US at this point is Wall Street.
The fact that the FBI is investigating citizens documenting government violence rather than the government agents committing violence tells you everything about where this is heading.
Yeah! Signal has nothing to do with technology. The government trying to snoop on a private E2EE service is not worth discussion.
quercus 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hobs 8 hours ago [-]
Many people on hacker news have a reason to care about the united states government's position on signal and their evolving efforts relating to civil rights.
quercus 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dayyan 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
Sounds good, until you realize that they've now murdered two peaceful protesters, who they post facto smear as terrorists to justify their murder.
spiderice 2 hours ago [-]
Driving your car at someone, whether or not you are trying to hit them or putting them at risk by trying to dodge them, isn't peaceful. I'm shocked that this needs to be explained to people. Tribalism is one helluva drug.
hackyhacky 1 hours ago [-]
That's not what happened. Watch the video. What you'll see is an undertrained bully with no accountability who was looking for an excuse to use violence. That's why the victim was shot from the side, and why the administration refuses to allow a serious investigation.
oceansky 1 hours ago [-]
putting them at risk by trying to dodge them? What?
dayyan 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
How is a history of constitutional violations not on topic?
xrd 8 hours ago [-]
He just misspoke slightly. What he meant to say:
"What we will defend: using chaos, riots, and volatility as cover to escalate violence against peaceful protesters."
8 hours ago [-]
q34tlR4y 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
superkuh 8 hours ago [-]
Tracking the murderers who executed citizens in the street and then fled the scene of the crime and any sort of trial or investigation? That ICE and Immigration and Border Patrol? I wonder why. And since when is tracking public officials operating in public in the capacity of their government jobs illegal?
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
stuffn 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hackyhacky 8 hours ago [-]
Are you holding up some random unverified substack, featuring an obvious AI-generated photo, as a reliable source of information?
> You should probably read the original source before taking the opinion of your favorite pundit.
This is not an "original source" of the article in question.
stuffn 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Psillisp 8 hours ago [-]
Great add
superkuh 8 hours ago [-]
And you need to watch the videos but I imagine the cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.
direwolf20 6 hours ago [-]
When Trump saw the video of Renee Good's execution, he faltered. He hadn't seen that before.
stuffn 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hobs 8 hours ago [-]
No, the ones on broadcast television news where they go scene by scene breaking down any claims of Alex being at fault being bogus lies that you are now repeating.
OrvalWintermute 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
q34tlR4y 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Ms-J 2 hours ago [-]
People need to investigate the FBI. They would be shocked at their crimes. The recent Epstein news comes to mind but that is only the smallest tip of it.
Always use encryption for anything. Encrypted messengers are great, but I would never trust Signal. It requires phone numbers to register among other issues, has intelligence funding from places such as the OTF, and their dev asset Rosenfeld is a whole other issue.
CMay 3 hours ago [-]
It's not illegal to track law enforcement, but if any of their still visible chats show intent it will hurt them. They'll also want to find out how many people in the group chat are outside of the US, if any money was being exchanged, etc.
Hopefully they can unwind these groups, because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against. They don't seem to have a sense for when they have gone beyond protesting and have broken the law. There's this culture about them, like protesting means they are immune to law.
If this all ties back to funded groups who are then misinforming these people about how they should behave to increase the chance of escalatory events with the knowledge that it will increase the chance of these inflammatory political highlights to maximize rage, it won't surprise me.
If they want to follow ICE around and protest them, fine, but that's not what they're doing. These people are standing or parking their cars in front of their vehicles and blocking them. They'll also stand in front of the street exits to prevents their vehicles from leaving parking lots and so on. They refuse to move, so they have to be removed by force, because they are breaking the law. Some people are just trying to get arrested to waste ICE's time, and it's particularly bad because Minneapolis police won't help ICE.
A lot of video recordings don't even start until AFTER they've already broken the law, so all you end up seeing is ICE reacting.
Any time someone dies, there'll have to be an investigation to sort out what happened. Maybe the ICE officer made a mistake, but let the evidence be presented. Being that this is Minneapolis, hopefully they do a better job than the George Floyd case. I absolutely recommend you watch the entire Fall of Minneapolis documentary to get a better sense for what the country may be increasingly up against in multiple states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPi3EigjFA
flumpcakes 3 hours ago [-]
An American VA Hospital ICU Nurse was disarmed and executed. Which crime is it OK to be chemically and physically assaulted before being disarmed and shot dead?
CMay 3 hours ago [-]
As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest. He had a gun on him, which is not in itself a problem, but he had already broken the law 3 times by this point and the fact he had a gun on him instantly escalates the potential threat. They don't know if he has multiple guns on him or just the one. Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.
He wasn't killed for owning a gun or carrying a gun.
He wasn't killed for laying hands on the officer.
He wasn't killed for resisting arrest.
It was likely the entire combination of things that caused him to demonstrate he was a credible threat to their lives and reaching for an object. No matter what you think, Alex made a whole string of mistakes. The officer may have also made mistakes. With any luck investigation will reveal more details.
I'm not predisposed to assuming that Alex is innocent and the officer is guilty, because there is a lot of activist pressure to push exactly that perspective. I prefer to preserve the capacity to make up my own mind.
oceansky 1 hours ago [-]
There are multiple videos from multiple angles and a multitude of witnesses.
The only investigation being done is by the DHS, who is blocking all other state level investigations. The same DHS who lied about easy disproven things that were recorded and destroy evidences.
What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
CMay 32 minutes ago [-]
In the case of George Floyd, that was local police. In this scenario, these are federal law enforcement officers so it probably is correct for this case to be handled federally as far as I know.
I don't know what you're referring to about DHS lying about disproven things and destroying evidence. If you can give me links I'll look into it.
> What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
I've seen enough video to know that it's not impossible the officer reacted within the spirit of the law. To get a sense for that requires testimony from the officer that fired the shot. Please watch court cases some time and you'll get a sense for how the application of these kinds of laws work. I'm not a lawyer, but if you ever have to defend yourself against someone you'll be thankful the laws work the way that they do.
We have a justice system for a reason. It doesn't always work, but it lays out a process for evaluating evidence. Why do we do it that way? We do it that way, because it is not that uncommon that perceptions, witnesses, videos and many other things can be deceptive. They can make you believe things which are not true. So you try to establish all of the relevant facts as they apply to the law. Not based on how you feel, but based on the law.
It actually hurts some of the witnesses that are obviously activists, because it means they aren't unbiased objective observers, but are predisposed to a perspective and have a possible agenda in mind which risks reducing the quality of their testimony. A law enforcement officer that thinks he might be found guilty also risks their testimony being weak. The video quality is also often bad and there are people obstructing important details at times. All of those things have to be considered.
Of course when you are emotionally invested, you might want them to just rush to what you obviously see. Again, you will be very thankful that the justice system generally doesn't rush to those conclusions so readily if you ever have to defend yourself in court when you know you're innocent.
8note 3 hours ago [-]
> because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against.
i think people know exactly what theyre up against: a lawless executive, many members of which have never had to work in places where they are held accountable to the constitution before.
its more important for the government to follow the constitution than for citizens to follow the law. if the government isnt following the law, there is no law
CMay 3 hours ago [-]
If you're talking about the Trump administration, they're surrounded by lawyers and constantly battling things up to supreme court decisions, which is not what lawless looks like. ICE is also enforcing existing laws that simply haven't been enforced in recent years. Whatever you think about those laws, they are the laws. Many people agree those laws need to be reformed, but elect people who are willing to change the laws. Unfortunately congress has trouble passing laws around some of these more controversial issues, so it'll probably stay this way for many more decades.
jimt1234 2 hours ago [-]
It's not just the what, it's the how.
ncallaway 3 hours ago [-]
This is what collaboration looks like
CMay 2 hours ago [-]
So I'm part of a gold star family now? Are you going to put me in a concentration camp, because I think the rule of law is more important than mob rule?
It's best to show some moderation and give these controversial political moments a little time to air out, because there is a lot of disinformation being promoted with the intent to amplify people's emotions. Some people are very vulnerable to that kind of propaganda, and many of those people are compassionate.
Don't let your compassion be weaponized. Be your own person.
unethical_ban 3 hours ago [-]
Civil disobedience exists and does not deserve a death sentence.
At least, while decrying civil disobedience, you differ from the administration in one important aspect: You think there should be accountability for police shootings. That's different than the ICE leader, the DHS leader, the FBI director and the Vice President.
CMay 2 hours ago [-]
From a sort of naive perspective it doesn't matter whether it's police or not. If you kill someone illegally, you should be held accountable for it. In many cases, whether it's illegal depends on how reasonable it was to do so. This is where it being law enforcement starts to matter even more.
Law enforcement face a lot of violent resistance, so it can be very reasonable for them to see an uncooperative person as a serious threat to their life. If they kill someone, because they believe them to be a lethal threat even if that was not the reality, their perspective absolutely matters to the outcome.
Civil disobedience is basically understood to be breaking the law in a civil manner. What I'm seeing in a lot of videos is not civil disobedience. One expected attribute of civil disobedience is non-evasion, but resisting arrest is essentially attempted evasion.
Again, I don't think anyone should have died, but to my eye I can tell the people who are unreasonable and lacking in critical thinking, because they have already prejudged and sentenced people as if they've already sat through the entire court case and had their own hands on the gavel as it went down.
Social media, videos, news, activists and more are incentivized to rile people up. Let it be investigated.
actionfromafar 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the victim is investigated. Kill anyone evading arrest. Bring in the tanks.
CMay 28 minutes ago [-]
That's not how the law works. In a case like this, all the events that led up to the moment he was killed are relevant as per the supreme court. They'll have to investigate both the officer and the activist and see how the law applies to it.
and what is NBC "news"'s motive/agenda for framing this info the way they are?
"LEFT-CENTER BIAS
These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
NBC News is what some call a mainstream media source. They typically publish/report factual news that uses moderately loaded words in headlines such as this: 'Trump threatens border security shutdown, GOP cool to idea.'
Story selection tends to favor the left through both wording and bias by omission, where they underreport some news stories that are favorable to the right. NBC always sources its information to credible sources that are either low biased or high for factual reporting.
A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 42% of NBC News’ audience is consistently or primarily liberal, 39% Mixed, and 19% consistently or mostly conservative. A more liberal audience prefers NBC. Further, a Reuters institute survey found that 46% of respondents trust their news coverage and 35% do not, ranking them #5 in trust of the major USA news providers."
tclancy 13 minutes ago [-]
What are you getting at? The idea of any of the major news outlets in the US being left-leaning is risible nowadays.
Rendered at 02:07:24 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resistance.
As a former government employee I had the same reaction to the Snowden leaks: sure the government might be collecting all of this (which I don't support), but I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
Incompetence might be the greatest safety we have against a true dystopia.
It may feel normal now, but back then, serious people, professionals, told us that the claims just were not possible.
Until we learned that they were.
Meanwhile, the whole time, communications and tech companies were working hand in hand with the government siphoning up any and all data they could to successfully implement their LifeLog[1] pipe dream.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
I honestly have no god damn clue what was actually revealed by the Snowden documents - people just say "they revealed things".
Like I said: I've read a ton of stuff, and apparently what people are sure they read is very different to what I read.
Is the claim that there was adequate court oversight of operations under those codenames which then turned out not to be the case? Are they referring to specific excesses of the agencies? Breaking certain cryptographic primitives presumed to be secure?
Why is absolutely no one who knows all about Snowden ever able to refer to the files with anything more then a bunch of titles, and when they deign to provide a link also refuses to explain what part of it they are reacting to or what they think it means - you know, normal human communication stuff?
(I mean I know why, it's because at the time HN wound itself up on "the NSA has definitely cracked TLS" and the source was an out of context slide about the ability to monitor decrypted traffic after TLS termination - maybe, because actually it was one extremely information sparse internal briefing slide. But boy were people super confident they knew exactly what it meant, in a way which extends to discussion and reference to every other part of the files in my experience).
What I learned in that revelation was that the NSA was deliberately tampering with the design of products and standards to make them more vulnerable to NOBUS decryption. This surprised everyone I knew at the time, because we (perhaps naively) thought this was out of bounds. Google "SIGINT Enabling" and "Bullrun".
But there were many other revelations demonstrating large scale surveillance. One we saw involved monitoring the Google infra by tapping inter-DC fiber connections after SSL was added. Google MUSCULAR, or "SSL added and removed here". We also saw projects to tap unencrypted messaging services and read every message sent. This was "surprising" because it was indiscriminate and large-scale. No doubt these projects (over a decade old) have accelerated in the meantime.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nsa-palantir-israel-...
Someone else on HN said it would be nice if the NSA published statistics or something, data so aggregate you couldn't determine much from it, but still tells you "holy shit they prevented something crazy" levels of information, harder said than done without revealing too much.
There were stories like "look at how we stopped this thing using all this data we've been scooping up"... but often the details lead to somewhat underwhelming realities, to say the least.
It might be that this stuff is very useful, but only in very illegal ways.
They are still dangerous even if theyre over promising because even placebos are dangerous when the displace real medical interventions.
Competence is also terrifying, but for different reasons.
That may sound hyperbolic but I hope it's obvious to most people by now that it's not.
I let one of my cars expire the registration a few months Everytime, because I'm lazy and because I want to see if I get flagged by a popup system Everytime a police officer passes near me. My commute car is out of registration 3 months right now. And old cop friend told me they basically never tow unless it's 6 months. I pay the $50 late fee once a year and keep doing my experiment for the last 6-7 years. Still no real signs they care.
My fun car has out of state plates for 10 years now. Ive been pulled over once for speeding, and told the officer I just bought it. I've never registered it since I bought it from a friend a decade ago. They let me go. It makes me wonder if one day they'll say "sir, we have plate scanners of this vehicle driving around this state for a year straight.. pay a fine." Not yet.
As a former intelligence officer with combat time I promise you there are A LOT of actions happening based on that data.
It isn't usually a question of efficiency, it is a question of damage. Technically there is an argument that something like the holocaust was inefficiently executed, but still a good reason to actively prevent governments having ready-to-use data on hand about people's ethnic origin.
A lot of the same observations probably apply to the ICE situation too. One of the big problems with the mass-migration programs has always been that there is no reasonable way to undo that sort of thing because it is far too risky for the government to be primed to identify and deport large groups of people. For all the fire and thunder the Trump administration probably isn't going to accomplish very much, but at great cost.
We can only hope that the surveillance state is still working with the same algorithm…
The SA was eventually hung out to dry, because Hitler feared Ernst Röhm had too much power (among other reasons)— by executing SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives (die Nacht der langen Messer)…
To say the violence of the SS was quick to be extreme really forgets the ten plus year road they took to get there. I’d really suggest, as disheartening and sad as it is, to read about all this yourself. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the US right now are astonishing. It’s almost as if someone in the White House is using history as a playbook.
Which sort of goes full circle since Hitler took a lot from how brutal and racist the US towards slaves and non-whites.
Maybe now is exactly the right time to publicly call out the apparent uselessness of Palantir before they fully deploy their high altitude loitering blimps and drones for pervasive surveillance and tracking protestors to their homes.
(My greater theory is that the slide into authoritarianism is not linear, but rather has a hump in the middle where government speech and actions are necessarily opposite, and that they expect the contradiction to slide. Calling out the contradiction is one of the most important things to do for people to see what is going on.)
This can be seen in the case of ChongLy Thao, the American citizen (who was born in Laos). This was the man dragged out into freezing temperatures in his underwear after ICE knocked down his door (without a warrant), because they thought two other men (of Thai origin I think) were living there. The ICE agents attitude was that they must be living there, and ChongLy was hiding them. That being wrong does not cost those ICE agents anything, and that is the source of the problems.
There is a difference between what you are seeing and what is actually happening.
99.9% of the time they are finding the right people, but "illegal alien was deported" is as interesting a news story as "water is wet".
If the end goal is that the broad, general public are intimidated, then they're not necessarily "finding the wrong people." With the current "semi random" enforcement with many false positives, nobody feels safe, regardless of their legal status. This looks to be the goal: Intimidate everyone.
If they had a 100% true positive rate and a 0% false positive rate, the general population would not feel terrorized.
All the data signal keeps in the cloud is protected by a pin and SGX. Pins are easy to brute force or collect, SGX could be backdoored, but in any case it's leaky and there have already been published attacks on it (and on signal). see https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.... and https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attac...
Palantir is SAP with a hollywood marketing department. I talked to a Palantir guy five or six years ago and he said he was happy every time someone portrayed them as a bond villain in the news because the stock went up the next day.
So much of tech abuse is enabled by this, and it's somewhat more pronounced in America, juvenile attitude toward technology, tech companies and CEOs. These people are laughing on their way to the bank because they convinced both critics and evangelists that their SAAS products are some inevitable genius invention
> Spyware delivered by text > In August, the Trump administration revived a previously paused contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to The Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto with expertise in spyware.
> Little is known about how ICE is using Paragon Solutions technology and legal groups recently sued DHS for records about it and tools made by the company Cellebrite. ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about its Paragon Solutions contract and whether it is for Graphite or another tool.
> Graphite can start monitoring a phone — including encrypted messages — just by sending a message to the number. The user doesn't have to click on a link or a message.
> "It has essentially complete access to your phone," said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and policy group focused on privacy. "It's an extremely dangerous surveillance tech that really goes against our Fourth Amendment protections."
Deals with Flock, and so on. It makes no sense for Palantir to be the one doing those deals rather than the Party. They've been doing so for a long time now. That's the whole point of data brokers, on this site alone there are hundreds of comments and posts about how the Party abuses those to get around laws on mass surveillance - can't legally (or are too incompetent to) gather data ourselves? Just buy it off a data broker. And Snowden showed us more than a decade ago that even without them they can just.. not care about the "legal" part.
That's wild if so. That's quite the precedent to set.
Note: I don't support ice or their actions. nor do i support vigilante justice.
The question is whether the government will respect and protect those rights or not.
I am not referring to actual bystanders. Implying that I am is purposefully being ignorant of what I am talking about.
That's not what is happening here.
Remember, they're accusing the people they killed of heinous motives for their narrative. They can't find it, so they make it up. Keep filming, y'all.
What a phrase
Today you'll still find a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters insisting against common sense regulations because they need their guns to stop government oppression and tyranny yet you can open youtube right now and find countless examples of government oppression and tyranny and to no surprise those guys aren't using their guns to do a damn thing about any of it. In fact they're usually the ones making excuses for the government and their abuses.
There are reasonable arguments for supporting 2nd amendment and gun ownership but resisting/overthrowing the government is not one of them. That's nothing more than a comforting power fantasy.
It was basically crowdsourcing the military. We've been running through all the various problems with that idea ever since, including:
- oops, turns out not enough people volunteer and our whole army got nearly wiped out; maybe we need to pay people to be an army for a living (ca. 1791)
- oops, turns out allowing the public to arm themselves and be their own militia can lead people being their own separate militia factions against the government, I guess we don't want that (e.g. Shay's Rebellion, John Brown and various slave rebellions fighting for freedom)
- oops, turns out part of the army can just decide they're a whole new country's army now, guess we don't want that (the civil war)
- oops, turns out actually everyone having guns means any given individual can just shoot whomever they like (like in hundreds of school shootings and mass shootings)
- oops, turns out we gotta give our police force even bigger guns and tanks and stuff so they won't be scared of random normal people on the street having guns (and look where that's gotten us)
Honestly, the whole thing should've been heavily amended to something more sane back in 1791 when the Legion of the United States (the first standing army) was formed, as they were already punting on the mistaken notion that "a well-regulated militia" was the answer instead of "a professional standing army".
If protest is approaching/crossing the line into insurgency, people need to seriously consider that they may be putting their life on the line. It's not a game.
Just this week there were [~~Catholic~~] PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist [~~ICE in Minneapolis~~] the government https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5678579/ice-clashes-new...
How can you think it's a "game'?
Edit - removed incorrect quantifiers
Episcopal (the US branch of the Anglican Communion), not Catholic, and it wasn't conditioned on going to Minneapolis, it was a statement about the broad situation of the country and the times we are in and what was necessary for them, with events in Minneapolis as a signifier, but not a geographically isolated, contained condition.
Everything seems fueled by social media radicalisation, and the social media side of things is very much 'gameified', all about scoring likes/upvotes/followers (and earning real revenue) for pushing escalating outrage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...
> In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms"...
We rather quickly saw the federal government rolling over the people even with weapons in the Whiskey Rebellion.
But it's still very funny seeing the Right wrestle with "wait, the other team has guns?!" and "wait, Trump sounds like he wants gun control?!" right now when this claim has been the basis of their argument for decades.
I recall the 2016 shootings of Dallas Police Officers and the right were apoplectic about the individual
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micah_Xavier_Johnson
I'm not asking for a primary source, just something without a political axe to grind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxc_90uW3iE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybBZKzLe6Qs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxMmAMnzWvY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNv8H_xCJdc
I've heard from people who have worked with the Signal foundation that it was close to being endorsed for private communication by one branch of government, but that endorsement was rescinded because another branch didn't want people knowing how to stay private.
They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
The only problem is that Telemessage was wildly insecure and was transmitting/storing message archives without any encryption.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
Turns out they were right.
https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/
https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
https://signal.org/blog/building-faster-oram/
https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/
There isn't really anything you can do with that information. The first value is already accessible via other methods (since the phone companies carry those records and will comply with warrants). And for pretty much anyone with signal installed that second value is going to essentially always be the day the search occurred.
And like another user mentioned, the most recent of those warrants is from the day before they moved to username based identification so it is unclear whether the same amount of data is still extractable.
Ironically enough Reddit seems to have a pretty good take on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qogc2g/comment/o21aeh...
I was genuinely surprised when I went to Reddit and saw that as the most voted comment on the story.
The lookups go through a secure enclave, the system is architected to limit the number of lookups that can be done, and the system has some fairly extensive anti-exfiltration cryptographic fuckery running inside the secure enclave to further limit the extent to which accounts can be efficiently looked up.
And of course you can also remove your phone number from contact discovery (but not from the acct entirely) but I'm not sure how that interacts with lookup for subpoenas. If they use the same system that contact discovery uses, it may be an undocumented way to exclude your account from subpoena responses.
The rest of what they say however is pretty spot on. The priority for signal is privacy, not anonymity. They try to optimise anonymity when they can but they do give up a little anonymity in exchange for anti-spam and user-friendliness.
So of course the ending notes of "use a VPN, configure the settings to maximise anonymity, and maybe even get a secondary phone number to use with it" are all perfectly reasonable suggestions.
And re: defaults the default behavior on signal is that your phone number is hidden from other users but it can be used to do contact discovery. Notably though you can turn contact discovery off (albeit few people do).
>We have also worked to ensure that keeping your phone number private from the people you speak with doesn’t necessitate giving more personal information to Signal. Your username is not stored in plaintext, meaning that Signal cannot easily see or produce the usernames of given accounts.
Extremely non trivial. What I'm hearing is "security by obfuscation".
I don't really think Signal tech has anything to do with this.
As a reminder... if you don't know all the people in your encrypted group chat, you could be talking to the man.
For users who configure Briar to connect exclusively over Tor using the normal startup (e.g., for internet-based syncing) and disable Bluetooth, there is no Bluetooth involvement at all, so your Bluetooth MAC address is not exposed.
Signal does give out phone numbers when the law man comes, because they have to, and because they designed their system around this identifier.
The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.
The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.
https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/
If there's one thing we learned from Snowden is that the NSA can't break PGP, so these people who live in the world of theory have no credibility with me.
I never saw a single speck of anything I ever sent to anyone via PGP in there. They had access to my SIGAINT e-mail and my BitMessage unlocked, but I used PGP for everything on top of that.
Stay safe!
I assume because of the baseband stuff to be FCC compliant? Last I checked that meant DMA channels, etc. to access the real phone processor. All easily activated over the air.
Indeed. The only reason this is not used by customer support for more casual access, firmware upgrades and debugging is a matter of policy and the risk of mass bricking phones and as such this is not exposed to them. There are other access avenues as well including JTAG debugging over USB and Bluetooth.
FCC devices are certified / allowed to use a spectrum, but you must maintain compliance. If you're a mobile phone manufacturer you have to be certain that if a bug occurs, the devices don't start becoming wifi jammers or anything like that.
This means you need to be able to push firmware updates over the air (OTA). These must be signed to avoid just anyone to push out such an OTA.
The government has a history of compelling companies to push out signed updates.
And even then, a trusted participant could not understand they're not supposed to give their private keys out or could be rubber-hosed into revealing their key pin. All sorts of ways to subvert "secure" messaging besides breaking the crypto.
I guess what I'm saying is "Strong cryptography is required, but not sufficient to ensure secure messaging."
SimpleX does better than Session because the address used to add new contacts is different from the address used with any existing contact and is independently revocable. But if that address is out there, you can receive a full queue of spam contacts before you next open the SimpleX app.
Both Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to storage DoS as well.
- identify who owns the number
- compel that person to give unlocked phone
- government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person
Corollary:
Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read
It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their phone numbers.
Genuinely, from outside, it seems like your government doesn't give a damn on what they are and aren't allowed to do.
The district courts will eventually back me up on this. Our country has fallen a long way, but the district courts have remained good, and my case is unlikely to be one that goes up to appellate courts, where things get much worse.
There’s an important distinction: the government doesn’t care about what it is allowed to do, but it is still limited by what it is not capable of doing. It’s important to understand that they still do have many constraints they operate under, and that we need to find and exploit those constraints as much as possible while we fight them
etc, etc. So it goes
Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that motivating ability. I don't know that the Dems have anyone as motivating as Obama line up. The Dems seem to be hoping that enough people will be repulsed by the current admin to show up.
By the end of his first term, the danger was hard to miss, and the attempt to remain in power after losing the election should have cemented it for everyone.
I was unhappy with Biden and Harris. I voted for them in 2020 and 2024 anyway because I understood the alternative.
I don't get it, was there anything surprising about him after his inauguration? He sure sounded dangerous on the campaign trail.
I just do not understand this sentence at all. The writing was clearly on the wall. All of the Project 2025 conversations told us exactly what was going to happen. People claiming it was not obvious at best were not paying attention at all. For anyone paying attention, it was horrifying see the election results coming in.
I just pray they run Newsom this time. Despite his "being from California" handicap, I think he should be able to easily beat Vance by simply being a handsome white man with a white family. Vance is critically flawed and will demoralize much of the far right IFF his opponent doesn't share those same weaknesses.
What evidence went before a judge prior to the two latest executions in Minneapolis?
Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
No, not really, because in the two killings you can vaguely argue they felt threatened. Pointing a gun to someone's head and demanding the password isn't anywhere close to that. Don't get me wrong, the killings are an affront to civil liberties and should be condemned/prosecuted accordingly, but to think that ICE agents are going around and reenacting the opening scene from Inglorious Bastards shows that your worldview can't handle more nuance than "fascism? true/false".
Precisely.
There's no question that ICE is daily trampling civil liberties (esp 4th amendment).
But in both killings there is a reasonable interpretation that they feared for their lives.
Now should they have is another question. With better training, a 6v1 < 5ft engagement can easily disarm anyone with anything less than a suicide vest.
But still, we aren't at the "run around and headshot dissenters" phase.
... Did you watch the videos from multiple people filming?
Yeah, did you? Any more substantive discourse you'd like to add to the conversation?
To be clear about the word "reasonable" in my comment, it's similar to the usage of the very same word in the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt".
The agents involved in the shootings aren't claiming that:
- the driver telepathically communicated their ill intent
- they saw Pretti transform into a Satan spawn and knew they had to put him down
They claim (unsurprisingly, to protect themselves) that they feared for their life because either a car was driving at them or they thought Pretti had another firearm. These are reasonable fears, that a reasonable person has.
That doesn't mean the agents involved are without blame. In fact, especially in Pretti's case, they constructed a pretext to began engagement with him (given that he was simply exercising his 1st amendment right just prior).
But once in the situation, a reasonable person could have feared for their lives.
Eventually we got used to letting the feds slide on all the good things to the point everything was just operating on slick ice, and people like Trump just pushed it to the next logical step which is to also use the post-constitutional world to his own personal advantage and for gross tyranny against the populace.
Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.
I'm sure the Israeli spyware companies can help with that.
Although then they'd have to start burning their zero days to just go after protestors, which I doubt they're willing to do. I imagine they like to save those for bigger targets.
I’m also curious what they could get off of cloud backups. Thinking in terms of auth, keys, etc. For SMS it’s almost as good as phone access, but I am not sure for apps.
If you're willing to kick in doors to suppress legal rights, then having accurate information isn't necessary at all.
If your resistance plan is to chat about stuff privately, then by definition you're also not doing much resisting to you know, the door kicking.
The problem with mass surveillance is the “mass” part: warrantless fishing expeditions.
But yes... it does limit what can be read. My point is it's not perfect.
Celebrite or just JTAG over bluetooth or USB. It's always been a thing but legally they are not supposed to use it. Of course laws after the NSA debacle are always followed. Pinky promise.
[1] https://threema.com/
[2] https://shop.threema.ch/en
They technically have logs from when verification happens (as that goes through an SMS verification service) but that just documents that you have an account/when you registered. And it's unclear whether those records are available anymore since no warrants have been issued since they moved to the new username system.
And the actual profile and contact discovery infra is all designed to be actively hostile to snooping on identifiable information even with hardware access (requiring compromise of secure enclaves + multiple levels of obfuscation and cryptographic anti-extraction techniques on top).
Now, whether FBI and friends would be determined to use PII obtained in this way to that end—is a point of contention, but why take the chance?
Better yet, don't expose your PII to third parties in the first place.
Settings > Privacy > Phone Number > Who can find me by number > Nobody
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46786794
That is to say: it allows a determined party to largely remain anonymous even in the face of upstream provider's compromise.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-supreme-court-s...
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
-- Letter from the Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr: https://people.uncw.edu/schmidt/201Stuff/F14/B%20SophistSocr...
That's life, if you can't take that heat stay out of the kitchen. It's also why elections are a much safer and more reliable way to enact change in your country than "direct action" is except under the most dire of circumstances.
No one is arguing that people who practice civil disobedience can expect to be immune from government response.
Accepting jail over 1A protected protests only proves you're weak (not in the morally deficient way, just from a physical possibilities way) enough to be taken. No one thinks more highly of you or your 'respect for the law' for being caught and imprisoned in such case, though we might not think lesser of you, since we all understand it is often a suicide mission to resist it.
My point is about civil disobedience, not disobedience generally. The point of civil disobedience is to bring attention to unjust laws by forcing people to deal with the fact they they are imprisoning people for doing something that doesn't actually deserve prison.
Expecting to not end up in prison for engaging in civil disobedience misses the point. It's like when people go on a "hunger strike" by not eating solid foods. The point is self-sacrifice to build something better for others.
https://www.kqed.org/arts/11557246/san-francisco-hunger-stri...
If that's not what you're into -- and it's not something I'm into -- then I would suggest other forms of disobedience. Freedoms are rarely granted by asking for them.
I'm not even really sure why I'm getting so much pushback here. I've thought this administration should have been impeached and removed within a week of the inauguration in 2017. I just am not sure where all this "why won't you admit that things are so bad, and shouldn't be this way" is helpful, when Trump was democratically elected. When you have a tyranny from a majority, the parallels to MLK are very clear, and you can't expect that change with come without sacrifice.
Civil disobedience is only nice and easy when you're sect is already in power, which -- when we're talking about people who generally support liberal democracy -- it has been since probably the McCarthy Era.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
A group chat coordinating use of force may be tough.
They surely can. But the point was more than the people in power don't really need Signal metadata to do that. On the lists of security concerns modern protestors need to be worrying about, Signal really just isn't very high.
The whole reason cops love ALPR data is anyone's allowed to collect it, so they don't need a warrant.
Tow trucks have ALPR cameras to find repossessions. Plenty of private options for obtaining that sort of data; you can buy your own for a couple hundred bucks. https://linovision.com/products/2-mp-deepinview-anpr-box-wit...
it will be quite easy for a prosecutor to charge lots of these people.
it's been done for less, and even if the case is thrown out it can drag on for years and involve jail time before any conviction.
The FBI is weak now compared to what it was even two years ago.
The real protection for the legal protesters and observers in MN is numbers. They can't arrest and control and entire populace.
prosecutors may take their time and file charges at their leisure.
However, neither Border patrol nor ICE have been exhibiting thoughtfulness or patience, so I doubt they're playing any such long game.
> This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem
I was not saying it's not a problem that the feds are doing this, because that's not what I was replying to.
I live in NY now. Just today, I got a message from a close friend who also did SF->NY "I'm deleting Signal to get more space on my phone, because nobody here uses it. Find me on WhatsApp or SMS."
To a naïve audience, Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother maintaining yet-another messenger whose core competency is private messaging?" Signal is reasonably mainstream, and there are still a lot of people who won't use it.
I suspect you'll have an uphill battle using something even more obscure.
Aside: I see similar attitudes when I mention I use VPN all of the time
https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...
much more closer to the $5 wrench attack
https://xkcd.com/538/
Assuming they dont have disappearing messages activated, and assuming any protestors willingly unlock their phones.
Or they are running any mainstream iPhone or Android phone, they've unlocked the phone at least once since their last reboot, and the police have access to graykey. Not sure what the current state of things is, since we rely on leaked documents, but my take-away from the 2024 leaks was GrapheneOS Before First Unlock (BFU) is the only defense.
Notice even unlocked doesn't allow FFS.
[1] assuming standard security settings of course.
Or you know, the 2nd amendment.
Id be willing to bet that ICE would have a much smaller impact if they would be met with bullets instead of cameras. In the end, what ICE is doing doesn't really matter to Trump, as long as MAGA believes that things are being done, even if nothing is being done, he doesn't care.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-you-cant-have-gu...
I hope you realize that civil unrest is coming. Maybe not in a month. Maybe not even in a year. But at some point, after Trump fucks with elections and installs himself as a 3d term president, and the economy takes a nose dive as companies start pulling out of US, peoples savings are destroyed, and states start being more separationist, you are gonna see way worse things.
The second amendment is literally in the constitution for the EXACT reason where if a governing entity decides to violate the security and freedoms of people, the people have the right to own weapons and organize a militia.
Plus nobody really needs to die. Having enough people point guns at them is going to make them think twice about starting shit. Contrary to popular belief, ICE agents aren't exactly martyrs for the cause. There are already groups of people armed outside protecting others, for this exact reason.
You are the actual fed lmao.
and apparently it now a perfectly valid reason for the state to execute someone without being charged or a trial.
A Chinese bot farmer who says we should be shooting each other? Agitator.
A neighbor who says "If I see LEO murder someone, I'm taking them on"? Not an agitator.
That's not what was said here though
This has always been the absurdity of the moronic claims of the 2nd amendment being to overthrow government tyranny: You may own the gun legally, but at no point will your actions be legal. If you've decided the government needs to be overthrown, you are already throwing "law" out the window, even if you have a valid argument that the government you are overthrowing has abandoned the constitution.
Why the fuck do you need legal guns to commit treason? Last I checked, most government overthrows don't even involve people armed with private rifles!
If you are overthrowing the government, you will need to take over local police stations. At the moment, you no longer need private arms, and what you are doing isn't legal anyway.
Meanwhile, every single fucking time it has come up, the gun nuts go radio silent when the government kills the right person who happens to own a gun. Every. Single. Time.
It took minutes for the "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" people who raised a million dollars for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend himself for driving to a protest in a different state while armed to the teeth to of course get to shoot someone to turn around and say "Actually bringing a gun to a protest makes you a terrorist and you need to be shot". Minutes. They have also put up GoFundMes for the guy who executed that man.
If you are too scared to stand up to your government without a fucking rifle, you have never been an actual threat to your government, and they know that.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-complies-percent-us-go...
It wasn’t paywalled for me, BTW.
But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.
If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)
I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
But that's not an example of something that would be illegal to say in a chat. It would be an example of something that's illegal to do regardless of the chat.
Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened.
Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.
Here’s the facts:
- Protesters have been coordinating using Signal
- Breaches of private Signal groups by journalists and counter protesters were due to poor opsec and vetting
- If the feds have an eye into those groups, it’s likely that they gained access in the same way as well as through informants (which are common)
- Signal is still known to be secure
- In terms of potential compromise, it’s much more likely for feds to use spyware like Pegasus to compromise the endpoint than for them to be able to break Signal. If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
- The fact that even casual third parties can break into these groups because of opsec issues shows that encryption is not a panacea. People will always make mistakes, so the fact that secure platforms exist is not a threat in itself, and legal backdoors are not needed.
https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/new-leaks-on-police-phone...
To see DOJ use its power the way we've seen (and I know the original story here is only with FBI at this point), it makes me think there should be some equivalent of anti-SLAPP laws but aimed at federal prosecutions. Some way to fast track baseless charges that will obviously never result in anything and that are just meant to either (a) punish someone into paying a ton of lawyer fees, (b) to intimidate others, or (c) grab some short-term headlines.
This is confirmation that this wasn't being investigated until just now. This is surprising, I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.
You assume competence. Have you heard (or heard of) Kash Patel?
The goal is to prevent ICE / BP from doing their jobs. Which I rather suspect is not actually legal.
Thinking they're incompetent doesn't change that. Thinking the specific laws they're (nominally) enforcing are evil doesn't change that. Thinking that national borders are fundamentally illegitimate doesn't change that.
Perhaps the FBI had been ignoring this out of incompetence. Perhaps they'd been ignoring it as a form of protest. Either is interesting.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/nyt-6-federal-prosecutor...
We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.
You can demand answers from Congress, but until a significant portion of the GOP base demands answers, they are just going to ignore your demands. As of now 39% of Americans support the administration. Also, you can't hold SCOTUS responsible, only Congress can.
A lot of people that care a lot about the 2nd amendment saw the photo of Pretti's gun on the ICE rental car seat, and they saw a well-used, well-cared-for weapon that was clean and seen a lot time at the range. They saw that it can happen to somebody just like them.
Police messed up and someone got killed. I feel like outrage is warranted if nothing is done about it, but after seeing the videos I’m fairly confident this won’t get swept under the rug. Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
News cycles go fast. Outrage is quickly forgotten. Now more than ever, as there are new outrages coming on the heels of the last.
No you're not. You're choosing words like 'hysteria' to delegitimize others' opinions while striking a posture of disinterested neutrality.
In a nutshell, to date, US ICE & DHS interactions have resulted in 10 people shot **, 3 people killed, and established a pattern of high level officials immediately blatently lying and contradicting video evidence.
That pattern includes obvious attempts to avoid investigation, to excuse people involved, to not investigate the bigger picture of how interactions are staged such that civilian deaths are inevitable.
It's good to see the citizens of the US dig in and demand that federal forces and federal heads of agencies be held accountable for clearly screwed up deployments and behaviours.
** My apologies, I just saw a Wash Post headliine that indicates it is now 16 shootings that are being actively swept under a rug.
They wear masks, don’t get warrants before entering houses, regularly arrest American citizens, and are operating far from anything a reasonable person would call an immigration or customs checkpoint.
Also, they’ve been ordered in public (by Trump) and private (by superiors) to violate the law, and have been promised “absolute immunity” for their crimes (by Trump).
One other thing: Trump and his administration have made it clear (in writing) that ICE’s mission in Minnesota is to terrorize the public until Governor Walz makes a bunch of policy changes that the courts have declined to force. So, there’s no reasonable argument to be made that they’re acting as law enforcement.
I doubt the Trump DOJ will want to prosecute this. Now, if Democrats win in 2028, maybe the Newsom (or whoever) DOJ will-but Trump might just give everyone involved a pardon on the way out the door. And I doubt a state prosecution would survive the current SCOTUS majority.
So yes, there are decent reasons to suspect “nothing to come of this” in the purely legal domain. Obviously it is making an impact in the political domain.
ICE, a federal agency and not a state or municipal police force, had a man face down and unarmed. There were what, half a dozen of them? He was completely subdued. They then shot him in the back.
This was not a “mistake.” This was murder.
The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state with heavier illegal immigration on patrols performing illegal 4th-amendment violating door to door raids is already a complete abomination in the face of American’s rights and their constitution.
And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed in the face of all of this?
Let me know how the boot tasted so at least I can learn something from this
They conveniently forgot their excuses for Rittenhouse. Guess they all changed their mind and think he should be arrested.
Britain tried to tax Americans without government representation, and they started sending the tax man home naked and covered in tar, feathers, and third-degree burns. These stories are then taught to schoolchildren as examples of how Americans demand freedom above all else.
If the powers that be keep doing whatever they want without consequence, eventually there will be consequences, and those consequences very well could be the act of being physically removed from their ivory towers and vivisected in the streets.
To kill or utterly destroy a large group of enemies with an extreme overabundance of weapons and items, including throwing knives to the head, poison, stabs to the neck or back, kicks to the chest, shoves off of high ledges, multiple headshots, artillery, panzer rockets, flames, dynamite, mines, construction pliers, airstrikes, or even slamming a door into someone's chest. Wolfensteining a group of enemies requires that every kill be performed using a different method
you are calling for extreme violence?
> an epic creature that will shoot fire at you if you get near it. you can usually find one outside or near/in a house. its main abilities are to chomp and scratch but they can also pounce, shoot lasers out of their eyes, be cute, jump as high as they want, and fly. do not fight one unless you are equipped with extreme power armor and heavy assault cannons. […]
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cat
I was informing the community what the word means after putting in the effort to look it up.
If you are not curious, if you can't handle differences of opinion, you don't belong here.
> I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
It isn’t. It is like saying “you can do that but you will eventually get beat up.” That is not saying “people should beat you up.” There is a world of difference in those 2 statements. Your accusation hinges on the worst possible - debatably possible at best tbh - interpretation of their statement. It is bait, it is dishonest, and you’re being intentional about it.
This is not a difference of opinion, this is not curiosity, you are just being difficult.
But, yeah, any state prosecutions (likely especially the first) is going to (1) get removed to federal court, and (2) go through a wringer of federal litigation, likely reaching the Supreme Court, over Supremacy Clause immunity before much substantive happens on anything else.
OTOH, the federal duty at issue in in re Neagle was literally protecting the life of a Supreme Court justice riding circuit, as much as the present Court may have a pro-Trump bias, I wouldn't count on it being as strong of a bias as it had in Neagle.
The person in front said "I've got the gun, I've got the gun", and I can tell that quite clearly in the videos.
> here antifa community organizers are escalating non stop in hopes that someone dies [...] in hopes they can radicalize people
I think this rhetorical frame highlights how many people don't believe in protest. Expressing disdain for trampling of civil liberties is not 'escalation' any more than the curtailment of fourth amendment rights that inspire the protests.
I am not attacking you (I believe we should all be able to express how we feel with respect to the government). I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
That means there is an even better version that what I saw and heard which means normies will figure out fairly quick this was not malicious intent. Perhaps malicious incompetency but certainly not an intentional execution.
I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
I would accept that if these were just protesters, stood at the side of the road holding up signs but a number of them are far from it. They have formed military squads, dox agents and attack them at home and in their personal vehicles, coordinate their attacks between multiple groups of "vetted" agitators. They are tracking their personal vehicles and their family members. They are blocking traffic and forcing people out of their cars. At best this is an insurgency being coordinated from out-of-state agitators and at the behest of the state governor. They are egging people on to break numerous laws, obstruct federal agents, throw bricks at agents or anyone they think is an agent, use bull-horns at full volume in the ears of anyone supporting the agents. I could go on for hours regarding all the illegal shenanigans. So yeah these are people trying to radicalize others and trying to get people hurt or killed. This is primarily occurring in sanctuary cities where the government is actively encouraging their citizens to attack federal agents. That is not even close to anything that resembles protesting and is not anywhere near a protected right.
I also blame President Trump for not invoking the insurrection act and curtailing this very early on.
My main question is how you might frame the protests (comprising legal and potentially illegal behaviors) in the context of how the US was founded, or in the French revolutions. Were we in the 1750s, would your assessment about how to go about protesting be the same?
Here, I'm not making arguments about what is or is not similar, just trying to understand how you view historical political upheaval from the perspective of the people who lived in those times.
edit: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/01/27/congress/pr...
Apparently the agents yelled 'he's got a gun'
The founding of the nation was far more violent and laws were sparse but I am sure you know how complex of a question you are asking. There are multi-volume books and movies created around that mess. I would never want a return to those times and behaviors that we are purportedly evolved beyond.
What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants. I am told it is for voting purposes to get more delegates but it can't really be worth it. At least in my opinion it would not be worth it. All of that said I am not in favor of kicking people out that have been here for decades and that had properly integrated into our society. That I could see people protesting if they were in fact just protesting.
My issue with the current tactics is a loss of our Bill of Rights privileges (note this doesn't depend on citizenship), which really can only go poorly from here.
> What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants.
There's an easy argument about maintaining Constitutional rights for every person—once we stop doing that, we're essentially finished as a democracy.
The majority of people being removed are not criminals of any sort whatsoever. It's tricky to get data about this as DHS is releasing very political statements[1] but many have been in the US for decades and have no criminal records in Minnesota. Also, Minnesota is not a liberal state—being a Democrat means different things in different parts of the country, and things are quite 'centrist' there; I say this to discourage porting sensibilities from other states.
1. DHS Highlights Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens Arrested in Minnesota Yesterday Including Murderers, Drug Traffickers, and an Illegal Alien with TWENTY-FOUR Convictions - (this is the title of the relevant webpage)
edit - To distill my perspective, I am worried that we will lose our rights, not because I am alarmist, but because this has happened in several democracies this century, notably Turkey (but also cf Hungary, Poland, the Philipnes). Even amongst undemocratic nations, strongmen are upending institutions (China, but also more recently in West Africa).
The only way the US can escape is by continually standing up for what rights we still have.
ICE is not targeting violent illegal immigrants. They are targeting legal residents, immigrants with pending asylum cases that allow them to stay, US citizens that happen to look like immigrants maybe, people that are legally recording their activities in public from a safe distance, all kinds of people really.
they are protesting masked armed thugs running around their neighborhood smashing windows and dragging people out of cars because they happen to feel like it. running up to people and pepper spraying them in eyes for saying things they dont like. and yes, shooting them.
I think everyone can understand someone saying 'wtf, no' in those circumstances. except you.
See where this is going ?
I admit, US propaganda is very good at projecting an image of strength. I strongly doubt it is prepared for a civil ground war, based on all available evidence. It cannot even keep other nation states out of critical systems. See fragile systems for what they are.
If you're imagining a large scale revolt, figure that the revolutionaries will be outnumbered by counter-revolutionaries, even without the military. (Which would also include police forces amounting to millions more.)
https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/trump-voters-on-medicai...
https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/voters-in-trump-c...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294501/
Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution. I would expect especially DHS to basically become a non-functional (or even seditious) department if they prosecute those guys and they could purposefully make the president look bad by making his security apparatus look incompetent.
Won't help if the prosecuting sovereignty isn't the one they work for (state vs federal charges.)
Also won't work if the agency is disbanded and they are dismissed en masse before the prosecution happens.
Unless, as Doge showed us, you ignore the law, fire them anyway, and the SCOTUS says, "Yeah, whatever."
At this point I think the only thing that will work is organizing a month where the nation stops spending money and going to work.
Not even bothering to run the established investigation playbook when law enforcement kills a civilian is a major departure, and one worth noticing. But if all you do is go "same old same old", then you can safely lean back in your chair and do nothing as the problem worsens, while calling yourself so much smarter and more insightful than the people around you.
I agree that the "same at it ever was and always will be" attitude isn't great. It's defeatist and I choose not to live my life that way, even if it would be much easier mentally.
I think part of the reason I see this attitude so often is that, especially since 9/11, a large portion of the US population has decided that the police and military are infallible and should be trusted completely, so any large-scale attempt at reform runs into these unwavering supporters (and, in the case of the police, their unions).
- Overly broad qualified immunity
- The power of the police unions
- Lawsuit settlements coming out of public funds
- Collusion between prosecutors' and the police
These are all issues that need to be resolved to restore the sanity in policing.
At the federal level, the FBI needs to be reigned in...somehow. They all to often work outside the bounds of their defined role and powers. This isn't a new problem and one could argue it has been an issue since the beginning.
Whether they behave like civilized people or like thugs should be besides the point regardless of your political leaning in the matter of the system. Naturally from a basic human perspective civilized law enforcement is much more preferable than the alternative, but they aren’t your friends!
But the kind of white people we have here have never really had anything in common with those people so now that the Feds are coming after people of the sort of political persuasion they identify with for the first time since, the 1970s it "feels" like they're just now going after white people.
Now a lot of those same patriot right types are cheering this on if not enlisting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter?wprov=...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/newb...
Yes, I hope future administrators go up and down the chain of command looking at everyone who was involved in the cover-up, and charges them with conspiracy to commit murder, but a future Democratic administration will at least identify and prosecute the murderers themselves. While Republican administrations will conceal the identity of the killers and continue to have them out on the streets
The question is, can the State of Minnesota put together enough evidence to convict these agents for murder and conspiracy to commit murder without the involvement of the federal government?
If so, we could see cases brought as early as this year.
If not, then the next question is can Democrats get them enough information by controlling one branch of the federal government. In that case, we could imagine a prosecution brought in 2027.
Otherwise, if we need Democrats to control the executive branch to get enough information it might be 2029.
I don’t think it will take long, because the State of Minnesota will have put the case together and be waiting to go. So the question will be how quickly can they get any necessary evidence, incorporate that into their case, and then bring charges.
They'd have to fight the feds for jurisdiction and will unfortunately likely lose that fight.
51 senators voted to confirm this unqualified moron to lead the top law enforcement agency.
This is a horrifying and very unpariortic thing to say about people who are trying to prevent their daycares from being tear bombed, prevent masked thugs from beating detained law-abiding citizens before releasing them without charges, from masked thugs killing law-abiding people for exercising basic rights.
King George would have used that language. We sent him the Declaration of Independence, and the list of wrongs in that document is mostly relevant again today.
If you are framing this as insurgency, I place my bet on the strong people fighting bullets with mere whistles and cameras, as they are already coming out on top. If they ever resort to a fraction of the violence that the masked thugs are already using, they will not lose.
As a parent, you should know that believing this obviously false propaganda requires both 1) a weird and overly specific interest in daycares, and 2) not enough normal healthy exposure to kids to understand what daycares don't let weird freaks come inspect the children. Namely, repeating this obvious lie gives off pedo vibes, and I would never let you near my children after hearing you gobble up that propaganda uncritically and then even going so far as to spread it. Ick
From the MinnPost article:
Most child care centers are locked and have obscured doors or windows for children’s safety. Children are also kept in classrooms and would not likely be visible from a reception area. One of the day cares in the video told several news outlets that it did not grant Shirley entrance because he showed up with a handful of masked men, which raised suspicions that the men were agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least one of the centers was closed at the time Shirley arrived because it opens later in the day to serve the children of second-shift workers.
Is there a history of child care fraud in the state?
Yes, but it’s not as widespread as Shirley claims.
If anything, I'd be suspicious of (and not send my child to) any daycare that _didn't_ have those security features.
The tactics being used are:
* whistles * recording with phones * free speech * communication with neighbors * sharing with neighbors, ala potlucks * training each other on legal means of resistance * caring for people kicked out of detention centers in the dead of winter without their coats or phones * bringing meals to families that are afraid to leave the house, since the political persecution is largely a function of skin color, as numerous police chiefs have attested when recounting what ICE/CBP does to their officers when off duty.
Calling this "insurgent tactics" instead of neighbors being neighbors is most definitely a perverse and disgusting values assessment. When the hell have insurgents used the whistle and the phone camera as their "tactics"?!
Saying that this lawful activity, all 100% lawful, somehow "impedes federal enforcement of laws" is actually a statement that the supposed enforcement is being conducted in a completely lawless, unconstitutional, and dangerous manner.
Keep on talking like you are, because people right now are sniffing out who is their neighbor and who will betray them when ICE moves on to the next city. Your neighbors probably already know, but being able to share specific sentences like "insurgent tactics" and how cameras are somehow "impeding" masked men abducting people, when days later we don't even know the identity of officers that shot and killed a man on film, who was in no way impeding law enforcement. And the only people who talk about "impeding law enforcement" also lie profusely when there is direct evidence on film contradicting their lies.
There is terrorism going on, there is lawlessness, there is a great deal of elevated crime in Minnesota, but it all the doing of masked ICE/CBP agents that face zero accountability for breaking our laws and violating our most sacred rights.
This just reads as "I don't know whether you're on Other Team.. but, I'll assume you are, here goes:"
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor and overstaying your visa is a civil violation and not even a crime. Yet somehow those are the only ones he's targeting. Those, and actual lawful immigrants that say things that he doesn't like.
I love this example because it demonstrates like 5 different levels of ignorance about American politics and foreign relations, plus a good helping of propaganda.
It doesn't change the organization and tactics used to identify targets are the same methods and strategies used by insurgent groups to select targets and attack. AQI was very sophisticated for the technology they had. Their warriors were brave, cunning, and true believers with efficacious systems for what was available to them.
Twenty years of that, plus the rest of the middle east has now made it particularity common knowledge how to run insurgency cells worldwide. This combined with American expertise brought back and with people legally aiding these groups in setting up their C2 structures with what is effective and what works is no surprise.
This investigation should be no surprise to anyone. They use these techniques because they work. They are so effective at target acquisition, monitoring, and selective engagement that if they flipped from their current tactics to more violent ones it would be a large casualty event.
The structure of your message implies you are not American. DHS posts the people they deport here:
https://www.dhs.gov/wow
It's really hard to go down that list and say "yeah i'd rather have these people here than have ICE deporting people".
Not "brown looking" native americans or "foreign looking" US citizens that have been incorrectly identified and dragged without warrents from their homes and families barely dressed into the snow?
It's well past time whatever is left of DOGE got to working culling the over reach of the rest of the current ICE / DHS system.
pardon my ignorance, but why would that be up to your President?
This isn't a bunch of people organically protesting, this is an organized system designed to "target" ICE agents. The only difference is the payload delivery between physical disruption vs weapon based attacks.
We have chats, organized territory and labor specialization in a company I work for, too. It doesn't say anything by itself. It's just describing a means of human cooperation. Goal is to write software. You can have organized protest movement too. Unless the goal is to overthrow governing authority, or whatnot, it's not insurgency.
Anyone who ran convoys in the Middle East, patrolled, or did intel around it will know this playbook. The resistance is impressive because it's taken lessons learned from observing the US Military overseas dealing with insurgencies.
0 - https://www.usainscom.army.mil/iSALUTE/iSALUTEFORM/ 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHIPEVj0pRo
During the Obama administration, state and local LEO worked with ICE to deport. Now they are directed not to. Without that protection and cooperation from local officers, it becomes significantly harder and more dangerous to execute these operations. So they put masks on because the local agitators are doxxing them, threatening their families, and making life unsafe for the agents.
So now we have this lack of cooperation from local government that creates unsafe and dangerous operating conditions for ICE. What are they supposed to do? Not enforce the law because the local government says no? We already fought a war about Federal power versus state power. Heck, Obama (whom i voted for 2x) sued Arizona (Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387) over supremacy of the Federal Government with respect to immigration.
There would be no problems if Minneapolis and Minnesota leadership reacted the way other cities like Memphis did. Instead they've explicitly, or tacitly, endorsed this escalating resistance movement. I can't imagine ever putting my hands on a LEO and expecting it to go well, yet they do it freely. Officers are only human, and day-in day-out of this, combined with very real actionable threats against your life, and family life are only going to create more tensions and more mistakes.
This is no invasion hostile force, this is a chosen focal point to challenge the will and ability of this administration to enforce the democratically made laws.
The FBI has a long history of attempting to infiltrate and destabilize these groups. In the early 2010s there was a push to infiltrate right leaning groups. They especially called out in their published documents disgruntled veterans returning from the wars and unhappy with leadership noting a worry they would use the skills picked up at war at home.
It's absolutely no surprise that the FBI would investigate this behavior.
- he was carrying
- despite that, he involved himself in physical altercations with federal officers
- his group of disruption activists was quite successful; if you watch any video, it is very clearly difficult for the federal agents to communicate with one another
- one federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting one time, perhaps erroneously thinking Pretti had his gun out
- another federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting several times, perhaps thinking that the one shot was Pretti
basically, everything that could go wrong, went wrong, Pretti is not blameless, his group is not blameless, the ICE agents are not blameless, and it probably wasn't murder
Small town cops in third world countries are more professional than any of these ICE clowns, these mistakes happened because they keep hiring the lowest if the low, both in term of intelect and morality
Next time I’ll add /s
Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?
1. Some rando on X saying "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" doesn't mean said rando actually did infiltrate a signal group.
2. Signal was not the app Hegseth, et al. used. They used TM SGNL, which is a fork of Signal. But that's a minor nit.
3. Encryption is not the same thing as authentication. And authentication is somewhat meaningless if you let everyone into your encrypted group chat.
Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone
When you mention an anecdote about shooting a hunting dog in your autobiography, that shows something beyond just being a "true believer" or stooge. That is willingly pointing out that you are willing to act out your lack of empathy through violence towards an animal.
I'm not a clinician (and haven't met Noem) but that just seems to me to be something indicative of a personality disorder.
Miller is different. He has his own agenda, a lot of which has becomes trumps agenda. But trumps agenda changing does not change what Miller’s agenda is.
I could imagine we'll see the same thing again, before or after the midterms, and Miller and Bessent are two I expect to see have a dethroning at some point simply on account of Trump never taking responsibility for anything.
That and I've seen both try to speak "on behalf" of Trump, something the authoritarian personality doesn't appreciate.
However some of that logic is based on 1st round Trump not being as senile and insane as 2nd round Trump. It's possible his weakening cognitive faculties have made him even more open to manipulation.
He’s not an idiot. He knows how much damage he can absorb and how to position himself to not take more than that. He never positions himself as the implementation person who will take the hits. He’s the idea guy, and the manipulator/cheerleader. He doesn’t seem to expect trump to take care of him for his loyalty, so he doesn’t position himself to require it.
I think ultimately he won’t be thrown under the bus because his relationship with Trump is mutually beneficial, and they both see it as transactional. For both of them, the other is a means to an end. Soul mates in hell I guess.
Maybe I'm just really hung up on the dog thing, but that is the crux of it. There's basically no one who hears a story of shooting a dog for misbehaving and thinks, "yeah, that'll show the libs". That's not a story out of a politician's biography as much as it is a story out of a book profiling a serial killer's childhood.
71% of American households have pets [0] and there's a good chance that those who don't have had at least one in the past. There was absolutely no benefit to including that in the book, and I'd be stunned if the publisher didn't at least try to talk her out of putting it in there, given her political ambitions. If they didn't try to get it cut, they didn't do their jobs; if she ignored them, then she really does display a tendency to take pride in behavior that is recognized across the political spectrum in American society as cruel and antisocial.
She genuinely gives me the creeps.
[0] https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...
As many have already stated, Signal is overwhelmingly secure. More secure than any other alternative with similar viability here.
If the feds were actually concerned about that, publicly "investigating" Signal chats is a great way to drive activists to less secure alternatives, while also benefiting from scattering activist comms.
If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.
Federal felony
You seem to be glossing over the key piece of that statute. Peaceful protest is protected by the first amendment (free speech, right to assembly).
I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.
Did you expect the government to charge people in good faith? It doesn't matter it if it's true or not, even putting them in the slammer for a long time while awaiting trial and forcing them to hire expensive attorneys is a win.
The post you replied to didn't ask what they might be charged with. It asked what they "plan" to charge.
And you replied with internet rumor nonsense. It's actually fine to say "I don't know" or simply not reply at all when someone asks a question to which you do not have an answer.
What this reads as is a bunch of credulous X users trying to one-up each other and looking for reasons that Trump and his cronies are not once again lying to your face.
It is neither necessary nor particularly useful for them to be running plates for reasons you've already identified.
That's exactly what they have done - shared the information pointing to the organized attempt to interfere with the ongoing federal operation. This is a crime.
That's another angle that needs to be discussed more often with respect to Trump's DoJ: if you're impaneled on a grand jury for charges coming out of these investigations, you don't have to give them a bill.
You don't. You could even order sim cards off ebay/amazon if you wanted to, which definitely doesn't have any KYC.
Source?
>As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it.
Why collect it then? Imagine having a service promising "lets people use phones without revealing identity" but for whatever reason asks for a bunch of info, then brushes it aside with "yeah but you can fill in fake information so it's fine".
>Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
Your inability to take any criticism without resorting to personal attacks is crystal clear.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"
Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
> Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
None of that matters _today_, because _today_ the law is different.
For example, a lot of people thought it was wrong that federal agents could cover their faces. Sacramento agreed. Now there is a law preventing it.
A wide array of policy issues related to the targeting and manner of execution of Trump’s mass deportation program, not the number of deportations.
Also, a number of specific instances of violence by the federal government during what is (at least notionally) the execution of immigration enforcement.
> why are they only upset in one city?
People are very clearly not “only upset in one city”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_mass_deportat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good_protes...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/24/protests-ale...
There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
And there's a lot of truth to that which a lot of people need to reconcile with.
The fact that we don't have DACA solidified into a path towards citizenship by now is just sad.
During Obama's term the leaders of DHS / ICE were not blatently lying about events captured on film and evading legitmate investigations into deaths at the hands of officers.
During Obamas term people with no criminal record were not being offshored to hell-hole prison camps with serious abuses of human rights.
From your linked article:
There's your difference. Thank you for playing.I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
Like searching a vehicle database? That's available to all sorts of people, like auto body repair shops.
Taking a photo of a license plate? Nothing illegal about that.
Taking a photo is legal. Running plates through law-enforcement/ALPR systems is not, and auto body shops don't have that access.
Real-time identification != observation - it implies unauthorized data access.
In fact the first clue that they look for is having Illinois Permanent plates because that is a strong indicator that they are using rental vehicles. That doesn't take a database, it's just a strong signal that can be confirmed by other evidence.
Were they doing that? I haven't read the article, that's why I'm asking.
Also, what is the outrage about? This administration has deported the least number of people compared to all previous administrations. Obama deported 3.1 million people, ten times more than Trump today. Same ICE, same border patrol.
2. Their death is the outcome of the outrage.
You don't have to agree with the criticisms but to not even be able to understand why people are upset stretches believability.
And 'different tactics' doesn’t explain the reaction gap, as i said, under Obama there were 3.1M+ deportations and at least 56 documented deaths in ICE custody (https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/re...) with nowhere near this level of outrage. What changed is media framing and amplification, not the existence of harsh enforcement.
18 U.S.C. § 1505 - Obstruction of Federal Officers (this includes ICE itself - obstructing or interfering with an ICE arrest is a crime)
18 U.S.C. § 118 - Obstructing, resisting, or interfering with federal protective functions
> > The fascists won. That’s why?
> No, they haven’t.
Yes, they did, that’s why they are able to use the executive branch of the federal government to enforce their wishes at the moment, with virtually no constraint yet from the legislative branch, and no significant consequences yet for ignoring contrary orders from the judicial branch.
They may lose at some point in the future, but something that might happen in the future is irrelevant to the question of why what is happening now is happening, and it is happening because they won. Unambiguously.
The fascists haven't won because if they did, they would be killing a lot more dissidents in the street. They killed two and the public outcry is so angry that Kristi Noem might be impeached. Democrats are willing to shut down the government to starve ICE if they have to. Even GOP legislators are criticizing Trump, which is a dangerous activity for any Republican looking to keep their seat.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of meaningful checks.
Bovino (Border Patrol “at large” Commander who may or may not have lost that title and been returned to his sector command), not Bongino (the podcaster-turned-FBI Deputy Director who resigned to go back to podcasting), and Homan didn't get Bovino’s job, only his spotlight (he was already the head of border policy for the White House.)
if you want the fascists to un-win, you need to treat the world as it is: the fascists are ascendent.
I don't think it makes sense to reject an explanation of current events grounded in a battle that is clearly over having been won and the victor using the ground they’ve gained to produce the events being discussed merelt because the broader war isn’t over and that victor may potentially lose some subsequent battle.
I think the dissent is about the latter. It's not over yet, so people should not give up.
The root comment clearly has ambiguity that people take both ways.
flagged
Are you pro or against this?
Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.
What do you have against crime?
Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.
We also know that legal observation and making noise does not constitute interference.
So those may be their stated reasons, but they will not hold up in court.
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
That is who is alleged to be impeded.
Publishing locations alone is not conspiracy to commit a crime. If ICE is impeded as a result of this information, that’s not enough. Conspiracy requires the government to prove that multiple people intended to impede them.
Our mainstream news outlets are openly calling the "official" versions from the Trump administration what they are – lies. The video evidence is clear to anyone watching: this was murder. No amount of spin changes what the footage shows.
As citizens of a country that knows firsthand how fascism begins, we recognize the patterns: the brazen lying in the face of obvious evidence, the dehumanization, the paramilitarized enforcement without accountability. We've seen this playbook before.
What Americans might not fully grasp is how catastrophically the US has damaged its standing abroad. The sentiment here has shifted from "trusted ally" to "unreliable partner we need to become independent from as quickly as possible." The only thing most Europeans still find relevant about the US at this point is Wall Street.
The fact that the FBI is investigating citizens documenting government violence rather than the government agents committing violence tells you everything about where this is heading.
"What we will defend: using chaos, riots, and volatility as cover to escalate violence against peaceful protesters."
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
> You should probably read the original source before taking the opinion of your favorite pundit.
This is not an "original source" of the article in question.
Always use encryption for anything. Encrypted messengers are great, but I would never trust Signal. It requires phone numbers to register among other issues, has intelligence funding from places such as the OTF, and their dev asset Rosenfeld is a whole other issue.
Hopefully they can unwind these groups, because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against. They don't seem to have a sense for when they have gone beyond protesting and have broken the law. There's this culture about them, like protesting means they are immune to law.
If this all ties back to funded groups who are then misinforming these people about how they should behave to increase the chance of escalatory events with the knowledge that it will increase the chance of these inflammatory political highlights to maximize rage, it won't surprise me.
If they want to follow ICE around and protest them, fine, but that's not what they're doing. These people are standing or parking their cars in front of their vehicles and blocking them. They'll also stand in front of the street exits to prevents their vehicles from leaving parking lots and so on. They refuse to move, so they have to be removed by force, because they are breaking the law. Some people are just trying to get arrested to waste ICE's time, and it's particularly bad because Minneapolis police won't help ICE.
A lot of video recordings don't even start until AFTER they've already broken the law, so all you end up seeing is ICE reacting.
Any time someone dies, there'll have to be an investigation to sort out what happened. Maybe the ICE officer made a mistake, but let the evidence be presented. Being that this is Minneapolis, hopefully they do a better job than the George Floyd case. I absolutely recommend you watch the entire Fall of Minneapolis documentary to get a better sense for what the country may be increasingly up against in multiple states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPi3EigjFA
He wasn't killed for owning a gun or carrying a gun.
He wasn't killed for laying hands on the officer.
He wasn't killed for resisting arrest.
It was likely the entire combination of things that caused him to demonstrate he was a credible threat to their lives and reaching for an object. No matter what you think, Alex made a whole string of mistakes. The officer may have also made mistakes. With any luck investigation will reveal more details.
I'm not predisposed to assuming that Alex is innocent and the officer is guilty, because there is a lot of activist pressure to push exactly that perspective. I prefer to preserve the capacity to make up my own mind.
The only investigation being done is by the DHS, who is blocking all other state level investigations. The same DHS who lied about easy disproven things that were recorded and destroy evidences.
What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
I don't know what you're referring to about DHS lying about disproven things and destroying evidence. If you can give me links I'll look into it.
> What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
I've seen enough video to know that it's not impossible the officer reacted within the spirit of the law. To get a sense for that requires testimony from the officer that fired the shot. Please watch court cases some time and you'll get a sense for how the application of these kinds of laws work. I'm not a lawyer, but if you ever have to defend yourself against someone you'll be thankful the laws work the way that they do.
We have a justice system for a reason. It doesn't always work, but it lays out a process for evaluating evidence. Why do we do it that way? We do it that way, because it is not that uncommon that perceptions, witnesses, videos and many other things can be deceptive. They can make you believe things which are not true. So you try to establish all of the relevant facts as they apply to the law. Not based on how you feel, but based on the law.
It actually hurts some of the witnesses that are obviously activists, because it means they aren't unbiased objective observers, but are predisposed to a perspective and have a possible agenda in mind which risks reducing the quality of their testimony. A law enforcement officer that thinks he might be found guilty also risks their testimony being weak. The video quality is also often bad and there are people obstructing important details at times. All of those things have to be considered.
Of course when you are emotionally invested, you might want them to just rush to what you obviously see. Again, you will be very thankful that the justice system generally doesn't rush to those conclusions so readily if you ever have to defend yourself in court when you know you're innocent.
i think people know exactly what theyre up against: a lawless executive, many members of which have never had to work in places where they are held accountable to the constitution before.
its more important for the government to follow the constitution than for citizens to follow the law. if the government isnt following the law, there is no law
It's best to show some moderation and give these controversial political moments a little time to air out, because there is a lot of disinformation being promoted with the intent to amplify people's emotions. Some people are very vulnerable to that kind of propaganda, and many of those people are compassionate.
Don't let your compassion be weaponized. Be your own person.
At least, while decrying civil disobedience, you differ from the administration in one important aspect: You think there should be accountability for police shootings. That's different than the ICE leader, the DHS leader, the FBI director and the Vice President.
Law enforcement face a lot of violent resistance, so it can be very reasonable for them to see an uncooperative person as a serious threat to their life. If they kill someone, because they believe them to be a lethal threat even if that was not the reality, their perspective absolutely matters to the outcome.
Civil disobedience is basically understood to be breaking the law in a civil manner. What I'm seeing in a lot of videos is not civil disobedience. One expected attribute of civil disobedience is non-evasion, but resisting arrest is essentially attempted evasion.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/
Again, I don't think anyone should have died, but to my eye I can tell the people who are unreasonable and lacking in critical thinking, because they have already prejudged and sentenced people as if they've already sat through the entire court case and had their own hands on the gavel as it went down.
Social media, videos, news, activists and more are incentivized to rile people up. Let it be investigated.
and what is NBC "news"'s motive/agenda for framing this info the way they are?
"LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
NBC News is what some call a mainstream media source. They typically publish/report factual news that uses moderately loaded words in headlines such as this: 'Trump threatens border security shutdown, GOP cool to idea.'
Story selection tends to favor the left through both wording and bias by omission, where they underreport some news stories that are favorable to the right. NBC always sources its information to credible sources that are either low biased or high for factual reporting.
A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 42% of NBC News’ audience is consistently or primarily liberal, 39% Mixed, and 19% consistently or mostly conservative. A more liberal audience prefers NBC. Further, a Reuters institute survey found that 46% of respondents trust their news coverage and 35% do not, ranking them #5 in trust of the major USA news providers."