[HN Gopher] The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Am...
___________________________________________________________________
The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social
media posts
Author : nahikoa
Score : 480 points
Date : 2021-04-21 16:53 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.yahoo.com)
| zhte415 wrote:
| I'm surprised no one's mentioned GDPR, or similar extra-
| territorial laws.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Given the weird arrest of General Flynn by USPS and then the
| weird ensuing court case, this is not really surprising.
| tengbretson wrote:
| I bet FedEx could operate a domestic intelligence agency for like
| a quarter of their budget.
| jjk166 wrote:
| You joke but private mail carriers don't have the same
| restrictions on monitoring your mail that the USPS does. They
| are free to open and inspect any package, as well as x-ray and
| other such methods, and don't need to disclose it. Except under
| some special circumstances, letters and parcels going through
| the USPS, on the other hand, need a warrant to be opened. One
| could easily imagine a program where private carriers report
| the contents of parcels sent to or from targeted individuals or
| even add things like listening devices or malware to items
| being shipped. While probably not useful for dealing with
| organized crime, if your goal is just general intelligence
| gathering or blackmail, private carriers could easily be a
| treasure trove.
| _jal wrote:
| > One could easily imagine a program where [...]
|
| One doesn't have to imagine.
|
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/cisco_shippin.
| ..
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| More likely to improve targeted advertising.
| shuntress wrote:
| It's not complicated.
|
| Your data (we could debate whether "data about you" is
| actually "your data" but that is a tangent discussion) is
| valuable. FedEx can collect then sell it.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| International mail can be opened and inspected for customs
| purposes. Otherwise it makes sense that domestic mail would
| need a warrant to be opened.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is such a persistent sicking point with
| people. The post office regularly operates with a 1-5 billion
| dollar loss. Both UPS and Fedex operate with a net 1-5 billion
| dollar profit. That represents a theoretical min-max profit
| difference of about 10 to 2 billion dollar difference in any
| given year. In a 20 trillion dollar economy it's not even a
| rounding error.
| logicslave wrote:
| Everyone has their tin foil hat with stuff on like this, but
| unless they are paying a 100 - 1000 engineers 250k-500k a year, I
| doubt theyve built anything useful with uptime. Maybe they could
| just scan a massive dataset of everyones posts, with some string
| searching, but still. I just dont see any entity like this being
| able to accomplish this task effectively.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| What would " _100 - 1000 engineers_ " even be doing?
|
| The story starts off saying that the work's being done by
| analysts:
|
| > The work involves having analysts trawl through social media
| sites to look for what the document describes as "inflammatory"
| postings and then sharing that information across government
| agencies.
|
| , so it sounds more like they've got some folks browsing
| social-media.
|
| Granted, a lot of the post-scanning would seem better done by
| bots, and stuff like sentiment-analysis could help classify
| posts for human inspection, so they'd probably want to hire a
| few engineers, but why hundreds? And why 250-500 kUSD/yr for
| such mundane work?
| logicslave wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| "> The work involves having analysts trawl through social
| media sites to look for what the document describes as
| "inflammatory" postings and then sharing that information
| across government agencies."
|
| This is useless and nobody should fear it. You should fear a
| set of teams of highly trained technologists. Thats not what
| we have here
| millzlane wrote:
| The entity's only job is to create a RFP and pick one. It's the
| company they hire that you have to worry about. The one thing
| we can count on is the government will spend the money to get
| what they want.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Why do you believe that unless they're paying their developers
| "250k-500k a year", they wouldn't have built something useful?
| logicslave wrote:
| Because analyzing all of social media with efficiency and
| effectively is really hard.
| barbazoo wrote:
| It implies that only an extremely highly paid developer can
| write efficient code which I think just isn't true.
| logicslave wrote:
| I've been programming for 15 years and worked at firms of
| all sizes and payscale, I see a direct correlation
| between the two
| netfortius wrote:
| The things that troubles me the most is abysmal record when it
| comes to delivery (pun intended) of fundamental services, e.g.
| interruptions in delivery of mail for weeks, then only partial
| delivery, critical documents lost, medication lost, credit cards
| "lost", etc., etc.
| TakakiTohno wrote:
| I'm not surprised
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Still think anonymous communications platforms like Freenet, I2P
| and Tor are just for conspiracy theorists?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Pretty much any federal agency you have heard of has an
| investigative dept that employs federal special agents. These are
| law enforcement roles with the same training, authority, and
| responsibilities as investigative agents in the FBI, etc.
|
| They were created to meet the specific law enforcement needs of
| each agency. Dept of Education agents investigate misuse of Dept
| of Education funds, for example. The Postal Inspectors
| investigate illegal use of, or threats to, the mail system.
|
| After 9/11 a lot of these depts got new infusions of resources,
| and instructions to do a lot more information sharing. There was
| a feeling that the attacks of 9/11 could have been prevented if
| existing disparate info had been better collected and collated.
|
| So it's not that surprising that these agencies will seem to
| stray out of their lanes. If Postal is monitoring broadly for
| threats against their systems, but sees other concerning info,
| they are supposed to share it.
|
| This is all intended to be explanatory; I'm not saying that it's
| how things should be.
|
| I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about programs
| to monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that
| seek to access, monitor, and store content that people intended
| to be privately communicated to other people.
| stevenicr wrote:
| I basically agree with "...fewer concerns about programs to
| monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that seek
| to access, monitor, and store content that people intended to
| be privately communicated to other people. "
|
| a few caveats though
|
| Scraping public data to see if some person / group / whatever
| is doing something the week of 4-20 is one thing, it's another
| to scrape the data and hold it for years or forever.
|
| How long should something be held on to after a poster has
| deleted it?
|
| I think transparency about data retention is very important -
| as this data can also become a tool used by others outside the
| scope of the original intention / need.
|
| What is private and what is thought to be private by the
| majority of Americans today?
|
| Most on HN may see differently and have a better understanding
| - but aside from the obvious "it's in the cloud is not your
| data, your data is their product to sell.. only self hosted,
| encrypted, one-time pad notes shared in person with no
| electronics around to listen in on is private" - sure..
|
| But even beyond what many around this forum may think is common
| sense - I can think of many things where lines are blurred not
| just by ignorance but by design, and lack of awareness -
|
| a fbook pm / chat - is that private? what if I have posts set
| to friends only - and someone uses a cambridge alanytica type
| thing where friends who do something exposes what I thought of
| as private to third party scrapers? Is that scraping illegal if
| scraping public posts is? What about browser extensions?
|
| My private friends only photos - are they being used to train
| AI for fbook, clearview? are they being shared by some poll
| software a friend is using?
|
| an invite only group, is that data private? does text in a
| description create a type of protection? What about data that
| is hacked and published - it's become public data - how about
| an ex lover who publishes what was thought to be private DMs?
|
| I'm sure there are many more situations in which people think
| they are doing things privately that others could finger a
| reason why it's not.
|
| stories? disappearing snaps?
|
| If fbook keeps a log of things you've typed but then backspaced
| over - is that data public? is it yours? How many people think
| that data even exists?
|
| So in general I kind of agree - but I think we should include
| things people assume are private as off limits without
| warrants, while specifying what data is probed, what the
| retention is, and what the scope of sharing could be.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >They were created to meet the specific law enforcement needs
| of each agency. Dept of Education agents investigate misuse of
| Dept of Education funds,
|
| That's a really charitable way of saying "handle petty stuff
| that the FBI can't justify spending resources on".
|
| Every specialty police department exists for this reason and
| this reason only. Because the mission is often so petty they
| wouldn't get any resources if it was obvious that resource
| allocation to that task was resource allocation away from other
| policing.
|
| When you have real problems the real police have no problems
| allocating resources and whipping up dedicated teams. When you
| feel like using state violence to harass drunken college kids
| you create a campus PD. When you feel like using state violence
| to kick the homeless out of the train station you create
| transit cops. Etc. etc. Even if you're an investigative agency
| you will have no problem getting the local cops to provide
| muscle if your needs are legitimate. "Look at us working with
| the <pick three letters>" is the kind of photo op local
| departments love, so long as it reflects well on them.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Makes a lot of sense to me that each department handles their
| own law enforcement, and can set the priorities they prefer.
|
| One centralized Federal Police Department would be a single
| point of failure and bureaucratic nightmare.
|
| Imagine if there were not State and local police departments.
| Just the FBI managing every shoplifting arrest in the
| country.
| girvo wrote:
| Lots of countries do just that though, without the crazy
| specific separation and specialisation that America does.
| fastball wrote:
| Which ones and how big are they?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Pretty much every western country. Sweden, France,
| Germany to give three examples.
| fastball wrote:
| Right, so countries the size of a single US state.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| The US divides it's police by town, not by state.
|
| And France and Germany are each twice as populous as the
| most populous US state.
|
| So you're not really correct.
|
| There's absolutely no reason why having a single
| bureaucracy wouldn't work well.
|
| It actually seems like it would be much easier to have a
| single bureaucracy.
| Kalium wrote:
| Also, counties often have their own sheriffs with a
| separate set of powers and responsibilities. Sometimes
| court systems have their own enforcement arms, separate
| from other agencies.
|
| The US often seems to have more layers of administration
| and law-making than some other places. Making individual
| officers work through which set of powers and laws
| they're dealing with in a given moment seems like it
| might at times be a daunting prospect. You could in
| theory organize them into a single bureau, but I suspect
| you'd inevitably wind up with specialized sections to
| deal with the particular laws in given cities.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Germany has a federal police force, mostly tasked with
| border protection and transport security, and 16 state-
| level police forces.
| vinay427 wrote:
| There are only a handful of western countries that use
| this approach. As counterexamples, Switzerland, the UK,
| Spain, and many other countries tend to have local
| municipal police departments, and Germany has
| state/Bundesland-level police departments as well as the
| random auxiliary departments that a sibling comment
| mentioned.
|
| France and Sweden are both far more centralized and less
| federalized. There's a reason more federal countries such
| as Switzerland or Germany have more decentralized
| policing. I think it would be beyond unacceptable to most
| Americans, myself included, for the US to have a single
| police department with its bureaucracy in Washington. If
| anything, I think far too power in the US is already
| centralized in DC which contributes to bad governance due
| to the vastly increased distance (in many senses) between
| politicians and their constituents.
|
| I would be fine with 50+6 state/district/territorial
| police departments, which is sort of the Germany or
| Canada (with Ontario and Quebec) approach.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Russia
| alisonatwork wrote:
| On the flip side, there are plenty of countries that do
| just have a national police force, or a handful of regional
| departments, and don't have tens of thousands of
| independent police forces like America does. They tend to
| do just fine.
| hattar wrote:
| Any with a population and land spread comparable to the
| US? I imagine that would make more sense in a small
| country with low diversity of terrain/population/etc.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| Plus a national police force is basically illegal and
| unconstitutional in the US.
| banannaise wrote:
| Gosh, who's going to notify the feds in Portland of this?
| earleybird wrote:
| As it was, so it is. The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll; from the
| wikipedia article "a general reluctance to share information;
| the FBI in particular was uninterested as no large sum of
| money was involved and no classified information host was
| accessed" Cliff of course gives a very entertaining
| description of getting investigators interest. Should be
| required reading for anyone doing/interested in security.
| toss1 wrote:
| Indeed, and excellent book that should be required reading
| for any computer professional, even outside of security.
|
| No relationship other than being impressed with the work.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-
| Espiona...
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| They can also provide specialized knowledge. Ex. the DOE OIG
| is going to have nuclear scientists, the HHS OIG or TIGTA is
| going to have tons of forensic accountants, etc. In the case
| of Inspector Generals specifically, they also have the
| mission of investigating internal misconduct within the
| agency, and they have a relationship where they are
| independently authorized to act but under ideal circumstances
| work closely with agency heads to root out corruption and
| improve efficiency. A lot of what they do is accounting and
| effectiveness audits that do not fall under law enforcement.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Wait till you hear about privately-owned company and railroad
| police departments...
| tacocataco wrote:
| Do these private police have more authority than the
| private security hired by other businesses?
| Kalium wrote:
| Yes. They're actually _police_ , with attendant legal
| status and powers.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Yes, although I don't know if all states have them. In NC
| they are called Company Police which are considered
| Special Police Officers commissioned by the Attorney
| General. It started in the 1800s with the textile mills
| and company towns. They may only exercise jurisdiction on
| their employers property, or they may be employees of a
| security company that is hired and granted jurisdiction
| by other businesses. Most companies that do it have both
| security (Private Protective Services) and police
| (Company Police) services available. The only authority
| they have outside real property owned by their
| employer/client is when in hot pursuit.
|
| Private universities, same as public, may have Campus
| Police instead of Company Police, and those officers also
| have jurisdiction on public ways passing through the
| campus. In some cases they also have one mile
| extraterritorial jurisdiction; moreover, they can receive
| broader jurisdiction through agreements with the
| city/county law enforcement.
|
| Railroad police are to be certified in their home state
| and have nationwide jurisdiction by federal law, on the
| property and rights-of-way of their employer as well as
| in connection with its services (conceivably quite a wide
| scope as railroads run right through virtually all major
| cities--the CPD "bait truck" incident that cause
| controversy a few years ago involved NSRR Police). With
| the exception of Amtrak, these are all private companies.
|
| I'm not sure to what extend qualified immunity does or
| does not apply to them, however.
|
| PA definitely has something like this too.. just like in
| NC, it originated from company towns, in their case
| mining.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| I have a story that captures what you're saying fairly well.
|
| About a decade ago I was living in a major southern US city
| in the more modestly priced part of an upscale area of town.
| I came back to the area from work fairly early in the
| afternoon, rounded the bend, and saw both sides of the street
| littered with unmarked police cars and vans, with many, many
| extremely large men in suits and sunglasses running around,
| directing the hapless local cops to do this and that. I'm
| talking the whole American militarized authority jamboree and
| then some: dogs, rifles, lights flashing, citizens being
| shooed away. A big SWAT-looking van poking out of a driveway.
| Maybe 3 dozen official looking people all told. US law
| enforcement is nothing if not histrionic and self-important
| in how it occupies physical space, but this presence was more
| than just the usual overreaction to a cat stuck in a tree. I
| remember thinking "uh-oh" and really meaning it.
|
| Of course I couldn't get into my parking lot -- I lived
| across the street a few doors down, and the cops weren't
| letting anyone through -- so I parked nearby and walked back
| over and began to chat up some neighbors, exchanging
| speculation on what the hell it could be. Obviously they were
| FBI, we all agreed - that's the cyborg-looking guys in suits,
| surely all grown in the same vat near Quantico? And the
| crime? Terrorism was the consensus, though one guy was sure
| it was counterfeiting money. (I remember that because he
| insisted that he knew someone "who used to do that".) The
| vibe standing there was equal parts morbid curiousity and
| real nerves -- what if someone _was_ making bombs in our
| quiet residential neighborhood?
|
| After a while someone got up the nerve to ask one of the
| bewildered local cops what the heck was going on. "That's not
| the FBI," he says, "that's the US Postal Police." Apparently
| someone was "sending marijuana in the mail".
|
| This effing country, right?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| As long as they suppress competition for the alcohol racket
| they justify the expense of their tactical cybernetics
| because it keeps the taxes flowing.
| cryptoquick wrote:
| This. This right here. Every word.
|
| I would even go so far as to say, there shouldn't be specific
| immigration cops, or alcohol, tobacco and firearms cops,
| since if there were actual crimes committed by immigrants or
| gun owners, the crimes themselves should be dealt with. To
| allow cops to go snooping around by widening jurisdictional
| responsibility, it has a very "pre-crime" aspect to it, which
| is often subject to prejudice and bias.
| bscphil wrote:
| > if there were actual crimes committed by immigrants or
| gun owners, the crimes themselves should be dealt with
|
| Maybe I'm missing your point, but isn't that exactly what
| the cops in question are supposedly doing? "Immigration
| cops" investigate illegal immigration. The ATF investigates
| the unlawful use or sale of firearms and drug trafficking.
| All of these things are crimes (regardless of whether they
| should be).
|
| So how is there a "pre-crime" aspect to specialization
| among police when it comes to things that actually _are_
| crimes?
| cryptoquick wrote:
| I guess I'm asking a question of crime priority, and
| whether some crimes are more likely to be punished
| because a disproportionate amount of policing is put in
| place towards that sort of crime.
|
| If the same resources that were dedicated to the numerous
| policing agencies in the US were given to a smaller
| number of more generalized agencies, those agencies would
| be allowed to prioritize where their time and resources
| are best spent protecting the public.
| banannaise wrote:
| > those agencies would be allowed to prioritize where
| their time and resources are best spent protecting the
| public.
|
| If you trust the police to decide how to distribute their
| resources, I have some pretty bad news for you.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I would rather the public collectively decide (assuming
| an effective representative government) how much we
| should prioritize X vs Y rather than just giving a giant
| pile of money and saying to the cops "do with this money
| whatever you think is best".
|
| These people have a monopoly on legally sanctioned
| violence. If you think there is any merit in anti-trust
| for businesses or that big tech should be broken up, I
| hope you'd think it even more strongly for policing.
|
| We don't have a perfectly functional representative
| process, but we sure do have a way to get influence over
| the system. Imagine how much resources could have been
| devoted to the war on drugs if the police could have
| stopped all other policing. That would be terrible IMO.
|
| It would also be bad (though perhaps less so) if the Dept
| of Education had no resources to examine its operations
| for fraud and waste.
| hundreddaysoff wrote:
| Agree. What is the point of all these laws on the books
| if they aren't enforced? That will just encourage people
| to break them when word gets out.
|
| If the counterargument is that these "crimes" shouldn't
| actually be crimes, then the solution is to remove the
| laws, no?
|
| But I suppose that whether removing the laws is feasible
| is another can of worms.
| volkl48 wrote:
| You can either have separate agencies or you can have a pile
| of specialized sub-agencies within some umbrella
| organization.....but working out how to align funding with
| who it's serving is going to be harder with the umbrella
| organization in many cases.
|
| Specialization is a thing within policing as much as it is
| within the rest of life. It's not like the same person who
| knows how to investigate a murder scene is equally capable of
| investigating complicated financial crimes on Wall St.
|
| ----------
|
| In terms of aligning incentives, there are various situations
| where there would otherwise there would be a mismatch of "who
| pays for this/who's responsibility this is" vs "who this is
| meant to serve".
|
| On your examples:
|
| Campus PD - College has equal/larger population than town.
| Town-college relations are often tense at best. Voters in
| town have no interest in spending their tax money on adequate
| policing for the college, college has no interest in donating
| a bunch of money to the PD to maybe get better services that
| they still have no say in. Students often heavily distrust
| the local PD and are unlikely to report crimes to them. It's
| still a problematic structure, but the premise that it would
| be better without is questionable.
|
| Transit Cops - No individual town or city is going to patrol
| the system coherently otherwise, and areas which utilize the
| service less are unlikely to spend significant resources
| policing it. Services which cross state lines also have
| jurisdictional issues even with just using normal state-level
| police.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Funny thing is, it works in pretty much any other western
| country. Now speaking about Germany there's essentially two
| police arms. The state police and the federal police.
|
| I don't see why every government department needs a police.
| Yes there are specific crimes that you might want to
| investigate, but you don't have to have police for that.
| Look for example to IRS they can have investigators, but
| they don't need police powers. If they need those they can
| go to the police.
|
| It's not only that every government department has a police
| now, it's also that (nearly) every one of them has swat
| teams, I mean for heavens sake the department of forestry
| has a swat team!
| lodovic wrote:
| In the Netherlands, we have national police, local
| police, military police, railroad police, forest police,
| border police, and so on. They are all fairly independent
| of each other and have separate jurisdictions.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| In Sweden, there was until just recently, 21 regional
| indendepent police, plus a national investigative unit.
| (And the secret police and the military police.)
|
| Now the 21 regional police have been merged into one
| national police.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| The Dutch railroad police (as well as the water, traffic,
| and aviation police) was sadly disbanded in 2013 [1]. In
| the same year, all 25 local police forces were disbanded
| and replaced by one national police force [2].
|
| [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dienst_Spoorwegpolitie#
| Opgehev...
|
| [2] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politie_in_Nederland#Vo
| rming_v...
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| I hear you, though, even in Germany there are other
| separate police forces under different ministries, like
| the Zoll (customs and immigration), the Feldjaeger
| (military police), and Justizvollzug (correctional
| officers and prisoner transport) - and each one of them
| has SWAT-like teams in addition to the forces of state
| and federal police.
|
| There are also a lot of other public officers with
| limited police powers and different reporting, just like
| in the US - officers of the courts, public health
| inspectors, the Ordnungsamt (public order office), forest
| rangers, officers of the bureau of standards etc.
|
| Until a few decades ago, it was even more splintered, and
| the border police and railway police were only integrated
| into the federal police in the 1990s if I am not
| mistaken...
| nkmnz wrote:
| Some cities like Frankfurt also started to rename the
| ,,Ordnungsamt" to ,,Stadtpolizei" (City Police). Also, we
| should not forget that we have quite some presence of US
| military police around US bases like Ramstein,
| Kaiserslautern and NATO Headquaters.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Well... when you're posting things on social media you're
| publishing them to the world. That somebody is going to look at
| them... well I guess I don't have that much of a problem with
| it. If you don't want the minor details of your life recorded
| and put up to government scrutiny, stop making your existence a
| reality show.
| salawat wrote:
| >I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about
| programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than
| programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that
| people intended to be privately communicated to other people.
|
| You should be worried about both, they're honestly equivalent.
|
| See, this is the greatest bait and switch ever perpetrated on
| the citizens of the United States, and I'm not sure anyone was
| even actively trying to do it. Time was, communication between
| you and someone else _was_ fundamentally expected to stay
| private. This was by definition prior to Third Party Doctrine,
| with which the Judiciary unilaterally decided the 4th Amendment
| was more of a suggestion than a hard line in the sand.
|
| Communication intermediaried through a service provider should
| never have been severed from personal effects and papers. If
| third-party metadata were treated bbased on the end; intended
| communication either point to point (private), multicast
| (confidential with expectation of privacy), or broadcast
| (implicitly public), we'd be in a much better place. When the
| Government starts vendoring out surveillance, or bakes it into
| departments, you know you've steered your society off the rails
| somewhere.
|
| The fact we're okay with businesses acting like a cabal of
| gossiping grannies only legitimizes the continued erosion of
| private space. How long until IoT connection strength logs make
| it possible to surveill anywhere with enough devices and
| computing power?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about
| programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than
| programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that
| people intended to be privately communicated to other people.
|
| This distinction is disappearing quickly in the current
| Internet, where conversations are increasingly company-mediated
| and facilitated. There's no such thing as a "private"
| conversation on Facebook or similar hosted platforms. You might
| _address_ a message to your friend, but you are _sending it_ to
| Facebook, and they ultimately get to decide how private it is.
| It 's likely a single "is_private" bit in a database!
|
| I'm more and more defaulting to a very strict rule: Never send
| anything to the Internet that I intend to be private. Whether
| it be a forum post, a message board, an E-mail, or a chat
| message. Keep my private pictures off of "secure, private"
| cloud storage. Don't do anything on a web site that I wouldn't
| want talked about in my local newspaper. Consider it all public
| knowledge because it's one leak or subpoena away from actually
| being public knowledge.
| jcrites wrote:
| WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook) employs end-to-end
| encryption between individuals for its 1on1 and group
| conversations, and no one else in the world besides those
| parties (or possibly backup companies those parties decide to
| use) has access to the message contents that WhatsApp says
| are protected by E2EE. It uses the Signal Protocol.
|
| Facebook has started efforts to roll out end-to-end
| encryption for its Messenger as well, using the same protocol
| as WhatsApp, which Signal blogged about:
| https://signal.org/blog/facebook-
| messenger/#:~:text=Facebook....
|
| Posts and other content on your "wall" or "timeline" are
| intended to be relatively public, according to whatever
| privacy settings you have set up on your account, and won't
| be similarly encrypted; but the content will only be
| available to the people that you allow to see your account
| and post. That's more of a permission set described by a
| database like you describe. But you can share different posts
| with different groups of people you define; or participate in
| public or private/secret/invite only groups where content is
| only accessibly by those people.
|
| Yes, that content would be accessible as plaintext by certain
| FB employees, just like your Gmail account's contents could
| be accessed by certain employees at Google. However, there
| are very strict policies around not accessing user content at
| FB by employees unless required for the function of the
| employee's job (e.g. investigating spamming, child
| pornography, and other abuse like that I would imagine; or
| assisting law enforcement with subpoenas or court orders for
| the content).
|
| Notably WhatsApp has no ability to hand over message contents
| between individuals whose conversations are protected by end-
| to-end encryption even if it receives a court order to do so,
| because the encryption keys protecting that content truly
| live only on the user's devices, and the plaintext content
| never touches WhatsApp servers today. As long as you don't
| back up your message history outside your device in plaintext
| (and what WhatsApp stores on the device might be encrypted
| now too; I'm not sure), the only way for anyone to obtain the
| message history is to get their hands on your phone and the
| encryption keys & message history it contains. So if your
| phone is protected by a strong passcode and a security vendor
| hasn't found a way to bypass iPhone login security, as long
| as your iPhone is locked even the US government won't be able
| to get at your data.
|
| I believe their was a court ruling that passwords to your
| phone are protected by the 5th Amendment against testifying
| against yourself, so I don't believe a court can compel you
| to reveal the phone password, but I'm not up to speed on the
| current case law. So if you lock your phone before an
| attacker seizes it, they can't get the contents even if the
| attacker is a government (unless they're willing to use
| physical coercion as in XKCD 538 [1], or indirect physical
| coercion such as ordering revelation of the password under
| threat of contempt of court, if that's permissible).
|
| WhatsApp is also allowing businesses onto the platform, to
| use it to communicate with those customers, and some of those
| conversations may be regularly encrypted, not end-to-end
| encrypted. Those conversations are displayed differently in
| the UX of WhatsApp when the conversation begins, to clarify
| that they're not protected by E2EE. (It's arguably
| impractical to have real E2EE between a customer and a large
| business with, e.g., many customer service agents. What would
| that really mean? I personally think E2EE is most meaningful
| between individual people who personally know each other, not
| between people and businesses which are anonymously-defined,
| constantly-changing groups of people.)
|
| I'm not a spokesperson for any company and these are my own
| opinions based on what I've read from public news sources.
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/538/
| Thorentis wrote:
| Yes, but I think OP is saying that the law should protect
| intent. Just like with the physical mail system. It is
| illegal to open a letter addressed to somebody else (though,
| warrants can override this). But I am fine with the
| principle.
|
| On the other hand, if you stick a huge banner out the front
| of your house, that information is fair game. Just like
| posting on your Twitter profile or blog. The intent was never
| for it to be private.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Not a correction, but I'd like to add a small precision to
| that because I've seen the same argument used in other
| contexts.
|
| For Twitter and Facebook I tend to agree, as there is an
| active intent (as you say) of publication. However, I've
| seen people reason in the same way with respect to licence
| plate or face recognition: "but the information is public".
|
| The fact that technology now allows us to treat
| licenceplates or faces information globally, in very cheap
| way, means that a fundamental new capacity is created.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I agree, the impact of automated scale is definitely
| worth considering.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| It does seem like they should centralize this stuff though...
| virtually every nationwide-jurisdiction agency will want to
| monitor social media posts so you would think they would
| centralize it in one department rather than duplicating effort.
| Also the argument can be made that spending too much time
| enforcing other agencies' laws is not spending the budget the
| way Congress intended.
| irrational wrote:
| > So it's not that surprising that these agencies will seem to
| stray out of their lanes.
|
| Like the secret service (Treasury agents) becoming the
| President's bodyguards?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The IRS has a sizeable police force as well.
| threatofrain wrote:
| And these are their stories. Dun dun.
| tim-- wrote:
| You joke, but they actually made a TV series.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inspectors
| manigandham wrote:
| > _"...it was the only show on commercial television paid
| for by a U.S. government agency, with its funding coming
| from the United States Postal Service asset forfeiture...
| "_
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about
| programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than
| programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that
| people intended to be privately communicated to other people.
|
| You may have fewer concerns about public monitoring vs private
| spying, presumably because in the latter case privacy is being
| violated in a way that isn't the case for the former.
|
| But both cases are nefarious, and you don't have to choose
| between them.
|
| Both are examples of using public funds to abuse access to
| information from end users for political purposes.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Public vs Private:
|
| Public: I can think of an example. If the USPS finds out that
| in a certain area of a certain city, there is a big chance to
| have riots "tomorrow after 10am" (protests because of X-Y-Z
| resason), they can alert their local teams to e.g. deliver
| the post at 7am instead of 11am. Yes, some operations would
| be impacted (e.g. noon delivery won't happen), but this will
| protect the staff, protect the items (letters, parcels), the
| vehicles, etc.
|
| If they just hoard data to feed a bigger best (e.g. NSA)
| then, the data is still out there (my public blog, your
| public blog, HN comments, etc.) and they are up for the
| taking. In which case it doesn't matter if it is a federal
| agent carrying a NSA or a USPS badge.
| ridaj wrote:
| I'd be surprised if they could deliver anything ahead of
| schedule, but I imagine they can tell people to stop what
| they're doing at 9am if they're in a dangerous area
| mxcrossb wrote:
| 14 billion dollars was spent in the 2020 election [1]. If
| someone wants to "nefarious"ly analyze public information for
| political purposes, they can easily do it with private funds.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/28/
| 202...
| dataflow wrote:
| > Pretty much any federal agency you have heard of has an
| investigative dept that employs federal special agents. These
| are law enforcement roles with the same training, authority,
| and responsibilities as investigative agents in the FBI, etc.
|
| Maybe worth noting that USPIS is older than the FBI. It's the
| oldest federal law enforcement agency.
| belval wrote:
| That's a fantastic trivia fact, I guess threats to the postal
| service are a very old problem so it makes sense.
| dylan604 wrote:
| also, back then, the USPS did more than just deliver mail.
| dataflow wrote:
| Not merely threats to the postal service itself, but
| threats _via_ the postal service. I imagine the best to get
| away with (say) fraud has always been to avoid physical
| presence, i.e. using mail.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > the best to get away with (say) fraud
|
| And letter/package bombs
| banannaise wrote:
| This is the territory where police departments and
| agencies get themselves into trouble - investigating
| crimes that aren't really their job to investigate. They
| technically have jurisdiction over a specific location or
| process, and that gives them an excuse.
|
| The most obvious parallel is pretext stops - state cops,
| sometimes local, coming up with an excuse to pull someone
| over on a highway, in order to check them for warrants or
| in hopes of discovering contraband they have no reason to
| suspect exists.
|
| A less obvious example is immigration enforcement fishing
| for excuses to deport someone.
| jeffchien wrote:
| I'm sure that the recent shooting of their FedEx colleagues
| in Indianapolis is on the USPS's mind as well, and I
| wouldn't be surprised if UPS and DHL tries to monitor
| social media as well.
| acdha wrote:
| It's hard to understate just how important the postal
| service was to the country: beyond driving so much commerce
| (and hence making mail deliveries a valuable target) it was
| used for all kinds of official documents and financial
| documents (money orders were introduced to reduce the risk
| further). Travel being expensive and hard, no alternatives
| like phone or email, etc. means that you send letters a LOT
| and things like postmarks or registered mail signatures
| have a substantial legal weight. Making a highly trusted
| service with special status to deter thieves available to
| everyone at a modest fee was a really smart move.
| anitil wrote:
| There's a sense in which is predates the US! Throughline from
| NPR had an episode about it, referring to a book called 'How
| the Post Office Created America' [1]
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/02/908836752/the-postal-
| service
|
| [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311582/how-the-
| post...
| Paul-ish wrote:
| > Maybe worth noting that USPIS is older than the FBI. It's
| the oldest federal law enforcement agency.
|
| The wikipedia page for USPIS claims that. But the wikipedia
| page of the US Marshalls claims that same honor. I wonder
| which is correct.
| dataflow wrote:
| Supposedly USPIS goes back to 1737 (or 1772 if you don't
| want to count that), whereas USMS started in 1789? USPIS
| claims its "birth date" to be 1775, so I guess that's the
| latest. https://www.uspis.gov/about/history-of-uspis#1775
| o0-0o wrote:
| It is also the only agency named in the constitution. The
| others are all fluff. At least that's what I was taught!
| dataflow wrote:
| Interesting, are you sure about this? The only clause I
| find in the constitution mentions post offices and post
| roads (perhaps that's what you're thinking of?), but
| nothing about their security. To my knowledge federal
| agencies were only established by the Administrative
| Procedures Act after WWII (which is basically the
| "constitution" of federal agencies), but I'm not sure if
| there's other similar terminology that might be in the
| constitution. If someone has a link to the clause that
| would be interesting.
| o0-0o wrote:
| Yeah buddy. The security service is just like internal
| affairs for the USPS. It's actually pretty creepy inside
| the USPS they enter through different doors, they have
| catwalks with two-way mirrors, etc. The SSF and DCF or
| whatever they're called (been a while) are super creepy
| to observe. You are CONSTANTLY being watch when you work
| there, but unseen faces. There is a reason 'going postal'
| became a thing. Imagine that atmosphere!
| behringer wrote:
| Having worked there, you drown out the catwalks and just
| consider them like fancy camera monitoring. We never,
| ever saw law enforcement, so it was out of sight, out of
| mind.
| PLenz wrote:
| Census is in the Constitution as well
| o0-0o wrote:
| Pretty the sure the Census is mostly conducted by the
| USPS though.
| [deleted]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| If they're disinterested in private comms, it's because they're
| very interested in public comms. If they're wondering what the
| public thinks and would make improvements, great, but if
| they're targeting the public because what they say is too true
| to handle, ugh.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| USPIS is actually the _oldest_ federal law enforcement service.
|
| That said, its _present_ utilisation seems to specifically
| address cases in which other agencies, both outward-facing
| (CIA, NSA) and inward (FBI) are limited.
|
| The USPIS's investigation, case, and conviction rations are
| quite impressive. Relatively low counts of cases, I believe,
| but conviction rates are extraordinarly high (~90% or so).
|
| Documented in the FY2019 USPIS annual report:
| https://www.uspis.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FY-2019-ann...
| smsm42 wrote:
| > If Postal is monitoring broadly for threats against their
| systems
|
| If, however, they are running a wide-net surveillance program
| under the guise of "anybody could be threatening our systems at
| any time, so we better monitor everyone just in case", thats a
| bit different sound. It's easy to say "well, we have to protect
| our systems" but so far there's zero evidence anything that
| USPS has been monitoring was threatening their system, and yet
| they keep the surveillance. With zero oversight or control from
| the people.
| ThothIV wrote:
| USPS? You mean the bankrupt federal agency that we all heard was
| going extinct? They can afford this? Hmm... (And they certainty
| can't afford it, which is why druggies exclusively ship their
| goods with USPS over FedEx / UPS or any other private carrier).
| God bless them!
| thamalama wrote:
| > The postmaster general is the second-highest paid U.S.
| government official, > based on publicly available salary
| information, after the President of the > United States.[13]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postmaster_Gener...
|
| PmG is a very powerful position.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Lots of sentiment today that the USPS is way out of its zone of
| expertise in doing this -- and that is possible.
|
| But it's worth noting that the USPS has had its own legion of
| postal inspectors going back to the 19th century, when they were
| a (comparatively) huge part of the U.S. government, and the FBI,
| etc. did not exist.
|
| Some 1,200 postal inspectors are still around, and they play
| important roles on federal prosecutions related to mail fraud,
| drug shipments, etc. There's a good Wikipedia entry on it all:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspectio...
| realityIsntHere wrote:
| A total monopoly on daily mail and we get snooped.
|
| I can't tell if this is corruption or genuine work.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| "When our Corps goes in as guards over the mail, that mail must
| be delivered," wrote Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby. "Or
| there must be a Marine dead at the post of duty. There can be
| no compromise."
|
| https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/08/25/intense-rules-u...
|
| The mail is serious business.
| el_dev_hell wrote:
| That was a wild read.
|
| > Q. Suppose the thief was apparently unarmed but was running
| away?
|
| > A. Call halt twice at the top of your voice, and if he does
| not halt, fire one warning shot; and if he does not obey
| this, shoot to hit him.
|
| There was no chill during the great depression:
|
| > Q. If I hear the command 'Hands Up,' am I justified in
| obeying this order?
|
| > A. No; fall to the ground and start shooting.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Asides from all that stuff about ordering soldiers to kill
| American civilians, I'm just boggled that it had a FAQ. How
| old is the FAQ structure? Wikipedia suggests a history
| going back to the 1600s, and much further if you stretch
| the definition to Plato.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| American civilians who had made a decided effort to
| commit a federal felony. Also "ordering soliders to kill
| American civilians" attempts to color the situation in an
| unfavorable light, as if the soldiers had alternatives,
| or the situation didn't fully warrant it.
|
| There's no reason that killing armed gangsters wasn't
| totally justified in this case.
| jayrot wrote:
| Where's the BG copypasta quote about why soldiers
| shouldn't be police
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| No mincing of words. Something like this would never be put
| into writing today, as far as I understand the USMC:
|
| Q. Is there a general plan for meeting a robbery?
|
| A. Yes; start shooting and meet developments as they arise
| thereafter.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > Something like this would never be put into writing
| today
|
| Because we don't need rules like that today. America was
| a very different place than it is now. Those rules were
| there, not because they were shoot happy maniacs, or
| because they didn't care about being "PC", but because it
| was much more dangerous back then. It is the same reason
| that US soldiers stationed in Germany don't have the same
| rules of engagement as soldiers in Afghanistan.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| People were shocked last summer when federal agents started
| doing night patrols around a vandalized and firebombed
| federal courthouse in Portland, deterring and detaining
| people left and right. Not many are aware of how seriously
| the federal government takes protecting its properties and
| duties, and how lethally serious such encounters were not too
| many decades ago.
| jchanimal wrote:
| Except the US Capitol.
| CharlieEadwyn wrote:
| Except for the killing of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally
| shot despite being unarmed.
| riffic wrote:
| > going back to the 19th century
|
| 18th, even. From the same Wikipedia article you shared:
|
| > The Postal Inspection Service has the oldest origins of any
| federal law enforcement agency in the United States. It traces
| its roots back to 1772 when colonial Postmaster General
| Benjamin Franklin first appointed a "surveyor" to regulate and
| audit the mails. Thus, the Service's origins--in part--predate
| the Declaration of Independence, and therefore the United
| States itself.
| ROARosen wrote:
| the 19th century was also the time when the USPS was not having
| net losses of $9.2 billion per year.[1]
|
| How about having the FBI monitoring the security instead and
| them notifying USPS.
|
| [1]https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-
| releases/2020/1113-....
| boston_clone wrote:
| Do you think all public services ought to be profitable? Or
| can we entertain the thought that our taxes help offset costs
| of (or directly fund) critical public services?
|
| As an aside, I genuinely dislike seeing misinformation from
| the Trump/Russia era on HN.
| ROARosen wrote:
| How about not having ad hominem attacks on HN? Your dislike
| to seeing certain information on HN doesn't add any value
| to the conversation. Especially when it presumes - without
| evidence - that the parent comment surely has some partisan
| mental bias just like you yourself have.
|
| And to your actual answer. I do believe public funds can go
| to fund government enterprises. Just not when any
| comparative private enterprise seems to figure out how to
| be profitable.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Sure, but the 19th century ended over 120 years ago. So that's
| _kind of_ not relevant to how they 're structured and operate
| today?
| JJMcJ wrote:
| I think 1,200 investigators for the entirety of the USPS's
| operations isn't out of line.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Not relevant? Do you somehow imagine that how things were
| done in the past _doesn 't_ affect "how they're structured
| and operate today"?
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Depends if we're talking how they _are_ structured vs
| _should be_ structured
| DanBC wrote:
| People forget that spying on citizens by the post office goes
| back _hundreds_ of years. This doesn 't make it in any way
| acceptable, but people shouldn't act surprised that post
| offices spy on citizens when it's an activity that's baked
| into the service from the very early days.
|
| https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/03/today-in-
| lond...
|
| > The Post office was of central importance to this
| surveillance. The 'Secret Office' - an arm of what was
| basically a secret service, dedicated to opening post to
| discover plots against the government - was formed around
| 1653 under Cromwell's post-Civil War republican Protectorate;
| but it proved so handy, the Office was continued after the
| restoration of the monarchy.
|
| [...]
|
| > Morland also recorded what he saw as the basic function of
| his devices and of surveillance in general: "a skilful prince
| ought to make a watch tower of his general post office... and
| there place such careful sentinels as that, by their care and
| diligence, he may have a constant view of all that passes."
|
| Samuel Morland was interesting and has some early computing
| devices.
|
| https://history-computer.com/samuel-morland/
|
| https://history-computer.com/samuel-morland-biography-
| histor...
|
| https://www.headstuff.org/culture/history/terrible-people-
| fr...
|
| One of the links talks about letters sealed in the Spanish
| manner.
|
| https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/sealing-
| wa...
|
| > It was then that the superior qualities of the new
| "Spanish" wax came to be highly valued. The basic formula of
| this new sealing compound was a blend of shellac, mastic,
| turpentine, chalk or gypsum, and a coloring agent, to which
| essential oils and/or fragrant balsams might be added to
| facilitate melting and impart a pleasant fragrance. This
| "sealing wax" could be melted to a thick viscous fluid which
| would readily and firmly adhere to the parchment or paper on
| which it was placed. While warm, it would take a clear
| impression of any seal that was pressed in to it. It would
| remain solid, even in the heat of summer, and was flexible
| enough to remain intact while affixed to the document on
| which it had been placed. However, it was extremely difficult
| to remove a seal made of this material and replace it after
| the contents of the sealed document had been read. This
| compound was more brittle than beeswax so it could be easily
| broken, thus providing clear evidence of tampering. Even if
| the seal could be removed unbroken, any attempt to re-affix a
| seal was nearly impossible, since, with such a low melting
| point, the image which had been impressed into it would loose
| its crispness, if not melt completely, if additional hot wax
| was used to re-attach it, yet another sign of tampering.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Can't help thinking of W.A.S.T.E. though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49
| TameAntelope wrote:
| One thing I haven't really seen discussed (or maybe I'm just
| blind) is the fact that the USPS _isn 't_ a government
| organization quite like the others. It's supposed to be a more-
| private entity that competes in a market.
|
| Feels weird to give them law enforcement powers while still
| putting them up against private industry as competition, couldn't
| they just arrest all the UPS workers or something (gross
| oversimplification but still)?
| bradj wrote:
| Private railroads also have police with law enforcement powers.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police
| flyingfences wrote:
| USPS is given an explicit monopoly on letter deliveries; they
| do not compete in their market.
| riffic wrote:
| wasn't always that way. At one time the predecessor agency to
| the USPS was a cabinet-level department:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Post_Office_Depa...
|
| There is Constitutional authority empowering Congress "To
| establish post offices and post roads"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause)
|
| We also used to have a limited form of postal banking here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...
| jfengel wrote:
| News flash: people read things that you make public on the Web.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| There is a qualitative difference between "people reading
| things you make public on the web" and "a government-funded
| agency uses extensive technological means to read, categorize
| and threat-assess your statements on the net, and have the
| power to throw you into jail for an indeterminate length of
| time - or worse."
| [deleted]
| _-david-_ wrote:
| It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some
| other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and
| packages not investigate material on the internet.
| mattmanser wrote:
| To be fair, look at it from totally the opposite direction to
| see their point of view.
|
| Your workers are under threat from poorly made postal bombs
| that could easily blow up during processing, killing your
| workers. Due to the vast volume of post you process, the threat
| is real and non-trivial.
|
| Do you do nothing?
|
| I think you obviously have to do something, whether you go as
| far as they did is what's up for debate.
| cblackthornekc wrote:
| You don't even have to say bombs, the article lists a great
| example. They are tracking protests. I think I would like to
| be aware if where I normally deliver mail I'm walking into a
| protest that might get violent.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If I turn the corner on my mail route and see an angry mob
| down the block, I turn around? It's not like people don't
| have eyes anymore.
| cblackthornekc wrote:
| Or you can look to see that it is scheduled for the
| afternoon so you deliver in the morning.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| The FBI (or some other agency) can investigate these things
| and send out notices to government agencies operating in
| the area. It seems like you are advocating for every single
| government agency to monitor the internet for potential
| protests in their area? Why duplicate the work when we can
| get people who are experts handle it?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| If there is a bomb threat why can't the FBI or DHS
| investigate? That is the entire purpose of those agencies.
|
| Should every government agency have a department to
| investigate threats towards their employees? Why limit it to
| just the USPS? Why not give investigative powers to the
| Agency for Global Media or the Administration for Community
| Living? Should those employees have to risk the very "real
| and non-trivial" threats they face?
|
| If this was just some sort of way of detecting bombs or
| anthrax or something I think most of us could get behind it.
| This is turning the post office into an investigative crime
| solving agency and not even strictly for the thing they do
| (mail delivery).
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Agency for Global Media has their own law enforcement that
| investigates threats against the agency and it's personnel.
| This ranges from securing HQ against protests to
| investigating what happens to broadcast infrastructure in
| war zones like Afghanistan to securing classified
| information.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I chose a random agency without checking what exactly
| they do. The specific agencies I mentioned are irrelevant
| to the actual points I was making.
|
| We don't need every single agency to handle investigating
| threats to themself. It just doesn't make financial or
| practical sense. We can use the FBI, Secret Service, DHS,
| etc to deal with protecting the entire government and
| their employees. This will eliminate duplication and make
| it easier to share threat information.
|
| One problem we have is the lack of information being
| shared with the correct agencies. This was allegedly the
| cause of some terrorist attacks not being stopped. If
| there are only a couple agencies that handle security and
| threat investigations instead of 100s it will already be
| in the hands of the correct agency. We should be striving
| for a streamlined process that removes duplication
| instead of hoping every single agency can do the job
| well.
| salawat wrote:
| We don't need more centralization. That just puts all the
| spoils in terms of getting corrupt individuals in
| positions of influence in one basket. Keeping agencies
| and jurisdictions divided keeps people specialized,
| limits the spread of taint, and ensures any that does
| take root is limited in scope; which is a good thing.
| Last thing we need is a monolithic law enforcement
| agency.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Your workers are under threat from poorly made postal bombs
| that could easily blow up during processing
|
| How does that threat compare to threats the post office
| accepts for it's workers such as being killed in traffic
| accidents?
| stefan_ wrote:
| Yes, when will the USPS do something about the 0 postal
| workers killed from letter bombs this year, last year, the
| year before last, the year before last before last year, ...?
|
| More of them are endangered by their shitbox LLV trucks
| catching on fire.
| jjgreen wrote:
| "In 1975, no one died, ..."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUoT5AxFpRs
| filoleg wrote:
| Bombs in packages isn't the only thing that threatens
| postal workers that USPS is trying to protect.
|
| For example, look at this[0]. Two people physically
| attacked a postal worker after accusing her of "stealing
| their stimulus checks"[1].
|
| Sure, you can say that this case had nothing to do with
| USPS surveillance. But it just goes to show that there are
| plenty of serious dangers to postal workers other than just
| nigh-non-existent "bomb in the mail" scenarios that you
| seem to be fixating on.
|
| 0. https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/police-make-arrest-
| after...
|
| 1. https://news.yahoo.com/usps-worker-beaten-michigan-
| alleged-1...
| _-david-_ wrote:
| That has nothing to do with this issue. The article is
| about USPS investigating online threats. Do you really
| think people who are going to beat USPS workers are going
| to post about it online and that the USPS would be better
| equipped than agencies whose sole purpose is to deal with
| these kind of things?
|
| If you think every postal worker should have some sort of
| security / police going with them on their routes that is
| one thing, but that is not at all what this article is
| about.
| filoleg wrote:
| >That has nothing to do with this issue
|
| It addresses the comment that essentially boiled down to
| "why would they want this, letter bombs almost never
| happen", and I simply have shown other reasons for why
| they might want it. I wasn't addressing the article, I
| was addressing a specific comment.
|
| >Do you really think people who are going to beat USPS
| workers are going to post about it online [...]
|
| Yes, it does happen. People publicly post on twitter
| about their plans to vandalize property and such, so I
| don't see this scenario out of reach at all.
|
| >[...] and that the USPS would be better equipped than
| agencies whose sole purpose is to deal with these kind of
| things?
|
| No, but USPS would be able to use this as a clue of
| something brewing and make the relevant agencies aware,
| all while dealing with ad-hoc mitigations (e.g., if the
| threat seems credible on the surface, prepare tentative
| re-routing plans for their drivers to avoid that area, in
| case the agencies confirm that the threat is credible; if
| the agencies confirm that the threat isn't credible,
| everything proceeds as usual).
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I agree that sometimes people do post online about
| committing crimes, but I do not believe USPS is better
| equipped than the FBI or DHS at handling it. The job of
| the USPS is to deliver mail. The job of the FBI is to
| stop crimes that will happen or find those responsible
| for crimes which have already been committed.
|
| The FBI has more resources for investigating, finding,
| and assessing crimes. They also have additional
| intelligence that the USPS is not privy to. Why have an
| agency which has less resources and intelligence handle
| it? If it is a real threat the FBI can relay that
| information the USPS (and other agencies who operate in
| the area) to re-route their drivers or lock down their
| offices.
|
| The USPS does not do anything so unique that it needs to
| a specialized investigative unit.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _when will the USPS do something about the 0 postal workers
| killed from letter bombs this year_
|
| And how do you think that number became zero? Magic bomb-
| negating fairies?
| NavinF wrote:
| https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, you contact the FBI and get them to investigate, just
| like everyone else does when federal crimes are involved.
|
| (Also, echoing the sibling: where are all these poorly made
| postal bombs you're talking about? I can't remember anything
| in recent and not-so-recent memory.)
| yosito wrote:
| > Do you do nothing?
|
| No, you coordinate with the CIA or FBI to investigate threats
| against the government.
| popinman322 wrote:
| Postal inspectors can hand off to other teams for
| investigation of affairs that might affect more than the
| post system-- hence this memo.
|
| If postal workers are at risk then it's within their
| purview (as it has been for over 200 years) to investigate
| and warn local offices in addition to other government
| offices.
| GCA10 wrote:
| A couple postal workers died about 20 years ago when someone
| used the U.S. mails as an anthrax-delivery mechanism. Details
| are here:
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5239a2.htm Note
| that's there's also a deeper CDC analysis looking at whether
| mail sorting is a job with higher than usual mortality rates.
| (Answer: probably not).
|
| Granted, that's a long time ago, and it doesn't happen
| habitually. But if you're going to have a workforce safety
| team (good idea), they will likely want to either actually do
| something to stop the threats, or at least signal to
| management that they aren't totally clueless
| java-man wrote:
| Just don't ask where that anthrax strain came from.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The postal service, as a Constitutionally-mandated requirement
| of the federal government (though the post itself is a private
| company, responsibility for ensuring there _is_ a post and that
| it _works_ is Congress 's), is some very old and very serious
| law and enforcement.
|
| The Postal Inspection Service traces its lineage to 1772; the
| FBI to 1908. USPIS being separate from the FBI is one of those
| quirks of American enforcement, like how the Secret Service is
| responsible for physical security of the President and other
| political figures... And financial services.
| wtallis wrote:
| > Constitutionally-mandated requirement of the federal
| government
|
| The constitution says: "The Congress shall have Power [...]
| To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
|
| This is not a constitutional mandate. It is constitutional
| authorization. The federal government is not obligated to
| fully exercise every power it is granted.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Lol, a government will always exercise any power it is
| given, and that's why your laws must be overly limited in
| the first place.
|
| Just see the interstate commerce clause and what's happened
| with that
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In this case, and speaking specifically around the time
| that the Constitution was ratified, I suspect a Congress
| that failed to exercise that power would have been replaced
| by a Congress willing to, since people liked receiving
| correspondence and it was fairly vital to doing any kind of
| long distance business.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There are loads of intelligence services in America. Coup
| d'Etat has a non-exhaustive list. I'm pretty sure even the NOAA
| does homeland security stuff.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans'
| social media posts_
|
| Of course it is. Why wouldn't it? Crazy people put all kinds of
| crazy things in the mail. Have we so quickly forgotten the
| Unabomber? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
|
| The next time anthrax or ricin shows up in a politician's
| mailbox, the same people gritting their teeth about this will
| bark about why more wasn't done to detect and prevent it.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Why would you spend billions monitoring 300 million people when
| you could swab politicians' mail for anthrax?
| tqi wrote:
| > The work involves having analysts trawl through social media
| sites to look for what the document describes as "inflammatory"
| postings
|
| What exactly constitutes "monitoring"? This sounds like some
| agents spent a few hours using Twitter's built in search to look
| for certain keywords...
| throwaway99x99 wrote:
| And then released a security bulletin: hey, people are saying
| threatening things _on the Internet_!
| sneak wrote:
| > _"Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service
| (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored
| significant activity regarding planned protests occurring
| internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021," says the
| March 16 government bulletin, marked as "law enforcement
| sensitive" and distributed through the Department of Homeland
| Security's fusion centers. "Locations and times have been
| identified for these protests, which are being distributed online
| across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing
| leaning Parler and Telegram accounts."_
|
| > _A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around
| the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom
| and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to
| 5G. "Parler users have commented about their intent to use the
| rallies to engage in violence. Image 3 on the right is a
| screenshot from Parler indicating two users discussing the event
| as an opportunity to engage in a 'fight' and to 'do serious
| damage,'" says the bulletin._
|
| > _"No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of
| these threats," it adds._
|
| Oh, that doesn't seem like an asymmetric allocation of resources
| at all. It's totally not trivially exploitable like the ticket
| presales in Tulsa or anything.
|
| This "we have to respond to all potential threats, no matter how
| trivial" doctrine is a ridiculous waste of time and resources
| even in the best case. In the worst case, it overcommits to an
| impossible task.
|
| I think it's reasonable to rate their competence level at "the
| cybers" around the same level as their ability to keep a "covert"
| operation off of Yahoo News.
| tims33 wrote:
| This is a truly bizarre story. I agree with others that other
| government agencies should run this particularly given USPS
| already well known financial challenges.
| agogdog wrote:
| This is in no way related to their financial struggles.
|
| The USPS was breaking even regularly (phenomenal considering
| what they do) until they were forced to save up funding for 75
| years of pensions within a 10 year span. Not only that, but
| they have to exclusively rely on the US Treasuries to fund the
| retiree medial fund, so it's more expensive out of the gate.
|
| So they're doing more for their employees, paying more for it,
| and are required to do so in a shorter amount of time than just
| about any private company out there.
|
| I'd be surprised if this covert program cost more than 1% of
| what the pension fund does.
| tims33 wrote:
| I'm aware of the pension rules and to your point I'm sure the
| cost is minimal. It just seems so long as they are being
| managed by the government in this way, they should get some
| "free" services elsewhere.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Hah, remember this story?
| https://apnews.com/article/1e42c1a6fd324f5784c414fcd2adbd17
|
| > The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
| lost track of most of the guns, including two found at the scene
| where a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was fatally shot in the Arizona
| desert. The operation sparked a political backlash against the
| Obama administration.
|
| > Attkisson left CBS in 2014 and is now the host of "Full Measure
| with Sharyl Attkisson," a weekly Sunday news program broadcast by
| the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.
|
| > In her lawsuit, Attkisson says that two computer forensics
| teams identified an unauthorized communications channel opened
| into her laptop was connected to an IP address belonging to the
| U.S. Postal Service, "indicating unauthorized surveillance."
|
| > Government lawyers argue that Attkisson's lawsuit does not
| include any evidence that Holder and Donahoe had direct
| involvement in spying on her.
|
| > "At best, plaintiffs' complaint suggests a mere possibility
| that Holder and Donahoe could have participated in developing or
| enforcing policies concerning electronic surveillance generally;
| there are no allegations that they conducted or ordered the
| particular incursions about which plaintiffs complain," Justice
| Department lawyers argue in a legal brief filed in the 4th
| Circuit.
|
| The Obama administration used USPS to spy on journalists
| investigating Fast and Furious. It sounded ridiculous at the time
| -- "The USPS is spying on journalists, and not the NSA, and not
| the FBI, and not the CIA? Suuure."
|
| Not so ridiculous anymore.
|
| I'm tired of being angry about this, I've been asking for change
| for most of my adult life. Our constitution isn't worth anything
| anymore. The federal government needs to shrink. Asking nicely to
| not be spied on does not work.
|
| On a more silly note, this whole scenario reminds me of this
| Seinfeld clip. https://youtu.be/On3cQ0sPvSY?t=46
| starkd wrote:
| Not too much to ask at all. Every American should be outraged.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Half of Americans, and the vast majority of powerful
| institutions, are just fine with this because the targets are
| right-wingers.
| adamrezich wrote:
| completely forgot about that story--great catch.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not very certain that a nation of 350 million people can be
| kept stable without some amount of internal espionage.
|
| Most human constructs of that size have espionage going on
| between them (for example, that's more than the population of
| Germany and Russia combined, and those nations are definitely
| spying on each other). The fact that they have a thick border
| drawn on the map between them and the US has thin borders drawn
| on its map probably implies the US should spy on itself less...
| But how much less?
|
| Internal espionage has been key at several points in the
| history of the US for preventing internal power structures from
| overriding law and order (the Chicago mafia, for example). It
| has, obviously, also been leveraged against the rights of law-
| abiding citizens.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Even the mail man is glowing now.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Crossing the streams, the USPIS are a Cellebrite customer:
|
| https://www.uspis.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FY-2019-ann...
| (p. 35)
| Lammy wrote:
| Were the 2001 "Amerithrax" letters the justification for this
| program? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I read that in the 60s to the 80s, a lot of civil unrest was
| taking place and there were so many "protest" bombings (whatever
| that means) that it became a almost normal in some cities
| (according to articles I found). This might have been a
| precaution against something like that, considering the current
| political climate in the USA?
|
| https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
|
| Edited to add a reference and correct a detail
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It is not the USPS running this operation. It is the US postal
| inspection service, which is a legitimate law enforcement agency
| that mostly oversees crimes related to mail, but has long handled
| investigations into other types of crime including cybercrime,
| identity theft, and child exploitation. The title would make it
| seem like mail carriers are spending time looking at our social
| media accounts in the back of the local post office.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Weird, and scary.
|
| But maybe I can kind of see it. Here's a protest. Let's say it's
| Proud Boys, and Antifa shows up. And here's a mail carrier out
| trying to deliver the mail, who drives (or worse, walks) right
| into the middle of it. The Post Office might have a legitimate
| reason for wanting to know, so they can keep their on-duty
| employees from harm.
|
| Is that what's going on? Is that _all_ that 's going on? I don't
| know.
| shuntress wrote:
| You should try to re-word your comment so that it reads less
| like an _" I'm just asking questions"_ conspiracy theory.
| paxys wrote:
| It's possible for employees of every government agency and
| every private company to get caught up in the middle of a
| protest. Should they all start their own surveillance programs?
| Black101 wrote:
| > Is that what's going on? Is that all that's going on? I don't
| know.
|
| Doesn't sound like it. Maybe they are trying to shift money to
| surveillance with all the packages going around because of
| Covid (I.E: USPS trying to get rid of that "surplus")? Either
| way, it sounds crazy.
| sitkack wrote:
| This is a power grab by the USPS to inject themselves into the
| industrial surveillance complex.
|
| It most likely tries to tie a social media profile to a physical
| address and provides a pen register of all the mail sent and
| received by that citizen along with a collection of the
| "inflammatory opinions".
|
| It is unconstitutional and folks at the USPS and organizations
| they shared the data with should go to jail.
| ababoaoabaa wrote:
| Go to jail? Who is going to make them? You have a centralized
| compartmentalized military and society where one literally
| controls many. The top has been corrupted by over a hundred
| years of printing money out of thin air and the use of usury to
| control everything. Wake up and smell the new world order. It
| reeks.
| ska wrote:
| > to inject themselves into the industrial surveillance
| complex.
|
| Haven't they been de-facto participating for decades?
| pessimizer wrote:
| They were the earliest, really, searching mail first to find
| information about birth control being shared and pornography
| (Comstock Act, 1873), then sedition. I assume that all of the
| first precedents for mass surveillance and data collection
| come from the USPS.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
| Lyons4512 wrote:
| I must say you have written a great article. The way you have
| described everything is phenomenal
|
| https://www.expresshr.me/
| liminal wrote:
| Do others also find it strange that the postal service has their
| own police force?
| pixl97 wrote:
| No, they in fact have one of the oldest police forces in the
| US.
|
| Mail fraud and mail theft is a crime as old as mail.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| Less strange than the Department of Education having one.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/...
| fmakunbound wrote:
| Heh and here I was worried about my weed shipments from
| California. Would iCop be the same organization that enforces
| that kind of thing?
| [deleted]
| dqv wrote:
| Oh is that why so many people I don't know with no mutuals add me
| on Facebook? They're going to have to impersonate someone I know
| for that to work.
| saurik wrote:
| I feel like the key sentence in this article (edit: which is
| ironically no longer verbatim in this article, which I see hours
| later has been heavily expanded) which purports to answer the
| "but... why the USPS?"--is: > The agency told Yahoo News the
| Inspection Service collaborates with law-enforcement agencies to
| identify and assess threats to the Postal Service and its
| "overall mail processing and transportation network.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Now I'm worried they might find out that I've been using this
| newfangled technology called "email" for the past 25 years and
| I haven't licked a stamp in over a decade. Some say its only
| used for money laundering and drug dealing, but I think it's
| rather convenient and more innovative than what the government
| can offer.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| If only some other kind of mail had become popular to replace
| the lost letter volume...
| elliekelly wrote:
| Can you imagine if USPS ran an email service and all of the
| legal protections afforded to our mailboxes and the
| contents of our postal communications applied just the
| same? The internet would be a completely different place.
| In a good way, I think.
| throwaway99x99 wrote:
| Can you imagine if all of that was true except that it
| could be run by anyone? (Sadly, we have very little --
| almost zero -- legal protection for our email in the
| U.S.)
| comprambler wrote:
| Less awesome, but realistically USPS and their respective
| national organizations should run their DNS RBL lists.
| Protecting their nations against spam.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| If the USPS ran email, they would legalize spam and
| charge by the kilobyte.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Is spam illegal now?
| colonelxc wrote:
| It truly has been a long time for you, as you don't even need
| to lick stamps, they are sticky on their own.
| Taniwha wrote:
| oh, that may explain why I get them stuck on my tongue ...
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > which purports to answer the "but... why the USPS?"
|
| Yes, that's the burning question I took away from this article.
| robocat wrote:
| Perhaps it is a hack to route around federal laws - the USPS
| could have exceptions (or grandfathered laws) that give it
| more leeway than other departments?
| Kharvok wrote:
| Oh so this is why they were so concerned about the post office
| funding in 2020.
| slt2021 wrote:
| I work in cyber security ML engineering (open for interviews,
| hmu) and frequently see federal contractor firms hiring for cyber
| data/engineer positions for USPS. Always puzzled me.
|
| example:
| https://jobs.rtx.com/job/-/-/4679/4267185376?codes=INDEED
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I don't see why this is hard to understand.
|
| Nationwide logistics aren't simple. They have to evolve with
| the times to modernize/automate their operations and adapt to
| new, unknown cyber threats.
|
| The mail is quite important.
| ramoz wrote:
| chill https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-provides-u-s-
| posta...
|
| recent NVIDIA conference talks will detail some use cases.
|
| are you interested in federal contract jobs tho? hmu
| slt2021 wrote:
| thank you, but I dont think I qualify for federal due to
| visa.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What is cyber data?
| wil421 wrote:
| I've recently heard people use cyber to mean cyber security.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| My guess is that's it is data on or relating to computing
| devices rather than other data (for example, sales figures at
| a carpet store). I'm just guessing, though. It's a good
| question.
| seppin wrote:
| The Post Office is a tech company, etc.
| bigth wrote:
| I'm surprised by the comments here. People seem clueless to real
| threats the USPS faces and are puzzled why they have inspectors.
|
| Last year or maybe it was 2019 a delivery worker was murdered.
| Agg robberies of delivery workers has been going up. Breaking
| into mail boxes and mail theft has been going up. Using mail
| service to conduct fraud and other criminal transactions is going
| up. I'm on mobile so it's hard to get the links but just google
| it, not hard to find.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| If that's the case, surely it would be more appropriate for a
| law enforcement agency such as the FBI to investigate any
| crimes committed against postal workers. But we aren't even
| talking about crimes that were committed here - we're talking
| about crimes that _might_ be committed.
| bigth wrote:
| The postal inspection service is a law enforcement agency...?
| And it existed before the FBI. Moreover, all federal law
| enforcement trains at the same place in Georgia.
|
| Look: https://www.uspis.gov
|
| Matter of fact their website news section shows you some of
| the crazy crime they investigate. Theft of postal vehicle
| happened few days ago apparently.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm not surprised they have inspectors. I'm surprised they
| think that social media surveillance is within their purview.
|
| I hope their inspectors continue to investigate mail theft,
| mail fraud, and other things related to the physical delivery
| of mail. But I don't want them shifting into digital snooping
| that is totally unrelated to mail.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You do know mail fraud is commonly initiated by online
| groups, many times on social media, right?
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _The work involves having analysts trawl through social
| media sites to look for what the document describes as
| "inflammatory" postings and then sharing that information
| across government agencies.
|
| "Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service
| (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored
| significant activity regarding planned protests occurring
| internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021," says
| the March 16 government bulletin_
|
| Sounds like they're focused on issues other than mail
| fraud.
| bigth wrote:
| Not true at all, any gathering of people is a prime
| target for shipping contraband in the mail. Not to
| mention how the protests could affect mail service in the
| area.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > But I don't want them shifting into digital snooping that
| is totally unrelated to mail.
|
| I mean, the primary method for delivery of goods purchased on
| the Silk Road was through the USPS. And I imagine the tor
| sites that replaced the Silk Road have similar delivery
| needs.
|
| So if the USPS isn't going to "digitally snoop" for the
| illegal delivery of handguns and heroin, who will?
| seany wrote:
| Delivering guns as data is a thing now, I'm sure someone is
| working on heroin.
| oblib wrote:
| This is a tough issue for a government. We do have crazies out
| there and we do need to investigate potential dangerous groups
| and individuals and reel them in before they do something crazy.
|
| On my FB feed I have seen friends and friends of friends call for
| armed revolt many times over the past few years. Most all of them
| are blowing steam and many are in their 60s or older and couldn't
| run a block in gym shorts, and much less if they were carrying
| any kind of real military gear, but they like to think they can.
| We all grew up with "Rambo" movies.
|
| But some of those who's comments I've seen I don't know at all.
|
| The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that needs to
| be monitored. Most of those who went there were not armed or
| dangerous, but there were enough kooks to cause some real damage
| and lives were lost. And last year we had the guy who blew
| himself and his motorhome up on a Downtown street.
|
| If we had another "Timothy McVeigh" event people would be
| howling, and if we had several they'd be freaking out and
| demanding something be done.
|
| We all have good reason to be wary of "Big Brother" type
| surveillance but we also have to acknowledge that we have a
| problem with people getting crazy and shooting into crowds and
| blowing things up.
|
| There's not always a good solution to a shitty situation.
| 015a wrote:
| It doesn't need to be monitored. It needs to be deescalated.
| The left wants to believe its blameless, but there's a massive
| portion of America that, per their believe foundation,
| disagrees with the policies they are putting in place. We live
| in a Democracy; the only "right" way forward is the one we all
| agree with, and we can't agree on anything right now.
|
| I don't know how to deescalate it, but its beginning to feel
| like the most sensible solution is transferring significantly
| more resources and power to the States (which is precisely how
| our country was founded). Many states do, internally, have
| division, but broadly speaking California would be happier to
| run itself more independently of Donald Trump, as much as
| Mississippi would be happier to run itself more independently
| of Joe Biden.
|
| It doesn't feel like this is optional; some amount of
| fractionalization will happen, possibly in four years, possibly
| in fifty, but it is inevitable. The choice in front of us is to
| either, ease ourselves into it using the democratic framework
| we have in place by significantly reducing the power of the
| executive branch and transferring more tax-originating
| resources from the federal to state & country levels, or; some
| form of civil war.
|
| And, I beg you, don't form this idea of "civil war" in your
| mind to resemble the first one; it won't. For all the ugliness
| of our first Civil War, our second will be far uglier. One
| possibility may take the form of a second Trump-like presidency
| destroying the Federal faith of left-leaning states, causing
| the west coast to secede. Another; domestic terrorism, cyber
| warfare, untraceable and unstoppable flash attacks on critical
| infrastructure such as electricity and water, splinter military
| groups.
|
| As left-leaning as I may be, we can't come out of the Trump
| presidency and Biden election thinking all of this is over. We
| can't ban Parler from AWS then wash our hands clean and say its
| a job well done. This rage is real, its everywhere, and there
| are four hundred million guns owned by civilians in America
| [1]. Gun control? A fairy tale. Suppression of dissenting
| speech? Someone didn't read 1984, or the Constitution. The only
| solution is to fractionalize; if people feel anger at the
| President, the solution isn't to install a new President, it's
| to make the position of the President one that isn't worthy of
| Anger.
|
| The scariest part about our future as a country lies in the
| reality that this will never happen. We are driving full speed
| toward a civil war, or worse, and the immutable system we've
| built won't allow us to do what is necessary to avoid it.
|
| [1] https://wamu.org/story/20/09/18/how-many-people-in-the-u-
| s-o...
| rocqua wrote:
| > there's a massive portion of America that, per their
| believe foundation, disagrees with the policies they are
| putting in place. We live in a Democracy; the only "right"
| way forward is the one we all agree with, and we can't agree
| on anything right now.
|
| I mostly agree. Especially that the speed with which
| progressive policies have been adapted has alienated a lot of
| people. The same has happened with conservatives trying to
| roll back some of these policies alienating the progressives.
| This has weakened faith in democracy, which is rather bad.
|
| My conclusion is that broad consensus and middle ground needs
| to be found. This requires having debate that has some good-
| faith. And requires some amount of empathy for the opposing
| side. How America could get back to that is hard.
|
| I am not sure whether more state-authority would help that
| much. These fundamental disagreements also exists within
| states, and both sides care a lot about people outside their
| state. Democrats in California would not accept banning
| abortion in Arkansas. Nor would republicans in Texas be happy
| if Oregon bans firearm ownership. In fact, I fear that either
| case happening would only drive the polarization.
|
| It would let either party vilify and generalize their
| opponents based on the in their view horrible things done by
| those parties in their states.
| oblib wrote:
| >> It doesn't need to be monitored. It needs to be
| deescalated.
|
| I used "monitored" as verb to point out we need to be aware
| of who is plotting extreme violent events like the one
| Timothy McVeigh planned and executed and prevent them
| whenever possible in order to deescalate a trend towards
| others carrying out similar events.
|
| "Q" is a thing, and we've seen quite a few citizens fall for
| it. That's a problem that any government could come up
| against and it is the government's duty to protect it's
| citizens.
| frabbit wrote:
| _The ordeal at our Capital proves there 's a problem that needs
| to be monitored._
|
| They were monitored. To the extent that the lead of the Proud
| Boys was actually supplying intel to the feds and the Status
| Coup youtube channel (which I think was taken off line for some
| Kafkaesque reason) was recording various pro-Trump people in
| public calling for such actions.
|
| More monitoring is not needed. Monitoring did nothing to stop
| the 9-11 Saudi allies from carrying out their mission. The only
| thing monitoring does is to make people fear to express their
| thoughts online in case they get into trouble.
| TheBlight wrote:
| FWIW, the protestors at the capitol didn't kill anyone.
| throwaway99x99 wrote:
| Why was this downvoted? It's completely factual. Officer
| Sicknick passed away from natural causes (the narrative that
| his head was bashed in with a fire extinguisher evaporated a
| couple of days ago[0]). Two of the protesters had heart
| attacks and one apparently had a meth overdose. The only
| person who was killed was shot by police. If you have
| evidence to the contrary, please cite it.
|
| 0. https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/apr/20/update-
| capito...
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Most people may not have heard, or don't want to hear, that
| the narrative collapsed.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| This is a dumb argument because they were at least trying to
| IMPLEMENT A COUP. It seems pretty clear to me that they would
| have assaulted and killed representatives if they would have
| gotten the chance which they very nearly did.
|
| Also, don't call them "protestors". The nicest term I can
| think of for them would be rebels since they were in open
| rebellion to the United States. Some people at the capital
| that day were protestors, but the people who stormed the
| capital went far beyond protest.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Back in the day, my grandparents told me people get killed
| at rock concerts if they get caught in the moshpit.
|
| This reads at a similar level of credebility. Compate the
| footage from the capitol with footage of Ukrain protests
| back in the day.
| concordDance wrote:
| I think it's worth bearing in mind a few things:
|
| 1. Coups don't have to be violent.
|
| 2. The hypothetical coupers would not have believed it to
| be a coup, merely reinstating the rightful president.
|
| 3. Those invading the capitol were likely mostly just doing
| because they could rather than because they had a concrete
| plan on what they'd do if they found Pence and the
| representatives. I expect the vast vast majority would have
| done nothing more than shout slogans.
|
| 4. In general, when it comes to ones Outgroups there's a
| strong tendency to assume the worst at every opportunity.
| You might want to work to counteract that tendency (if only
| so you can better understand said Outgroup).
| TheBlight wrote:
| Funny "coup" where none of the plotters were armed.
| Thorrez wrote:
| > 17 charged with weapons crimes
|
| > These include people arrested outside the Capitol
| grounds with weapons like guns and Molotov cocktails
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/us/capitol
| -ar...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, not really. Quite a few successful coups have been
| essentially bloodless and relied on a combination of
| surprise and bluff. Napoleon's actual seizure of power
| was disorganized to put it mildly:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire
|
| Also, there are charges pending against people who had a
| stash of firearms in a hotel in Virginia, just across the
| Potomac, and planned to bring them over at a later stage.
| Firearms are largely banned in DC so the idea was to take
| over the Congress first and then establish a defensive
| perimeter.
|
| Now, I didn't say it was a good plan.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Does incompetence and failure bear on intent? I don't
| think that usually flies in court.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Is it remotely plausible to believe a group of unarmed
| protestors were seriously attempting to gain control over
| the most powerful superpower the world has ever seen with
| their barehands? This narrative strains credulity,
| counselor.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That does seem to be the intent they announced.
| unishark wrote:
| It's plausible that it's what some people were personally
| thinking (or a better word might be "LARPing"). But for
| the reasons you point out, it's not realistic to suggest
| that the loftiness of the goal implies the danger was
| historically-serious, or requiring some kind of
| revolutionary increase of law enforcement (beyond
| handling protests at the capital more wisely next time).
| getlawgdon wrote:
| Person you're replying to didn't say that the protesters
| killed anyone directly.They said "lives were lost." But it is
| obviously highly probable that those death occurred due to
| their activities.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| As far as I know, the only person that actually killed anyone
| was the Secret Service agent that shot Ashley Babbit.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They probably would have if they got their hands on people
| and they also beat several cops which could have potentially
| killed them. They were definitely out to hurt people and take
| over Congress.
| concordDance wrote:
| > They probably would have if they got their hands on
| people
|
| You cannot know this. You should be suspicious of thoughts
| that say your Outgroup is worse than what you have concrete
| evidence for. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing.
| colllectorof wrote:
| _> The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that
| needs to be monitored._
|
| Unlike, say, nightly riots in Portland, that require neither
| monitoring nor federal response of any kind?
|
| It would be one thing if posts like the one above honestly
| argued for some necessary level of general surveillance in good
| faith. It's entirely different story, however, when they
| sneakily imply a certain set of hyper-partisan assumptions.
|
| If you can't demonstrate to me that surveillance of social
| media is politically neutral and aims at preventing harm,
| rather than suppressing speech through harassment, I'd rather
| have no surveillance of that kind at all.
|
| Edit:
|
| It's bizarre that despite all these "concerns" about social
| media there is no investigation (that I know of) into the
| origins of the whole QAnon degeneracy.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Out of curiosity. Why do _you_ think that people disliking and
| even hating their government is necessarily a bad thing? Or is
| it only _expressing_ that feeling that you have a problem with?
| oblib wrote:
| I think it's obviously a bad thing when they express their
| hate by murdering random and innocent victims. When and
| wherever that line is crossed it is a bad thing. There are no
| exceptions to that.
| f430 wrote:
| USPS is the new DEA
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-23 23:02 UTC)