[HN Gopher] The FBI tried to ambush my source
___________________________________________________________________
The FBI tried to ambush my source
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 226 points
Date : 2022-06-04 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| hhh wrote:
| http://archive.today/v1271
| robonerd wrote:
| > _[the lawyer] told me that he was sometimes involved in
| international arms deals. [...] The lawyer seemed to be an
| adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side
| of international intelligence. [...] While the FBI knows who the
| lawyer is, I will not name him, even though he betrayed me.)_
|
| Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave
| warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and the story
| unresolved without knowing who it was.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Why protect this asshole?
|
| Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources
| needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes
| to constitute "betrayal" in the future.
|
| Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic
| signalling to future sources.
| natch wrote:
| > Because future sources need to trust you.
|
| Makes sense in principle, but who would ever trust James
| Risen after his reporting on Wen Ho Lee?
|
| I mean let's see, Taiwanese person is going to spy for
| mainland China? Really? And the evidence for this is that
| blueprints not available to the suspect, generated well
| downstream from where the suspect works or has access, are
| leaked to China... Right, let's sensationalize some bs
| theories in the NYT even though there is nothing there, at
| the expense of a man who, oh well, is Taiwanese, so who
| cares? Not James Risen.
| robonerd wrote:
| You'd trust this guy?! He has spooks crawling all over him.
| This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source,
| and the journalist won't even name that lawyer. An
| NSA/TLA/etc leaker would need a death wish to approach this
| journalist now, having read this story.
| lapcat wrote:
| > This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's
| source
|
| The lawyer _introduced_ the journalist to the source. So at
| the very least, the source seems to have trusted the lawyer
| too.
|
| It also sounds like the lawyer provided the journalist with
| the audio recordings of phone calls about the ambush.
| robonerd wrote:
| The source coming from and trusting the lawyer doesn't
| change the fact that the lawyer was informing to the FBI
| and was an associate to this journalist.
|
| > _Eventually, he confessed to me that the FBI had been
| waiting in Bruges to trap my source. He said that the FBI
| knew about the meeting because he had told them about it,
| and that he had also told the FBI that the source wanted
| to provide me with NSA documents. He admitted that he had
| been informing on me._
|
| The journalist has spooks all over him. Whatever you
| think of the journalist's intentions, you'd have to be a
| complete fool to get near him. At least he's been honest
| about this much, so future leakers will be forewarned.
| lapcat wrote:
| > The journalist has spooks all over him.
|
| Not sure what this is supposed to mean exactly. It's
| pretty much a given that if you're reporting on national
| security, the government has its eyes on you.
|
| "In January 2014 -- just as the FBI was planning its
| ambush operation -- the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to
| hear arguments over my subpoena in the leak case
| involving the mismanaged CIA program. At the time, I was
| facing the possibility of going to prison for refusing to
| reveal my sources if the Supreme Court did not rule in my
| favor."
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chatmasta wrote:
| _In Bruges_ is a fantastic film, one of my favorites as well, and
| makes for a poignant backdrop to this story, wherein the reporter
| unknowingly manifests its plot from his semi-ironic suggestion of
| meeting there. The imagery of the FBI guys waiting around in
| Bruges is just too perfect. Life imitates art.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I was about to say that, but you beat me to it.
|
| > The FBI team in Bruges waited and waited, according to the
| lawyer, frustrated and in vain.
| gilleain wrote:
| Hopefully they got to see the swans. Like a fairytale, really.
|
| More seriously, what appeals to me about films like that is how
| 'real life' crime (as far as I can know) is not like a
| glamourised action movie. It is more haphazard, and contingent
| on personal decisions and people's character flaws.
|
| For me, the line 'I am sorry I called you an inanimate object.
| I was upset' is more real than any number of Godfather movies.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| _As I prepared to travel to Bruges, I tried to take a few
| precautions to avoid detection. I planned to fly from
| Washington to Paris, then pay cash for a train ticket to
| Bruges. I hoped that would reduce the digital evidence of my
| travel._
|
| I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly
| into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet
| the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys
| to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still
| get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and
| all that.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left
| with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the
| years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in
| resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter
| Biden laptop story. [1]
|
| Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex
| CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he
| says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover
| for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but
| even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer
| frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started
| informing on him, but an educated guess would say he _always
| was_! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first
| place? (source didn 't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do
| even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this
| story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!)
|
| Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI.
| Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke
| at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be
| considered useless as journalist.
|
| For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it
| started and he was always raked across the coals in the now
| disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he
| came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a
| shadow of it's former self.
|
| 1. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-
| bide...
| [deleted]
| ratsmack wrote:
| The corruption is deep and wide within our government (deep
| state?) and it doesn't matter which political faction is in
| power. The attack on the dissemination of information and
| transparency seems to be accelerating every day. It's almost as
| if there is something to hide... as if the only way to maintain a
| position of power is to obfuscate, lie and and deflect at every
| point a question is asked.
| [deleted]
| tgv wrote:
| The piece is pretty vacuous. It lacks so much information, it
| reads as a made-up story. Does anybody know what documents he's
| talking about?
| tootie wrote:
| It's surprising to see Risen write for The Intercept but
| honestly this piece would probably not get printed by NYT. It's
| definitely an incomplete story without any conclusive proof of
| who did what or why and is something of a personal narrative. I
| guess Risen just wanted this on the record somewhere since
| people were telling their side of the story elsewhere.
| lapcat wrote:
| Risen said the NYT killed his story about the CIA, which was
| later published in his book and caused the Obama
| administration to subpoena him for his sources.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| He admits himself there may have never been documents.
|
| I don't think it reads as made up, but it really does seem like
| there's not really anything there.
|
| A meeting that did not happen with someone that may or may not
| have had something....
| [deleted]
| trhway wrote:
| > Later, he split his time between the United States and Europe;
| he told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms
| deals.
|
| >The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had
| found a home on the dark side of international intelligence.
|
| one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service.
|
| >the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious
| that it had been put in writing
|
| beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own
| bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was
| previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the
| broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA
| illegal spying ..." or something like that :)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is a fascinating read.
|
| Still, I am not sure if it is a good sign that the story
| presented, if true, seems more intriguing than average
| "Blacklist" episode. I would normally default to blaming X ( in
| this case Holder, Pompeo and Trump as they are named in the story
| ), but the reality is those are just people, who just happened to
| use that power.
|
| The issue is that unchecked power apparently will exist until a
| truly unscrupulous man uses it to his advantage ( if that did not
| happen already ).
| crayboff wrote:
| As much as I enjoy blaming the Trump administration, this story
| didn't actually name Trump/Holder/Pompeo. This all happened
| under Obama's admin with Comey
|
| Your point still stands though regardless
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is possible that I was not sufficiently clear with the way
| I phrased it; I apologize for that. The story of this
| particular case technically does not involve Trump or Pompeo.
|
| The linked article, however, does list the following
| paragraph:
|
| "The Trump administration went to even greater extremes than
| its predecessor to target the press. In 2017, then-CIA
| Director Mike Pompeo reportedly considered kidnapping
| WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who at the time was living
| in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Yahoo News reported last
| September that former President Donald Trump even raised the
| possibility of assassinating Assange. Pompeo was reportedly
| obsessed with targeting Assange after a massive leak of CIA
| hacking tools, known as Vault 7. WikiLeaks published Vault 7
| documents in 2017, revealing that the CIA had the ability to
| hack the computer systems built into a wide range of consumer
| products, including cars, televisions, and home appliances.
| In April 2017, Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a "hostile
| intelligence service.""
| crayboff wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification, I interpreted your original
| post as referring to the story and not the side note about
| Assange.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _" whole" story_
|
| There doesn't seem to be any reason to credit any particular
| novel detail in this... whatever this is. The details already
| related in Schmidt's book could be believed, I guess, but
| basically just amount to "FBI boondoggle to Europe". Wow that's
| news. We're not told who the go-between was, who the various
| parties in Belgium were, anything at all about why anyone
| believed "the source" was worth thinking about or even existed.
|
| It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is
| the only name mentioned. [EDIT: removed dumb question] At the
| time he may have been an FBI agent, though he also appears to be
| a documentary filmmaker and lawyer. DDG seems to believe he is
| associated with various IMDB entries, but that association has
| been deleted from IMDB. Risen's relationship with FBI is not as
| adversarial as portrayed here. No matter how he deflects, it
| seems unlikely to distract from the poor publicity FBI have
| recently. One suspects the real news, which if anything about
| this is true we'll learn years from now, is the identity of the
| go-between.
| lapcat wrote:
| > It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his
| is the only name mentioned. Are we sure he was an FBI agent?
|
| There's a reference to court testimony by FBI agent Grayden
| Ridd in this 2013 story about Robert McFarlane (of Iran-Contra
| infamy). https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-
| sudan/index.html
|
| (I somehow didn't see in the news that McFarlane died last
| month.)
| jessaustin wrote:
| Good catch!
| nullc wrote:
| I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist
| and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty
| much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually
| full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved
| to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he
| frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie
| my ass off every day'".
|
| From personal experience being targeted with harassment and
| vexatious litigation by a fantasist conman, many of his victims
| and enablers will sometimes admit he often lies or 'exaggerates',
| but the reality is that he virtually always lies, that his
| documents are either completely uninteresting but misrepresented
| or interesting but obvious forgeries. When confronted with
| irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make
| excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept
| that it's just another example out of thousands. Risen's
| description-- including features like the corrupted USB stick--
| resonate for me.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'm also confused how the lawyer was the person who introduced
| the source to the journo, but the FBI can't press the lawyer
| directly to find out who the source was? Is the idea that the
| lawyer just connected a completely random anonymous person with
| his journo friend?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Talking to a reporter isn't a crime, and having talked to a
| reporter isn't enough to get a search warrant.
|
| The FBI could have known who the source was, confirmed that
| he would have access to the kind of data being discussed, but
| couldn't show he had taken classified information so needed
| to catch him in possession of illegal documents to arrest
| him.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a
| fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories.
|
| Except that Risen said he already met the source. The ambush
| was for their follow-up meeting.
| nullc wrote:
| I saw that he said "met" but was the "met" online? I had been
| leaning towards assuming it was.
|
| If they'd met in person why were they traveling to a far off
| country?
| guerrilla wrote:
| > When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his
| victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few
| time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example
| out of thousands.
|
| People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop
| stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| FBI tried to ambush a suspected criminal*
|
| I don't understand the controversy.
| lapcat wrote:
| FBI tried to ambush a whistleblower. You can say that
| whistleblowing is a crime, but what if the whistleblower has
| evidence of even greater crimes being committed? That makes the
| ambush a cover-up.
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > but what if
|
| That's kind of the issue though. We don't in fact know what
| the source really had. Was it legal or illegal? Who knows?
| lapcat wrote:
| Well, the reporter claims to have audio recordings of plans
| for the ambush (presumably, recordings reviewed by the
| reporter's editors at least), and the FBI apparently
| considered it important enough to send a whole big team to
| Belgium. Who knows if the source had anything, but it seems
| the FBI was very worried.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree with that - that it seemed to motivate the FBI.
| At the same time, we all know the FBI has been wrong
| before though, so I remain unconvinced that their urgency
| reflects the truthfulness of the claim.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There are legal whistleblowing avenues and protections.
| Nowhere does it say to give classified material to the press.
|
| Maybe they tried that already and the reporter was a last
| resort. That's still a criminal act and it's the FBI's job to
| go after these things.
|
| I just don't see what the big deal is.
| ajross wrote:
| I'm not really understanding what the newsworthy bits here are.
| There's an implication that this source had some kind of huge
| trove of data, but the reporter never got it and that's not what
| the story is about.
|
| Instead, this story alleges: (1) the reporter planned to meet
| with a source to get a classified leak, (2) the FBI got wind of
| it, and (3) they planned what amounts to a sting operation (I
| guess, it's complicated because this was in France) to catch the
| leaker.
|
| That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly
| illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
|
| Beyond that there's some juicy details about the lawyer who
| originally ratted on the source and then got cold feet and warned
| the reporter. And that's interesting.
|
| But... there's no government abuse angle here, not without
| knowing the contents of that leak that didn't happen.
| [deleted]
| zionic wrote:
| > That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly
| illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
|
| I'm not sure this is true, considering the programs in the
| "leak" might themselves be illegal.
|
| The problem with your position is it allows the following loop:
|
| Government makes it illegal to report government crime, then
| government commits crime.
|
| You can't report the crime without breaking the law, so the
| government effectively is bound by no law. How do you break
| this cycle?
|
| The only solution is to have it such that reporting a crime
| cannot itself be a crime, classification or otherwise.
| tobiasSoftware wrote:
| My understanding is that the legal system figured out a
| compromise for this type of issue during the Nixon trials. A
| leaker who signed NDAs and clearance forms and doesn't go
| through the proper whistleblowing channels (possibly for good
| reasons) is still legally on the hook. However, the
| compromise is that the people they leak to are legally in the
| clear, which would (theoretically) prevent the government
| using security to silence the free press.
| jameshart wrote:
| In _theory_ a person who believes that the NSA is engaged in
| illegal activity can, rather than laking classified
| information to the press, take evidence of the wrongdoing _to
| the FBI_. Inspectors General are also a thing. They can also
| go to their congresspeople.
|
| In theory.
|
| That someone has to resort to leaking to the press to achieve
| accountability is a bug in the system, it's not _how things
| are meant to work_.
| pierrebai wrote:
| The press and government are two distinct powers. All that
| you listed, FBI, attorney, Congress, are all part of the
| government, which is the one which controls and directs
| what the NSA does.
|
| Leaking to the press is not a bug. Seeking maximum distance
| from what you denounce is sane. You have the same problems
| in the private sector, where you are directed to voice your
| complain to HR.
|
| Secrecy is a poison.
| devman0 wrote:
| There are legal avenues for whistleblowing through IGs and/or
| Congress.
|
| You can't write a law that gives journalists special access
| to classified information and giving them arbitrary
| information is ok, how would that even work? (That's without
| getting in to the complications of defining 'journalist').
|
| If you wanted to argue that leaking information of illegal
| government activity in certain circumstances is an
| affirmative defense I could possibly get behind that, the
| devil would be in the details.
| lapcat wrote:
| > There are legal avenues for whistleblowing through IGs
| and/or Congress.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal
|
| In this case the legal avenues were followed, yet the
| Director of National Intelligence decided not to inform
| Congress of the whistleblower report, despite being legally
| required. The administration could have squelched the
| report if Michael Atkinson hadn't informed Congress
| himself, and of course Atkinson was later fired by the
| President.
|
| Why should a whistleblower trust the very administration
| they're ratting out?
| Teever wrote:
| if those legal avenues are implemented/neutered by the same
| people who implement the illegal programs for the purpose
| of mitigatingthe actions of whistleblowers can you really
| say that theyre legal avenues?
|
| what would you do in this situation?
| rzz3 wrote:
| Is there evidence of such avenues being effective,
| specially within the US Intelligence Community? I can't
| find any.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| No, Bruges is in Belgium
| eli wrote:
| Must a story break new ground and change our understanding of
| things to be interesting and worth reading?
| alaricus wrote:
| lapcat wrote:
| > That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly
| illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
|
| Ask yourself if the FBI is investigating the NSA. Did the FBI
| investigate the NSA before Snowden? You can enforce the law
| very selectively, prosecuting whistleblowers who are trying to
| reveal evidence of crimes committed by the government itself.
| slim wrote:
| Whistleblower POV : Reporter chose a strange meeting place in a
| strange town in a strange country in europe. When I got there it
| was full of FBI agents, so I walked away. Reporter set me up and
| then made up a story about a lawyer.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The Intercept has burned sources before (Reality Winner and
| maybe others), so I don't see why any actual whistleblower
| would trust them at this point.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Especially after what The Intercept did to its founder.
| slim wrote:
| Reporter was working for New York Times a the time. I suppose
| New York Times also burned sources, so your argument is still
| valid.
| zionic wrote:
| It's saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse
| from the department of "justice", FBI, and NSA.
|
| I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand
| that you're working for the wrong side.
|
| Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it
| doesn't matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very
| existence is antithetical to a free and open society.
|
| Edit: To expound upon this further, I believe it's a
| fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security.
| We can debate where those lines are all day, but the heuristic
| should always favor freedom/lack of control over totalitarian
| surveillance. This unfortunately means that some bad things are
| effectively "allowed" to happen, because the trade off required
| to eliminate them is too severe.
|
| Edit 2: I can't reply to any of you anymore due to the rate limit
| soft ban. I wish you all well. I'll try and reply later.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| The FBI has been an enemy of the people since its creation.
| Throughout its history it has wholesale spied on the public,
| collected dirt on political opponents and has been used to
| discredit dissidents. This agency is used solely to protect
| power. Their stated mission is ancillary to the true purpose.
|
| With a history like that the whole agency should be disbanded.
| But, power will find another way to legally spy on opponents.
| Before the FBI it was secret service agents that were loaned
| out for that kind of work.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I generally agree with your statement, but there is an
| additional function of agencies like the FBI (no, it's not to
| do with their PR campaigns on catching serial killers and
| child abuse rings).
|
| It's best explained by looking at the behavior of the US
| pharmaceutical corporations relative to outfits like Mexican
| and South American drug cartels. Both engage in the same
| business: selling drugs to consumers, but one is extremely
| violent, one is not. Most of the violence in the illegal drug
| trade is cartel-on-cartel violence, with a fair amount of
| innocent bystanders. Imagine if say, Purdue Pharma or Gilead
| were conducting armed raids on each other production lines,
| hijacking each others shipments, etc. Similarly, what if a
| mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson were to abscond with
| millions of dollars in product and set up a rival operation?
|
| These corporations are all ultimately owned by Wall Street
| investors, by and large. This is who the FBI is there to
| serve and protect, a lot of people misunderstand that. They
| prevent such shenanigans as the drug cartels get up to
| (wholesale murder I mean) by investigating internal corporate
| crimes of that nature. Otherwise, the CEOs would be hiring
| private security (like cartel enforcers) to crack down on
| such things, in a extrajudicial process. The FBI also covers
| for the crimes of the mighty and powerful, too - HSBC
| laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa cartel drug money comes to
| mind, and then future FBI Director James Comey went to
| 'advise' them. No criminal charges were brought.
|
| If we look at Wall Street as a kind of white-collar organized
| crime ring, the FBI is basically their enforcement arm. This
| is why so many top top-level FBI types 'retire' to lucrative
| positions in Wall Street firms, as Mueller did. It's a rather
| telling trend.
|
| I suppose the kind of political operations they get up to are
| also in service of this general agenda, i.e. going after
| politicians who threaten Wall Street interests, covering up
| certain outrageous crimes that would reflect badly on the
| pillars of society, and so on. Overall, rather similar in
| function to the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo (and
| later, STASI), although not quite as powerful (they still can
| be embarrassed in legal proceedings, see the Steven Hatfill
| case, the Leonard Peltier case, etc.).
|
| So, they serve a particular function for their Wall Street
| masters, but it's a pretty sleazy world they live in, and
| nobody should trust them anymore than you'd trust some STASI
| operative.
| mlindner wrote:
| The government as a whole is the enemy of the people. It's
| why the founders put in place provisions to protect the
| people from the government (protections which the people over
| the centuries have kept removing).
| missedthecue wrote:
| What do you mean "tolerate". There was massive societal
| backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's
| not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can
| unilaterally shut down a government agency.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the
| Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry
| people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a
| government agency.
|
| Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision
| was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction
| proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases
| that don't attract as much of a visocus response end with the
| cops getting away with gunning people down who we're even
| criminals
| missedthecue wrote:
| Convicting an unpopular guy is easy. Shutting down a
| government institution is not. Even Obama failed to shut
| down Gitmo, despite being the most powerful person in the
| country for 10 years.
| Volundr wrote:
| Did he try? I always counted it among many broken
| promises never even attempted.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It was the first thing he tried, and he was blocked by
| Congress who refused to fund the shutdown operation.
| ncmncm wrote:
| That looked to me like providing cover for not
| performing.
|
| All the evidence suggests Obama was Their Man from the
| beginning. (E.g. expanding "death from the sky" program
| -- even against a US citizen and his children,
| weaponizing Espionage Act against reporters &
| whistleblowers.) Most interesting to me is how They
| arranged to get him a Nobel Peace prize for nothing.
| (They got one for Kissinger, too!)
| mistermann wrote:
| Tolerate: allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of
| (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with)
| _without interference_.
| My70thaccount wrote:
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ok but those agencies look for enemies, and you have just made
| yourself one, and anyone else that agrees with you essentially,
| by the conflict "us or them" language.
|
| Real reform has many avenues, but none of those include
| becoming like your own enemy, and vilifying the job. I am not a
| fan and not making excuses, but the wording here is impossible
| to agree with, except to start some kind of riot?
| zionic wrote:
| > but the wording here is impossible to agree with
|
| Why? You haven't disagreed with my argument, only argued
| instead that winning against them is impossible so our only
| path is to submit and hope for incremental improvements by
| submitting extra hard.
|
| These agencies only exist and operate (in theory) with the
| consent of the governed. In reality almost no one consents to
| this, so these agencies rely on mass apathy and ignorance. If
| we talk about what they've done wrong, and how they actively
| harm America a few things happen:
|
| 1) it becomes less socially acceptable to work for them, and
| they struggle to attract talent
|
| 2) it becomes more politically feasible to argue for their
| removal
|
| The us-vs-them language is a feature, not a bug. People in
| large groups are (mostly) incapable of being both passionate
| and nuanced on the same subject. So sure, bringing up the
| children murdered by FBI and ATF at Waco doesn't directly
| relate to ending mass illegal surveillance but it does help
| achieve the goal.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > only argued instead that winning against them is
| impossible so our only path is to submit
|
| that is most definitely not what I said at all
| donthellbanme wrote:
| [deleted]
| markovbot wrote:
| > It's saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of
| abuse from the department of "justice", FBI, and NSA.
|
| what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful
| recourse against the myriad of government abuses.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| We have the courts, the threat of which forced the government
| to make the only illegal program in Snowden's leaks legal. We
| have the ballot box, which elected Obama, who shut down email
| metadata surveillance even before it leaked.
| krapp wrote:
| Also that Second Amendment we all have to pay for with our
| childrens' blood in perpetuity. That's supposed to be the
| only thing keeping our government from slipping into
| tyranny. Despite all the tyranny our government has
| apparently slipped into.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think if a well organized and coordinated initiative began
| where people talked about it in a skillful manner, and
| documented the outcomes of those conversations, something
| could come out of that.
|
| Unorganized, uncoordinated complaining on various internet
| forums, it seems not much comes out of this.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I believe it's a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer
| freedom over security
|
| Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing
| with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely
| bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things
| to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once
| thought possible.
| zionic wrote:
| Are you not convinced this is correct, or not convinced it's
| an American viewpoint?
|
| You could argue you disagree with the concept, but I don't
| think you could honestly argue it's not a traditionally
| American position.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I suppose I'm not even sure it is an American position. If
| it ever was, I don't think it is now, or has been for
| several generations. We're not farmers or fur traders
| anymore -- we have complex and large societies.
|
| Honestly I think trying to suggest _anything_ is "an
| American viewpoint" dismisses too much nuance. We're
| neither all cut from the same cloth nor are our origins
| similar.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| as a many-generation American, I believe that the great
| compromise here was to find some balance, where strong law-
| and-order can exist, and free-as-in-freedom can also exist..
| There is no scenario, I think, where either side does not
| fail and suffer from their own excesses over time.. so the
| trick is to address that as the parade continues.. Yes, we do
| remember Watergate.
| rzz3 wrote:
| Or perhaps you're just getting older, and your income level
| is rising, and you don't operate near any edges of the bounds
| of the law. Due to your perspective, freedom may have become
| less important that security.
|
| Of course there is always a balance to be found, and
| everyone's perspective is different, but personally I'm a 1
| or a 2 in the `freedom |----------| safety` scale.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I don't think I follow your point about income level. At
| first blush it sounds like you are suggesting the poor care
| more about freedom (or have more to fear from the
| FBI/CIA?).
|
| I am personally not worried about my own safety at all. Or
| maybe it's more fair to say that I worry no more about my
| safety than anyone would living under the nuclear sword of
| Damocles (never mind an environment out of kilter) -- or
| that I worry no more about my safety than I would about any
| other's safety.
|
| If I am older I suspect it has given me the perspective to
| see that we live in a time when people can do horrendous
| things on a scale where thousands die in a single evil
| event and that we should not accept this as a society -- we
| should not hold instead to some hard-line idealism of
| requiring everything to be free and open.
|
| Again, I am not personally afraid of being the target of
| some sort of random act of terror, nor am I naive to think
| that a secretive government organization given a blank
| check could completely eliminate such a threat. But when
| something horrible happens again, if our leaders were
| asleep at the wheel and did nothing, we could be well
| expected to be also enraged with them, to have expected
| more from them.
|
| I don't think I even agree with your continuum of "freedom
| <-> safety". We're never truly "safe". To allow for bad
| actors to do harm is more an affront to _justice_ if you
| ask me.
| tonguez wrote:
| "I don't think I follow your point about income level"
|
| it makes sense when you consider that TLAs basic function
| is to preserve the status quo for wall street. we subvert
| democracy overseas to preserve corporate profits and have
| been doing so for many generations a la United Fruit
| Company, selling weapons to saudi arabia, etc.
| Zariel wrote:
| Not far off Burn After Reading
| [deleted]
| zarriak wrote:
| It is crazy to think that such little progress was made after
| Snowden that it is not even slightly off to think that even
| Snowden didn't depict the true vastness of the power of the NSA.
| the_only_law wrote:
| The stuff 3-letter agencies have gotten away with over the last
| century is insane. The NSA is a popular one to talk about now
| for good reasons but another one that always leaves me feeling
| angry is MKUltra and how the CIA basically tortured US citizens
| for science, Richard Helms destroyed evidence and died a free
| man. And we just seem to look back at it say "yeah these were
| bad people" and let it happen again.
|
| In the end the only people being held responsible for anything
| seem to be the people who warn us and let us know.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The biggest lie about MK-ULTRA is that it ended.
|
| Second biggest is what it was about.
|
| It was a PSY-OP against the US public. The stories, about
| e.g. spying via ESP, were false. They are still believed by
| most who have heard of the code name and supposed
| investigation. So, a successful operation against us.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard
| Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side.
| They are on their own side.
|
| I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working
| Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country.
| Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
| tootie wrote:
| If I'm reading the story correctly the villain is that lawyer
| who seemingly mislead everybody. The DOJ sought to prevent the
| loss of classified information which may or may not have ever
| existed related to spying programs that may or may not have
| ever existed. That's well within their responsibilities even if
| they were being overzealous.
|
| I've never been one to put full trust in any politicians or
| bureaucracy but the balance of value is still overwhelmingly
| towards democrats. The odd botched investigation is a small
| price for supporting democracy, human rights and climate
| justice.
| zionic wrote:
| > The DOJ sought to prevent the loss of classified
| information which may or may not have ever existed related to
| spying programs that may or may not have ever existed. That's
| well within their responsibilities
|
| Really? Wouldn't most people think a Department of Justice
| should be actively hunting down and prosecuting those who
| illegally spy on US Citizens?
|
| I mean they're supposed to work for us, uphold our laws and
| constitution etc. If employees of executive branch agencies
| conspire to defraud citizens of the United States of their
| most basic rights (4th amendment?) isn't that a crime they
| should be pursuing?
|
| Instead they seem far more interested in suppressing evidence
| of the crime.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| There is no evidence in this story that anybody was
| illegally spying on US citizens. The FBI had a court order
| to allow this operation.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I think deep down, many people in those camps realize it, but
| it's a _very_ tough pill to swallow. Particularly if one is not
| equipped to mentally handle the hard emotions. These
| realizations amplify that feeling of helplessness.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Exactly, we aren't talking about the ways these parties are
| different, we're fully aware of that, we are talking about the
| ways these parties are the same. When we say "both sides" or
| "both sides are the same" we are talking about the ways in
| which they are the same, and that these ways are problematic
| and bothersome.
|
| Its as valid of a stance, for an individual, as a different
| individual choosing to privilege a way in which one party is
| different.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Why else do you think career politicians from across the
| spectrum, from liberal Gavin Newsom to conservative Ron
| DeSantis, have worked hard to explicitly block ranked choice
| voting reforms? Not just voice their opinions against it, but
| proactively halt and override legislative reforms when they
| happen.
|
| The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and
| inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of
| political involvement.
|
| "It's a big club, and you're not in it." -- George Carlin
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Single-winner ranked ballots methods are reform theater; they
| aren't particularly "more fair and inclusive" that FPTP in
| general, and the particular method called "Ranked Choice
| Voting", "Alternative Vote", or "Instant Runoff Voting" in
| particular is only minimally different in structure and
| effect from majority-runoff.
|
| Established elites make a show of opposing IRV/AV/RCV because
| centering the debate on that focusses attention there rather
| than on real reform, which requires systems that produce
| proportional results.
| toma_caliente wrote:
| This statement seems to be in conflict with everything I've
| read about ranked choice voting. If I can put my preferred
| independent candidate as rank 1 and a safe choice at rank 2
| then this is objectively better than just voting for the
| safe choice out of fear of stealing votes away and giving
| it to the opposition.
|
| What systems would you prefer?
| JTbane wrote:
| Just wanted to chime in that all ranked voting systems
| can be gamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_imp
| ossibility_theore...
| haswell wrote:
| This is an oversimplified conclusion.
|
| FTA:
|
| > _The practical consequences of the theorem are
| debatable: Arrow has said "Most systems are not going to
| work badly all of the time. All I proved is that all can
| work badly at times_
|
| Followed by:
|
| > _Although Arrow 's theorem is a mathematical result, it
| is often expressed in a non-mathematical way with a
| statement such as no voting method is fair, every ranked
| voting method is flawed, or the only voting method that
| isn't flawed is a dictatorship.[11] These statements are
| simplifications of Arrow's result which are not
| universally considered to be true._
|
| Bottom line - this seems interesting, but is hardly as
| simple as "all ranked voting systems can be gamed".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Bottom line - this seems interesting, but is hardly as
| simple as "all ranked voting systems can be gamed"
|
| It is almost that simple. Every deviation from the
| unattainable ideal in Arrow's theorem corresponds to one
| or more ways that the system:
|
| (1) can be gamed, or
|
| (2) is insensitive to voter preferences, or
|
| (3) changes outcomes in the opposite direction of changes
| in expressed voter preferences.
|
| (And usually several from multiple categories.)
|
| There are whole catalogs of these and enumerations of
| which ones apply to each voting system.
| salawat wrote:
| ...That just degenerates to propping up the duopoly! That
| won't _change_ anything.
|
| I'm straight up against any methodology that blunts the
| _sting_ of no confidence in the two big parties. They
| should absolutely have to react to shifting priorities.
| That means, no safety net. Otherwise, you 're handing
| them the same election advantage they've always enjoyed
| and just handwaving the entire issue.
|
| It sounds more to me like we need to start tracking
| negative votes (not this person) as well. It's bollocks
| that no confidence is treated as "I have no opinion".
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Right, what is considered "real reform" here?
| anonporridge wrote:
| Yes, we also need multi-member, proportional legislative
| districts. https://www.fairvote.org/prcv.
|
| Single member districts are a disgusting thing for a
| society that claims to be a representative democracy. As a
| very simple example, rural liberals and urban conservatives
| effectively never get represented in our government, and
| that's still within the context of the false dichotomy of
| left/right.
|
| But single winner ranked choice voting is still important
| for elected positions that necessarily must be one person,
| like executive seats.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But single winner ranked choice voting is still
| important for elected positions that necessarily must be
| one person, like executive seats.
|
| Executives are neither necessarily single seat nor
| necessarily directly elected. When indirectly elected,
| the electoral body that is itself directly elected need
| not be elected with single-winner methods. The US, in
| fact, uses multiwinner elections for electing the
| electoral college _now_ , though mostly using the
| specific method (multiseat plurality winner-take-all)
| whose manifest unfairness and utility in excluding
| minority voices is the specific reason for the existing
| statutory ban on multiwinner elections for Congress.
| t-3 wrote:
| We don't need anything so complicated, we just need to
| return to the house and electoral college being
| periodically resized according to census data rather than
| fixed at 435. Those reversions would solve most electoral
| problems without even needing to touch hard issues of
| engineering fair an trustworthy alternative voting
| systems.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Those reversions would solve most electoral problems
|
| No, they wouldn't, as the problems (including duopoly)
| predate the changes you would reverse.
| t-3 wrote:
| The population, level of urbanization, and amount of
| information were all far less back then. It would be a
| lot harder for two parties to completely control an 8000
| member congress or gerrymander that many districts.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Real reform is not palatable. The correct reforms include
| rotating appointments on the Supreme Court, abolishing the
| Senate, re-apportioning the House, and changing the
| presidency to have significantly less power. But something
| like this is not achievable with the current ossification
| of our dysfunctional political systems in the US.
|
| Given that, I still believe ranked choice voting is the
| first baby step toward more representative politics.
| robonerd wrote:
| I think ranked choice voting is too nerdy for much of the
| general public to understand; not the principle of it but the
| actual practice of how to tally votes and calculate the
| winner. Given the choice between a voting system the public
| demonstrably tolerates even though it isn't mathematically
| fair, and a voting system that is mathematically fair but is
| likely to cause confusion and distrust in elections, I prefer
| the former.
|
| You could change my mind by showing that ranked choice voting
| systems can be taught to even the most common of midwits.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g. select
| all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes wins). It's
| simpler for voters and RCV is more likely that people will
| be lazy and only select one choice. But it does have the
| problem that many people will think it violates one person,
| one vote.
|
| There are municipalities and states that have implemented
| both. Voters handle them fine.
|
| More importantly, a large minority of people in the US who
| already believe the current voting system isn't fair, so
| why are you afraid RCV will make it worse? I think it will
| be the opposite, since it is likely to cool the political
| polarization and encourage the election of more moderate
| politicians that a larger majority are ok with.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g.
| select all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes
| wins)._
|
| Yes, I like this one a lot more.
|
| > _There are municipalities and states that have
| implemented both._
|
| I think for low-stake elections that most people don't
| vote in anyway, experimentation is relatively safe. But I
| wouldn't want to try anything new with fiery federal
| elections, particularly not the presidential election.
| The risk of confusion resulting in costly civil unrest is
| too high.
|
| > _More importantly, a large minority of people in the US
| who already believe the current voting system isn 't
| fair_
|
| Yes, but they tolerate it for the most part.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > Yes, but they tolerate it for the most part.
|
| Arguable after the 2020 election.
| robonerd wrote:
| _For the most part._ Tens of millions of people voted, a
| few hundred people rioted, and the rest are mostly just
| complaining.
| rosnd wrote:
| Do you think that Americans are unusually stupid? Other
| countries manage this without any issues.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think the most important distinction between the
| various scenarios is who was it that put these
| alternative approaches in place? Was it a consequence of
| public backlash and potentially against the will of the
| political class (which is what would be required in the
| US and Canada), or was it an initiative started by, or at
| least supported by, the political class?
|
| Another important aspect: if the public isn't
| sufficiently intelligent, or isn't interested in such
| things, how did that state come about? Does the
| government play any role in setting educational
| curriculum? Does the media play in any role in what the
| public focuses on, considers important, etc?
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I used to be a big proponent of ranked choice voting, but
| then I finally stepped back and realized that it doesn't seem
| to necessarily produce more "inclusive" or "unifying"
| outcomes. Change my mind.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| It's a little presumptuous to come in and say "I don't
| believe this, change my mind." I don't think anybody is
| going to bother to, frankly. You ought to put in a slight
| amount of effort and give some modicum of evidence.
| ajross wrote:
| There are no politicians involved in this story at all. This is
| just the FBI doing police work (and then getting burned by
| their own informant). Like it or not, distribution of
| classified material is a crime, and the FBI's job is to enforce
| the law.
|
| There's no "unchecked" power here. The details are complicated
| because the meeting was international (so presumably there was
| some coordination with local police), but there's no court in
| the nation that wouldn't immediately stamp a warrant based on
| the straightforward facts alleged here.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Exactly. They weren't there to arrest the reporter, who
| wasn't doing anything illegal, but to arrest the leaker, who
| was. It doesn't matter which politician you elect. The FBI
| will enforce the law.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The idea that because the courts will rubber stamp a warrant
| is not a valid rebuttal to unchecked power
|
| Just like the saying that a "federal prosecutor could get a
| grand jury to indict a ham sandwich" like wise the FBI could
| get a warrant for anything they desire at any time
|
| The warrant requirement is a not a check on power, and has
| not been for decades, the courts and our legal system is no
| longer a protector of rights, or justice and has not been for
| a long long long time.
| ajross wrote:
| > The idea that because the courts will rubber stamp a
| warrant is not a valid rebuttal to unchecked power
|
| But the crime is "release of classified material". That's
| not a rubber stamp, it's a clear allegation of criminal
| activity. I think your real feeling is that this material
| "shouldn't" have been classified (based on what you believe
| it contained -- the reporter never got it). And maybe
| that's true!
|
| But the facts in this article are just _OBVIOUSLY_ probable
| cause for a warrant, nonetheless.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| My comment has no bearing on the facts of this case, or
| my opinions on state secrets
|
| The fact of the matter is the warrant system, a non-
| adversarial system based on flimsy assertions and often
| out right lies by police and agents is not now, and
| likely never has been a check on government power
| ajross wrote:
| And I disagree, because virtually every successful
| resistance to police or prosecutorial misconduct (and
| there are many!) comes right down to a successfully
| argued fourth amendment violation. The fourth amendment
| is, quite frankly, the _single most powerful_ check on
| law enforcement power in our society. And people who
| claim otherwise really need to spend some time resisting
| governments that don 't have an equivalent.
|
| But in this case, as I mentioned, the fourth amendment is
| silent. This arrest was totally OK (or would have been,
| had it not been spoiled) and doesn't represent any kind
| of government overreach at all.
| [deleted]
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| If we knockout the nationalism, what's left?
|
| States, counties, for some - districts. Thirty years and I've
| met one representative.
|
| America wasn't designed to operate at the current scale and
| it's causing considerable strife internally and externally.
| We're effectively the de facto world sovereign, and at the same
| time _we the people_ and the collective will is so contrived as
| to be totally incomprehensible, largely, I would posit, as a
| product of federal overreach and inertia. We 'd do well to
| refederate - California's America is not the same as Texas' nor
| is Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity
| to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no
| points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what
| defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
| macintux wrote:
| I think we muddled along fine as long as we had 3 or 4 TV
| networks steering the national conversation and no social
| networking. Now we can self-select for our biases and
| realities.
|
| I think we'll come through it intact. Hopefully.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but my point was that it would be healthy to
| drop the nationalist trope, for _everyone_. There 's no
| real foundation for it.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Nationalism isn't the problem. The problem is political
| tribalism. Both parties have become extreme in their own
| right and now people don't feel they have much in common with
| one another because of this extreme rhetoric coming from both
| sides.
| krapp wrote:
| > California's America is not the same as Texas' nor is
| Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity
| to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no
| points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what
| defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
|
| It's weird how this wasn't the case prior to 2016. Like, I
| distinctly recall there being a unified American culture and
| identity. Even between California and Texas, both considered
| themselves (and one another) Americans despite their
| differences.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| You think that was weird, witness how America came together
| immediately after 9/11
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| There's a lot of parallel process going on that are hard to
| account for. Internet use, for example. According to
| Statista, 2011 is a trough in internet use, some [?]210mn
| users, by 2016 it plateaus at [?]290mn, meanwhile the
| platforms and accessibility are evolving alongside, in
| manifold ways. And there's old industries developing in new
| ways, TV supplanted by the modem, papers by the web, and
| it's all interactive. TV, I suspect, and the legacy boys,
| are pressing hard for turning their outlets up to 11, like
| have you watched Tucker Carlson? And that's got to be
| exacerbating the problem. And information is more
| accessible than ever, too: COINTELPRO or the Iran-Contra or
| the Mexican Revolution, or Banana Republic, or go go
| banking a la 1980's financial imperialism and there's the
| third world debt crisis for you.
|
| Viola! Schismogenesis. Erstwhile we're competing inside of
| a relatively inert system with intractable inertia, and the
| pressure builds.
|
| Of course the economics of the individual are poorer and
| poorer, as well, and at what appear to be increasing costs
| and that is a considerable portion of what the government
| ultimately does - enable commerce. And we're finding out,
| perhaps, that we're running on fumes.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-04 23:01 UTC)