[HN Gopher] FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home
___________________________________________________________________
FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home
Author : echelon_musk
Score : 840 points
Date : 2026-01-14 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| edot wrote:
| "Natanson said her work had led to 1,169 new sources, "all
| current or former federal employees who decided to trust me with
| their stories". She said she learned information "people inside
| government agencies weren't supposed to tell me", saying that the
| intensity of the work nearly "broke" her."
|
| Wow. So they're going to plug her phone in to whatever cracking
| tech they have and pull down the names of everyone who has been
| helping her tell the story of the destruction of our government.
| The following question is "what will they do with the names of
| the people they pull?". I can only imagine. Horrible. Hopefully
| she had good OPSEC but she's a reporter, not a technologist. I
| bet enough mistakes were made (or enough vulnerabilities exist)
| that they'll be able to pull down the list.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| You must accept that 3 letter agencies have full root access to
| any Tim Apple or Google device and will use it if they already
| went far enough to do an FBI raid on a reporter.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| This isn't hyperbole. They literally went to the king with
| gold in hands. There's no WAY they didn't open up their
| platforms to him.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > They literally went to the king with gold in hands.
|
| Exactly what I was thinking about when I was writing my
| comment.
|
| I can understand that big corpos are not our friends and
| are purely money driven, but publicly bribing the president
| with gold is on a level no one ever expected. Right in line
| with the Fifa peace price.
| derektank wrote:
| IDK, the FIFA world peace prize was completely
| unsurprising to me. It's a massively corrupt institution
| and has been for decades. It's out of the norm in a US
| context, for sure, but that kind of thing is penny ante
| for an organization whose Wikipedia article has multiple
| subsections on corruption
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA?wprov=sfti1#Corruption
| fhdkweig wrote:
| And don't forget the $400 million airplane that is
| probably filled with listening devices that will feed
| info to all of our enemies.
| DetectDefect wrote:
| What is especially insane is people STILL praise Apple for
| championing "privacy" - after Snowden, after China, after
| Trump ... the well-engineered sunk-cost fallacy is just too
| potent to resist, I guess.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Magical end to end protection in Meta and Apple (chat)
| software to protect you from... whom exactly?
|
| MAYBE non US governments? They probably have deals with
| all the big governments allowing them to spy on their own
| people at least.
| DetectDefect wrote:
| "End to end" protection/encryption has lost all
| functional meaning when the masses accepted corporations
| as the arbiters of "ends". No one can even respond to the
| argument based on technical merit, because all that
| remains is hollow marketing bullshit.
| luddit3 wrote:
| Appeasing a moron with a shiny, valuable object is low
| effort. Covering up and adding a backdoor to Apple's widely
| used iOS is not in the same ballpark.
| beeflet wrote:
| They don't need a backdoor. They can push whatever update
| to the OS they want. They have a front door.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'm afraid Snowden was so long time ago, that the most vocal
| people don't even seemingly know about it, so yet again,
| we're in a period of time where assuming Apple/Google has
| full access to anything you do on your device, is seen as
| conspiracy theories. People seem to forget the past so damn
| quick, it's a wonder we humans manage to accomplish anything
| at all at this point.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I don't have to accept any assertion in the absence of
| evidence directly supporting it.
| weberer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think that PRISM involved root access to any
| devices and this link does not claim that it did.
| dkdcio wrote:
| I was expecting this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
|
| still doesn't really prove much
| parineum wrote:
| It actually proves that they _don't_ (or didn't) have
| that kind of access because they first publicly asked for
| the access and then rescinded that request when they, not
| officially but widely accepted, acquired access through
| some kind of hack/bug/exploit given to them by, probably,
| the IDF or an Israeli private company.
| fwip wrote:
| Counterpoint - if they have full root access to any phone,
| why did they need to do the raid?
| iAMkenough wrote:
| The same reason federal agents wear GoPros. Security
| theater, and to send the message that journalists should
| not pursue stories like this that put the federal
| government in a less-than-favorable light.
| kuerbel wrote:
| To intimidate other reporters
| beeflet wrote:
| So they don't burn their 0day
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| > The following question is "what will they do with the names
| of the people they pull?".
|
| I'll take a shot at the answer -> Charge them with treason.
| Because that's the country we live in now, and most of us are
| just sitting by passively watching it happen.
| lawn wrote:
| Or they'll have ICE take them and they'll be deported or made
| to disappear. Some might even end up dying.
|
| That's how the US is right now.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| That only works if they aren't U.S citizens... Which if
| they're working for the gov means they are. This
| administration is creative they will find other more
| 'legal' ways for retribution so the punishment sticks.
| joering2 wrote:
| What difference does it make whether they are US citizens
| or not?
|
| At least DHS is not interested in finding out. And there
| has been plenty US citizens deported under DHS.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118180/documen
| ts/...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-
| american-...
| andsoitis wrote:
| > And there has been plenty US citizens deported under
| DHS.
|
| Are you sure? Do you mind linking to information /
| reporting about that? I have not seen any.
| throwaway38294 wrote:
| How about starting on the wikipedia page:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_depo
| rta...
|
| Then you can read the congressional report:
|
| https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118180/documen
| ts/...
|
| At this point this is not an accident it's an intentional
| policy to spread fear and suppress dissent
| joering2 wrote:
| Sure, since you haven't heard of Wikipedia, or internet
| in general.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_depo
| rta...
| andsoitis wrote:
| Thanks. It (US citizens deported) hadn't crossed my radar
| before, so it is helpful to have this reference.
| prh8 wrote:
| It's easy to not see anything if you willingly close your
| eyes
| srean wrote:
| Or what Upton Sinclair said.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > That only works if they aren't U.S citizens
|
| Ice has already summarily executed two US citizens. one
| literally on camera and broadcasted to the world.
| blhack wrote:
| I think you're talking about Renee Good - who is the
| other person?
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| His name was Keith Porter. [1]
|
| Relatedly, here's a fuller list of recent shootings by
| immigration agents. [2]
|
| 1. https://www.foxla.com/news/ice-shooting-keith-porter-
| northri...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shootings_by_U.S
| ._immi...
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I'm not quite sure why this is being voted down.
|
| But as an outsider, its really not normal for agents of
| the state to detain people without legal basis. much less
| deliberatly make sure they can't be found. (citizen or
| not.)
|
| You as a US citizen are not required to carry ID, so
| being arrested on the spot for not having proof of
| citizenship is grossly authoritarian.
|
| Not to mention shooting someone in the street.
| srean wrote:
| ICE is now close to being Trump's private police, funded
| by tax payer's money and beyond accountability.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Close? That's been the case since ICE started rocking
| face masks and getting deployed only to "blue" cities.
| srean wrote:
| It seems our down-voters disagree.
|
| Quite an interesting phenomena though, how affiliations
| color some unarguable facts. Many clearly believe that
| ICE agents are doing the right thing, they got what they
| voted for.
| lawn wrote:
| Don't be so gullible.
|
| There are quite a few examples where they did detain US
| citizens, even claiming that the papers they had weren't
| good enough.
|
| The president has also multiple times said that he will
| strip people of citizenship. Yes, it's not exactly legal
| but they're doing illegal shit all the time and nobody's
| stopping them.
| lokar wrote:
| There are many documented cases of them detaining natural
| born US citizens for close to a month.
| rozab wrote:
| ICE just summarily executed a US citizen in the street
| with the full support of the administration.
| toss1 wrote:
| Nonsense. You are seriously mistaken if you think mere
| legality will stop them.
|
| This regime has already illegally stopped, assaulted,
| arested, jailed, and/or deported multiple US citizens.
| They now stop people and demand they show citizenship
| papers, and the AsstDirFBI has said people must carry
| proof of citizenship at all times, and if not, ICE are
| free to abuse you under the presumption you are an
| illegal.
|
| We are already under a "May I see your papers, please?"
| Nazi-like system.
|
| Except without the superficial politeness of the "May..."
| and "...Please" and seeing the face of your accusers who
| hide behind masks.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| oh how naive you are... do you not watch the news / go
| outside?
| gvedem wrote:
| This would only be true if ICE cared to obey the law,
| which they do not. They are not observing even the most
| basic facsimile of due process or probable cause.
| Protesting them is being treated as grounds for
| brutalization or arrest. They are actively flaunting
| their contempt for the Constitution while "conservatives"
| cheer from the sidelines.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Instead of calling them "conservatives" we should be
| calling them reactionaries. They want to erase the
| progress of the 20th century.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Practically, what is stopping them from black-bagging and
| deporting citizens? Congress? The courts?
| TitaRusell wrote:
| That's just it. In theory Congress watches the watchers.
|
| But half of Congress sucks Trump's cock and the other
| half is literally denied the right to do their job.
| sneak wrote:
| Nah, ICE is snatching and robbing US citizens too, even
| when they have ID on them. My (US citizen) friend got
| taken last month and driven hundreds of miles to another
| state simply for speaking spanish in public.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| This clearly struck a nerve. What I was trying to say is
| I doubt they will use ICE for retribution here... My bet
| is they will use the FBI and simply arrest the sources.
| I'm aware ICE has detained U.S citizens and also killed
| citizens on the street.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| They also lie to local police. There was a case here where
| they drove erratically to try and make it look like a legal
| observer rammed their vehicle. They hit him twice, called
| the local police, lied to the police and then said observer
| provided his dash cam footage and was released. Will ICE
| face any repercussions? Nope.
| pxc wrote:
| Link?
| an0malous wrote:
| There's a good fraction of people, especially on this forum,
| who are actively encouraging this. Posts that criticize the
| administration consistently get flagged off the front page
| even when they're related to tech
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| You are severely misreading why people flag posts about
| that discuss the administration (whether for or against):
| they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to
| productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to be
| what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't 100%
| off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it
| and I'm sure others do too.
| NewJazz wrote:
| This is just conjecture
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some people do that, yes.
|
| Others do what the parent post described.
|
| HN is certainly not a monolith, and we've got our share
| of loons on all extremes of the political spectrum.
| heromal wrote:
| Yeah, because "AI is so great guys!!" is any better.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Maybe we'll be able to flag more than 1 type of post
| someday :/
| bix6 wrote:
| I find the political discussions on here interesting and
| generally of decent+ caliber. Plus so much of what's
| happening is tech related / enabled.
|
| There's 30 posts on the front page. If someone doesn't
| care about politics why can't they just ignore that 1
| post instead of flagging it into oblivion?
| pureagave wrote:
| I agree that it is slightly better than Reddit but often
| it just turns into a mess that doesn't touch on tech.
|
| They are plenty of places for political discussions. HN
| is a rare great place for tech so personally I'd rather
| keep it that way.
| Levitz wrote:
| I agree that HN tends to have better discussion, but I'd
| argue it tends to have better discussion precisely
| because it's not the norm, so there's input from the type
| of people that loathe the current state of Reddit on the
| matter, and also the type of people that do like yapping
| about it 24/7 are absent from it.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Is this thread not about the administration? The FBI
| currently acts at the will of the White House / GOP /
| Trump. Stick your head in the sand all you want, but
| don't betray the people who are standing up against
| oppression.
| sofixa wrote:
| > they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to
| productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to
| be what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't
| 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away
| from it and I'm sure others do too.
|
| I don't agree. Crypto scams get discussed at length here
| for days, but when it's a Trump crypto scam, it gets
| flagged and disappears.
| simgoh wrote:
| > Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come
| here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
|
| I sympathize, relate, and I'm not about to lecture you
| like some corners of the internet about "the privilege"
| to try and ignore stuff like this, but it is important to
| keep stuff like this at the forefront. We continue to
| experience unprecedented life events.
| Levitz wrote:
| On the contrary, there's no need whatsoever to even deal
| with this since it already happens everywhere else, it's
| not some niche, subtle matter, it's probably the most
| talked about subject in the last decade.
| simgoh wrote:
| That doesn't really resonate with me because you could
| make that argument about anything, _especially since_
| most of the items that are posted here are links to other
| websites. There's no need to talk about it here - you
| could just talk about it at the relevant site(s) comment
| section.
| Levitz wrote:
| No. I'm not saying "There's is some other place", I'm
| saying "This is everywhere already", and for that reason
| there is no need for it to be explicitly here. There is
| by no means whatsoever any shortage of places in which
| those discussions could take place.
|
| The argument is that it should be _everywhere_ , and I
| staunchly disagree.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > The argument is that it should be everywhere, and I
| staunchly disagree.
|
| The argument is that it should be _here_ , and that is a
| very reasonable stance. There is no shortage of places
| where _anything_ can be discussed; that 's not the point.
| "Here", there is a certain expectation around how to
| comment which makes this place a more interesting
| discussion forum, no matter the topic. That some topics
| bring out the worst in some people is not a good reason
| to make the topic verboten, but instead a reason to be
| more critical of the commentary under those topics.
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| That doesn't say "no divisive topics" for a reason. The
| topics are not what make this place interesting, but
| instead the rules of engagement are.
| throwworhtthrow wrote:
| There are many topics discussed on HN that I find
| tiresome to read about. For example, diet and fitness
| topics. You could swap the comments from one article to
| another and not even notice.
|
| That's why I stopped reading them.
|
| It's never once occurred to me that I should rather open
| them up, dive into the comments section, and tell the
| participants that I'm trying to get away from boring
| discussions about diet and fitness.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| There is also a conflict of interest for many in the tech
| space who browse this forum. Many of the technologies we
| work on are being abused by this administration.
|
| IE Flock being a ycombinator startup, Ring cameras giving
| free access to police and others[1], AI systems being
| used for targeting dissent, ad-services and the data they
| vacuum up being bought by agencies to build up profiles
| for dissenting citizens[2]. We've watched this type of
| technology even be used to target the families of people
| in warzones to explicitly perform war crimes[3].
|
| This is a forum of people who have effectively built the
| panopticon but don't enjoy hearing about how the
| panopticon is being used. Politics is now interwoven into
| our careers whether we like it or not. There is no pure
| technology, everything we work on effects the world for
| better or worse. Pulling the wool over our eyes to
| pretend there's a pure non-political form of talking
| about these topics is childish and naive.
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/home/security/amazons-ring-
| cameras-push... [2]
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-
| americans-i... [3]
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/10/questions-and-
| answers-is...
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > There is also a conflict of interest for many in the
| tech space who browse this forum. Many of the
| technologies we work on are being abused by this
| administration.
|
| Possibly true. Just irrelevant.
|
| I already have far too much exposure to Trump, and I'm
| not even American. I'd like it not to come up here. You
| may disagree, and that's fine, but the original question
| was - why are stories about him flagged. I maintain that
| the answer, for many people if not nearly all, is simple:
| ugh, not again.
| GJim wrote:
| > Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come
| here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
|
| Whilst I sympathise, it's a bit hard to avoid politics on
| here, when the tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley are
| actively supporting a corrupt administration to line
| their own pockets.
|
| A statement of fact that will no doubt earn the ire of
| many tech-bro's.
| afavour wrote:
| I understand the instinct to remove "politics" from HN
| but it's fuzzier than that. There were great HN-related
| conversations to be had around DOGE and what it was
| (purportedly) trying to achieve with automation, AI,
| replacing old code bases etc. There was a fascinating
| discussion about COBOL and what DOGE didn't understand
| and it immediately got flagged off the front page. Same
| thing recently with Grok and non-consensual adult
| content. Folks on HN are well placed to speak
| knowledgeably about it yet it is instantly voted off the
| front page.
|
| Difficult not to see it as folks plugging their fingers
| in their ears. And there _are_ folks on here that are
| flagging things because they paint the administration in
| a bad light. There are DOGE folks here, there are
| Palantir folks, etc. etc., I don 't think you can dismiss
| those motivations even if they aren't true for you
| personally. I think the core problem is that flagging
| system is too powerful and too anonymous.
| Teever wrote:
| The no politics rule on HN is the equivalent of "the
| suspect smelled like marijuana so I had probable cause to
| search his car." -- it gives the moderators a plausible
| reason to remove content they don't want on here while
| maintaining an air of legitimacy around the removable
| because thems the rules.
|
| Donald Trump has threatened to annex my country. Are
| posts about that political? Sure doesn't seem like it to
| me. From my persective this subject seems more like an
| existential threat then a discussion about policy. But I
| suppose to Americans it is just a matter of policy and
| politcs.
|
| The incessent posts about Bay Area housing regulations --
| political or not? Seems pretty political to me but
| apparently it isn't?
| tdeck wrote:
| Sorry, your country potentially being annexed just
| doesn't spark curious discussion. We've seen this with
| the other 5 countries that were annexed: just a lot of
| tiresome complaints and people flagging each other in the
| comments.
|
| When I'm hiding in my basement from the Patriot Press
| Gangs, I want to read about the difference between TCP
| Reno and TCP Tahoe, not about some boring politics.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| If you want to talk about a country being annexed, you
| can go to literally any other website. That's not true if
| you want to talk about TCP.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > There were great HN-related conversations to be had
| around DOGE and what it was (purportedly) trying to
| achieve
|
| Were there? I just saw people blindly advocating and
| excusing their incompetence. The discussions were very
| polarized, not well thought out or supported with
| evidence, and not remotely productive. At least from what
| I saw.
| belorn wrote:
| > There were great HN-related conversations to be had
| around DOGE and what it was (purportedly) trying to
| achieve with automation, AI, replacing old code bases etc
|
| I have a very different impression of those discussions,
| with more or less half of the comments being flagged and
| downvoted into oblivion, and the overall mood being very
| heavy in negativity and hostility.
|
| I would like to see great HN-related conversations. Maybe
| if they disabled donwvotes and flagging, and did some
| heavy handed moderation against negativity and hostility.
| A great conversation depend on a safe environment where
| people feel free to express their genuine views and
| opinions.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Flagging off news about current events (whether you
| support the regime or not) is counterproductive to a
| forum nominally for the startup community. Startup
| founders need to be aware of the environment they are
| operating in, so if the current environment is a corrupt
| fascist authoritarian one then you need to be prepared to
| operate in that type of business environment. If you now
| need to bribe certain officials in the regime in order
| for your startup to succeed, for example, flagging posts
| about how that's necessary is counterproductive.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The seeds of fascism are in the hearts of well over 50% of
| the people around you.
| billfor wrote:
| It's flagged because its historically not Hacker News. Many
| of the newer accounts seem to bias towards using this forum
| as a "reddit" to discuss how much they hate the current
| administration or their mental issues. The technical
| "hacker" content is getting less and less -- thank God for
| https://lobste.rs/. So that's all fine and maybe hackers
| should just change be a reddit forum, but don't take it
| personally or be surprised if 15 old accounts are flagging
| your posts. I say this noting that the account you posted
| from is only 9 months old.
| jyounker wrote:
| Sadly politics in the US has reached the point where it
| is impossible to separate, particularly if you're
| involved in any kind of business.
| rtp4me wrote:
| Wow, thanks for this! I normally don't login to HN and
| comment anymore due to all the reddit-style comments -
| especially the constant hate for the US and the
| President. Thanks for giving me another outlet to review
| tech-related stuff.
|
| <logging off now>
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Hating the current administration is one of the top
| technical issues on my mind. There is a substantial
| chance that all US-EU software collaboration is going to
| get blown up in the next few months if Trump makes good
| on his threats to invade Greenland, just as international
| trade has been reoriented around his illegal tariffs and
| responses to them.
|
| When Trump decides to destroy your life, as he's
| destroyed so many others, I hope you'll find supporters
| who aren't so determined to ignore the inconvenience as
| you.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| We historically haven't had an administration like this
| either. People need to get over politics creeping into
| their every day life because that's what it's actually
| doing. We're at the point where the government is using
| tech to police and surveil the public and many of the
| CEOs of tech companies are openly coordinating with the
| President. Tech is politics at this point.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Sadly, a lot of people in Silicon Valley now subscribe to
| this "dark enlightenment" nonsense.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I fear the answer, but what the fuck is "dark
| enlightenment" ?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| It's pretty shocking how many people on HN are ok with
| government officials killing citizens in the streets, but
| writing diversity statements is just too far.
| ap99 wrote:
| Well it really depends on what was leaked.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Ironic that the orange man is telling Iranians to risk their
| lives.
| lokar wrote:
| His policy is very consistent and clear. He does not care
| about the form of government, how they treat the population
| etc, only that they show deference to him (personally).
| parineum wrote:
| That's always the country we've lived in.
|
| If these people were caught, they'd always have been
| punished. What they did is extremely illegal. The issue is
| with the manner of obtaining evidence, not with the crimes
| being pursued.
| immibis wrote:
| Charging with a crime is so last decade. Nowadays they just
| shoot people they don't like.
| bregma wrote:
| Don't be ridiculous. Charging someone can be fraught. They
| will simply and quietly disappear.
| baggachipz wrote:
| But I would think they'd like to publicly make an example
| of them. So, disappear most, publicly flog the rest.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Denaturalize and deport?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5649729/trump-
| administr...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If you've got a way for us to _not_ just passively sit by and
| watch it happen, well, we 'd all love to see the plan.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-
| resign...
| naravara wrote:
| I hope Washington Post does a better job of training their
| reporters than my friend's former employer did.
|
| They sent her off to a certain country with highly repressive
| speech laws and secret police to interview and survey various
| civil rights activist groups. They gave her little to no
| guidance about how to protect herself aside from "Use a VPN to
| send any documents to us." They didn't even instruct her to use
| an encrypted email provider or to use a VPN for any online work
| that didn't get sent to the employer.
|
| It's very fortunate she knew me and I could at least give her
| some basic guidance to use an encrypted email service, avoid
| doing any work on anything sensitive that syncs to a cloud
| server, make sure she has FileVault enabled, get her using a
| password manager, verify that her VPN provider is trustworthy,
| etc.
| gruez wrote:
| >They sent her off to a certain country with highly
| repressive speech laws and secret police to interview and
| survey various civil rights activist groups. They gave her
| little to no guidance about how to protect herself aside from
| "Use a VPN to send any documents to us." They didn't even
| instruct her to use an encrypted email provider or to use a
| VPN for any online work that didn't get sent to the employer.
|
| How would those advice have helped?
|
| >an encrypted email provider
|
| Unless this was in the early 2010s the email provider was
| probably using TLS, which means to the domestic security
| service at least, is as safe as a "encrypted email provider"
| (protonmail?)
|
| >FileVault enabled
|
| That might work in a country with due process, but in a place
| with secret police they can just torture you until you give
| up the keys.
|
| >password manager
|
| Does the chance of credential stuffing attacks increase when
| you're in a repressive state?
|
| None of the advice is bad, but they're also not really
| specific to traveling to a repressive country. Phishing
| training is also good, but I won't lambast a company for not
| doing phishing training prior to sending a employee to a
| repressive country.
| naravara wrote:
| > Unless this was in the early 2010s the email provider was
| probably using TLS
|
| It was the mid 2010s yes.
|
| And they're not going to abduct and torture and American
| citizen out of the blue. The more "intensive" methods are
| higher cost, the intention is just to increase the friction
| involved with engaging in the routine and scalable,
| ordinary forms of snooping.
| tuna74 wrote:
| Shouldn't this be basic knowledge for journalist?
| naravara wrote:
| Why would it be if nobody trains them on it?
| bink wrote:
| There are several groups out there that train journalists
| (and others) about digital security.
|
| https://freedom.press/digisec/
|
| https://tcij.org/initiative/journalist-security-training/
|
| https://ssd.eff.org/playlist/journalist-move
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That doesn't obviate the practical reality that "nobody
| trains them on it". Someone can be available to train
| them but, if that resource is not utilized, then the fact
| remains that they weren't trained.
| tuna74 wrote:
| People train to become journalists, wouldn't these
| practices be part of the curriculum?
| srean wrote:
| In India we have been going through this the last 14 years or
| so.
|
| Look up Stanswamy [0], an octagenarian jailed on the basis of
| trumped up charges and planted evidence (most likely with the
| help of Israeli companies). Journalists held in jail for five
| years without any charges pressed. Same fate for those who
| criticize the government too vocally.
|
| Now pretty much all of the press is but a government press
| release with a few holding out here and there.
|
| [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/13/stan-
| swamy-h...
| everdrive wrote:
| It's important to note, that the law is not written such that
| it's only illegal to share classified information when you have
| a good president. I think a lot of us are very sympathetic when
| classified information is released to the public due to public
| interest, concern regarding government action, etc.
|
| But it's still illegal. I'm not making a moral claim here.
| Rather, people who release classified information without
| authorization are breaking the law. If I rob a bank to feed my
| family vs. robbing a bank because it's fun, it's still illegal.
| A jury might be more or less sympathetic to my cause, but I
| will still be arrested and charged if the police can manage it.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| But also note the government is punishing people for legal
| acts as well. It's perfectly legal to tell a soldier they do
| not have to obey unlawful orders, in fact in many cases it's
| a requirement. But the us military started court martial
| proceedings against a sitting congressman person for doing
| it.
| everdrive wrote:
| Well yes, but you can't tell a judge "yes, I broke the law,
| but it's OK because the government broke the law first."
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let's
| not kid ourselves, this isn't about classified material
| it's about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that
| didn't do anything illegal.
|
| This government brought sham charges against the Fed
| president, what are they going to do to a run of the mill
| federal employee?
| irishcoffee wrote:
| > It's frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter.
| Let's not kid ourselves, this isn't about classified
| material it's about loyalty, so watch what happens to
| sources that didn't do anything illegal.
|
| It is not illegal to talk to a reporter, it is illegal to
| share classified intel with someone who doesn't have a
| clearance and a need-to-know.
|
| Do I think they should have raided this persons house?
| Absolutely not. Is it illegal to share classified
| information, absolutely.
|
| "For my friends everything, for everyone else, the law"
| or whatever the saying is, applies here. In this case,
| the reporter did nothing wrong, but the raid on the home
| of the reporter can be justified according to the law, so
| it isn't illegal. Should it be? Probably.
|
| Legislation is good, rules are good, the classified rules
| seems to make sense if you subscribe to Hanlons Razor at
| the least. Sometimes though, laws just don't make sense
| and shouldn't be codified.
|
| For example:
|
| MCL 750.335 - "Any man or woman, not being married to
| each other, who lewdly and lasciviously associates and
| cohabits together, and any man or woman, married or
| unmarried, who is guilty of open and gross lewdness and
| lascivious behavior, is guilty of a misdemeanor
| punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year, or a
| fine of not more than $1,000.00."
|
| This shouldn't be a law.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| You've misunderstood the parent. They're saying watch out
| what happens to anyone in the Journalist's book who _did
| not share classified information_.
|
| You seriously think this administration is going to get a
| list of 1,200 government employees who are (legally)
| informing reporters of the goings-on and just... Let it
| go? Those people are about to get punished.
|
| And since we're at the point of an unaccountable,
| unidentifiable Gestapo going door-to-door and arresting /
| murdering citizens openly in the streets...
| Nicook wrote:
| its pretty clear, even from the journalist's quote, that
| some of the things they informed her about was not done
| legally (classified information).
|
| Now is overclassification a problem too, yes but that's
| bureaucracy.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| You are responding to a thread with the exact quotes:
|
| > But also note the government is punishing people for
| legal acts as well.
|
| ...
|
| > so watch what happens to sources that didn't do
| anything illegal.
|
| So we, in this thread, are talking about what happens to
| the majority of her sources that are _NOT_ sharing
| confidential information or committing any crime.
| alphawhisky wrote:
| No, but you can tell it to a jury.
| epistasis wrote:
| Aren't you arguing against a straw man here? It seems
| that you can't address the concerns of the comment and
| are instead saying obvious truths as if that is somehow
| counter to the person you replied to.
| everdrive wrote:
| I didn't intend to. When he said "But also note the
| government is punishing people for legal acts as well." I
| read this as "the government is breaking the law"
|
| I think instead what that poster meant is was "people who
| didn't share classified information will be targeted and
| prosecuted as well."
|
| So, apologies for misunderstanding.
| mingus88 wrote:
| Soap box > ballot box > jury box > ammo box
|
| We are on step 3
| HNisCIS wrote:
| I fear over the past week we've hit 3.99
| immibis wrote:
| The other side is already using box 4.
| mindslight wrote:
| Yes, this is my problem with references to the ammo box.
| That exact rhetoric has been with us for decades now, and
| has in fact _helped to get us_ to the point we 're at.
|
| Sure, maybe some ICE home invaders will be shot in self-
| defense while committing their crimes, but we already
| know how that plays out legally and even in the court of
| public opinion sadly (Walker/Taylor). So instances of
| self-defense won't change the big picture, regardless of
| such self defense options perhaps being pragmatic for
| those who are likely to be attacked right now or in the
| near future.
|
| So that brings us back to the question of the large scale
| situation, which IME rests entirely on there being so
| many people Hell-bent on using the ammo box to "save" the
| country with the net effect of trashing it. We've
| essentially got flash mobs of brownshirts, understandably
| frustrated at how they've been disenfranchised and their
| liberties taken away, but having their frustration
| channeled into being part of the problem. Which I'd say
| comes back to filter bubbles, social media, pervasive and
| personalized propaganda, etc.
|
| Of course freeing people from those filter bubbles is
| much harder than if we had managed to avoid the corporate
| consumer surveillance industry from taking hold and
| strongly facilitating them in the first place.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| i keep tabs on posts roughly along the lines of "maybe we
| need guns after all."
|
| imo they're usually too late, as guns without training
| and a group aren't very useful. but i can tell you the
| number has went up about 4x the baseline in the holiday
| season. and thats after its doubling after November's
| elections.
|
| this country is a powderkeg and what's worse is i think
| these provocations are international. the admin seems to
| want to start a civil war.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I think you (the country, not you the writer) has been on
| the ammo box for a good number of years.
|
| The number of police and public based killing is much
| higher than comparable countries elsewhere.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| The ballot has always been a proxy for the bayonet.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I reject the current legitimacy of that law. After Donald
| Trump claimed personal immunity for classified document
| violations in his interregnum, any prosecutions his
| government launches based on it are presumptively invalid.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| That's all well and good, but the law stands because the
| administration has more firepower than you.
| HNisCIS wrote:
| The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or
| goat herders, they sure as fuck can't handle the most
| armed country in history.
|
| The question is how many people will side with them vs
| reality.
| selectodude wrote:
| The American military would have zero problems massacring
| an unlimited number of rice farmers and goat herders.
| HNisCIS wrote:
| They absolutely did, and yet still lost both wars
| horribly.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or
| goat herders
|
| Eh, they killed them by the hundreds of thousands, and
| were not even trying to genocide them. If the current
| regime decided to actually just exterminate people our
| level of technology would make what the Nazis did look
| like babies playtime.
|
| >The question is how many people will side with them vs
| reality
|
| At least 40% of the population given what we've seen so
| far.
| HNisCIS wrote:
| We'll find out I suppose, the Iranian government is
| currently seeking the answer to that question
| experimentally.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or
| goat herders
|
| Where can I read more about this?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2
| %80...
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah, but... the quoted phrase should not be taken
| literally as a statement about battlefield capability.
|
| It was a political struggle for legitimacy, not just
| territory, and the enemy did not have to win any battles,
| just avoid losing until the political will collapsed.
|
| The thing is, military power does not automatically
| translate to political success, and guerrilla fighters do
| not need to defeat tanks and jets, they just need to
| survive, persist, undermine legitimacy, and exhaust the
| opponent's political will.
|
| So, in this sense, the US was not beaten by farmers, it
| was beaten by a strategy that made military superiority
| irrelevant.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Absolutely, and I think the domestic opposition strategy
| here makes military superiority irrelevant. The US
| government doesn't want to, and would collapse if they
| tried to, shoot everyone who says that Donald Trump is an
| illegitimate president and any prosecution he wants to
| succeed should fail.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I agree.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or
| goat herders...
|
| The American military at the time cared - at least
| _somewhat_ - about the international reputation of the
| United States. That may not always be a thing. It may not
| be a thing now.
| HNisCIS wrote:
| The American military is designed to operate away from
| its shores. One hunting rifle round into the transformer
| outside of the bases and they're trucking in fuel for
| generators, a few rounds into the fuel trucks and they
| have no power. They would have to mobilize massive
| resources to secure Lockheed and Raytheon facilities from
| sabotage...
|
| Keep thinking along these lines and you realize the
| situation for them is actually quite dire.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I certainly don't agree that quantity of firepower
| determines what laws do or don't stand. Ask the federal
| agents who tried, and failed, to convict a guy for
| throwing a sandwich at them
| (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/dc-
| sandw...).
| HNisCIS wrote:
| I understand what you're saying, but we as a society need to
| have some sort of baseline above the law and order view of
| the world. I know a lot of people are either too stupid or
| too tied up in the propaganda machine but we DEEPLY need to
| agree on some sort of universal ethical standards as a
| country or we will die.
|
| We used to have at least vague concepts like that but the
| admin has eroded that in the pursuit of "anything goes"
| political maneuvering.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| They can and do make whatever they want illegal, but you're
| correct not to make a moral claim about it. I'm not making a
| moral claim, either, but a pragmatic one.
|
| At the same time, it's entirely legitimate to look at a set
| of laws and think "fuck that". Just because you're correct
| that bad things might happen to folks doesn't mean I have to
| be happy with it.
|
| At the end of the day, having bad laws doesn't make the rest
| of us cower in fear.
|
| Rather, those laws help us understand that the folks
| protected by those laws (and the systems that they are using
| to harm us) neither have our interests in mind nor have any
| legitimate claim to authority.
|
| So while your "bad things will happen if I break the law" is
| maybe pragmatic, consider a similar pragmatic point:
|
| "writing laws that folks feel justified in breaking might
| lead to shifts in how legitimate people see that government".
| srean wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46617645
|
| comments that it's only federal employees who are legally
| bound regarding classified documents, reporters are not.
| kuerbel wrote:
| Usually you would only communicate through secure drop. Looks
| like the Washington post uses it:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/
| stevenwoo wrote:
| There's a subreddit dedicated to fed employee opinions so I
| assume they already identified all active posters by now and
| the direct contacts are being correlated.
| a2tech wrote:
| Between this and Minneapolis I guess the water temperature just
| keeps on being turned up, and us frogs are just chilling out in
| our warm baths.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That was one of the main plot points in Andor.
|
| The rebellion had to raise the temperature faster, more
| dramatically, in order to wake people up. To make the frogs
| realize it was hot and jump out.
|
| Lonni Jung: "You realize what you've set in motion? People will
| suffer."
|
| Luthen Rael: "That's the plan."
|
| Luthen believes that to succeed, they need to anger the Empire
| and make them come down hard on the citizens, which in turn
| will fuel the rebellion.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Woah woah woah! I still haven't watched this. (I know, I
| know...)
| eszed wrote:
| Watch it. Best TV show I can think of, ever. By that I mean
| that the writing and acting and production values are top
| notch; it's _entertaining_ throughout - some of the other
| greats are not ( _The Wire_ falls down here, sometimes;
| Keislowski 's _Dekalog_ , likewise - though its best
| moments are better than anything else); and _Andor_ nails
| its cultural moment, by being directly about, well, all of
| the Important Stuff we 're talking about in this thread.
| Also, it's a tragedy; it's about sacrifice and loss, and
| the human consequences of following your convictions -
| regardless of the side you choose. (That last note's a
| personal taste, but I'd stand by the former points as being
| reasonably objective.)
|
| I sat through it going, "how the hell did they manage to
| make a work of art out of a _Star Wars_ series? ", which
| even makes it better. You don't have to care about _Star
| Wars_ AT ALL to appreciate _Andor_ , but if you do,
| watching _Andor_ - > _Rogue One_ - > Originals back to back
| makes the earlier stuff better.
|
| You'll think I'm over-selling it. Please watch it, then
| come back and tell me I'm wrong.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "makes the earlier stuff better."
|
| This is an amazing feat.
|
| if only every prequel could accomplish this.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Reminds me of the West Wing:
|
| C.J. Cregg: Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who
| wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone
| perceived by the American people to be irresponsible,
| untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the
| limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the U. S.
| House of Representatives?
|
| Leo McGarry: Well, they'll get around to it sooner or later.
|
| C.J. Cregg: So let's make it sooner - let's make it now.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| We have left wing accelerationists in the US too.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Perhaps that is the real problem.
|
| The Rebels were 'accelerationists', but the Empire was also
| wanting it to escalate. They played into each others hands.
|
| Both sides wanted escalation, so it is positive feedback
| loop.
|
| When societies get to the point where everyone is
| escalating, there isn't much to stop it. The cool heads are
| drowned out.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Did people not like Andor? Or the same Russian Bots that
| downvote any anti-right-wing/brown-shirt sentiment.
| squigz wrote:
| Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately? Did someone
| famous use it or something?
|
| Edit: just to clarify, I'm not denying it's appropriate; it
| just seems remarkable to me that it's being used so often
| lately.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Because it's appropriate and descriptive?
| technothrasher wrote:
| We're actually dumber than the frogs. The original 19th
| century experiment involving frogs that didn't jump out of
| heated water was using frogs who had had their brains
| destroyed. The question being asked was whether the escape
| reaction to hot water was caused by the brain or by
| something further down in the nervous system. With an
| intact brain, the frogs would jump out. Without one, they
| wouldn't. Question answered.
| backscratches wrote:
| Exorbitant education costs and free flow of thought
| extinguishing media means Americans are the brainless
| frogs.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Maybe that's a strong element, but I think we are simply
| too addicted to comfort and our way of life. We've been
| encouraged to "just vote" for so long we've lost all
| political muscle.
| r721 wrote:
| Relevant Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B
| oiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's just a simple analogy that quickly breaks down.
|
| The frogs have it easy. All they have to do is jump out.
| One individual action and they're safe. (Until the
| scientist catches them and uses them in more experiments,
| anyway.)
|
| The situation for people living under governments
| becoming gradually more oppressive is much more
| complicated. You don't know for sure that the water will
| keep heating up. Escape is extremely difficult and
| costly. Turning off the heat takes massive collective
| action. A third of the frogs actively want the water to
| boil, and another third don't really care.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's a 100+ years old metaphor widely used at virtually any
| point in time since then to describe all kind of situations
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately?
|
| Probably because a country that was famous for trying to
| spread their idea of "freedom" all across the world,
| seemingly can't notice themselves that the country is rapidly
| declining into full on authoritarian dictatorship, with a
| very skewed perspective of "freedom", and the people who are
| opposing it, aren't rioting (yet at least).
|
| The judicial arm of the government aren't even enforcing the
| laws of the country anymore! Not sure how, but it'll get
| worse before it gets better. Quite literally a fitting
| analogy in this case.
| sowbug wrote:
| Have fun seeing "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" everywhere.
| relaxing wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof effect.
| imzadi wrote:
| There were over 1000 protests over the weekend. The one I went
| to in Surprise, AZ had almost 1000 people, in a fairly
| conservative area with mostly older, white demographics. I
| think the tide is turning.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Serious question from a clueless european here, who should
| they vote for?
|
| To us on the outside, getting filtered news that trickles
| down, it just seems like there are no candidates. One is 79
| and one is 83, where are all the young politicians? Why does
| the media choose to only emphasize a few of them at the time?
| xhrpost wrote:
| If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you
| can't ever vote for a third party because that's
| effectively voting for the other major candidate. So the
| problem of not having more than 2 choices perpetuates
| indefinitely.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that
| you can't ever vote for a third party
|
| Actually, both major parties (not always at the same
| time) have a long track record of working _very_ hard to
| promote voting for third-party candidates, doing things
| like funneling funds covertly (or simply nudging donors)
| to fund their efforts, assigning party activists to
| support third-party efforts, etc.
|
| Of course, they exclusively do this for third parties
| whose appeal is, or is expected to be, mainly to people
| whos preference, if choices were limited to the major
| parties, would be for the other major party.
|
| Because it's not just rhetoric, as long as the electoral
| system isn't reformed to change this, getting people to
| vote for a minor party instead of your opponent like
| demoralizing them and getting them to stay home, or
| disenfranchising them (two other things the major parties
| have been known to try to do to populations likely to
| vote for their opponents otherwise) is a lot easier and
| exactly half as useful, per voter, as getting them to
| switch to you from the other major party.
| bluGill wrote:
| That only works if the message of the third party is more
| appealing to those voters. And so the major party also
| pays attention to which third party messages from those
| who would support them are getting through and changes.
|
| It is also helped because many of the people who are
| insiders in the major party are secretly voting for the
| third party when the majority of primary voters (who are
| rarely well informed) force someone they don't like on
| the party. They can't do anything this time, but they can
| send a message to each other where they failed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That only works if the message of the third party is
| more appealing to those voters.
|
| It actually works just as well if the third party fails
| to attract the voters with its message but provides a
| reason _not_ to vote for the targeted major party
| candidate that would not work as well if the messenger
| was the major party using the third party as a stalking
| horse. Because discouraging voters that would otherwise
| vote for the other party has the exact same effect on the
| outcome as moving them to a minor party.
| immibis wrote:
| Whichever choice has the least favour is malleable. Right
| now, by switching up their candidates and policies, the
| democrats can't do any worse than they're already doing,
| which is losing. If the democrats next time, then the
| republicans will have 4 years with nothing to lose.
| lawn wrote:
| Yes, the system sucks and there should be more and better
| candidates.
|
| But when one side represents fascism and the other doesn't
| the choice is still easy.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| The 83 year old wasn't the candidate.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| US elections happen in two stages, a "primary" where each
| party decides their candidate and then the "general" where
| the final winner is decided. It sounds like you may only be
| getting news about general elections (and may have missed
| the news where the 83 year old ended up getting swapped
| out).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _One is 79 and one is 83, where are all the young
| politicians?_
|
| Down ballot. There are very few elections where nothing on
| the ballot is of stake.
| pjc50 wrote:
| (also a Brit)
|
| Biden was no longer a candidate even by the time the last
| election happened.
|
| Look to Mamdani. Note that the real election there was in
| the primary. If you squint a bit, the US electoral system
| looks like the French one. There's two rounds of voting,
| and in the first one you get to pick who is the crook that
| will be put up against the fascist in the final round.
|
| It's going to be boring and time consuming, but people have
| to use the levers they do have available to do internal
| Democrat party politics if they want to improve the
| situation.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| If you're talking age, the US just had a 60 year old run in
| the last election and the party that complained to no end
| about the elderly running for office still voted for the 80
| year old. Next election, the other frontrunner is currently
| 58. We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the
| South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to
| have him win the primary.
| parineum wrote:
| > We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the
| South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough
| to have him win the primary.
|
| That 38 year old, along with the rest of the center left
| candidates, all dropped out to ensure the 70 year old
| candidate could beat the other 70 year old candidate.
| "The South" had nothing to do with it.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Incorrect. Buttigieg won #1 and #2 delegates in the first
| two primaries of Iowa and New Hampshire. It was only at
| the fourth primary, South Carolina, when Biden won 6x the
| votes, that the Buttigieg campaign dropped realizing they
| had no chance because of underperformance in only the
| South.
|
| Only 54% in SC say homosexuality should be accepted by
| society. 42% in Arkansas. In 2025! https://www.reddit.com
| /r/MapPorn/comments/1lxzznb/acceptance...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The 83 year old dropped out before the election took place.
| Kamala Harris is 61. No spring chicken, but at least not
| old enough that she should've retired years ago.
|
| The two-party system will always leave you with suboptimal
| choices when it comes to casting your vote, but the
| alternative to Trump was two decades younger.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There are plenty of young politicians. Their parties
| deliberately keep them out of power. Political power in the
| united states gets strangely concentrated by our 2 party
| system in a way that tends to ossify policy and promote
| more ring-wing versions of both parties.
| GJim wrote:
| > There were over 1000 protests OVER THE WEEKEND
|
| At the risk of sounding sarky, you are going to have to do
| more than protest at the weekend (!) to stop what is
| happening to you.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| It's worth noting that Renee Good was shot because she was
| protesting after she happened upon ICE operating in her
| city. More than just weekend protests are happening. Few
| people in any of the blue sanctuary cities ICE is
| terrorizing actually want ICE to be there and those who
| don't frequently make themselves heard, sometimes resulting
| in their tragic end.
|
| Yes, some protests happen when it's convenient for the
| protesters. That does not invalidate their protests, nor
| any others with a similar message. It does not weaken the
| message nor the movement.
| 10xDev wrote:
| If you compare this to what is happening in Iran, US
| citizens are docile. A "peaceful protest" is an oxymoron.
| imzadi wrote:
| I think the problem is just how big the US is. People
| outside of the US really don't understand this. For
| instance, I'm about 2300 miles from DC, also known as
| 3700 km. It just not logistically possible for me to
| march on the capital. I do what I can locally, a lot of
| us do, but with everything so spread out, it is hard to
| make an impact.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > If you compare this to what is happening in Iran, US
| citizens are docile.
|
| This is still moot. Even if they appear such (even if
| they _are_ such) it does not diminish the validity nor
| righteousness of their message.
|
| > A "peaceful protest" is an oxymoron.
|
| This is false by a plain understanding of the words. A
| "protest" is an expression against something. "Peaceful"
| means nonviolent. Obviously expressions can be
| nonviolent.
| njovin wrote:
| I don't know if it's fair to say we're chilling - there have
| been fairly organized (although admittedly not very large)
| protests around the nation related to the killing of Nicole
| Renee Good. I live in southern California and there were at
| least 6 within easy driving distance this past weekend.
|
| Whenever ICE goes into a new city, they're meeting more and
| more community resistance. The protestors have mostly been very
| smart about remaining civil, which continues making ICE look
| worse and worse as they tear gas and arrest peaceful
| protestors.
|
| The supreme court has ruled (somewhat surprisingly) that Trump
| can't deploy the National Guard into cities any longer.
|
| Trump's approval rating has continued steadily declining since
| he took office, and the midterms are shaping up to be a
| bloodbath.
|
| I'm mid-40s and this is the best-organized and most successful
| demonstration movement I've witnessed in my lifetime. Occupy
| got close, but that felt like something that the more 'extreme'
| ones were actively participating in, with more passive support
| from the populace. Now it feels like everyone is getting
| directly involved in one way or another.
| peab wrote:
| I understand protesting ICE for better accountability, they
| certainly need to be held accountable. But I don't understand
| those who protest the presence of ICE as a concept. Are there
| any countries that don't enforce their immigration laws?
| immibis wrote:
| "I don't understand why people protest the Gestapo as a
| concept. Are there any countries that don't have undercover
| police?"
| CompanionCubee wrote:
| > "Are there any countries that don't have undercover
| police?"
|
| In what countries do undercover police drive marked
| vehicles and wear insignia of their agency?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| ICE as an agency was created in 2003. Most of the posters
| here are older than it by a significant factor. We can live
| without it and create another agency to enforce immigration
| laws that isn't thoroughly rotted and filled with
| criminals.
| rmah wrote:
| Yes, but it's essentially just a re-branded INS
| (Immigration and Naturalization Service). They were
| conducting raids to catch undocumented immigrants (often
| at workplaces) for as long as I can remember (i.e. back
| into the early 1980's). IIRC, spanish speakers called
| them "la migra".
| bluGill wrote:
| My libertarian philosophy is not compatible with
| immigration laws in general. I'm not quite let everyone in
| - but I require strong reason to not let someone in. People
| should have the right to move, only restricted in the worst
| cases.
| toast0 wrote:
| A protest movement can't be very subtle. A clear and short
| message like "No ICE" or "ICE Out" is much preferable to
| "We would like an immigrations and and custom enforcement
| agency that respects people and the law, efficiently
| inspects imports, checks in on visa overstayers, pursues
| charges against business owners that have a business
| practice of not checking work eligibility of new hires, and
| works with competent, trained agencies to perform traffic
| stops and home/office raids or trains their own officers
| for such"
| peab wrote:
| but it's directionally wrong. It's like the BLM protests
| that had main messages of abolishing the police - those
| had terrible consequences [1]. "Reform" would be a better
| direction.
|
| [1] In 2020, during the height of the protests and the
| pandemic, low-income communities of color experienced the
| sharpest increases in firearm violence and homicides
| https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/firearm-deaths/index.html
| [2] Polls have consistently shown that a majority of
| Black (52%), Latino (66%), and Asian (61%) Americans
| oppose defunding the police.
| https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-communities-of-color-
| want...
| cdrnsf wrote:
| ICE didn't exist prior to 9/11. There's no reason it
| can't be dissolved.
| peab wrote:
| that's a fair point
| toast0 wrote:
| > but it's directionally wrong.
|
| A time honored protest chant is "hey hey, ho ho, [target
| of protest] has got to go." That's just how protests work
| --- don't like what someone or an agency is doing, march
| to get rid of them. Getting rid of them may not be
| achievable or desirable, but it resonates.
|
| Given the number of high profile shootings related to
| totally unnecessary situations the agency has put its
| agents into with apparently zero preparation and
| training, it's not surprising that people want it to go.
| I don't remember this kind of thing when INS was doing
| activities with the same kinds of reported goals.
| jyounker wrote:
| ICE has been turned into a secret police force. If you'd
| like a history of the border patrol in the US, then here is
| an excellent introduction:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdStIvC8WeE
| pxc wrote:
| Years ago, this book provided me with a useful
| introduction to the history of immigration to the United
| States and various crackdowns (vigilante and official)
| against it.
|
| It's not a difficult read, but its authors are leftists
| and the language may sometimes be difficult for readers
| with sensitivities related to the goodness of Democrats
| or Republicans or whatever.
|
| (I think maybe I'll re-read it today as well; it's been a
| long time.)
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7861.No_One_Is_Illega
| l
| vel0city wrote:
| > Are there any countries that don't enforce their
| immigration laws?
|
| I don't think there are many developed countries where
| their immigration officers are routinely tear gassing
| students and bystanders, no. I don't think there are many
| developed countries where their immigration officers are
| detaining _indigenous peoples_ in private, for-profit
| detention centers without charging them with any kind of
| crime.
|
| Feel free to point out other developed countries where this
| is now just a routine occurrence though.
| peab wrote:
| Hm, you seem to be replying to an argument that I did not
| make. this seems to fall under:
|
| > I understand protesting ICE for better accountability,
| they certainly need to be held accountable
| vel0city wrote:
| The argument about getting rid of ICE isn't about having
| zero enforcement of immigration laws. It is about getting
| rid of this entire stack of management and agents. I
| guess that's what you're not understanding.
|
| ICE is recent. We don't need ICE, the organization and
| people that are currently doing what they're doing, to
| continue to be a part of the government. If the whole
| organization is behaving badly, the whole organization
| should be scrapped and a new organization with different
| people and a different plan and enforcement style should
| be created.
|
| ICE was created in 2003. We had immigration enforcement
| actions happen well before 2003. Getting rid of ICE does
| not mean "no longer enforce immigration laws".
| peab wrote:
| I see, I can understand the argument better now, thanks!
|
| Looking it up, it seems that ICE used to be part of INS,
| which was broken up into: -USCIS: Handles services (green
| cards, citizenship). -CBP: Handles the borders (Border
| Patrol and ports of entry). -ICE: Handles interior
| enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations).
|
| So I'm not really sure I follow. If we get rid of ICE,
| who handles Handles interior enforcement (raids,
| investigations, and deportations)? Another org?
|
| This feels like people who argue to get rid of the
| police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces",
| or something of the likes.
| vel0city wrote:
| > If we get rid of ICE, who handles Handles interior
| enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations)?
| Another org?
|
| Yes, a different org, back under the Department of
| Justice, staffed by very different people and with a
| different way of going about enforcement of immigration
| law. I'd argue there have been a lot of issues with the
| Department of Homeland Security and that massive parts of
| the organization should probably be reworked.
|
| The DHS' mission is supposedly all about protecting
| people from terrorist attacks, go read the arguments on
| why it was a good thing right after it was created to see
| that kind of connection[0]. Why do we have an
| organization designed to fight terrorists in charge of
| handling civil infractions? Its no wonder we have agents
| treating everyone as a terrorist; its what the department
| is supposed to focus on, fighting terrorists! Its almost
| like maybe we should have a different group of agents
| equipped to handle potential terrorist threats to the
| agents making sure foreigners aren't overstaying visas or
| working while not authorized to work.
|
| In another direction but related to this, we should also
| pretty much scrap and redo all of our immigration laws as
| well. They really don't work well and are generally
| pretty bad. Note I'm not saying we should have no
| immigration laws at all, but the systems we have today
| are largely dumb, ineffective, and just end up hurting a
| lot of people while not really doing much good for the
| American people.
|
| > This feels like people who argue to get rid of the
| police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces",
| or something of the likes.
|
| A lot of what the police do these days probably _should_
| be re-tasked to different, potentially new agencies with
| different trainings and different focuses. Police these
| days are expected to handle such a wide range of
| community issues, many of which probably don 't need the
| same kind of people who respond to violent threats and
| what not. When someone is experiencing a mental health
| crisis we probably shouldn't send people who spend their
| days training to perceive every action as a threat to be
| handled with a gun as the first line responder. When
| there's someone on the street strung out on drugs having
| the police respond and put them in jail/prison probably
| isn't helping the situation.
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20071114000911/http://www
| .dhs.go...
| rmah wrote:
| It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has been
| down-voted so aggressively. Immigration enforcement is
| required. Illegal immigration should be discouraged. ICE's
| current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem
| to be used politically. But immigration laws should still
| be enforced. I imagine you'd agree that if ICE
| agents/supervisors act beyond the scope of their duties or
| with excessive force, they should be
| disciplined/prosecuted. I also have a hard time
| understanding people who don't agree with what I just
| wrote. I can only imagine those that want to disagree think
| I'm writing with some sort of underlying agenda and in code
| to push some broader political narrative (I'm not).
| peab wrote:
| > ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and,
| yes, seem to be used politically. But immigration laws
| should still be enforced.
|
| Yeah, it's strange that this take is so polarizing.
|
| > I imagine you'd agree that if ICE agents/supervisors
| act beyond the scope of their duties or with excessive
| force, they should be disciplined/prosecuted. Yes of
| course, it's hard to disagree with that.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > rather innocuous comment
|
| It may appear innocuous yet it normalizes ICE's actions
| as mere "immigration enforcement". Their actions are far
| more and far worse than that, as you note:
|
| > ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and,
| yes, seem to be used politically.
|
| It is not an issue of immigration laws being enforced, it
| is an issue of rights being infringed. The "overly
| aggressive" tactics being "used politically" is exactly
| the problem.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has
| been down-voted so aggressively.
|
| Despite the ridiculous narrative that Obama and Biden
| were "bringing in illegals en masse to vote for
| Democrats," if you look at the actual numbers, it's not
| surprising that folks are down-voting that comment.
|
| Mostly because those previous administrations (Obama and
| Biden) managed to deport many more undocumented folks
| than either this or the previous Trump administration,
| without the thuggery, violence and murder we're seeing
| now.
|
| I'd note that even without the gratuitous violence and
| intimidation, folks were _also_ protesting Obama 's and
| Biden's ICE activities.
|
| Because the real issue around immigration in the US is
| that our system is broken and we haven't constructively
| addressed those problems for nearly 40 years.
|
| So no. I'm not surprised by the down-votes because
| there's nuance that's being glossed over and, while doing
| so, giving violent thugs a pass by claiming that they're
| "enforcing the law," even though they're doing a crap job
| while harming our citizens, legal residents and helping
| to destroy what's left of our civil society.
|
| I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either.
| Just pointing out a few things not mentioned in your or
| GP's comments.
| rmah wrote:
| It's like you didn't see where I agree that current
| enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a
| tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the
| sort of thing that confuses me.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It's like you didn't see where I agree that current
| enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a
| tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the
| sort of thing that confuses me.
|
| I combined my response to your comment[0] and its
| parent[1], as I mentioned: I'm not
| pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just
| pointing out a few things not mentioned in your
| or GP's comments.
|
| Rather than disagreeing with you, I was attempting to add
| nuance and additional substance. As the site
| guidelines[2] recommend: Please respond
| to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
| says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume
| good faith.
|
| You appear to have assumed _bad_ faith on my part. Why is
| that? Was I not clear enough? What could I have added to
| the above to be clearer?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46620707
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618048
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| timeon wrote:
| Original concept is dead when they are used as militia
| against states that did not vote for current
| administration.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| You can enforce immigration laws without shooting people in
| the face, ramming into their vehicles, ripping them out and
| putting them in illegal chokeholds, shipping them to
| prisons in El Salvador, firing tear gas at legal observers
| and on and on.
|
| It also wasn't an agency prior to 9/11. It should be
| dissolved. All ERO agents should be prosecuted and or
| barred from all future public service.
| peab wrote:
| Oh interesting, i didn't know it was a post 9/11 agency.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| It was born out of INS but it and DHS have its roots in
| the security apparatus that developed thereafter. It's
| become progressively worse leading up to the
| weaponization we're seeing now.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I live in Seattle and I've seen multiple large protests around
| the ICE murder of Renee Good. Part of the problem is that the
| US is too large as the people responsible for the jackbooted
| thugs kicking in doors and killing citizens are on the other
| side of the country. Business in Minneapolis is practically
| grinding to a halt as stores and businesses close their door
| out of fear.
|
| I think we're one or two bad incidents away from wide-scale
| rioting.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Not everyone is chilling. Some of us are protesting and/or
| moving our families out of the country.
| therobots927 wrote:
| We have the tech elite to thank for this disaster
| chasd00 wrote:
| " Agents searched Hannah Natanson's Virginia home and seized
| devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials case"
|
| Right underneath the headline. That's pretty normal for the FBI,
| assuming they had a search warrant.
| reader9274 wrote:
| Of course they had a search warrant.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| ICE has been knocking down doors and ripping folks from their
| homes without warrants. Why would the FBI under this
| administration behave differently?
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| No, this is absolutely not normal as the article clearly
| states. Reporters are very rarely raided in the US under
| circumstances like these.
|
| The problem is that "classified materials" means whatever the
| government wants it to mean in this context. Is there a
| journalist you want to target for a particular reason? Just
| accuse them of handling classified information, which they
| don't ever have to produce to the public because it's
| "classified".
| notyourwork wrote:
| Trump keeps that kind of stuff in their guest bathroom, cool.
| Reporter, raid and straight to jail. What a timeline to
| witness. Elected officials glut preventing them from doing
| their duty.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Not only that, the word going around is some of the stuff
| found in the bathroom were far above top secret, including
| some Q-Clearance level stuff from the DoE.
|
| As in, the US's full knowledge of the technical capacity of
| Israel's nuclear weapons program, including how we obtained
| that information. That's now in the hands of the Saudis,
| Iran, the Chinese, the Russians, etc. And it was found in a
| fucking bathroom.
|
| Yet nobody seems to care that a Trump-appointed lackey
| magically (whose husband has credibly been linked to
| organized crime) found themselves on the case "by chance"
| and issued a whole bunch of bullshit non-appealable verbal
| rulings on how and why Donald Trump is innocent.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Q clearance isn't "far above top secret." It's TS plus
| Nuclear Weapons Information. The background investigation
| is exactly the same as TS and almost everyone that works
| at a DOE lab gets one: almost 100,000 people have access.
| It requires no polygraph like SCI and higher clearances.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >, this is absolutely not normal
|
| On what grounds? Just repeating a BS assertion doesn't make
| it true.
|
| The feds have been abusing journalists like this as long as
| I've been alive. It's not a lot, it's a trickle of them,
| maybe one a year or so in recent years. But one raid on one
| person isn't unprecedented or abnormal in any way. Now if you
| want to talk about frequency or the minimum size of thorn in
| side they'll go after it might be a different story. But
| nobody is saying that.
|
| I might think the behavior is despicable and probably also
| unlawful, and their "they had classified info" excuse is
| flimsy BS, but it is unfortunately somewhat normal.
|
| The problem is way, way, way worse, way longer running and
| way more institutionally entrenched than flabbergastingly
| moronic "these specific people right here right now did
| misdeeds" surface level assessment may comfortingly imply.
| rockskon wrote:
| Not all bad things are the same. Raiding a reporter's house
| is very much an abnormal act to have taken place.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Not all bad things are the same.
|
| Who said they were?
|
| >Raiding a reporter's house is very much an abnormal act
| to have taken place.
|
| Only by invoking the most numerical slight of hand sort
| of "a DV is abnormal because we hand out a thousand
| traffic tickets a day and make only one or two DV
| arrests" logic is it abnormal.
|
| For the past 5+yr the FBI has raided the home of about
| one journalist per year. Every time the allegation has
| been about investigating the source of some leak.
|
| They didn't do one in 2024/2025 I don't think. Time Burke
| and the Kanye thing, Project Veritas in 2022 and 2023 and
| the ABC news guy the year before are recent ones that
| come to mind. I'm not gonna say they get a pass, but this
| is "the normal amount" for them.
|
| Once again, that doesn't make it right and I shouldn't
| have to say this but this comment should not be construed
| as an endorsement of the FBI or any specific activities
| they engage in.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| > Time Burke and the Kanye thing, Project Veritas in 2022
| and 2023 and the ABC news guy the year before are recent
| ones that come to mind
|
| Those were for computer fraud, possession of stolen
| property, and possession of child pornography,
| respectively. The first amendment allows journalists to
| publish classified material, it does not give them free
| license to commit crimes.
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| Right. Lincoln arrested hostile journalists without warrant
| or trial. FDR sent the FBI to shake down his critics. Going
| after the press isn't unprecedented at all. I worry this is
| another sign that the people behind the administration are
| moving to a war-time footing and life is going to get a
| whole lot worse.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Here's a less sensational article. The journalist is not even
| a target of the investigation, the target is a contractor
| leaking documents.
|
| " Natanson was told that she is not a target of the
| investigation, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
|
| Instead, it appears to be related to an ongoing probe of a
| government contractor in Maryland."
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/media/fbi-hannah-natanson-
| was...
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| Please don't be so naive as to think that this
| administration is above creating a pretext for raiding the
| home of their real target while claiming it's about
| something else. It's the same thing (minus the raid, plus
| an indictment) they're doing to Jerome Powell.
| floatrock wrote:
| oh you sweet summer child... to see the world with your
| simple star-spangled eyes...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| In some ways this is just desserts after American journalists
| decided that Julian Assange was not worth defending[1]. Still
| disheartening to see, since we need robust journalism to keep
| companies/politicians honest.
|
| [1] https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1116371239705227265
| saghm wrote:
| Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of
| journalists to investigate leaks? If not, it's hard to make a
| compelling case that this is "normal"
| taylortrusty wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of
| journalists to investigate leaks?
|
| James Burke, the Veritas guy, the ABC News guy, etc.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I think James O'Keeffe was the Project Veritas guy. He had
| a legally obtained the original of Ashley Biden's diary.
| Joe Biden's daughter. Where in it a page she wrote while in
| therapy said she had inappropriate showers with her father.
| vablings wrote:
| Legally obtained is dubious in this context. He likely
| knew it was stolen
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| No one, including the FBI has ever made a statement that
| it was stolen and then charged O'Keefe for that. It was a
| raid to further "investigation" to determine for stolen.
|
| But don't you think it's more interesting you care less
| about a journalist being raided, then you do the outcome
| of a diary that explains that Biden according to his
| daughter sexually abused her?
| vablings wrote:
| > No one, including the FBI has ever made a statement
| that it was stolen and then charged O'Keefe for that
|
| This is blatantly false two people were charged in
| connection with interstate transport of stolen goods, and
| the raid was part of the investigation. The diary was
| taken because it was the stolen good in question and
| important for the FBI's case on prosecuting the
| individuals charged.
|
| >then you do the outcome of a diary that explains that
| Biden according to his daughter sexually abused her?
|
| The diary was never published, verified or entered into
| evidence VS the current POTUS has had multiple credible
| allegations with affidavits and testimony
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| As others pointed out, the problem with this is that you end up
| with a government that can target any reporter by claiming they
| have "classified materials". No need to prove what those
| materials are (because they are classified). This is how third
| world countries choke journalists.
| nickff wrote:
| In the USA, the claim has to be convincing to a judge, so
| it's not quite as arbitrary as you indicate.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Clearly, the bar for it to be convincing seems quite low
| here
| fzeroracer wrote:
| In order for ICE to raid homes they need to have a valid
| warrant signed by a judge, but that doesn't seem to be
| stopping them in Minneapolis doing warrantless raids.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| The current administration is utterly lawless.
|
| That is relatively minor compared to ICE shooting
| protestors and then stopping people from giving them
| medical attention.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| They're supposed to. They've been breaking into homes
| without them.
| g947o wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_(film)
|
| Interestingly enough, that was an event related to classified
| information with the same newspaper.
|
| > Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by
| journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous
| Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the
| 20-year involvement of the United States government in the
| Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
| withinboredom wrote:
| They should have gone to Mar Lago to find their missing
| classified documents. Do they not watch the news? /s
|
| In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop another
| Snowden type leak.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop
| another Snowden type leak.
|
| In what way is what she was doing similar to Snowden? Snowden
| was a huge bombshell, with droves of material, proving what a
| lot of people suspected was happening, but had no proof.
|
| This journalist seems to have been receiving a ton of "small
| leaks", of improper firings and a lot of other federal
| misbehavior, but all within the US, and all with things we
| already knew was happening.
|
| So rather than "one big sea of bad", she was investigating "a
| thousand small cuts of bad" across thousands of people who had
| evidence.
|
| Snowden leaks had global implications that changed
| relationships between countries, while this seems mostly
| internal to the US.
| saghm wrote:
| Agreed. Snowden also wasn't a journalist but the source
| himself. Having over 1000 individual sources of information
| is not at all the same thing.
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| The problem is that "classified materials" means whatever the
| government wants it to mean in this context. Is there a
| journalist you want to target for a particular reason? Just
| accuse them of handling classified information, which they
| don't ever have to produce to the public because it's
| "classified".
| pwg wrote:
| Or intimidate a member of the press that isn't "bending the
| knee" to them.
| jimbohn wrote:
| >In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop
| another Snowden type leak.
|
| I bet it's the recipe for the military-grade copium some people
| are on
| webdoodle wrote:
| Not really surprised at this point. After Bush allowed, and Obama
| pardoned the collateral murder pilots, whistleblowers and
| journalists in the U.S. have been continually threatened, hazed,
| jailed and killed at the pleasure of whomever the current
| president is. This isn't party politics, Bush through Trump, are
| guilty. This is fascism at its finest...
| eunoia wrote:
| I think you're fundamentally right. Trump is obviously the
| worst we've seen yet, but power has been accumulating unchecked
| in the executive branch's hands for decades now.
|
| Trump is merely a symptom of the problem that is the Imperial
| Presidency. If we can't tackle the problem itself we'll get
| another politician doing the exact same shit after Trump.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Indeed, don't blame the individual (all thought the
| individual has plenty of individual blame going their way,
| rightfully so), blame the system.
|
| Unless the system changes, it'll continue to let people
| misuse it to their own gain. Trump was hardly the first one,
| and depending on how things will go, he might be the last,
| but "last" in a good way or in a bad way remains to be seen.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I absolutely blame the individual.
|
| Who is responsible for the system if not the individual -
| and the collective thereof?
|
| The fundamental problem is the citizen not being educated
| or caring enough about their own independence and state of
| being in the framework of a global economy and sovereign
| nation state
| eunoia wrote:
| I would highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to
| Death if you are looking to understand how the populace
| got to the point where truth is irrelevant and nothing
| really matters.
|
| It helped my mental model a lot at the very least.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'm extremely aware of amusing ourselves to death
|
| I think we came away with very different conclusions
|
| To me it is abject proof that individuals do not have the
| mental emotional or other capacity to actually behave in
| the modern world such that they retain their mental
| independence and develop a sense of personal epistemology
|
| Humans are way too dumb and prone to propaganda to
| actually have a coherent society at the scale needed so
| that we don't collectively kill each other through poorly
| identified and attributed externalities
| eunoia wrote:
| Unfortunately I think we actually agree on this and did
| come away with the same conclusions.
| specialist wrote:
| I believe, but cannot prove, that our _malleability_ was
| an evolutionary advantage. It enabled homo sapiens to
| gather in ever larger social groups.
|
| Media, from obelisks to tiktok, enables exploitation of
| our evolutionary quirk.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Similar to how we investigate and figure out airplane
| crashes, the system should not allow you to get into
| those situations in the first place, that's the solution
| that works across time, instead of for just individual
| situations.
|
| For example, how is someone who led/incited an
| insurrection against the government able to become head
| of said government? Already there, something is gravely
| wrong. You don't let undemocratic leaders lead a
| democratic society. So the system is broken, and the
| current administration is proof of that.
|
| Otherwise what other commentators said will happen,
| someone who might even be worse than Trump will
| eventually lead the country.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| So then again my question is who ultimately audits and
| holds the system accountable such that if the system
| needs to be fixed it gets fixed?
|
| The only answer to that is the people who form the
| citizenry.
|
| If the citizens cannot influence the system such that
| they can actually affect change on the system then they
| are irrelevant in it and the system needs to be replaced
|
| As long as they continue to fail to organize then they
| will continue to be dominated by it
|
| That's just reality
|
| There is no alternative organization that can counter the
| global capitalist system currently
| lawn wrote:
| We must blame the system _and_ the individual, otherwise
| the system will never change.
| pksebben wrote:
| I have an ongoing debate (argument? fight?) with my father
| about this. He recalls a time when it felt as if there were
| 'good guys' in politics, and can't understand why it is
| that I'm so hard on the democrats (this has begun to shift
| in recent months as Chucklefuck and Aipac Shakur have
| consistently disappointed him). Besides the obvious issue
| of republicans being a lost cause, it's policies like too
| big to fail and dodd-frank and nafta that created the
| conditions for our current mess, all the while expanding
| and allowing basic, obvious bad policy to persist
| (presidential pardons, executive order powers, life terms
| in the supreme court).
|
| A five year old can see the problems with a lot of this
| stuff, which once upon a time you'd defend with vague
| notions of a self-policing culture or the ghost of ethics
| in governance. Those kinds of non-safeguards can work fine
| _in a stable system_ , but they inherently rely on
| foreknowledge of future conditions not changing in
| unpredictable ways.
|
| The self-reinforcing recursive loop underlying all this is
| that the systems of governance can only be changed by the
| governors. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that
| democracy will fail so long as it's representative - the
| incentives to fix the system itself are simply not there
| because any inefficiency is exploitable for personal gain
| (so why fix it?) The doomsday proposition that comes out of
| _that_ though is that the system cannot be changed - only
| replaced once it decisively breaks. Maybe that 's what all
| this is. I would hate to find another bottom but I fear
| there's more to go before we get there.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Government is of course the quintessential multi-agent
| coordination problem.
|
| It has big problems when the people running it don't
| embody the values that it depends on.
| atlanta90210 wrote:
| They raided Trump's wife's underwear drawer too so Trump is a
| victim of this FBI overreach as well.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Its not really overreach if they get a warrant and find the
| things they were looking for.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| The photos you saw after the Mar-a-Lago raid of top-
| secret folders and classified files were fabricated. To
| look worse than they were.
|
| You can be mad at the FBI for raiding a journalist
| _(although we don't have all the details and maybe there
| is some context you don't know)_ ... but be consistent.
|
| The FBI staged that photo by combing through boxes. The
| TOP SECRET folders they showed were empty and they
| acknowledged that. This was a key component to Trump's
| defense and the FBI conceded it.
| selectodude wrote:
| Fabricated by whom? Like, out of whole cloth? Did the
| files not exist in the bathroom?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The difference here is that the journalist got passed
| information by people who were committing the same crime
| Trump did. Trump directly committed his crime. The two
| are not equal.
|
| Furthermore, Trump is no journalist, nor did he steal the
| secret files for journalistic purposes.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Citations needed.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| They moved them from a secure closet to a secure
| bathroom?
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Are you referring to the defense's assertion that even
| though great care was taken by the FBI to ensure that no
| individual file would move from one box to another, the
| ordering within an individual box was not preserved and
| constituted a "spoilation" of the evidence?
|
| Or are you referring to something else that I'm not yet
| aware of?
|
| Edit with an article link, to set a standard for the
| quality of discourse:
| https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/4648830-mar-
| a-l...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Most of which is downstream of 9/11 and the War on Terror.
| That provided lots of bipartisan support for state sponsored
| killings.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| It's been going since Reagan. Justice John Roberts is in
| the "unitary executive" camp and has been working to expand
| presidential power his whole career.
| api wrote:
| Not sure why this is being downvoted when it's quite an
| obvious trend in American politics. The executive has been
| getting stronger and Congress has been getting weaker and
| more dysfunctional for many years.
|
| We have been setting the stage and preparing the throne for
| an American dictator or emperor for at least 50 years, just
| waiting for one to decide to sit in the chair and wield the
| power we've laid at their feet. The only thing that stopped
| this from happening sooner is that none of the prior
| administrations truly wanted to do this.
|
| Bush, in particular, could have become dictator easily after
| 9/11. I dislike George W. pretty strongly but I do give him a
| little credit here.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| It'd be real cool if all the second amendment (guns) people cared
| as much about the first amendment (free speech and freedom of
| press).
|
| "They're gonna take my guns away!" Yet that never happens.
|
| But people are being targeted for what they say, for disagreeing
| publicly. That's real. And a lot of "patriots" don't seem to
| notice or care.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > And a lot of "patriots" don't seem to notice or care.
|
| They notice. They care. They just _love_ it.
|
| The "free speech absolutist" folks never were.
| petcat wrote:
| People care more about their guns because, in their minds,
| that's the last thing that stands between them and complete
| helplessness. They have fantasies of starting up an Idaho or
| Montana-style militia to protect themselves from the liberal
| and immigrant hoards.
| eunoia wrote:
| It was never principled opposition to anything, just a power
| fantasy that the current admin lets them live even more
| viscerally.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| The guns haven't been taken away only because people do care so
| much about the 2nd amendment. Those people understand that the
| 2nd amendment is the only ultimate defense for the people
| against the government.
|
| I too wish people also cared as much about the 1st amendment,
| but sadly I think the tide is turning on that. Too many on both
| the right and left seem okay with censorship and harassment.
| k2enemy wrote:
| Kind of ironic that there's a big overlap in the venn diagram
| between 2nd amendment enthusiasts and the crowd that is
| cheering on the government's authoritarian actions.
| chung8123 wrote:
| There isn't, it just appears that way. There is a subset of
| people that are cheering on the government in this
| situation and they are 2nd amendment supporters but the 2nd
| amendment supporters are much larger than that overlap.
|
| Things like this is just another way of trying to drive a
| wedge.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Because the visible 2A enthusiasts essentially trace a
| lineage to the KKK. Of course, they don't actually care
| about upholding the Constitution or fighting tyranny. That
| was just a convenient cover tactic and accusation to use
| against political opponents.
| xdennis wrote:
| > cheering on the government's authoritarian actions
|
| Enforcing the law is not an authoritarian action.
|
| Take for example the case of ICE agents arresting American
| citizens. Many complain that it's authoritarian. But it's
| just the law. 8 U.S.C. SS 1357(a)(5)(A) grants them the
| power to arrest anyone (including citizens) for any offense
| (not just crimes) committed in their presence.
|
| If Democrats disagree with this they can just repeal it.
| They've had the majority several times since the law was
| passed in 1990. But instead of repealing it, they advise
| their constituents that it's "illegal for ICE to arrest
| Americans" or it's "illegal for Border Patrol to operate
| outside the border". Complete misinformation!
|
| It's more authoritarian not to enforce the law. Instead of
| protesting to have the law changed, Democrats protest to
| harass ICE agents. A nation of laws seeks change in the
| legislature, not by vigilantism (what Renee Good was doing)
| in the streets.
| thunderfork wrote:
| >vigilantism (what Renee Good was doing)
|
| Good luck defining vigilanteism in a coherent way that
| includes "operating a motor vehicle near ICE agents".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| With the government harassing, attacking, and now killing
| innocent American citizens, I'm not so sure if the second
| amendment is working out so well.
|
| With the ridiculous leeway American law enforcement has when
| it comes to harming people ("qualified immunity"), I don't
| think that second amendment will be relevant until there's an
| outright civil war happening. And when it comes to that, one
| or both sides have access to predator drones and fighter
| jets.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Not civil war, but a revolution. The 2nd amendment isn't
| worth much except as a very last resort, when the vast
| majority of people are willing to die to overthrow a
| government, as we're seeing in Iran.
|
| The people claiming that having guns won't save you against
| the weight of the army are only partly correct. Having a
| few guns won't save me personally. I would certainly be
| killed on my own. But no government can kill everyone,
| either as a practical matter, or simply because you still
| need folks to produce the food. When everybody is armed,
| the government simply cannot oppress them to the same
| degree.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Imagine every protestor you see on video was instead
| standing rank and file in the street with a rifle on their
| shoulder. I.e. a well regulated militia. That would sure
| send a very different message, wouldn't it?
| watwut wrote:
| Message that "yes these are thugs and it is ok to kill
| them".
|
| Police can kill you if they feel fear or pretend to feel
| fear. And having a gun was already ruled valid legal
| reasom for police to kill people.
|
| If protesters carried guns, ICE could legally murder
| them. Not just J.D.Vance legaly, but legaly per how
| courts interpret such situations.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Well then that will be something for the courts to sort
| out, especially in the open carry states.
|
| But I think you are underestimating the effect it will
| have on individual federal agents, who might decide the
| pay isn't good enough anymore.
|
| These scenes are also put on for the benefit of the
| politicians watching.
| watwut wrote:
| > Well then that will be something for the courts to sort
| out, especially in the open carry states.
|
| They already sorted it out - in open carry states. In the
| above situation, the court in open carry state sides with
| cops.
|
| It is really simple. Sentencing cop for on duty murder is
| extraordinary hard even in clear cut cases. Guns presence
| means a cop can say he was afraid. And afraid cop is
| entitled to kill.
|
| > But I think you are underestimating the effect it will
| have on individual federal agents, who might decide the
| pay isn't good enough anymore.
|
| You are over estimating it. They would just shoot and
| feel good about it.
|
| Even if they left, the state would send better trained
| troop the next time.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| During BLM protests there were anti-protesters doing
| exactly what I described, and they were not automatically
| shot at by police. Of course the political roles are
| reversed, but I don't believe it is as guaranteed as you
| suggest. And the legality is of course much more
| complicated than you portray as well.
| watwut wrote:
| The courts decided exactly like I said when cops shot.
| That the cops shown more restraint in BLM case is good.
|
| The political roles being different is key factor - ICE
| wants to kill and this administration wants them to kill.
| It makes them feel manly.
|
| Frankly, the theory that armed forces would step back is
| absurd. They are cowards, but they are not afraid to
| kill. They are so afraid of everything that they are more
| likely to kill
|
| And other side are people with moral limits. People who
| are not afraid and are showimg courage every day, but not
| murderers. And ICE knows that.
|
| No one in ICE fears life ... they fear being emasculated.
| eunoia wrote:
| The "don't tread on me" folks converted to "comply or die"
| shockingly quickly.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "Don't tread on me, _tread on them_ "
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| it's a universal thing I think. in self-defense, when your life
| is at risk, you can use those guns, what do you have to lose.
| But in every other case, you have more to lose so guns are
| useless outside of use by aggressors.
|
| They don't need to take your gun away, they just need to give
| you enough reasons to not use them. And even in 1779, it
| required lots of planning and coordination, and lots of loss to
| life and property to achieve change that way.
|
| The focus should be more on elected politicians, and voters
| themselves and how they vote/not vote. If the mid-terms were
| being held today, how many people would vote? It's scary, who
| wants to risk their lives for a vote? not many.
|
| I fear the governors of states will have to intervene, and the
| way that goes might lead to a conflict with the federal gov.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| The American Left has spent the better part of the last century
| attacking the 2nd Amendment, limiting firearms ownership, and
| portraying gun owners as paranoid losers. That would drive many
| on-the-fence gun owners away from supporting them.
|
| Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying
| that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid
| whackjobs.
|
| Is there any surprise that there's a dearth of armed citizens
| ready to stand up for them?
|
| "A rifle behind every blade of grass only works if you've been
| watering the lawn"
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Adding this on as a separate thought:
|
| If you genuinely think we're at the point that we need to
| start shooting, the onus is on YOU to get armed, get trained,
| and take action. Don't expect anyone else to come and fight
| for you, especially those you perceive as your political
| enemies.
| codezero wrote:
| It took me 15 minutes to buy an AR-15 and a pistol in 2025,
| how did the left do this?
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Well done! Step one is getting armed, and step two is
| training. There are a lot of good resources out there for
| non-right-wing shooters, such as InRangeTV.
| codezero wrote:
| Yep I practice and watch much of guntube.
| pjc50 wrote:
| OK, now what happens when you show up in front of an ICE
| agent while carrying an AR-15? How, specifically, do you
| use the gun to effect political change?
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Sure, but this has nothing to do with gun ownership
| policy or the political left.
|
| Edit: oh, you were responding to the second half of their
| comment, not the first. I see.
| codezero wrote:
| I wasn't suggesting that. The post I responded to
| basically said the left alienated people by restricting
| 2a, and it's really not at all restricted. Some states
| are more restrictive than others but that's not an
| overall "The Left" problem to be called out.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > The post I responded to basically said the left
| alienated people by restricting 2a,
|
| Incorrect, but judging by the responses here I conveyed
| my point poorly. I wasn't trying to say that the Left
| alienated existing gun owners. I was trying to say that
| their actions and positions prevented the formation of a
| grassroots population of responsible gun owners in their
| ranks. Specifically, a population that might be more
| ready to stand up against ongoing injustices.
|
| > and it's really not at all restricted. Some states are
| more restrictive than others
|
| Your AR-15 you smugly mentioned that you bought last year
| in "15 minutes" is in _spite_ of Democrats best efforts.
| If they had their way on gun laws any time in the last 30
| years, that transaction would be impossible. You 'll note
| that there's a pattern with those "some states" that are
| stricter than others. The fact that their overreaches
| have been successfully fought is not evidence that they
| aren't constantly trying (Paid attention to the docket in
| Virginia lately?).
|
| But that's not what I was trying to say anyway, you (like
| many others) just jumped at the prospect of sticking it
| to a perceived ideological enemy with a pithy reddit
| quip.
| codezero wrote:
| I apologize if I came off smug. Definitely wasn't my
| intention, and I did misinterpret yours.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Likewise, I apologize for getting a bit snippy.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| You'd have to be pretty insane to see opposing raids on
| journalists as supporting "The American Left".
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| At this point, unfortunately, that appears to be where the
| Overton window is resting. I didn't intend any sideswipes
| or sarcasm in my comment, I was just trying to characterize
| the opposition to the 2nd Amendment in broad terms.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I don't know whether you've noticed, but being armed is
| simply giving the Federales more reasons to kill you first.
| The woman shot in Minneapolis was shot on the pretext of
| using her car as a weapon.
|
| How do people really expect this to work? In detail? You show
| up with an armed militia at a school and the ICE guys just
| drive on past (and then raid someone else)? Or are they
| expecting more of an Amerimaidan situation? Jan 6th
| situation?
| selectodude wrote:
| It's a bunch of dudes who think they're literally Rambo.
| Like, sure with enough firepower you can maybe take out two
| before they take you out but any sort of application of
| your second amendment rights is going to end quickly for
| you.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| The irony of the romanticizing of the "Lone Wolf" is
| that, in reality, the lone wolf dies alone.
|
| Coordinating with your neighbors and compatriots is
| essential from the soap box, to the ballot box, to the
| jury box, and to the cartridge box. And I'd like to
| emphasize the order of those boxes should be followed.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I'm gonna say the same thing I said the last time you
| trotted out this opinion (which is far more excusable now
| that you've outed yourself as a brit BTW). At a societal
| level the LARPers don't matter. They are a rounding error
| compared to all the people who have a single daily carry
| piece or purse gun or whatever. And those people affect the
| numbers and the risk calculations happening in offices far
| away.
|
| ICE is thuggishly and sloppily prowling places like
| Minneapolis because statistically they can get away with it
| without causing too many bodies. Up the potential body
| number and their tactics are forced to change for the
| better.
|
| If the statistical average door they kick in in Minneapolis
| had the same likelihood of "shit I ain't going back to
| prison <bang> <bang> <bang> <dives out bathroom window and
| hops neighbors fence>" behind it as the statistical average
| door in St. Louis ICE wouldn't be behaving the way they are
| in MN. They would have specific targets, specific places
| and times to pick them up, etc, etc. (i.e. operating like
| the local professional police do) because the risk
| calculation with even a tiny change you might get shot back
| at, even if only ineffectively, makes that (much higher)
| resource expenditure pencil out, with consequences in terms
| of how much they can get done.
|
| Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence if
| cornered (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an
| ATGM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. You're not gonna
| take a squad with TOWs on the offensive against a bunch of
| tanks, but if attacked you've at least got a prayer. The
| same math holds on the individual level. Making any
| potential target substantially more prickly to a
| potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is
| a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force
| multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone
| that records things the government does not like or a media
| platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the
| masses. It forces the superior force to still be much more
| careful and expend far more resources when engaging. When
| it comes to domestic policing what this means is that ICE
| would be under more pressure to "be careful and
| professional" in every city like the DEA did during the war
| on drugs we wouldn't even be having this discussion because
| they wouldn't be employing the tactics that everyone hates.
|
| This math is a large part of why drugs won the war on
| drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking
| around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed
| to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay
| for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and
| thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up
| on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a few cheaply
| (poorly) trained cops, minimal equipment and support,
| minimal planning and surveillance, etc. it would've gone on
| way longer (but they couldn't, because that would have
| yielded too many bodies and cost too much political
| capital).
| watwut wrote:
| ICE is hopefully waiting for any sign of violence against
| them so that they can escalate even more. They do their
| best to provoke.
|
| You know where are all NRA and "have gun against
| govermental tyrrany" guys? In the ICE or supporting from
| sidelines. And they are itching for when they will
| finally be able to commit even more violence.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Sure, but not resisting ICE is also a desired outcome for
| them. May as well pick the one that _might_ lead to a
| better outcome for the oppressed.
| watwut wrote:
| They are being resisted tho by people on the ground. The
| missing resistance is among politicians.
| mywittyname wrote:
| They are escalating regardless.
|
| I'm convinced the whole point of pulling a phone out to
| film a murder is because they having a long-term strategy
| for slowly boiling the frog and it's gamified for agents.
| I'm certain that dude got a bonus, an award, and is up
| for promotion for walking the administration up the next
| rung of the tyranny ladder.
|
| "achievement unlocked"
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Just so we're clear, you're arguing that ICE is already
| murdering people on the street with impunity, but people
| shouldn't defend themselves or they'll just _get murdered
| harder_?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're arguing that the fight is precisely what the
| administration is looking to generate.
| NickC25 wrote:
| >Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly
| saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for
| paranoid whackjobs.
|
| One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion
| dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive
| media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident
| into an us-versus-them narrative.....
|
| Yeah, it is a fantasy. Oh, and if anything really gets out of
| hand, that political empire also has nuclear weapons.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Thew whiplash from "Why isn't anyone fighting ICE???" to
| "the government will nuke us if we fight back" is frankly
| stunning
| NickC25 wrote:
| Can't fight ICE because they have no laws they need to
| uphold, and they have an unlimited budget to buy tools to
| fight you with.
|
| And the whiplash is quite small, if not nonexistent. Why?
| Because there's no depths to which this regime, which is
| openly hostile to its own population, won't go to assert
| power, as well as to maintain it.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > there's no depths to which this regime, which is openly
| hostile to its own population, won't go to assert power,
| as well as to maintain it.
|
| Sounds like a regime worth fighting if that's what you
| believe, but it seems you've decided it's futile.
| CompanionCubee wrote:
| >Sounds like a regime worth fighting if that's what you
| believe, but it seems you've decided it's futile.
|
| They both can and can't fight at the same time. The guns
| are weapons of war, but also useless in war.
|
| Make it make sense.
| beeflet wrote:
| >One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion
| dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive
| media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident
| into an us-versus-them narrative.....
|
| How does legal immunity or a media empire affect a dead
| man?
|
| >Oh, and if anything really gets out of hand, that
| political empire also has nuclear weapons.
|
| Nuclear weapons are not very useful in a civil conflict...
| Or pretty much any conflict
| NickC25 wrote:
| >How does legal immunity or a media empire affect a dead
| man?
|
| If I have complete legal immunity from ANY of my actions,
| including killing someone, and there's a massive multi-
| trillion dollar media empire dedicated to creating
| regime-friendly narratives and supporting the leaders on
| "my side" at all costs, I can harass, defame, defraud,
| and kill you without hesitation whenever, wherever, and
| however I see fit, and I'll get no blowback. I'll get
| fans and supporters.
|
| Haven't we learned _anything_ from history?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Are you familiar with Chris Dorner?
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > The American Left has spent the better part of the last
| century attacking the 2nd Amendment
|
| That's doing a lot of heavy lifting. I know Republicans who
| unironically say shit like "We can't do background checks.
| What if I'm trying to buy a gun really quick for a hunting
| trip?" I would imagine your idea of "attacking" the second
| amendment is just common sense laws.
|
| > Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly
| saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for
| paranoid whackjobs.
|
| In your heart of hearts, do you really believe this has
| anything to do with it? If we were to take your comment
| seriously, it just illustrates the right never actually cared
| about standing up to oppressive governments, they just wanted
| to be the oppressive government. That is actually pretty
| consistent with how the left clocked them.
|
| But in reality, it has nothing to do with what you wrote. The
| biggest 2A fanatics, as someone related to quite a few of
| them, just have a fantasy of shooting people. They are openly
| celebrating the death of Renee Nicole Good because that's the
| kind of thing they want to do.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > I would imagine your idea of "attacking" the second
| amendment is just common sense laws.
|
| I would imagine your idea of "Common Sense laws" is
| actually just petty attacks on law-abiding citizens that do
| nothing to stop crime, so I guess we're even.
|
| > it just illustrates the right never actually cared about
| standing up to oppressive governments,
|
| My comment was not trying to argue that the Right did or
| does care. My comment was saying "This is the reason there
| are comparatively so few gun owners on the (American)
| Left". Because the American Left (speaking broadly)
| discouraged it for almost a century.
| lefrenchy wrote:
| You're right, owning a hand gun will be effective means to
| rebel against the most militarized government in the world.
| sneak wrote:
| Vietnamese farmers would agree with you.
| beej71 wrote:
| > Is there any surprise that there's a dearth of armed
| citizens ready to stand up for them?
|
| Forget the left. Why don't they stand up for themselves?
| mywittyname wrote:
| > The American Left has spent the better part of the last
| century attacking the 2nd Amendment, limiting firearms
| ownership, and portraying gun owners as paranoid losers. That
| would drive many on-the-fence gun owners away from supporting
| them.
|
| No we didn't. Promoting safe and conscientious gun ownership
| is a good thing, and it's the right thing for society. It's
| actually a pretty common feeling among gun owners. But gun
| lobbies has polluted people's minds into believing that the
| "left hates guns." Which isn't really true.
|
| For sure, there are people whose opinion is colored by the
| frequency of mass shootings and having their kids deal with
| active shooter drills, etc. But this isn't always a political
| issue - my hard right-wing grandma hated guns and forbade
| their ownership in her house.
|
| I frequent a gun club with a bunch of the leftest, gayest,
| socialistest, DEIest people you could meet, and we always
| find like-minded people to chat with. We are a minority,
| sure, but not a small one.
|
| > Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly
| saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for
| paranoid whackjobs.
|
| And I still believe this - more than ever. You'd have to be
| insane to stand up to the current government right now. They
| will disappear people to gulags or just shoot them in the
| face for practically no reason. Imagine what they do to
| people they genuinely believe are threats.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > We are a minority, sure, but not a small one.
|
| So you are actually supporting my point. Conscientious,
| civically-minded people who own guns are unfortunately a
| minority on the (American) Left.
|
| > And I still believe this - more than ever. You'd have to
| be insane to stand up to the current government right now.
|
| Then you should be quibbling with my parent commenter who
| is smugly asking why the "gun people" aren't shooting back,
| not me.
| vel0city wrote:
| "Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47"
|
| The words of the last Democrat that seemed to really have a
| chance to win a senator seat in my state. His support
| really dropped after such a statement in this state.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > Is there any surprise that there's a dearth of armed
| citizens ready to stand up for them?
|
| We may have the most armed citizenry in the world. If the
| second amendment advocates cared as much about our protected
| rights as they claim, they'd be all over this. All you're
| saying is that our liberties only matter to them as regards
| people who agree with them politically. Which is absolutely
| true.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > All you're saying is that our liberties only matter to
| them as regards people who agree with them politically.
| Which is absolutely true.
|
| What I'm saying is that "Gun owner" shouldn't be a
| political statement, and we'd be a lot better off if more
| Democrats owned and trained with guns.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > If the second amendment advocates cared as much about our
| protected rights as they claim, they'd be all over this.
|
| This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Second
| Amendment, and all intersections with other civil rights
| are seen through our respective lenses.
|
| There _is_ a lot of attention being paid to this within
| that community, but it 's largely supportive. Everything
| the left is upset about falls into two categories: it's
| either something with broad support (deportation of those
| not legally present) or there's more to the story that
| significantly changes the situation, at least from their
| perspective (Renee Good).
|
| To be clear, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind or even
| state my own views with this comment; I'd just like the
| various sides to understand each other a bit better.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The American left is very much in favor of the second
| amendment. You seem to confusing it with liberal centrists,
| the sort of people who say 'violence is never the solution'
| and wrings their hands wondering why someone doesn't arrest
| bad actors in government.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| I specifically used the phrase "American Left" to try and
| head off this trite quip.
|
| I was referring, in general terms, to the left wing of
| mainstream American political discourse without narrowing
| it down to just "Democrats". I was trying not to trigger
| the waves of "Ackshyually karl marx says under no pretext"
| comments that one usually gets.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Then why not just say 'Democrats'? There's a large
| political community to the left of the Democratic party
| that is underrepresented electorally, as has been
| demonstrated at the ballot box over and over. Flattening
| everything together is an over-simplification.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Well, clearly I _should_ have just said Democrats,
| although my thinking at the time was that the comment
| would appear too partisan and trigger reflexive negative
| reactions. Clearly that happened regardless.
| joering2 wrote:
| Take it for whats its worth but I been good friends with
| someone who works in Newsom camp, and constantly goes for a
| bite with his team. They talk alot. The main theme now is how
| to use illegal immigration situation to their benefit. If
| Newsom is elected President, he wants to go door to door in
| search for illegal guns that illegals are harboring. Of course
| all this is BS, or in such insignificant amount that its rather
| irrelevant. But they want to use Republican's hate for
| immigrants to help them catalog all serials numbers and
| ownership of us-owned guns. To some degree it will be fun to
| watch the "all she had to do is comply with Federal law not to
| get killed while running away in her car" people rounded up and
| having their guns cataloged in the name of fight with illegal
| immigration, and in accordance with Federal law :)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| In your _"it would be fun to see people I don't like being
| killed"_ you have conflated legal gun ownership that you
| don't like to illegally crossing the remaining the borders of
| a country... and you can't see it huh?
| mos_basik wrote:
| You're misquoting them. They said "it would be fun to see
| [people I don't like] _have their guns cataloged_. "
| aftbit wrote:
| Huh? Are you saying that if Gavin Newsom is elected, rather
| than turning down the rhetoric, restoring the rule of law,
| and taking the pressure off of the immigrants and brown
| people who are scapegoats of the current administration, he
| instead wants to commit violations of the 4th amendment under
| the color of searching for immigrants but _actually_ in order
| to find firearms that are legally owned by US citizens?
| Presumably in preparation for a mass violation of the 2nd
| amendment (aka "round 'em up boys")? And your source for this
| is ... you're friends with someone who works "in the Newsom
| camp" and you go out for lunch with them?
|
| I'll be honest, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy
| theory, so I'm gonna take it for what it's worth ... nothing.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| He's saying his friend and his friend's coworkers who
| somehow work for Newsom wants Newsom to do that. Not that
| Newsome wants to do that.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Of course the actual implementation is much easier. Just
| repeal the laws that prevent digitizing the existing records
| and building a database. That will cover the majority of
| individuals even if there is a long tail of untracked
| firearms.
| fullstick wrote:
| It feels like all of the "patriots" joined ICE.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It feels like all of the "patriots" joined ICE.
|
| That's certainly possible. Maybe even likely. Fortunately, we
| now have more information[0] to correlate whether or not
| that's true.
|
| Perhaps soon we'll see a "Show HN" with a searchable database
| of those folks with links to known "patriot" groups. That
| would be interesting.
|
| [0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/whistleblower-leaks-
| person...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > "They're gonna take my guns away!" Yet that never happens
|
| That never happens because the parties vested in that right
| resist every single time. Effectively. With real numbers. Not
| media campaigns or propaganda social media mechanisms. Largely
| without protesting, with no need to get into degrees of
| legality in doing so.
|
| You don't get to say _"that never happens"_ as if it isn't the
| explicit goal of an entire political party. You get to realize
| _"we don't let that happen"_.
|
| As to current events... the mass deportation guy won elections,
| why is it you expect armed resistance to federal officers
| carrying out the exact thing the majority of voters wanted?
|
| You can disagree on anything you like, but, I find the _"why
| aren't people shooting federal officers who are enforcing
| immigration law!?_ " posts to be extreme affirmations of echo
| chamber. If you don't like it, get your reps to change the
| laws, not suggest murdering people who you don't like.
| captainclam wrote:
| Not asking adversarially at all here: what do you mean by
| resisting with "real numbers" without media campaigns, social
| media, or protesting? What do the vested parties actually do
| to secure their second amendment rights? Do you just mean
| having large voting blocs?
| mrtesthah wrote:
| No matter how many people vote for something, congress and
| the president do not have the right to infringe upon peoples'
| fourth (searches & seizures) and 14th amendment (due process)
| rights. Federal agents are systematically violating those
| rights and not being held accountable due to a blatantly
| partisan supreme court. With no other alternative, it will be
| up to everyday citizens to stop those offenses and seek
| justice.
| shimman wrote:
| The second amendment people are quite fine with the current
| administration. All you're learning is what real power means
| and sadly what performative opposition does (nothing).
| dmschulman wrote:
| This is Nathanson's recent article (gift link) describing her
| work and the story that likely triggered the FBI's interest. Her
| reporting tells the stories of federal workers, she's not
| involved in any investigative work beyond interviewing current or
| former civil servants who feel helpless and lost now that the
| career that gave them purpose is no longer the same:
| wapo.st/49BQBrh One day, a woman wrote to me on
| Signal, asking me not to respond. She lived alone, she messaged,
| and planned to die that weekend. Before she did, she wanted at
| least one person to understand: Trump had unraveled the
| government, and with it, her life. I called William,
| feeling panic rise like hot liquid in the back of my throat.
| He told me to stay calm. He told me to send the woman a list of
| crisis resources, starting with the 988 national suicide hotline.
| He told me to remember that reporters are not trained therapists
| or counselors, just human beings doing the best we can.
| "You should try to help, but whatever this woman does or doesn't
| do, it may happen regardless of anything you say," William said.
| "It's not up to you." I did what he said, then fell
| asleep refreshing the app, checking for a reply. The next
| morning, a message appeared below her name: "This person isn't
| using Signal."
| woah wrote:
| [flagged]
| genewitch wrote:
| mentally unstable people can hold down jobs sometimes, too.
| Like, those under treatment, but a stressor can cause
| "relapse" and now you got a predicament at work.
|
| Chemical and/or clinical depression can be debilitating, and
| i consider it mental instability.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Apparently. If you're scared of the government, this would be
| an entirely rational thing to do to safeguard the privacy of
| other people you know on Signal.
| shrubble wrote:
| Steps before self-ending:
|
| 1. Feed cat, ensure that friend will adopt cat.
|
| 2. Talk to any family members.
|
| 3. Uninstall Signal
|
| 4. Take too many Ambien.
|
| Or:
|
| "I'm sending this to you confidentially so please don't respond
| since metadata will show I contacted you."
|
| Reporter: responds anyway
| publicdebates wrote:
| This strengthens my belief that all governments, mafias, urban
| gangs, and even cliques, are literally all just ancient tribalism
| manifested in modernity; may the biggest rocks win.
| cathyreisenwitz wrote:
| "When populists get into power, the rhetorical discourse frames
| tend to be used to implement successive autocratic measures, such
| as limiting opposition through electoral manipulation, thwarting
| the free press, changing the constitution in their own favor, and
| circumscribing minority, civil, political, and economic rights.
| Populists are usually not against electoral democracy per se, but
| rather at odds with liberal democracy. Since they believe they
| represent the 'true people,' other people's votes do not really
| count as legitimate. Consequently, they are hostile to the
| underlying values and principles of constitutionalism, pluralism,
| minority rights, and checks and balances."
|
| -Nils Karlson, Economist and poltical scientist, founder of the
| Ratio Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, former professor of
| political science at Linkoping university, Sweden, visiting
| fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, etc.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| So how does the cycle work? I'm not being sarcastic I actually
| find this a relevant and on-point summation. I happen to be
| very interested in the systemic consequences and results in
| Western history as much as is applicable in present USA. I'm
| glad to be a bystander and not participant, that's for sure.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| One final resolution is the guillotine, dangling upside down
| on a meat hook, or a bunker fire. Those are extreme but we
| have to wonder what will stop a specific leader from pushing
| so far that they meet such a fate. This personality type does
| not stop unless they have to.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _One final resolution is the guillotine_
|
| Did you miss the lesson from the actual guillotine? It's
| just another escalation in the cycle. The parties switch
| from raiding to guillotining each other. The guillotine
| doesn't solve the problem, it just raises the stakes.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Just to add to this, it still blows my mind how quickly
| this happened. The French went from overthrowing the
| royals to guillotining their neighbours within 5 years,
| and in the same short timespan Robespierre went madder
| than any Sun King had ever been. "La Terreur" was total
| madness.
| pavlov wrote:
| On top of that he was a tremendous speaker. Tyrants don't
| usually bother to justify their actions much beyond
| "because I can and I want to." (Cf. current US
| administration's discourse over Greenland.)
|
| But Robespierre was a believer in capital-R Reason, and
| he had to face the National Assembly all the time. So his
| speeches are a fascinating gradual slippery slope from
| "it would be good if Jews and actors would get to vote
| too" to "only Terror will purify the world."
|
| I've got a little book of them, aptly titled "Les plus
| beaux discours de Robespierre" -- his most beautiful
| speeches. It would be an odd adjective to use about
| almost any other political monster's output (excepting
| Antiquity and the distance we have to them).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _French went from overthrowing the royals to
| guillotining their neighbours_
|
| The irony being the elites after the French Revolution
| were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped
| with so much money and wealth that it's actually debated
| if they increased their wealth share through the chaos
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023
| TitaRusell wrote:
| My country went from 1000 years of Christian hegemony to
| atheist in a span of approximately 20 years. Don't
| underestimate the capacity for humans to change.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Sure. Final resolution for that leader, in any case. But
| in the cycles of history, those events are almost always
| inflection points where something new happens. For the
| Terror, that lasted a while, but then we got Napoleon,
| which was definitely a new chapter.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _in the cycles of history, those events are almost
| always inflection points where something new happens_
|
| Guillotines have historically been a time for the elites
| to consolidate wealth and power (with some shuffling
| among them). The poor and middle class eat shit.
|
| (The _only_ exceptions to the first part to my knowledge
| being the o.g., and only the o.g., communist revolutions
| in Russia and China. Still shit for the poor and middle
| class. But the elites fully rotated.)
|
| > _For the Terror, that lasted a while, but then we got
| Napoleon, which was definitely a new chapter_
|
| Sure. One which involved shuffling between Bourbons and
| an imperial Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna brought
| peace to Europe until WWI. But to the extent the French
| Revolution benefited ordinary people, it was in Britain
| and America.
|
| Being temporally proximate to a guillotining is
| precedentedly fine. Being physically proximate to it is
| pretty much shit unless you're already powerful (or lucky
| enough to land a seat in the new oligarchy).
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Human society is prone to convulsions, though. Just like
| the often body requires a shock to become stronger,
| healthier, societies need to be a push to avoid
| stagnation and decay. Though its true that you risk
| permanent injury, if you go too far.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _its true that you risk permanent injury, if you go too
| far_
|
| Guillotining-and violence as a tool of politics more
| broadly-is pretty much a one-way signal in the historical
| record (outside civil wars). More concentration of wealth
| and power. Or anarchy. Either way, the poor and middle
| class end up worse.
|
| As for my civil-war caveat, even that's starting to look
| one way in the age of information and globally-mobilised
| proxy-war assets.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Hitler did not come to power out of a Jacobin movement,
| he came to power during a time just like our own, when a
| moderate government was convinced that there was no
| better alternative to their style of rule. It is
| dangerous to argue in favor of a stable middle class when
| history would prove that such forms of society are often
| fleeting when they do occur. Waves inevitably crash along
| the shore, which doesn't mean they aren't beautiful while
| they roll along it.
| timeon wrote:
| So what is 2A for? What is price of shooting children in
| schools for?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat
| io...
|
| 2. Modern societies are really complex, and a great deal of
| information-processing work is required to keep them
| functioning. Authoritarian governments maintain control by
| concentrating power, which means there are too few people
| available to make decisions about the behaviour of the
| system. A good example is the centrally-planned economy of
| the Soviet Union, which was outperformed by 'the invisible
| hand of the market', which is really a metaphor for the
| collective decisions of all participants in market economies.
| Consequently, authoritarian governments always collapse in
| the end. It's interesting to note, however, that the Soviet
| Union and the fascist or quasi-fascist governments in Spain
| and Portugal lasted much longer than Nazi Germany or Fascist
| Italy, because they built up some institutions that resulted
| in less concentration of power.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| I find your explanation of free markets outperforming
| authoritarian regimes wanting. How should a stable and
| sealed dictatorship like north korea be impacted let alone
| destabilized by anything outside privateers do? Can you
| give an example?
|
| Also, since many people bring up the french revolution.
| Peak weapons tech back then was front loading muskets and
| the fights in paris were desparation driven bloodbaths,
| where such weapons were eventually captured by the
| revolution. Today, the power gap to be outperformed by free
| markets is much bigger.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's somewhat hopeful to assume that it is a cycle.
| floatrock wrote:
| Usually there's a bodies-in-the-streets phase... guillotine
| was theatrical, bolsheviks called it the red terror, nazis
| were well the nazis, italians strung em up on meathooks,
| tienamin used tanks (after the famines), baltics did straight
| up ethnic cleansings, last week iranians gunned down
| thousands corralled in the squares.
|
| Luckily we're still only in the "kidnap and beat-up by the
| secret police" phase, haven't had the mass executions yet.
| Only a singular execution here and there.
|
| > I'm glad to be a bystander and not participant, that's for
| sure.
|
| Hope that's because you're not in the USA. USA-based
| bystanders is how this shit happens.
| Nicook wrote:
| "Liberal Democracy" is such a charged word.
| saulpw wrote:
| It doesn't mean "liberal" in the political sense. It has a
| well-defined meaning (from wikipedia):
|
| > Liberal democracy emphasizes the separation of powers, an
| independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances
| between branches of government. Multi-party systems with at
| least two persistent, viable political parties are
| characteristic of liberal democracies.
| pxc wrote:
| How so?
| Havoc wrote:
| > impair public interest reporting in general.
|
| Some administrations may see this as a feature not bug...
| FatherOfCurses wrote:
| Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and gave a boatload of money
| to Trump's campaign. Democracy dies in darkness.
| leoc wrote:
| Don't ever forget what Bezos chooses to do or not to do here,
| whenever his name comes up in any context in future.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Keep your eyes on protecting the midterms from interference... re
| ICE / militias etc. I encourage governors to call up their
| State's National Guards to protect their State's electoral
| systems from Federal intrusion and extremist militia groups. This
| move is founded in the most republican of urges: State
| Sovereignty. (btw, I'd even consider that as a move in
| Minneapolis, right now).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Do you think the Minneapolis National Guard are willing to fire
| on ICE if ordered to do so? What do you expect the legal
| fallout of that situation to be?
| empath75 wrote:
| I think that is becoming a less and less ridiculous scenario
| over time and I hope blue state governors have had long
| conversations with their national guard leadership about it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| There is a lot of room before that. Rather that the Guard
| would intervene illegal searches etc, and the inevitable
| tense ICE - National Guard interaction would change the
| dynamic, temper ICE's behavior. Moreover, the expected
| outcome would actually be Trump trying to nationalize that
| guard, then a constitutional crisis/emergency supreme Court
| intervention. The most power move that Democrats could make
| right now is the Republican one: state's rights/ sovereignty
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think your assessment is accurate and realistic.
|
| But ICE is behaving pretty sloppy. I'm not sure it could
| get to that point without (just due to risk multiplied by
| sheer number of interactions) ICE accidentally escalating
| something via sloppiness, crossing something that they
| don't value but is a hard line to their local PD security
| detail, refusing to stop and getting smoked that way,
| either by their own security or by a passer by while their
| security shrugs.
|
| A fed might not care about literally doing a George Floyd,
| but your security force might just walk off rather than be
| party to that.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think the Minnesota National Guard might be willing to fire
| on masked goons trying to abduct voters from polling
| stations, regardless of what agency they claim to be from.
| Even if they're not, their presence might deter the goons
| from showing up, which I think is a significant risk in the
| status quo.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do you think the Minneapolis National Guard are willing to
| fire on ICE if ordered to do so?_
|
| As curretly constituted, no. But it doesn't hurt to start
| contingency planning to build a force that is eventually
| loyal to its state and the Constitution over the men who hold
| the office at that time.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I don't think National Guard around polling places would be
| good for turnout. Voting in advance, from home, is a solution
| already in place for most.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| "Oops, sorry, your postal votes were kept in this warehouse
| over there. Yeah, the one that went on fire.". There's even a
| documentary about it called "Succession".
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm very much present in "right wing circles", and I've seen
| exactly zero mention of "militias" being involved in anything
| whatsoever. They are just as politically radioactive as they've
| always been.
|
| Where are you getting this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They are just as politically radioactive as they 've
| always been_
|
| J6ers attacking cops is currently being celebrated. That's an
| _ad hoc_ militia. (Tarrio built an actual one.)
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| When the militias can earn big dollars by joining ICE to do
| what they already want to do, the difference is meaningless.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| To clarify why it's aggressive: federal employees have a legal
| duty to secure classified information, but everyone else does
| not.
|
| Reporters are not federal employees and it's not illegal for them
| to have or discuss classified materials. Most of what Snowden
| leaked was classified, _and remains classified to this day_ , but
| you and I can read about it on Wikipedia. The government pursued
| Snowden because he was legally obligated to protect that info.
| They did not pursue Barton Gellman because he wasn't.
|
| So in this case the government is raiding the home of someone who
| did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting at people who
| might have. I think it's not hard to imagine how this concept
| could get ugly fast.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Thank you, this is really useful context!
| atoav wrote:
| Yet others just invite journalists to signal groups
| accieentally and don't face any repercussions. Strange.
| testfrequency wrote:
| Not to belittle good framing, but we are /waaaaay/ past the
| ugly point of law and order.
| munk-a wrote:
| We are - but it's important to not allow our standards to be
| shifted. This is unacceptable and while there is plenty of
| stuff happening today that's unacceptable it's still
| important to call it out. The past year has been a test of
| our endurance as illegal actions are piled up (in imo an
| intentional effort to overwhelm) and our minds must ping pong
| from foreign leaders being kidnapped to murders to threats
| against our closest allies all while legal demands from
| congress specifically passed against the administration are
| blatantly and illegally ignored.
|
| It's all unacceptable and it's exhausting, but apathy is the
| enemy here.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Calling out does nothing. Everyone is aware of the issues.
|
| The problem is nobody is willing to use their
| constitutional right to fight for justice, because everyone
| is deathly afraid of losing even a little bit of their
| comfortable life.
|
| If people were more willing to use the rights given to them
| by a specific amendment, none of this would happen.
| tuna74 wrote:
| A lot of people are doing that. Every protester against
| ICE is doing exactly what you described. Some have been
| murdered for it.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| wrong amendment
| munk-a wrote:
| If we need to fall back on that one it's going to suck.
| It isn't going to be glorious or something to celebrate
| being a part of - it's going to absolutely suck to live
| through and where we end up at the far end is very much
| up to chance @see myanmar.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >that one it's going to suck.
|
| Absolutely, but you can't make someone believe that
| things like trans athletes, DEI, multi race populations,
| and whatever else are all extremely minor things compared
| to how good your life is, until that good life goes away.
| Its exactly the same thing as with all the anti vaxxers
| who were dying on respirators saying that they were wrong
| and begging people to take the vaccine. Everyone needs a
| reality check.
|
| And on the other side of the isle, people need to realize
| that is not just political opinions, some people are
| truly just evil.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| Maybe this is too idealistic, but Waltz the IR Realist,
| frames this as 2 types of situations.
|
| You have your anarchic situations, International Relations,
| non-law breaking situations like having a conversation with a
| friend/stranger, and everything not covered in (signed)
| (legal) writing.
|
| You have your hierarchy. When the police get involved, when
| your boss can fire you, legal, etc.. In this case, you still
| need 4 things to happen: There needs to be a legal
| basis(Legislature), they need to be caught(Executive), they
| need to be found guilty (Judicial), it needs to be enforced
| (Executive).
|
| I wouldn't give up in hierarchy yet. But know the
| limitations.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Didn't they persecute (or tried to, I don't remember anymore)
| Assange for the same reason though? Or is there some clear
| difference here?
| sneak wrote:
| They had a flimsy argument that Assange actively conspired
| with Manning to hack government machines based on some chat
| logs.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Some added context for this raid. It allegedly is about a govt
| contractor
|
| > The search came as part of an investigation into a government
| contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government
| materials.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So, wait, the administration cares about people illegally
| retaining classified information now?
| Integrape wrote:
| When you're a star, they let you do it
| thedrexster wrote:
| Ooooph, brother :(
| pcaharrier wrote:
| >So in this case the government is raiding the home of someone
| who did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting at people
| who might have.
|
| I looked at a lot of search warrant affidavits in a previous
| job and there's really nothing all that unusual about this
| aspect (doing it to a member of the press or doing it on a
| pretext are separate issues that I'm not commenting on). Police
| execute search warrants at other locations all the time because
| the relevant question is whether there is probable cause to
| believe that there is evidence of the commission of the crime
| they are investigating at that location, not whether the person
| who lives or works there is guilty of that particular crime.
| Given that fact, of course, it's all the more reason that
| judicial officers should subject search warrant affidavits to
| careful scrutiny because when they come to look through your
| stuff they will just turn your house or business upside down
| and they don't get paid to help you clean up afterwards.
| dugidugout wrote:
| I appreciate the added nuance here and would like to hear
| your comments on the seperate issue of doing this to a member
| of the press, or better, the sepcific pretext presented by
| the reporting:
|
| > The warrant, she said, was executed "at the home of a
| Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting
| classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon
| contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars."
|
| > Bondi added: "The Trump administration will not tolerate
| illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported,
| pose a grave risk to our nation's national security and the
| brave men and women who are serving our country."
| tracker1 wrote:
| You'd have to be able to read minds if you want to
| establish a pretext. There are perfectly valid reasons,
| such as evidence collection against the accused party, to
| perform the search/raid.
|
| I do wish that the law provided for concepts of minimal
| damage and repair should there be actual damage (not just
| creating a mess) that doesn't result in evidence. ie: if
| you tear open drywall, there better be something behind
| drywall that was collected as evidence.
|
| However, that's not the case, and even civilly it's hard to
| collect damages even when it's the "wrong house"... though
| thatt's one of the few exceptions I've seen... also, iirc,
| there's been some 4th amendment arguments to construe
| having to pay for use/damages, not sure where that has
| landed.
|
| IANAL.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| As long as there's probable cause for _some_ crime, the
| subjective motivations of the officer are almost never
| going to enter the legal analysis. Whren v. United
| States[1] was a case about a pretextual traffic stop, but
| the core reasoning (unanimously) was about what the Fourth
| Amendment requires /allow. For example, if police have a
| "hunch" you're selling drugs but not probable cause, they
| can just wait for you to run a stop sign or something and
| then pull you over and see if you left something in plain
| view, or if you act nervous, or try to get consent to
| search. At that point, the fact that the initial reason
| they started focusing on you was a mere hunch doesn't
| matter legally speaking. If this sounds like it can be used
| to make life hard for people that law enforcement doesn't
| like, you're not wrong. In my job we really didn't see how
| challenges to search warrants turned out, but as far as I'm
| aware the Supreme Court has never said "Whren only applies
| to traffic stops and not search warrant affidavits."
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whren_v._United_States
| dugidugout wrote:
| > For example, if police have a "hunch" you're selling
| drugs but not probable cause, they can just wait for you
| to ...
|
| Whren doesn't seem to track in this case or am I missing
| something? In the example provided, the hunch directly
| ties the target to the crime ("drug selling"), which
| matches the stop's pretext. Natanson isn't accused of any
| crime, she's essentially writing about the "selling of
| drugs", not organizing or committing it.
|
| Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying
| history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really
| at risk of my home being raided and communications seized
| solely because I might have evidence leading to their
| conviction?
|
| Then extrapolating this to the implications on freedom of
| press... This doesn't sit well with me.
| t-3 wrote:
| > Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying
| history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really
| at risk of my home being raided and communications seized
| solely because I might have evidence leading to their
| conviction?
|
| If the police can convince a judge to give them a warrant
| for it, sure, but if they were targeting you specifically
| they probably wouldn't bother with the indirect route of
| your drug-dealing friend and would just harass you for j
| walking and not using your blinkers properly until you
| raised your voice at a cop and charge you with assaulting
| an officer.
| dugidugout wrote:
| I believe you have the hypothetical confused.
|
| > if they were targeting you specifically
|
| They are not targeting Natanson at all from what I can
| tell. They're targeting a source she's writing from (to
| what extent isn't clear to me). This is precisely why I'm
| positing Whren doesn't apply here.
|
| I get the idea of being 'papered' out of a system, but
| I'm trying to distinguish a pretext that can be justified
| (objective probable cause) from one that can't (abuse of
| process). My boss can easily provide reason relating me
| to fire me, however fantastic the reality, but those
| would be refused, for good reason, if they surfaced them
| through private channels outside the organization.
| t-3 wrote:
| In the case of drugs, they probably wouldn't have any
| reason to raid you unless you were suspected of stashing
| drugs or money or some other evidence. The journalist is
| reasonably likely to be in contact with the leaker and so
| the cops have a somewhat valid pretext to seize things
| they thought contained evidence of the crime. Whether or
| not the cops _should_ be able to do that is another
| thing, but the precedents have been long set.
|
| The really strange thing here is the massive raid in the
| middle of the night rather than a more proportional
| response. That suggests that the journalist _was_ being
| targeted specifically.
| dugidugout wrote:
| > In the case of drugs, they probably wouldn't have any
| reason to raid you unless you were suspected of stashing
| drugs or money or some other evidence.
|
| To keep with the analogy: If I had a public history of
| contact with the dealer (and was a prolific writer on the
| inner workings of drug trafficking), police could claim
| "reasonable suspicion" that I have
| communications/evidence related to them. That would
| justify seizing my devices for investigation under the
| same logic.
|
| I agree there's more context to evaluate, but even
| Bondi's provided framing troubles me. It seems broad
| enough to target any journalist with relevant sources to
| a provided crime.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _...they don 't get paid to help you clean up afterwards._
|
| Could you litigate to recover the costs and repair any damage
| done? Is there case law around what is a reasonable level of
| dishevelment?
| jandrese wrote:
| You can file a civil suit against the police department,
| but results are far from certain. Unless it was a case of
| the cops raiding the wrong home entirely and you managed to
| make the news the success rate is not great.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| And even then . . . https://ij.org/if-you-break-it-you-
| buy-it-unless-youre-the-p...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Unlikely. Similarly, if the fire department has to use an
| axe to chop your door open to respond to a fire call, it's
| your responsibility to replace the door.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| Let's call it "extremely difficult" - https://ij.org/if-
| you-break-it-you-buy-it-unless-youre-the-p...
| eli wrote:
| Sure, though the government routinely searches the personal
| property of innocent people if they think that search will
| yield information _about_ a suspect.
|
| The issue here is the American tradition of a free press and
| the legitimate role of leaks in a free country. The PBS article
| is a bit better on context:
|
| > _The Justice Department over the years has developed, and
| revised, internal guidelines governing how it will respond to
| news media leaks._
|
| > _In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued new guidelines
| saying prosecutors would again have the authority to use
| subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for
| government officials who make "unauthorized disclosures" to
| journalists._
|
| > _The moves rescinded a Biden administration policy that
| protected journalists from having their phone records secretly
| seized during leak investigations -- a practice long decried by
| news organizations and press freedom groups._
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fbi-searched-home-of-w...
|
| My understanding is that searches of journalists still must be
| signed off on by the AG personally.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > the government routinely searches the personal property of
| innocent people if they think that search will yield
| information about a suspect.
|
| If that's true, it's a direct violation of the fourth
| amendment. I'll paste it here for convenience:
|
| _The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
| and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall
| issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
| affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
| searched, and the persons or things to be seized._
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, "routinely" should have been interpreted to mean
| "routinely, after showing probable cause and obtaining a
| warrant". Law enforcement obtains warrants for that
| routinely, that is, it's not an exceptional case for them
| to do so.
| yorwba wrote:
| That includes an explicit carve-out for reasonable
| searches. And given "innocent until proven guilty" any
| search is technically targeting innocent people in hopes of
| yielding information about a suspect. Sometimes that's a
| reasonable thing to do.
| eli wrote:
| They get a warrant
| rolph wrote:
| there are some places where no one should go skulking
| around, no matter what the problem might be.
|
| if someone goes snooping around my 1000yd backstop without
| signing in at the range house, they are suicidal.
|
| there is a lot of signage, and curtailage, and a darwin
| prize
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _To clarify why it's aggressive: federal employees have a
| legal duty to secure classified information_ [...]
|
| Does that include (former) presidents as well?
|
| * https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65775163
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_...
|
| (Asking for a friend.)
| watwut wrote:
| They have duty to not take documents with them when they
| leave office. And they have duty to protect the documents
| while in the office.
|
| Of course that was before right wing supreme cpurt decides
| presidents can vreak the law as they wish (wink wink only as
| long as they are right wing, I am sure they would rule
| differently on democrat).
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| It's possible (and in fact the law) that the journalist against
| whom a search warrant is issued is suspected of aiding in the
| leak or committing a crime, though. I don't think we yet know
| that she's not in that category; only that she claims that she
| was told that she wasn't the focus of the probe and was not
| currently formally accused of a crime.
| belorn wrote:
| This is not a comment about if journalists homes should be more
| sacred than other people. Some countries do give journalists
| extra legal protection against this, but I do not know US law
| in this regard.
|
| To my understanding, a US search warrant authorize law
| enforcement officers to search a particular location and seize
| specific items. The requirements are:
|
| 1# filled in good faith by a law enforcement officer 2# Have
| probable cause to search 3# issued by a neutral and detached
| magistrate 4# the warrant must state specifically the place to
| be searched and the items to be seized.
|
| There is nothing about the owner of the location. It can be a
| car, a parking lot, a home, a work place, a container, a safe,
| a deposit box in a bank, and so on.
|
| The significant question here is about probable cause. Why were
| those items interesting for the FBI to collect? Are they
| looking to secure evidence against the leaker, and if so, what
| was the specifics of the search warrant? The article states:
| "The statement gave no further details of the raid or
| investigation".
|
| Probable cause should not be about preventing journalists
| access to documents they already got, as that would be like
| going after Barton Gellman.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Most likely securing information/evidence about the leaker,
| who likely did break the law or connected to someone who
| did... the first party leaking classified materials broke the
| law, while other intermediaries may not have. In an
| investigative process, this isn't at all inappropriate...
| Journalists aren't sacrosanct, though policies may have
| varied as to the level investigations will go.
| rolph wrote:
| #1 and #3 are the problems it works out to a trust us bro
| situation.
| hopelite wrote:
| > Some countries do give journalists extra legal protection
| against this, but I do not know US law in this regard.
|
| Something worth noting at least for pedantic purposes, since
| practice is quite different; technically speaking every
| person has the same rights and laws to follow as a
| journalist. Fundamentally, there are really no differences
| between a journalist and a regular person engaging in the
| same activities.
|
| It's an indication of the unique system architecture that
| differentiates the USA from all other societies on the
| planet.
|
| It has been attacked, infiltrated, poison pilled, and really
| rather devastated in especially the last 100 years, but it is
| still standing, for better or worse, whether it can be
| restored or it just needs to die in order to give others a
| chance to rebuild something improved on the core
| characteristics of the Constitution.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Explain why they pursued Julian Assange then.
|
| Based on your own logic then Assange did not have any
| requirement to protect classified information yet he was Public
| Enemy number one.
|
| I know people who personally sat on the Edward Snowden board
| and spent years of their life trying to create a case within
| the intelligence community against this guy
| vel0city wrote:
| > Explain why they pursued Julian Assange then.
|
| There is a difference between someone essentially just
| handing you a pile of classified documents and you going
| around soliciting and encouraging people to break the law and
| mishandle the documents to give to you.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > mishandle the documents
|
| https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2011-09-28/the-dangerous-
| cult-...
|
| > The low point in Leigh's role in this saga is divulging
| in his own book a complex password Assange had created to
| protect a digital file containing the original and unedited
| embassy cables. Each was being carefully redacted before
| publication by several newspapers, including the Guardian.
|
| > This act of - in the most generous interpretation of
| Leigh's behavior - gross stupidity provided the key for
| every security agency in the world to open the file. Leigh
| has accused Wikileaks of negligence in allowing a digital
| copy of the file to be available. Whether true, his own
| role in the affair is far more inexcusable.
|
| > His and the Guardian's recklessness in disclosing the
| password was compounded by their negligent decision to
| contact neither Assange nor Wikileaks before publication of
| Leigh's book to check whether the password was still in
| use.
|
| > [The Guardian] made no mention either of Leigh's role in
| revealing the password or of Wikileaks' point that,
| following Leigh's incompetence, every security agency and
| hacker in the world had access to the file's contents.
| Better, Wikileaks believed, to create a level playing field
| and allow everyone access to the cables, thereby letting
| informants know whether they had been named and were in
| danger.
|
| Jonathan Cook does a good job of telling this story.
|
| https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2013-07-29/the-
| assassination-o...
|
| https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2022-05-04/persecution-
| julian-...
| beej71 wrote:
| How does this apply to Trump and mar-a-lago, then? Genuine
| question.
| estearum wrote:
| Trump was requested to return the classified documents
| several times. He said he returned them all, then said he
| didn't need to return them all, then said he actually
| declassified them with his mind.
|
| And yeah, it's not a great situation with terrible optics. It
| would've been better for everyone if he just didn't steal the
| classified documents to begin with or, once requested, he
| returned them.
| beej71 wrote:
| I guess my question, given the GP's assertion that private
| citizens holding classified information isn't a crime, how
| does the law apply to Trump here?
|
| Is there another law saying that government officials need
| to return all classified documents that would apply to him
| and not to the reporter?
| estearum wrote:
| https://www.archives.gov/presidential-
| libraries/laws/1978-ac...
| GolfPopper wrote:
| It doesn't. Different rules _de facto_ for the ruling class
| and the peons. That 's one of the failures in American
| society Trump has been exploiting his whole life.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" So in this case the government is raiding the home of
| someone who did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting
| at people who might have."_
|
| That's unequivocally a lawful basis for a court-ordered search
| warrant. They must have probable cause that the person being
| searched has evidence of a crime; _not necessarily_ that the
| search target and the criminal suspect are one and the same.
| Search is investigative; not punitive.
|
| The newsworthy part of this is it's a journalist they raided,
| and to go after their journalistic sources at that. It's
| previously been a DoJ policy not to go after the media for
| things related to their reporting work. But that policy wasn't
| a legal or constitutional requirement. It's merely something
| the DoJ voluntarily pledged to stop doing, after the public
| reaction to President Obama's wiretapping of journalists in
| 2013,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Department_of_Justice_inv...
| ( _" 2013 Department of Justice investigations of reporters"_)
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _Search is investigative; not punitive._
|
| Let's be real, it can be both. A legal, valid and justified
| search can be done in a manner calculated to inflict maximum
| pain. Raiding in the middle of the night instead of when they
| step out their door in the morning, ripping open walls when
| all they're really looking for is a laptop, flipping and
| trashing the place in a excessive manner, breaking things in
| the process, pointing guns at children, shooting the family
| retriever, etc. I don't know if they took this raid too far
| in any of these ways, but it wouldn't surprise me.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| What recourse would an American have against a punitive
| search? And what if something turns up which would
| retroactively justify it?
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" And what if something turns up which would
| retroactively justify it?"_
|
| US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of
| evidence obtained illegally.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ( _"
| Exclusionary rule"_)
|
| There's no "retroactive" exception. The _core point_ of
| this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating
| people 's rights, under the expectation that what they
| find will, "retroactively", vindicate them. Won't work.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Won't work.
|
| How would you know when it did? You can't "retroactively"
| justify an arbitrary search under the exclusionary rule,
| but this doesn't exclude evidence tangential to a
| legally-executed warrant during the execution of that
| warrant. For example, suppose someone is suspected of
| illegally possessing wildlife. A search warrant is issued
| on the residence. No wildlife is found, and in fact no
| wildlife was ever on the premises. If officers find large
| quantities of cocaine during the search, they aren't
| precluded from making an arrest, because the warrant used
| to gain entry and conduct the search was legal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| roywiggins wrote:
| Only if it falls under the "plain view" doctrine, which
| is not unlimited:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
|
| > In Arizona v. Hicks, police officers were in an
| apartment investigating a shooting and suspected that a
| record player in the apartment was stolen. The officers
| could not see the serial number, which was on the bottom
| of the record player, so they lifted the player and
| confirmed that its serial number matched that of one that
| had been reported stolen. However, the Supreme Court
| ruled that lifting the record player constituted an
| additional search (although a relatively nonintrusive
| one) because the serial number was not in plain view.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| See also: parallel construction, which has come up
| (rightfully so) in HN threads about dragnet surveillance.
| LocalH wrote:
| Constitutional law doesn't mean anything when the
| authorities don't respect it. Constitutional law won't
| stop you from being arrested or killed if you don't fully
| submit to an authoritarian government.
|
| There were laws in Germany to prevent what Hitler did. It
| still happened.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > What recourse would an American have against a punitive
| search?
|
| None. The endless videos, from better-years-gone-by of
| people refusing to answer questions at the border then
| having drug dogs run all over their car to scratch it up
| was my first exposure to federal agents acting
| maliciously.
| t-3 wrote:
| You can attempt to sue for damages, but the suit is
| likely to be dismissed because law enforcement and legal
| adjudication are tightly coupled and very friendly in
| ways that subvert the proper functioning of justice. More
| likely you'd just invite more harassment for daring to
| attempt recourse at all.
| rendaw wrote:
| I agree that's what GP wrote, but I think GP's point is that
| it's not illegal for journalists to have classified
| documents, so it does not qualify as probable cause.
| xdennis wrote:
| > it's not illegal for journalists to have classified
| documents, so it does not qualify as probable cause
|
| It's amazing how many people offer free internet advice off
| of ideological groupthink rather than actual laws.
|
| This raid was authorized by a warrant. Do you really think
| a judge doesn't know the law, but you do?
|
| If a crime happens in your neighborhood, and you have a
| camera, the cops could get a warrant to search your
| footage. It doesn't mean you committed a crime, it just
| means you can be compelled to provide information
| pertaining to an investigation.
| y1n0 wrote:
| Try reading the comment you replied to again. A valid
| reason for a search is the collection of evidence of a
| crime. Which orthogonal to whether the person or premisses
| committed a crime.
| zweih wrote:
| Anyone who has had their home searched AKA ransacked by law
| enforcement knows that searches are effectively punitive.
| palmotea wrote:
| > So in this case the government is raiding the home of someone
| who did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting at people
| who might have. I think it's not hard to imagine how this
| concept could get ugly fast.
|
| When you phrase it that way though, it doesn't actually sound
| that bad. If a crime was committed, and some uninvolved person
| possesses evidence about that crime, the authorities need to be
| able to access it.
|
| To give another scenario: if someone gets shot in front of my
| parked car, but the bullet passes through them and gets lodged
| in my car, the police should have the power to compel me to
| hand over the bullet even if I don't want to (which is
| important evidence that only I have).
|
| > Reporters are not federal employees and it's not illegal for
| them to have or discuss classified materials. Most of what
| Snowden leaked was classified, and remains classified to this
| day, but you and I can read about it on Wikipedia. The
| government pursued Snowden because he was legally obligated to
| protect that info. They did not pursue Barton Gellman because
| he wasn't.
|
| But if Barton Gellman was the only person in possession of the
| full collection, and the police needed it to help find the
| perpetrator of the crime, it would be legitimate for them to
| compel Gellman to hand over a copy.
|
| However, it wouldn't be legitimate for them to go after you or
| me if we download the information from some public website,
| because that would serve no legitimate investigative purpose.
| bitexploder wrote:
| While you do not have a legal duty to secure classified
| information it is illegal for you to possess it. It is illegal
| for a reporter to have and discuss classified information under
| strict interpretation of the espionage act, however the supreme
| court ruled that they can as long as they didn't participate in
| acquiring it or induce someone to acquire it. They will
| prosecute a reporter if they have a clear indication they
| participated in the theft of the classified information.
|
| Regarding Gellman, he could have been prosecuted. Under strict
| interpretation he admitted to retaining classified information.
| The government is then in a catch 22 situation where they have
| to verify, publicly, the information he held creating a Snowden
| like situation where it is no longer secret. It is a very messy
| area of law and a zealous DOJ can exert tremendous pressure on
| individual journalists even though they are better shielded
| than non-journalists. Essentially, by prosecuting someone they
| have to prove it is national defense information and in so
| doing they will end up disclosing the information themselves
| making it dubious a jury would ever convict.
|
| It is the same reason we can freely discuss Snowden-leaked
| information now. It is not a secret. Even if it is classified
| it has lost its legal protection.
|
| In short, if this journalist even vaguely induced anyone to
| leak information to her she can be prosecuted and the precedent
| there is much less in her favor.
| profsummergig wrote:
| To my naive brain, the rules seem to be:
|
| - it's okay when Side A goes after Assange (a journalist) for
| possessing classified material. Also, Side A encourages
| journalists in certain countries to do exactly what Assange
| did.
|
| - it's not okay when Side B goes after journalists aligned with
| Side A
| wil421 wrote:
| What if you had the hard copies of the classified files or the
| original USB drive used in exfiltrate the classified data, not
| a digital copy.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Reporters are not federal employees and it's not illegal for
| them to have or discuss classified materials. Most of what
| Snowden leaked was classified, and remains classified to this
| day, but you and I can read about it on Wikipedia.
|
| CNN tells viewers its illegal to read Wikileaks emails (2016)
|
| "Also interesting is--remember--it's illegal to possess these
| stolen documents. It's different for the media. So everything
| you learn about this, you're learning from us."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBppdC1h_Y
| tmaly wrote:
| Sending the FBI after journalists is not new. They did it in
| 2010 and 2013 on a much bigger scale.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| > The government pursued Snowden because he was legally
| obligated to protect that info. They did not pursue Barton
| Gellman because he wasn't.
|
| Former administrations, to their credit, exhibited some degree
| of restraint that the current administration lacks. However,
| they indicted Julian Assange and plenty of people back then
| have warned precisely about the kind of things happening today.
|
| - The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19653012
|
| - Traditional journalists may abandon WikiLeaks' Assange at
| their own peril https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19639165
|
| From the EFF back then:
|
| > Make no mistake, this not just about Assange or Wikileaks--
| this is a threat to all journalism, and the public interest.
| The press stands in place of the public in holding the
| government accountable, and the Assange charges threaten that
| critical role.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/governments-indictment...
| steve1977 wrote:
| I'd say it's not that unusual in totalitarian dictatorships
| actually.
| zzzeek wrote:
| "that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at
| the request of the "department of war", the Trump
| administration's informal name for the department of defense."
|
| uh oh sounds like the Guardian is asking for a raid too
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Not sure why they call the name ("Department of War")
| _informal_. Seems pretty formal to me. It 's displayed on the
| building.
| riotnrrd wrote:
| It takes an act of Congress to change the name. Trump just
| made one of his dictatorial proclamations.
| testing22321 wrote:
| It was originally named the department of war, and changing
| it to defence was just newspeak anyway.
|
| Of all the things trump has done, I actually like this one.
| At least he's being honest about his intentions for what
| this department does.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm of two minds on this. As you say, renaming from War
| to Defense was a lie to tell Americans a more palatable
| story. However, renaming from Defense to War is actually
| the same thing in the current political context but for
| populace with different values. It is honest in a way but
| that was not the intention, nor is it the effective
| result. It's just a different lie.
| testing22321 wrote:
| I mean, they're doing their best to start new wars right
| now, so I'd say it's not a lie at all.
| zzzeek wrote:
| i dislike every action by a president that blatantly
| breaks the law, and yes that includes ignoring the tiktok
| ban
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's irrelevant. the point is that Congress is the body
| with authority to decide, not the executive branch.
| shadow28 wrote:
| The Guardian is not an American newspaper.
| mesk wrote:
| Or as some 'uknown' VP would say: We will protect freedom of
| speech until the last journalist is behind the bars. That is the
| price we are willing to pay.
| aa_is_op wrote:
| This country is turning into a meme
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Are you referencing something? I can't find any utterances of
| this phrase or something similar to it. Sounds juicy though.
| mesk wrote:
| No and yes. The first sentence paraphrases certain someone
| blabbering about the lack of freedom of speech in the EU. The
| second is from Shrek :-)
| cdrnsf wrote:
| To think that this administration makes Nixon look principled.
| g947o wrote:
| Looks like even Jeff's wealth and bribery couldn't stop this from
| happening.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Jeff is actively abetting this.
| g947o wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to just fire the journalist, like what
| he did with the editorial?
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Define "easier"? I see no opposition to this action that
| would punish or prevent future similar actions. Now you
| don't have to play whack-a-mole with other ideological
| dissenters because they'll fear for their safety.
|
| Journalists have always shown great tenacity when it comes
| to reporting news even if it jeopardizes their employment,
| but if it jeopardizes their safety... that's perhaps one
| level too far for many journalists.
| jvdvegt wrote:
| Without paywall: https://archive.is/1haDB
| g947o wrote:
| > "The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of
| classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to
| our nation's national security and the brave men and women who
| are serving our country."
|
| That's what the government said when Pentagon Papers were
| released. Guess what happened.
|
| But I guess time is different now, and today's supreme court
| isn't the same as the one in those days.
| curiousgal wrote:
| It's honestly hilarious how fragile all those checks and balances
| you keep hearing about are. Americans are the first people to
| criticise other regimes for being authoritarian but I guess the
| turns have tabled!
| Fazebooking wrote:
| Journalists are the backbone of a healthy democracy.
|
| FU USA FU
|
| And just to be clear: The biggest military force of the world
| threatens denmark, scrambles the economy around the world due to
| sudden politic changes (tarifs) and destroys its own integrity as
| an ally
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Oh, we're clear.
|
| We're just powerless to do anything, as the (probably) legally
| elected administration runs this ship like its own personal
| party barge into ... everything in sight.
|
| Our Checks refuse to speak up in Congress, and our Balances
| keep voting to make the (current) POTUS immune to the law.
| scoofy wrote:
| This shit needs to stop. If you have any Republican
| representatives right now, you might consider writing them every
| day.
|
| We can disagree on tax policy, immigration policy, even very
| strong issues, and I'm happy to fight about those issues and
| respect disagreement. But in the last month, the president has
| invaded a foreign country without even notifying congress, has
| used _literal thug tactics_ to try to get lower interest rates,
| and now he 's _obviously illegally_ entering the home of a
| reporter to take information which is clear violation of the
| first and fourth amendments.
|
| This is unamerican. It's a violation of the clear principles of
| the constitution. It's against the law. It's trivially deserving
| of impeachment.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Strongly worded letters to one's Congressperson are the
| equivalent to "thoughts and prayers". It doesn't matter how
| just (you think) your cause is; it will never achieve anything.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Strongly worded letters to one's Congressperson are the
| equivalent to "thoughts and prayers". It doesn't matter how
| just (you think) your cause is; it will never achieve
| anything.
|
| Your assertion isn't supported by, well, anything. The
| problem is that constituents think they can't affect their
| representatives' positions. They can.[0][1] Especially if
| there's a concerted effort to do so.
|
| For every constituent who writes/calls/emails, there are _at
| least_ a half-dozen more who feel the same way.
|
| The problem isn't that contacting your representatives isn't
| effective, it's that by _not_ doing so, you 're ceding power
| to those that do.
|
| [0] https://act.represent.us/sign/does-calling-congress-
| really-w...
|
| [1] https://americansofconscience.com/calling-congress-still-
| mat...
| mickle00 wrote:
| fuck this -- how is this not on the front page of HN?
| avensec wrote:
| It is the most commented on and has the highest points today.
| See: https://hckrnews.com/ . Another user pointed me to it in
| the past when I was also frustrated that an obviously engaged
| story was somehow being buried for reasons I didn't understand.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It is the most commented on and has the highest points
| today. See: https://hckrnews.com/
|
| Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/active
| billy99k wrote:
| "reporter early on Wednesday in what the newspaper called a
| "highly unusual and aggressive" move by law enforcement, and
| press freedom groups condemned as a "tremendous intrusion" "
|
| See: james o'keefe
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