The FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff.
If you mean more broadly trivial, I see that quite differently. An administration that has repeatedly abused its power in order to intimidate and punish political opponents is opening an investigation into grassroots political opponents. That feels worth being concerned about.
As to actually acting on what they learn, within this context yeah that would be troubling.
iirc that was something more than infiltration. The FBI found an extremist loser who lived in a basement, egged him on, helped him network & gave him resources. Without them, he probably would have been thinking really hard about it, not much more.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/aby-rayyan-fbi-terro...
That (US domestic political groups, anyway) is their job, after all?
It's how they found about Martin Luther King's affairs and what led them to write him a letter telling him to kill himself.
Given FBI Director Kash Patel is a Trump appointee, and I might even go so far as to say a Trump stooge, I think we have to assume that that is exactly what will happen.
Organised criminal activity.
Edit: I’m not complaining about moderation but it would be fascinating to know what part of this others believe is incorrect:
- Do you think the Anti ICE groups are not organised?
- Do you think obstructing federal officers is not criminal?
- Something else.
Define obstruction. Everything reported, blowing whistles, encouraging businesses not provide service to ICE agents, and recording from a distance is not obstruction. It's a First Amendment right to keep government forces in check.
What are you even talking about?
You think that an agent needs to show a random bystander a warrant?
If I recall correctly, they actually set the precedent here by adding civil war era conspiracy charges to put an additional 10 years on women who protested in front of an abortion clinic.
AI summary…
> Six of the protesters (including Heather Idoni) were convicted in January 2024 of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act—a misdemeanor carrying up to one year in prison—and felony conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241, which carries a maximum of 10 years. The conspiracy charge stemmed from evidence that the group planned and coordinated the blockade in advance to interfere with clinic operations.
> As a Health Center staff member ('Victim-1') attempted to open the door for the volunteer, WILLIAMS purposefully leaned against the door, crushing Victim-1’s hand. Victim-1 yelled, "She’s crushing my hand," but WILLIAMS remained against the door, trapping Victim-1’s hand and injuring it.
> On the livestream on June 19, 2020, WILLIAMS stood within inches of the Health Center’s chief administrative officer and threatened to “terrorize this place” and warned that “we’re gonna terrorize you so good, your business is gonna be over mama.” Similarly, WILLIAMS stood within inches of a Health Center security officer and threatened “war.” WILLIAMS also stated that she would act by “any means necessary.”
The reason they could prosecute to this degree? https://msmagazine.com/2024/01/18/anti-abortion-surgi-clinic...
A member of the conspiracy admitted to the planning; they have text messages and detail of deciding who will risk arrest, after going over the fact they'd be trespassing and violating the FACE act.
Do you think the administrative and medical staff present in 2020 would agree with you? That the group that blockaded, threatened and assaulted in one instance access to health services are in fact the victims here of government overreach?
Is it a violation of the FACE act? Absolutely.
Conspiracy? If that's a conspiracy then virtually any protest that involves any planning whatsoever could also be twisted into a conspiracy.
Yes, that's what a conspiracy is. In other news, the sky is blue.
Conspiracy, to conspire.
Conspire, to make plans, usually in secret.
The reason conspiracy is a more serious crime is because it's worse; it's one thing to go to a protest with a bunch of friends, and then decide in the heat of the moment, when everyone's emotions are raging, I don't wanna leave yet. It's completely different crime to decide before the protest starts, in a secret group with a bunch a friends. There's nothing they can do to make you leave. And when the cops show up, and when they say you have to leave you're gonna throw a frozen water bottle at them.
In this case, they planned to actively stop someone from receiving the medical care. Do you feel that's reasonable? Should I get to decide what medical care I think you should have? Only on days I'm free to go out and protest, obviously.
Somewhat related, after reading florkbork's post, I'm excited to hear your reply about if you think crushing someone's hand in the door counts as protesting?
Compare it to the situation in Minnesota. Protester bites of the finger of an agent. Is that protesting? Groups of people follow agents around blowing whistles while they're trying to do their job. Can protesters show up at an someone else's workplace and start blowing whistles at everyone? Diners? Medical offices?
https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/officer-will-lose-fin...
Now a situation has been created where everyone involved in those Signal chats could be...charged with conspiracy. The door is opened for that argument to be made and until the charge was thrown onto those women after the abortion protest, nothing like that had been done before.
FACE Act and Assault charges, plus damages were absolutely warranted. Conspiracy charges were political punishment.
That's factually incorrect. You you're welcome to conspire all you want. It doesn't become a chargeable offence until you, or someone else who has contributed to the planning, commits some overt or articulable action towards that end.
It's not illegal to be present in a signal chat. It's not even illegal to hypothesize violent resistance/protest. It *is* illegal to make plans to violently protest, and then pack your car full of weapons.
Conspiracy is notably different from solicitation; because it's also illegal to encourage someone to commit a crime, even if you don't yourself plan to participate.
> Conspiracy charges were political punishment.
Nah, I do agree it probably gives the appearance of it being politically motivated. But regardless of how you feel when "your side" is "attacked". That's kinda how the legal system works. If you don't charge them with conspiracy, all the evidence you've collected where they admit they know what they're doing is illegal runs the risk of being thrown out, or otherwise challenged. If you want to charge someone for assault or battery, and you have text messages where someone claims they don't care if someone gets hut. If you exclusively charge them with the assault or the battery. And they put forward the affirmative defense of, yeah it happened, but they pushed me first. You've just opened the door to an acquittal because the video someone got starts halfway through.
Being careless enough to allow that to happen might even be prosecutorial malpractice.
> Compare it to the situation in Minnesota.
I try to avoid whataboutism.
> Can protesters show up at an someone else's workplace and start blowing whistles at everyone? Diners? Medical offices?
Yes? I've heard of protests almost every where, haven't you?
Follow up question, are Diner servers/cooks or physicians/nurses empowered to legally abduct people by force, and then protected from liability for any crimes or needless harm by qualified immunity?
If not, I think it's fair to apply different standards to different cases, and asinine to say, well what about [completely different group, with a completely different set of objectives, and completely different set of restrictions, doing a completely different thing]
Are you referring to how a Democratic party AG's entire campaign was to "pursue Donald Trump". And then she found a victimless "crime", that every real estate developer is guilty of, in which nobody was harmed, and the banks were equally guilty, for which the statute of limitations has expired, to get her 34 felonies just to throw the ex president in jail and to stop him from running again?
Being convicted of a crime does not stop you from running for president. Being in prison also does not stop you from running for president -- one person has. The only qualifications necessary to run for president are to be a natural born citizen, have spent the last 14 years living in the country, and be at least 35 years of age.
Also, the criminal trial against him started after he assumed office for the second time. EDIT: Got my years mixed up. Ignore that last bit.
Nope. He was convicted even before the election started.
Can't be hard to get into for some skilled undercover cops. TV shows have shown me they do these things all the time!
So why does (if the service manual is to be believed) not changing my car's oil still allow my car to keep operating?
(does this kind of ignore-any-sort-of-abstract-model "insight" sway anybody who is not extremely stoned?)
Certainly they know the handles of those people, and what they've said and what documents they've exchanged.
Connecting Signal accounts to real-world identity... well, that's definitely the FBI's wheelhouse, but some might make it easier or harder than others.
But there are a few cases where even the Internet sleuths are pretty confident about identity.
> So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate?
Rationality requires treating behaviour inconsistent with a quality as evidence against that quality.
Protesting is not something you should do "casually."
What is not something that should be gone casually – or really at all – is an attempt to engage in insurrection with black bloc or globalized intifada insurgency tactics to prevent the enforcement of law.
…
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
…
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
- Some insurrectionists
I disagree. If the feds, or any law enforcement, wants to enforce law that is so unpopular that people feel compelled to make it hard in this way then, IDK, sucks for them. Go beg for more budget.
And I feel this way about a whole ton of categories of law, not just The Current Thing (TM).
A huge reason that law and government in this country is so f-ed up is that people, states, municipalities and big corporations in particular, just roll over and take it because that keeps the $$ flowing. A solid majority of the stuff the feds force upon the nation in the form of "do X, get a big enough tax break you can't compete without it" or "enforce Y if you want your government to qualify for fed $$" would not be support and could not be enforced if it had to be done so overtly, with enforcers paid to enforce it, rather than backhandedly by quasi deputizing other entities in exchange for $$.
Immigration enforcement is overwhelmingly favored by Americans, including immigrants.
The implementation has been awful, for lots of reasons everyone already knows. However, the situation has also been significantly escalated by often-violent obstructionists.
Obstructing enforcement of the law when it's something Americans voted for is not patriotism. It's undermining democracy.
Our law is explicit: immigration is the domain of the Federal government exclusively. State and local governments should "take it" as you say, because that's the law, and we should respect the law. If you don't like it, protest. But most are fine with enforcement in a reasonable way.
Trump and his cronies shoulder a lot of blame for how things have gone in Minneapolis. But so do democrats for stoking the flames.
Vote independent.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval...
> Just 39% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing on immigration, down from 41% earlier this month, while 53% disapprove, the poll found.
I am talking about American support for a working legal immigration process, and enforcing that process. Not everyone agrees about exactly what it should look like.
I'm not talking specifically about the actions Trump is taking or the job ICE is doing currently. The current sentiment around ICE is very negative.
Do you think the protests leading to escalations were done simply? Or BECAUSE of the awful implementation? (Masks, no IDs, no accountability, no body cameras, etc.)
If it is the latter, then isn't the blame to be placed squarely on the original enforcement philosophy?
Otherwise it reads like DARVO tactics. If we were talking about a relationship it sounds like -- Person A emotionally abuses Person B to the point of person B pushing back, and then Person A using the fact that Person B reacted (perhaps adversely) as justification for even more emotional abuse.
Militarized police with general warrants going door to door, going into schools, hospitals, places of worship to detain the dehumanized untermensch is legal.
People loudly protesting and sabotaging these efforts via their first amendment is a far more moral and honorable stance, despite being illegal in a round-about way.
It's quite literally a protest against state violence via non-violent means.
I am unwilling to risk protesting against this administration given the combination of facial scanning, IMSI catchers, ALPRs, and surveillance cameras in general. I cannot think of a way to stay truly anonymous when protesting, with enough access and time, you could be tracked back to your home even if you leave your phone at home and take public transportation. I believe the aforementioned technology chills free speech in combination with the current administration.
I’m not particularly worried about protesters being targeted by this administration, I worry about future administrations that could be far worse.
Then you are going to be identified and your conversations monitored. This is precisely the outcome the article is complaining about. I find that expectation absurd.
> of a self-governing people
This describes the majority not the individual.
> and petition the government
There is no expectation or statement that your anonymity will be protected. The entire idea of a "petition" immediately defies this.
> to prevent the enforcement of law.
How does "tracking ICE" _prevent_ the enforcement of the law? Your views on the first amendment suddenly became quite narrow.
Because the whole point of tracking ICE is to help people dodge them. It's absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
ICE have lost the trust of a significant portion of the people in Minnesota because they are using unreasonable force, eroding constitutionally protected rights and behaving with impunity.
They are, in reality, just conducting a politically motivated campaign of harassment. If they truly wanted to deport as many people as possible they'd start with border states like Florida and Texas, places with 20x more undocumented immigrants.
They have not used the same force in other states, because the resistance to their presence and purpose has not been so strong as to motivate it.
> eroding constitutionally protected rights
Narratives surrounding this are ignoring clear causes of action that are not in fact constitutionally protected, instead pointing at things protesters did that are constitutionally protected but not in fact related to arrests.
> and behaving with impunity.
The judicial system takes time.
> If they truly wanted to deport as many people as possible they'd start with border states like Florida and Texas, places with 20x more undocumented immigrants.
They did, and it's very easy to find out that they did using a search engine. And to address the other child comment, they also have gone after employers before. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768789 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46783450.
The resistance to their actions is lesser in other states because they are more subdued. The propaganda that Minnesotans are not working with ICE is flipping the narrative from the reality that ICE is not working with Minnesotans.
> Narratives surrounding this are ignoring clear causes of action that are not in fact constitutionally protected, instead pointing at things protesters did that are constitutionally protected but not in fact related to arrests.
Counter-narratives ignore clear use of tactics which have been documented as intentional escalations, instead pointing at the officers' emotions that were direct results of said escalations.
> The judicial system takes time.
https://thefederalnewswire.com/stories/673148305-fbi-announc...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/us/fbi-agent-ice-shooting...
Illegal immigrants aren't a thing at any meaningful scale if there aren't people willing to hire them.
But since a lot of those businesses that hire illegally or "look the other way" are BIG republican donors in deep red states....we can't do anything about it.
We should have made e-verify the federal minimum standard for ALL employment as far back as 1985. We had the tech and the ability.
Y'all honestly think Donald Trump hires blue-blooded WASPs to mow the lawns at his golf courses?
This is not economically feasible, the cost of food would double or more. They know that and I know that. That’s why they aren’t actually targeting illegal immigrants, America’s dirty secret is that we need them to keep prices low on certain things.
Good luck finding Americans that will pick strawberries or work in a meatpacking plant for $12-16/hr
And yes, it absolutely is feasible, and we all know it. It's just if it happened, some very wealthy and influential people would lose a bit of money and influence - we can't have that now can we?
I expect the vast majority of government abuses in recent history the world over have to at least some degree followed the law according to those carrying out the acts. Thus it is almost to be expected that as a situation escalates those crying foul might occasionally find themselves opposing the rule of law as described by those in power.
To state it plainly, not all "rule of law" is subjectively equal.
Seems completely reasonable given ICE is murdering, arresting, and deporting citizens and legal residents.
The government wronging 1 person to rightfully enforce the law on 10 is unacceptable.
There are a number of local citizens upset at two out of state vehicles blocking off a road while (?) executing warrentless invasions of homes in the community (?)
What is the appropriate action when Federal over reach is so blatent and unaddressed?
It's not as if people there are angry at ICE / DHS for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Pretti was breaking zero laws. You’d have to do some prosecutorial voodoo to conjure up a misdemeanor.
There is lawbreaking in that videos. But the felony-level stuff is all from folks in uniform. (Which, thankfully, they’ve started wearing.)
Does an ongoing protest empower civilians to stand in the middle of a road that has not been closed to traffic by local authorities?
You're not actually arguing that American citizens shouldn't be able to film the cops are you? That would be pretty un-American.
ICE are engaging in violence, warrantless forced entry to homes, at least two shootings that border on murder, they even tried to force entry into an Ecuadorian embassy.
They are detaining citizens at random, relocating them physically and in some cases releasing them; if they don't die in detention due to lack of access to medical care.
If you cannot see how these activities should be observed, documented, protested whilst still standing for professed Amercian values...
Edit: Ah excellent, downvotes without reply because facts are... uncomfortable!
Here's the sources:
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/ice-agents-blocked-from-... - Ecuadorian consulate.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-u-s-citizen-says-ice-f... - warrantless entry
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-... - many, many US citizens detained only for charges to vanish at the merest scrutiny
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/27/five-year-ol... - deporting citizens
https://newrepublic.com/post/205458/ice-detainees-pay-for-me... - cutting off medical care
https://abcnews.go.com/US/detainees-heard-cuban-man-slammed-... - deaths in custody
By your logic, combined with the actions of the ICE folks in Minneapolis, anyone who submits the location of a DUI checkpoint into Waze[0] should be summarily executed?
Is that your argument? ICE has murdered people for documenting their locations and actions which, by your statement was to allow others to "dodge" law enforcement.
Documenting a DUI checkpoint does exactly the same thing. So. If your position is that law "enforcement" is allowed to summarily shoot to death folks who document their actions and locations in one context, then they should be allowed to do so in other, more serious contexts like DUI checkpoints.
Is that your claim? If not, please do provide some nuance around what you said, because that's how I understood your statements.
See also: https://enwp.org/Chilling_effect
That doesn't include vandalism, it doesn't include blocking roads, looting, or assaulting people. What's obvious to me is that a certain class of protestors are intentionally provoking a response from the government by breaking the law. Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed, and that is used as an excuse for more protests. The protests get increasingly violent in an escalating cycle.
That process isn't exercising a "fundamental human right", it's a form of violence. If you don't agree with the Government the correct answer is to vote, have a dialog, and if you choose to protest do it in a way that's respectful to your neighbors and the people around you.
Yes, a proportionally large and significant number of local Minnesota community members of long and good standing.
> are intentionally provoking a response from the government
are reacting to excessive over reach by outsiders, directed by the Federal government to act in a punative manner.
> Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed,
This has already happened. Multiple times. As was obvious from the outset given the unprofessional behaviour and attitudes of the not-police sent in wearing masks.
> [the people aren't] exercising a "fundamental human right"
they are exercising their Constitutional rights. Including their right to free speech, to bear arms, to protest the Federal government, etc.
> the correct answer is to vote, talk to your neighbors and friends, and peaceably protest,
Which they have done and they continue to do.
See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defe...
for more about the local community of neighbour loving US citizens acting in defence of their community.
Instead, people are getting killed and videos are coming out that seem very chaotic, where people with different predispositions than you can empathize with the police. If those videos were people getting arrested and pepper sprayed for speaking out and for helping each other, they would hit a lot harder for a much larger population.
Actually, the less training and self-restraint an officer has, the more incentive there is for a target to do everything they can to flee or resist. If a town trusts its local police to be fair and professional, criminals are more likely to accept the offer of "Drop everything and put your hands on the ground." They trust they'll survive the arrest and avoid anything worse than a rough perp walk. But if the arresting officers are known to brutally beat and pepper spray people they detain, I would expect people to resist detainment.
Last weekend, we saw video footage of a man executed while being restrained and with no weapon in his hands. At this point, reasonable people could believe an ICE officer trying to detain them is threatening their lives. When do self-defense laws kick in?
This person is face down on the ground being restrained by three officers. Is the pepper spray necessary here?
edit: I found a video of this event: https://old.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1qjfxbj/ice_pepp...
It doesn't show what led up to this moment, but it appears the person was indeed resisting arrest. If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.
If three officers decide to push you to the ground and jump on top of you, you have three officers on top of you. This says nothing about whether you were resisting arrest or not.
Resisting arrest at least implies that you have some understanding that you are actually being arrested and by someone who at least notionally has some legal basis for doing so. It's why police officers will typically identify themselves and tell you under what you are suspected of during an arrest. If after that someone attempts to flee or fightback then sure.
I'm relatively sure spraying chemical irritants at point blank range is not following any reasonable use of force guidelines. They are just retaliating with force because it suits them.
If protestors are doing this sort of thing to ICE agents, then ICE has probable cause to arrest them while they’re doing it. I don’t support people interfering or obstructing ICE, but standing 20 feet away and filming or blowing a whistle is not obstruction.
What I’ve seen is ICE agents losing their shit and shoving people because they can’t emotionally handle being observed and yelled at, both of which are legal. I would not be able to handle that either, I’d lose my shit too, but I’m not an ICE agent.
I’m sure there are protestors crossing the line too, they arrested a bunch of people for breaking windows at a hotel the other night. I just don’t see the need to add conspiracy charges if they can just directly charge them with obstruction when it happens.
That is absolute nonsense. You can be a peaceful protestor whilst still inconveniencing the authorities.
Possibly the most famous non-violent protestor of all time is the unnamed man who stood in front of a column of tanks at Tiananmen Square.
Another contender would be Gandhi, who promoted civil disobedience for peaceful protesting.
Comments like your only serve to incite more violence.
Sometimes standing up to tyranny does require bravery. Like the protestor in Tienanmen Square. Did he get shot? We don't know.
> Comments like your only serve to incite more violence.
How so? We are clearly talking about the Pretti case. All the violence was from the paramilitary operatives. All Pretti did was film and stand in front of a woman who was being beaten and pepper sprayed.
Are you saying that the populace needs to learn to submit or else more violence will be inflicted on them? And that I should stop posting my opinion in case it angers the authorities or inspires more people into nonviolent resistance? If not, please clarify.
The "suspect" being the person standing alone who was sent flying backwards whens an officer approached and shoved with both hands? Why was that justified? Was that an "arrest" or physical assault?
The whole thing was completely unnecessary.
No. It's not. Governments are not natural. So you have no "fundamental" rights here.
> and obligation
No. It's not.
> It is something that you should do as casually as you would voting
I would say voting is _not_ something you should do casually.
> something you do from time to time when the moment demands it.
Then you should expect some consequences in your life. If you actually want to avoid those then put your casual demeanor down and get serious. Otherwise there's a decent chance you will make things worse and do nothing to solve your original problem.
> See also: https://enwp.org/Chilling_effect
We all know what a chilling effect is. You have no right to communicate on signal. This does not apply.
You could make the same moot point about all societal laws. Fundamental rights are determined by the constitution, the UN declaration of human rights, as well as any other local charters.
Please provide real proof to such a claim.
And if it is indeed God who grants rights, why are such rights not universal to all of God's creations, and instead, only granted to white rural Americans when it is convenient to them?
One does not need to know the specific identity of God to justifiably believe that rights come from God. Suppose that I receive a handwritten letter with no name on it. By the nature of the letter, I can reasonably infer that it was sent by a human, even if I don't know what specific human it was.
GP's argument is that the nature of rights implies that they must come from God. This is because they think rights can't be taken away by others; if they could, they would be privileges, not rights. They presumably think that for a right to be inalienable, it must come from an authority above all others, like God.
You seem to think that rights only apply to specific people at specific times and places. That's fine, but it's the very point that GP was addressing—if rights are given by the government, then they're not rights at all. Restating the claim that rights are not universal does not address GP's argument.
I don't think GP's argument works when it comes to God, because it might be that rights simply exist independent of any authority. Maybe they're an emergent property of human beings, or maybe they simply exist, the way that many believe that God, the number two, or the universe itself just exist without cause. GP might not agree, but it's certainly coherent to believe in inalienable rights without believing in God.
The point as it relates to the American Constitution is that that it was conceived with the notion of these divine rights and explicitly recognizes that there is no authority that can deprive the individual of them, thereby placing a hard limit on what a government can do.
You're free to disagree with the notion, of course, but it's worth understanding the foundation.
Because the truth is - there is no "god" in the way humans think there is. Saying some mythical sky-daddy grants a certain group of people "rights" at a given point in time is laughable at best, and deliberately disingenuous at worst.
Government rules and social norms can change over time, it ultimately doesn't matter what you feel is "right" or what some law says is "right", it's really about what you can get away with.
A large part of what you can get away with is determined about whether or not you will ultimately be penalized for your actions (possibly through violence), and laws can keep people aligned on what is or isn't going to be accepted and when people deemed to be acting in a socially unacceptable way are likely to be penalized in some form.
While "rights" may be somewhat philosophical, they can have very real physical "weight" behind them in the form of other people "enforcing" them.
And finally, in case you are mistakenly under the impression that I think it's okay for anyone to do anything they want so long as they can get away with it, I don't, but that discussion drifts into the territory of morality and ethics which, while related, are nevertheless different and very large topics of discussion in themselves.
In the meantime, rights are not granted by anyone. They are a contract between the governed and those that govern. Breaking that contract is the sort of thing that doesn't end up working out well for the governing class.
Governments which at least pay lip service to the premise of respecting people's rights are another matter entirely.
Neither is violently undermining our Constitutional order.
These folks should be on notice that they will be prosecuted. If we played by Trump’s book, we’d charge them with treason and then let them appeal against the death penalty for the rest of their lives.
No we don’t. Nobody has tested these in court. Trump has no incentive to.
I'm betting that's exactly what will happen - the FBI will single out some core organisers and let them serve as an example.
Hitler’s brown shirts didn’t start by killing judges. They started with voter (and lawmaker) intimidation.
Ah, the "ends justify the means" then? Is this something you want applied _against_ you? Seems reckless.
> These folks should be on notice that they will be prosecuted.
They will not.
> If we played by Trump’s book
Moral relativism will turn you into the thing you profess to hate.
> we’d charge them with treason and then let them appeal against the death penalty for the rest of their lives.
Words have actual meaning. We're clearly past that and just choosing words that match emotional states. If you don't want to fix anything and just want to demonstrate your frustrations then this will work. If you want something to change you stand no chance with this attitude.
I'm not choosing sides. I'm simply saying if you want to avoid FBI attention then take your heart off your sleeve and smarten up.
It’s literally happening. And sure. If I try to murder the Vice President or murder Americans as part of a political stunt, hold me to account. Those were the rules I thought we were all playing by.
> If you want something to change you stand no chance with this attitude
Strongly disagree. There are new political tools on the table. Unilaterally disarming is strategically stupid.
> if you want to avoid FBI attention then take your heart off your sleeve and smarten up
I’m going to bet I’ve gotten more language written into state and federal law than you have. That isn’t a flex. It’s just me saying that I know how to wield power, it and doesn’t come from trying to avoid crooked federal agents. If they’re crooked, they’ll come for you when you speak up. In my experience, they’re more bark than bite.
In some cases, popular messaging apps that initially did not provide "group chat" have since added this "feature", apparently in response to "user demand"
The so-called "tech" companies that control these apps from Silicon Valley and Redmond have aligned with one political party, generally whichever party is in power, for "business" reasons, e.g., doing whatever is necessary to ensure their continued profits free from regulation
Surveillance is their core business
But the worst case for an outsider joining is not very bad; they get to see what's going on, but the entire point of the endeavor is to bring everything to light and make everything more visible. And if an outsider joins and starts providing bad information or is a bad actor, typical moderation efforts are pretty easy.
But the more the whole thing shifts towards that, the closer civil war is.
In other words, if you think any easily joinable movement is a honeypot you already seem to think along the lines of resistance movement in a dictatorship. (If it is .. I will not judge, I am not in the US)
Isn't the simply inserting an agent into the secret circle the most time honored way to crack security.
Technology often fails around the human factor.
You have a private chat? Ok? and you let people in? So sorry your encryption didn't help with who you let in.
i don't think an investigation by FBI has ever been "simply" to the subjects of such an investigation. And to show bang-for-the-buck the "simply reading chat" officers would have to bring at least some fish, i.e. federal charges, from such a reading expedition.
In general it sounds very familiar - any opposition is a crime of impeding and obstruction. Just like in Russia where any opposition is a crime of discreditation at best or even worse - a crime of extremism/terrorism/treason.
These groups are also documented to have harassed people who are _not_ federal officers under the mistaken impression that they are. That’s just assault. Probably stalking too. Anyone who participates in these groups will be committing crimes, and should be prosecuted for it.
If you don’t like the job that an officer is doing then the right thing to do is to talk to your Congress–critter about changing the law. Keep in mind that ICE is executing a law that was passed in 1995 with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. No attempt has been made to modify that law in the last 30 years. If Democrats didn’t like it, they had several majorities during that time when they could have forced through changes. They didn’t even bother.
If I’m having a conversation with my friend, it’s free speech. If we’re plotting the overthrow of the government, it’s insurrection.
To observe them, and prevent them from committing crimes. Which if it isn't legal, is moral as all get out.
"Jobs" Nurmberg lol. Not an argument.
Filming officiers performing their jobs is not obstruction, even if it does make them uncomfortable. If it makes their jobs harder that's only because they know what they're doing is unpopular and don't want to be known to have done it.
> If you don’t like the job that an officer is doing then the right thing to do is to talk to your Congress–critter about changing the law. Keep in mind that ICE is executing a law that was passed in 1995 with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. No attempt has been made to modify that law in the last 30 years. If Democrats didn’t like it, they had several majorities during that time when they could have forced through changes. They didn’t even bother.
Yeah, there's a massive disconnect between politicians and their voters. This is pretty strong evidence of that disconnect. Even now Democrats refuse to support abolishing ICE, despite majority support among their constituency. Who are voters who want immigration reform supposed to cast their ballots for? There hasn't been such a candidate since ICE was created in the wake of 9/11. Conservatives got to let out their pent up frustration with an unresponsive government by electing Trump. Liberals have no such champion, only community organizing.
This is irrelevant, because many people have been observed physically obstructing officers, whether or not they were filming at the time.
> If it makes their jobs harder
Have you heard the constant blowing of whistles in these videos? Did you know that protesters have organized the mass 3d-printing and distribution of these whistles (https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2025/12/not-just-a-toy-how-wh... ; https://www.startribune.com/whistle-symbol-ice-protest-minne... ; https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2026/01/21/chicagoa...)? Can you imagine how this level of noise interferes with a job that involves verbal communication with both coworkers and civilians?
> Even now Democrats refuse to support abolishing ICE
I'm not mistaken in my understanding that Tim Walz is a Democrat, am I? The one making public speeches falsely claiming that ICE aren't LEO and encouraging "peaceful protest" without mentioning anything about obstruction of justice or resisting arrest?
And you're aware that the Signal groups in question are alleged to include Democratic state officials and a campaign advisor?
For that matter, exactly what do you mean by "abolishing ICE"? Should it not be replaced? Should immigration law not be enforced? Should the USA allow everyone to reside within its borders who wishes to do so, with no barriers to entry?
Not to mention that the point is also to alert illegals of the LEO presence so that they can get away.
What is not legal is point guns at journalists, beat people who record you on the phones and shoot people in the back because they had phone in hand and you are frustrated. What is not legal is to throw pepper spray at people who are no threat. One gotta love the "they mass produce whistles" as a grave accusation while ICE men literally openly threaten to kill people who are no threat. Or kill them and then are proud of their murdering colleagues.
> I'm not mistaken in my understanding that Tim Walz is a Democrat, am I? The one making public speeches falsely claiming that ICE aren't LEO and encouraging "peaceful protest"
Yes, he had good speeches.
> without mentioning anything about obstruction of justice or resisting arrest?
Lol, heavily armed cowards jump at observer, 8 on one, there is no resistance and then they call it resisting arrest.
> For that matter, exactly what do you mean by "abolishing ICE"? Should it not be replaced? Should immigration law not be enforced? Should the USA allow everyone to reside within its borders who wishes to do so, with no barriers to entry?
ICE is basically a violent gang with impossible to reform culture. You dont hire gangmembers to do law enforcement. It needs to be abolished and people in it need to be banned from working in law enforcement.
Highlight something in my comment that you believe is untrue, and I'll be happy to prove it.
> Second, noise is not an obstruction. It is ok and legal to produce whistles.
I did not argue to the contrary. I argued that noise makes it harder for officers to do their lawful duty, because that lawful duty involves verbal communication.
> because they had phone in hand and you are frustrated.
That is not why they were shot.
> while ICE men literally openly threaten to kill people who are no threat.
Please show me where you think this has happened. The only threat to kill people I have heard came from a Florida sheriff, who specifically said that this would happen to people who "throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies".
> and then are proud of their murdering colleagues.
Please show me where you think this has happened.
> heavily armed cowards jump at observer, 8 on one, there is no resistance and then they call it resisting arrest.
They are ordinarily armed, he was not an "observer" (as demonstrated by the fact that he was in the middle of the street and a car had to swerve to avoid him), there were not 8 of them, and there was very visible and prolonged resistance.
You do not appear to understand what "no resistance" looks like. When you are on the ground and under arrest, "no resistance" looks like not attempting to get up, and attempting to put your hands behind your back so that handcuffs can be applied. There is video of a protester in Texas doing this; no further harm came to him. This is not particular to ICE or to federal vs. state law enforcement, and not new. This is just how arrests work, and how they have worked, in the US, Canada and other places.
Not the last guy they executed. He was recording, then backed away when an officer approached him. Then he got dogpiled, his holstered gun was taken, and then he was shot repeatedly.
> Have you heard the constant blowing of whistles in these videos? Did you know that protesters have organized the mass 3d-printing and distribution of these whistles?
I'm quite aware of the intentionally annoying whistles. You're taking a pretty broad interpretation of "interference." I didn't realize that feds had a protected right to a calm and quiet work environment.
> I'm not mistaken in my understanding that Tim Walz is a Democrat, am I? The one making public speeches falsely claiming that ICE aren't LEO and encouraging "peaceful protest" without mentioning anything about obstruction of justice or resisting arrest?
Yeah, Walz is a weak Democrat who can't even condemn the organization killing and abducting his State's citizens. Exactly the kind of politician voters are tired of. All he can say over and over is to "not take the bait" by resisting occupation more forcefully.
> And you're aware that the Signal groups in question are alleged to include Democratic state officials and a campaign advisor?
I've not heard that alleged, but it wouldn't be surprising for some to be monitoring the situation. If you mean to imply that Democrat officials are organizing the resistance then that's laughable. If you're a Conservative then there are only a handful of Dems you should be afraid of, and the rest of the Dems will help you make sure they're not too influential.
> For that matter, exactly what do you mean by "abolishing ICE"? Should it not be replaced?
A more focused INS under the DoJ would be a good reset. A paramilitary with twitchy trigger fingers is no way to enforce any law, much less something as nonviolent and bureaucratic as immigration. If someone is being violent, send the Police, hold a trial. If you need to sort out immigration status you can send a pencil pusher to get papers in order.
> Should immigration law not be enforced? Should the USA allow everyone to reside within its borders who wishes to do so, with no barriers to entry?
No barriers? No. Extremely low ones though, absolutely. You do realize that almost all undocumented people living in the US are on overstayed visas, right? We let them in after checking they weren't dangerous, then they started working and living here. Now they make up a sizable chunk of the population. Clearly our immigration system is broken if it leaves this many residents undocumented. And your proposed solution is strict enforcement?
Imagine, if you will, applying this standard to, say, speeding. Repeated instances of speeding result in increasing fines, and eventually revocation of your license. That's what the law says! Should we not enforce this law?? Well. If we used cars' and phones' GPS and cameras to reconstruct a few days of driving behavior, then handed out punishment as dictated by law, 90% of drivers would instantly lose their license. Half of the population would be unable to go to work, buy food, of get their kids to school. It would be a disaster of historic scale. The problem then, is the law. To put it more succinctly: I am not a proponent of enforcing bad laws, and neither is just about anyone else here in reality.
This kind of behavior would not be tolerated any more if it targeted other work environments. Harassment (and that's the most generous interpretation) is not free speech.
"Work Environments" jfc. Harassing harassers is morally ok in anyones book. That they get paid for harrassment is irrelevant. People dont need to endure oppression because the oppressors are on the job.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
QED.
I don't know how else to read it. Inform me.
If anything the actions ICE is taking is even worse, Pretti didn't even have a terrorist assault whistle.
None of the argument has to do with "harassment", although of course that is not okay.
I mentioned the whistles specifically because it impedes communication between officers. Better communication between officers might, for example, have led to Pretti not getting shot, because they might have been able to understand better that he had already been disarmed. Hence "Can you imagine how this level of noise interferes with a job that involves verbal communication with both coworkers and civilians?", which was omitted from a reply that quoted the rest of the paragraph.
There is speculation that the first shot may have come from an accidental discharge of Pretti's gun, as it was carried by the officer who took it away. That could reasonably have spooked other officers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_shooting is a relevant concept here) who didn't have a clear view of everything that was going on. (There is also footage where Pretti appears to be reaching for where the gun would be, after it had been taken. Someone might not have realized it had in fact been taken.)
Refusing to comply with orders, and obstructing officers, justifies arrest. Presenting threats of death or serious injury during the arrest is what justifies self-defense actions. "Murder" is definitionally an unjustified killing; the entire point of a self-defense argument (and LEO do have some legal protections here that civilians don't, along with their responsibilities) is to establish that a killing was not murder. To call it "murder" is therefore assuming that which is to be established.
I am not asserting that a self-defense action is justified in Pretti's case. But I am saying that people are making the argument, and that there is a clear basis for it.
The guy I replied to literally said:
> Harassment (and that's the most generous interpretation) is not free speech.
> Better communication between officers might, for example, have led to Pretti not getting shot
You know what would have also led to the officers not murdering Pretti? The officers not being heavily armed, having the officers be better trained, have the officers not treat everyone as a threat to be handled, have the officers not assaulting people on the streets.
ICE is supposed to be serving civil infractions. They shouldn't be this armed to do so.
> There is speculation that the first shot may have come from an accidental discharge of Pretti's gun
There's zero evidence of this, and the video evidence shows the officer that actually shot Pretti experienced recoil in the hand holding his gun at the sound of the first shot. Meanwhile the officer holding Pretti's gun experienced no recoil at all, and instead of looking at the gun in his hands that supposedly misfired he turned to look at the guy who actually fired the first shot. If it was really Pretti's gun that misfired, wouldn't the guy holding it react by at least looking at it? I don't know about you, but if I'm holding a gun that suddenly goes off I'm not looking around elsewhere I'm looking at the gun that's unreliably going off!
Please don't continue pushing the false narrative (lie? slander? misinformation?) that it was some accidental discharge of Pretti's gun. It is not supported by reality.
Yeah? It's exactly the fact that their work environment is public streets and other people's homes, schools, and churches that prompt this behavior.
The video shows him physically interposing himself between the officer and a woman, and appearing to resist physically.
> You're taking a pretty broad interpretation of "interference."
It is not broad, as explained by the one sentence you omitted from that paragraph.
> Walz is a weak Democrat who can't even condemn the organization
He has very clearly done this on multiple occasions. As I said, he has even been making public speeches claiming that ICE aren't even LEO, which is false.
> abducting his State's citizens
This has not occurred. Arrest is not abduction.
> If you mean to imply that Democrat officials are organizing the resistance then that's laughable.
I do mean to say that Cam Higby asserts exactly that, and appears to believe he has considerable evidence to substantiate the claim.
> You do realize that almost all undocumented people living in the US are on overstayed visas, right? We let them in after checking they weren't dangerous, then they started working and living here.
I don't understand why you think they should be permitted to stay under those conditions.
> Clearly our immigration system is broken if it leaves this many residents undocumented. And your proposed solution is strict enforcement?
Yes; if you have a time-limited visa, you should be expected to leave the country when it expires, and you should expect for there to be strict enforcement of that rule. Otherwise the time stamped on the visa is meaningless.
> Imagine, if you will, applying this standard to, say, speeding.
I see no reason why this is comparable.
That's just normal law enforcement behavior though. I'm sure if she hadn't been short with him he would've otherwise been well-behaved and enforced our immigration laws without incident.
A very vocal minority is not a majority.
Jan 23rd General strike, Minnesota: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Downtown... https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1ql7eva/mn_01232...
This is not a 'vocal minority'.
Oh, that's one blue state; right? What do the rest of Americans think?
> The Economist/YouGov poll, 55 percent of respondents said they had “very little” confidence in ICE, while 16 percent said they have “some” confidence in the agency. Sixteen percent said they have “quite a lot” of confidence in ICE and 14 percent said they have “a great deal.”
Source poll: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor...
> Democrats overwhelmingly support eliminating ICE (76% vs. 15%), as do nearly half of Independents (47% vs. 35%). Most Republicans (73%) continue to oppose abolishing ICE. Only 19% of Republicans support eliminating the agency
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53939-more-americ...
If that's the case, then why has no one been prosecuted on those grounds?
No; conspiracy to impede and obstruct is a crime.
If you are about to do something I don't want you to do, but which is lawful for you to do, 1A covers me saying "hey, don't do that". It does not cover me physically positioning myself in a way that prevents you from doing it. And if you happen to be an LEO and the thing you're about to do is a law enforcement action, it would be unlawful for me to adopt such positioning. It is unlawful even if I only significantly impede you.
And ICE are federal LEO.
Which is obstructive, especially given that there was parking on both sides and everyone is in an SUV.
> The other was filming from a distance.
No, he is very clearly seen on video in the middle of the road directing traffic, and then physically interposing himself between an officer and another person who the officer may have intended to place under arrest, and then physically resisting arrest. At no point in the altercation did officers close the "distance"; he was the one who moved in.
The fact that federal agents are breaking the law doesn't change that. At all.
In spite of what you've been told federal LEO are bound by the law.
Executing random bystanders on a whim, operating without visible ID, failing to allow congressional oversight of facilities, failing to give those captured access to a lawyer - among many, many others - all put this operation far outside of any reasonable claim to proportionality or legality.
The behaviour being impeded and obstructed is not criminal. It is, in fact, law enforcement.
> In spite of what you've been told federal LEO are bound by the law.
I have not been told otherwise, nor does my argument assume or require otherwise.
> Executing random bystanders on a whim
This objectively does not even remotely describe either killing, and I have seen no evidence for the other things. Nor can I fathom what "congressional oversight" you have in mind, nor why it would be legally necessary.
If the behavior appears criminal at a glance, it is reasonable to step in; law enforcement should be aware of this and exhibit accordingly professional behavior such that it does not appear to be so criminally violent. The simple fact they're law enforcement is moot to whether said behavior is criminal, seeing as law enforcement can still be charge with crimes.
One phone gets compromised and the whole network is identified with their phone numbers.
You still need to use your phone number to sign up, though.
Which defeats the whole point. What if the FBI politely asks Signal about a phone number?
So the FBI cant ask what phone number is tied to an account, but if a specific phone number was tied to the specific account? (As in, Signal gets the number, runs it through their hash algorythm and compares that hash to the saved one)
But my memory is very very bad, so like i said, i might be wrong
Regarding hashing: while unsalted phone number hashes would be easy to reverse then I doubt that any hashing scheme today is set up like that.
Not only does one have to worry about other Signal users being compromised, one also has to worry about a third party being compromised: the Signal Messaaging LLC
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press: Cambridge, 2007), 372
Italics are mine
Also, if someone's phone is confiscated, and you're in their Signal chats and their address book, it doesn't matter if you're hiding your number on Signal.
It's better to just not require such identifying information at all.
If you don't want to link your contacts... don't link your contacts...
But this doesn't have the result that the GP claimed. The whole network doesn't unravel because in big groups like these one number doesn't have all the other contacts in their system.
For people that need it:
| Settings
|- Chat
| |- Share Contacts with iOS/Android <--- (Turn off)
|- Privacy
| |- Phone Number
| | |- Who Can See My Number
| | | |- Everybody
| | | |- Nobody <----
| | |- Who Can Find Me By Number
| | | |- Everybody
| | | |- Nobody <----
| |- App Security
| | |- Hide Screen in App Switcher <---- Turn on
| | |- Screen Lock <---- Turn on
| |- Advanced
| | |- Always Relay Calls <-----
Some of these settings are already set btw
If we go full tinfoil, then do you really trust Apple and Google to keep your Signal keys on your device safe from the US government?
It's probably not that bad, but I do know that we're having some serious discussions on Signal here in Europe because it's not necessarily the secure platform we used to think it was. Then again, our main issue is probably that we don't have a secure phone platform with a way to securely certify applications (speaking from a national safety, not personal privacy point of view).
I do agree with that when you can't hide from the company, you can't hide from the US government either.
Regarding attacks, even if your current app is e2ee then this could be subverted by simply updating it to a newer version that isn't. Yet another is that when somebody gets full control over your phone, then no system will protect you as the device is functioning as intended (showing you the messages), it just doesn't know that it's no longer the owner of the phone reading them.
> Signal's messages are encrypted at rest though? Because Android and iOS are both full disk encrypted.
1) Toast notifications include messages
2) Keyboard
The second is less obvious and unfortunately with iOS I don't think there's a solution. Under Android, by default, Signal uses the incognito keyboard. Android promises not to use typing patterns for its learning but like Apple you ultimately have to trust them. But unlike Apple you can install 3rd party keyboards from Fdroid which are entirely local (some even have learning capabilities and plenty have local STT).
But again, neither of these are actual issues with Signal or any other E2EE app. The problem is the smartphone.
> I do agree with that when you can't hide from the company, you can't hide from the US government either.
I don't think you can hide from targeted government surveillance. Or at least you have to go to some serious lengths to. But I do strongly believe that apps like Signal help you avoid dragnet operations and mass government surveillance. We should differentiate these types of things. I'm no doing anything nefarious so I'm not concerned with the former targeted surveillance (though I still dislike it in principle), but mass government surveillance is, in my view, a violation of my constitutional rights and everyone should take steps to fight against it.
Truth is, most mass surveillance can be avoided fairly easily: use an E2EE communication app like Signal (cross platform) or iMessage (security only with your Apple friends), install an ad blocker, set "do not track" in your browser, get a cookie destroyer (or use incognito/private), and disable tracking in each and every app (annoying...). This isn't a perfect defense from mass surveillance but it sure does get rid of like 80+% of it and that's a really good step in the right direction. There's no such thing as perfect privacy or perfect security, there's only speedbumps and walls. The intention is to make it hard and costly.
I nitpick because people do not differentiate these two and become apathetic. Acting as if it is pointless to make these changes. But mass surveillance (and surveillance capitalism) is where the disinformation campaigns and manipulation comes from. Unless you're some elite criminal then framing the conversation as "you can't hide from the government" is naive. Besides, I'm not trying to hide from the government. I have nothing to hide. But the checks and balances are that they have to have a reason to look. Get a warrant or GTFO. That's what making these types of changes is the equivalent of.
Thank you for the nitpick, AI, but this is hn so don't write as if this was fb. :)
> When the phone is taken from you, you'll not be typing them in anyway.
source:
https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/
hn discussion:
Tox (if you're addicted to phones): https://tox.chat/
Set up your own XMPP or Matrix server and only expose it via Tor.
Not using phone numbers in chat app doesn't protect you against someone locating you.
When phone is turned on, even without SIM, your location is saved, in inches. Thanks to 5G.
And some phone turns itself on automatically, lol.
Using laptop (without any wifi card) -> Wifi card (rotating fake MAC) -> wifi network/LTE modem with IMEI spoofing
Signal is a desktop app, as well. Even if you wanted to run it on Qubes in a Faraday cage, you'll need a phone number to register to use the app.
In the ideal situation, no one would be using Signal, phones or computers, the design of the internet is inherently identifying and non-anonymizing.
Oh wait, we did.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2026/jan/28/footag...
What I can tell is ICE starts to open a door, and a clerk immediately stops them and ICE shut the door a second later. The clerk opens the door to further tell them they are not allowed to enter. The ICE person states they will not try to enter and if the clerk touches them, they will yank the person out of the building. ICE then leaves.
I'm not ok with what ICE has been doing. But, it feels like a bit of a stretch to call this threatening staff, to me. Saying what will happen if the other party escalates feels like a different axis than threatening. Def taken as another data point in a sea of overreach however.
I'm not sure what the agent has to do to qualify as a threat to you, but at the very least this is thuggish behavior. The embassy is Ecuadorean sovereign territory where the staff have immunity from US laws, threatening to yank someone out of there is like extracting someone from Ecuador by force. It's highly offensive.
If you tried that at a US embassy you'd probably be shot, but it's generally impossible because they are all heavily secured and fortified.
> The ICE person states they will not try to enter and if the clerk touches them, they will yank the person out of the building.
Does that not amount to a threat?
It sounds as though most of these agents are poorly trained at best. https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ice-unloads
> “The brand new agents are idiots,” an experienced ICE agent assigned to homeland security investigations told me.
> The new ICE officer continued: “I thought federal agents were supposed to be clean cut but some of them pass around a flask as we are watching a suspect,” observing as well that the new guys “have some weird tattoos.”
"If you touch me, I'll break your jaw" has been ruled by courts to not be a threat.
Don't use Signal for organizing anything of this sort, I promise you'll regret it. I've heard people having better luck with Briar, but there might be others too. I only know that Signal and Whatsapp are what you want to avoid. Unless your concern is strictly cryptographic attacks of your chat's network-traffic and nothing more.
That is no longer true, you can use user IDs now.
For the other problem, you can enable self-deleting messages in group chats, limiting the damage when a chat does become compromised. Of course, this doesn't stop any persistent threat, such as law enforcement (is that even the right term anymore?) getting access to an unlocked phone.
I've also heard of side-channel attacks on Signal that could allow for profiling a user's location, which with the FBI's resources could presumably eventually result in identification.
Every user has to attempt decryption of every message sent by any sender. Later they cobbled on some kind of hokey sharding mechanism to try to work around this, but it was theoretically unmotivated and an implementation minefield (very easy for implementation mistakes in the sharding mechanism to leak communication patterns to an observer).
Bitmessage would be great if we had something like Schnorr signatures (sum of (messages signed with different keys) = (sum of messages) signed with (sum of keys)) that could tell you if any of the sum of a bunch of messages was encrypted to your secret key. Then you could bisection-search the mempool.
This is not actually what the majority of people think and feel.
IE; from recent polling > 55%+ of Americans have “very little” confidence in ICE, while 16 percent only have "some".
That's ~71% of ordinary US folks; and I would wager many international folks are very clear eyed about the situation.
But why don't you see a ratio of 7/10 of top level comments critical? It's reasonable to assume that about half of those people are just keeping to themselves or part of the political middle that feel something is a "bit wrong"; but not quite enough to go yell into the internet about it. For the others, arguing is tiring and doesn't seem to change much. Watching the situation induces feelings of dread, despair or helplessness.
On the opposing side, that 29% of people are faced with the fact that they might actually be the "baddies" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY), and a good number of them are flooding conversations to prove they are in fact "not"... because admitting otherwise would mean they are actually doing something quite morally or ethically wrong by their own or their community standards. Since that would be unthinkable! the only logical reaction is to post frequently in shrill defense.
If you keep that in mind - the relative psychology of each group - it's much easier not to despair if "everyone" seems to be saying the opposite of what you would expect.
I on the other hand happen to be a "bootlicker", while their opinion seems to be that it's ok to interfere with police work, and that the person that got shot did nothing wrong..
Here's a 3 minute explainer from the researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1fSW7zevE
This model defines a few different categories of how people respond - "Withdrawal","Attack-Self" and "Avoidance", "Attack-Other".
If you were to look at your comments through the threads here, would you be able to classify your responses as matching any of the categories above?
As a hint, you may be surprised to learn the person with multiple comments in question I was referring to isn't you. Yet you've sought this out and decided the most suitable response to why are two groups posting responses at different rates is to attempt to relitigate an imagined argument.
Trump had deportions of illegals on his agenda, they were creating trouble at certain locations (perhaps a tiny minority on US map), people voted Trump, he is keeping his promises. The protesters probably don't even know who is being currently captured..
They are protesting against the democratic outcome. But don't understand that when you're the minority, you can't have both the (1) "what you want", and (2) democracy.
But please for the love of god explain how "not following orders" is grounds for immediate extrajudicial execution? because your
"their opinion seems to be ... that the person that got shot did nothing wrong"
Lethal force wielded by unmasked, uniformed, badge-wearing, and bodycam'd police officers is already fraught with enough issues as it is... And at least they occasionally face investigation and punitive measures when they fuck up on the (admittedly very difficult) job and harm civilians unlawfully.
A woman not getting out of the car when being ordered to by unknown masked men bearing weapons is reasonable.
Shooting an unarmed civilian who poses no threat to you is not reasonable. It only serves to undermine the entire apparatus of civil governance as well as the bill of rights that the US government was founded upon. It's shameful and disgusting.
And yes, you're accurately labled a bootlicker if you make excuses to the contrary about how it's _ackshually ok_ to shoot and kill people who don't listen to you because boohoo they made your job harder.
If instead you decide you don't actually want to make such an indefensible stand, and instead motte and bailey your way around the issue by trying to talk about obstruction of enforcement of laws, and fall all the way back to "well ICE is allowed to invade places to get the dirty immigrants, so really all the law-abiding citizens would be fine if they just got out of the way", then you're a coward who wont accept the consequences of their own line of argumentation.
Murdering people (Renee Good) who pose no threat to you is wrong. Full stop. Whether that person did something worthy of a misdemeanor, or arrest, or some other LAWFUL CONSEQUENCE is a different matter entirely.
ICE's continued and flagrant misconduct is a breakdown of the Rule of Law, which literally only works if the populace maintains enough trust in those entrusted to enforce and uphold the law. Destroying that (precious little remaining) trust in a politically motivated boondoggle to "own the libs" is a colossal fuckup.
Go protest in some square, don't protest at ICE carrying out its work. Should this event somehow disqualify ICE, you'll see the Trump opposers hugging every criminal in the country. "Full stop" (as if rhetoric devices ever strenghtened an argument..)
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resistance.
As a former government employee I had the same reaction to the Snowden leaks: sure the government might be collecting all of this (which I don't support), but I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
Incompetence might be the greatest safety we have against a true dystopia.
It may feel normal now, but back then, serious people, professionals, told us that the claims just were not possible.
Until we learned that they were.
Meanwhile, the whole time, communications and tech companies were working hand in hand with the government siphoning up any and all data they could to successfully implement their LifeLog[1] pipe dream.
In 2008 I worked with a retired NSA guy who had retired from the agency 5 years prior. He refused to have a cellphone. He refused to have a home ISP. Did not have cable tv, Just OTA. He would only use the internet as needed for the work we were doing and would not use it for anything else (news, etc). He eventually moved to the mountains to live off grid. He left the agency ten years before Snowden disclosed anything.
An example like that in my life and here I sit making comments on the internet.
I have opinions but at the end of the day I'd rather live within the system with everything it has to offer me, even knowing how fake a lot of it is. Living in remote huts is just not that interesting
If NSA employs primarily some high functioning people on spectrum or similar types, which often don't work well in societies with tons of strangers, then moving off is also not the worst idea if one has enough skills and good equipment to not make it into constant hellish survival.
Perhaps. Like I said in the other comment, his motivations for that living choice may have been unrelated to his government work, but it did fit a pattern of choices. I am pretty sure his other choices of specific technology avoidance was related to his government work. No specific conversation but other colleagues and I noticed comments (mainly about cellular and internet avoidance) over the time we worked together in the vein of “I just don’t think it’s a good idea”.
Are they suspicious of the government? No, just poor and uninterested.
People don't want to be seen as crazy or on the fringes so it creates a far greater chilling effect than claims that e.g. the government is too incompetent to do something which could lead to casual debate and discussion. Same thing with the event that is the namesake of that group. The argument quickly shifted from viability to simply trying to negatively frame anybody who might even discuss such things.
At least from what I recall, law enforcement were portrayed as bumbling idiots when it came to computers and anything internet-related.
Same thing with legislators and regulators, with the "series of tubes" meme capturing the sentiment pretty well.
When it came to spying, yeah you were (and still are to an extent) considered to be insane if you think the government was spying on you or anyone you know, let alone everyone.
pretty much everything Snowden released had been documented (with NSA / CIA approval) in the early 80s in James Bamford's book The Puzzle Palace.
the irony of snowden is that the audience ten years ago mostly had not read the book, so echo chambers of shock form about what was re-confirming decades old capabilities, being misused at the time however.
I honestly have no god damn clue what was actually revealed by the Snowden documents - people just say "they revealed things".
Like I said: I've read a ton of stuff, and apparently what people are sure they read is very different to what I read.
Is the claim that there was adequate court oversight of operations under those codenames which then turned out not to be the case? Are they referring to specific excesses of the agencies? Breaking certain cryptographic primitives presumed to be secure?
Why is absolutely no one who knows all about Snowden ever able to refer to the files with anything more then a bunch of titles, and when they deign to provide a link also refuses to explain what part of it they are reacting to or what they think it means - you know, normal human communication stuff?
(I mean I know why, it's because at the time HN wound itself up on "the NSA has definitely cracked TLS" and the source was an out of context slide about the ability to monitor decrypted traffic after TLS termination - maybe, because actually it was one extremely information sparse internal briefing slide. But boy were people super confident they knew exactly what it meant, in a way which extends to discussion and reference to every other part of the files in my experience).
What I learned in that revelation was that the NSA was deliberately tampering with the design of products and standards to make them more vulnerable to NOBUS decryption. This surprised everyone I knew at the time, because we (perhaps naively) thought this was out of bounds. Google "SIGINT Enabling" and "Bullrun".
But there were many other revelations demonstrating large scale surveillance. One we saw involved monitoring the Google infra by tapping inter-DC fiber connections after SSL was added. Google MUSCULAR, or "SSL added and removed here". We also saw projects to tap unencrypted messaging services and read every message sent. This was "surprising" because it was indiscriminate and large-scale. No doubt these projects (over a decade old) have accelerated in the meantime.
If you still want a copy-paste response to your question, just let me know – I'm happy to help!
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nsa-palantir-israel-...
As for PRISM, it's regularly used - but we engage in parallel construction since it's probably illegal and if anybody could prove legal standing to challenge it, it would be able to be legally dismantled. Basically information is collected using PRISM, and then we find some legal reason of obtaining a warrant or otherwise 'coincidentally' bumping into the targets, preventing its usage from being challenged, or even acknowledged, in court. There's a good writeup here. [2]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJCxVkllxZw
[2] - https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega...
Someone else on HN said it would be nice if the NSA published statistics or something, data so aggregate you couldn't determine much from it, but still tells you "holy shit they prevented something crazy" levels of information, harder said than done without revealing too much.
There were stories like "look at how we stopped this thing using all this data we've been scooping up"... but often the details lead to somewhat underwhelming realities, to say the least.
It might be that this stuff is very useful, but only in very illegal ways.
- abuse
- incompetence
- getting away with breaking rules and laws
Sometimes, those are desirable or necessary for national security/pragmatic reasons.
For instance, good luck running an effective covert operation without being abusive to someone or breaking rules and laws somewhere!
Usually (80/20 rule) it’s just used to be shitty and make a mess, or be incompetent while pretending to be hot shit.
In a real war, these things usually get sorted out quickly because the results matter (existentially).
Less so when no one can figure out who the actual enemy is, or what we’re even fighting (if anything).
That may sound hyperbolic but I hope it's obvious to most people by now that it's not.
IE; just looking at their puff piece demo for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8
- semantic data integration/triplestores/linking facts in a database.
- feature extraction from imagery / AI detection of objects as an alarm
- push to human operators
You or I might expect this to be held to a high standard - chaining facts together like this better be darned right before action is taken!
But what if the question their software solves isn't we look at a chain of evidence and act on it in a legal/just/ethical manner but we have decided to act and need a plausible pretext; akin to parallel construction?
When you assess it by that criteria, it works fantastically - you can just dump in loads and loads of data; get some wonky correlations out and go do whatever you like. Who cares if its wrong - double checking is hard work; someone else will "fix" it if you make a mistake; by lying, by giving you immunity from prosecution, by flying you out of state or going on the TV, or uh, well, that's a future you problem.
To take a non US example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
Debt calculations were flat out wrong
The unstated goal/dogwhistle at the time was to punish the poor (cost more than it would ever recover)
It was partially stopped after public outcry with a few ministerial decisions.
It took years; people dying; a royal commission and a change of political party to put a complete stop to it.
No real consequences for the senior political figures who directly enacted this
Limited consequences for 12 of 16 public servants - no arrests, no official job losses, some minor demotions.
If the goal of the machine is to displace responsibility; the above example did its job.
It isn't usually a question of efficiency, it is a question of damage. Technically there is an argument that something like the holocaust was inefficiently executed, but still a good reason to actively prevent governments having ready-to-use data on hand about people's ethnic origin.
A lot of the same observations probably apply to the ICE situation too. One of the big problems with the mass-migration programs has always been that there is no reasonable way to undo that sort of thing because it is far too risky for the government to be primed to identify and deport large groups of people. For all the fire and thunder the Trump administration probably isn't going to accomplish very much, but at great cost.
As a former intelligence officer with combat time I promise you there are A LOT of actions happening based on that data.
Competence is also terrifying, but for different reasons.
They are still dangerous even if theyre over promising because even placebos are dangerous when the displace real medical interventions.
I let one of my cars expire the registration a few months Everytime, because I'm lazy and because I want to see if I get flagged by a popup system Everytime a police officer passes near me. My commute car is out of registration 3 months right now. And old cop friend told me they basically never tow unless it's 6 months. I pay the $50 late fee once a year and keep doing my experiment for the last 6-7 years. Still no real signs they care.
My fun car has out of state plates for 10 years now. Ive been pulled over once for speeding, and told the officer I just bought it. I've never registered it since I bought it from a friend a decade ago. They let me go. It makes me wonder if one day they'll say "sir, we have plate scanners of this vehicle driving around this state for a year straight.. pay a fine." Not yet.
In a way that's worse, because the systems aren't looking up your car or to target your vehicle for fines, but to look up and target you for arrest.
Same systems can be used to identify, track and arrest undesirables.
Maybe now is exactly the right time to publicly call out the apparent uselessness of Palantir before they fully deploy their high altitude loitering blimps and drones for pervasive surveillance and tracking protestors to their homes.
(My greater theory is that the slide into authoritarianism is not linear, but rather has a hump in the middle where government speech and actions are necessarily opposite, and that they expect the contradiction to slide. Calling out the contradiction is one of the most important things to do for people to see what is going on.)
This can be seen in the case of ChongLy Thao, the American citizen (who was born in Laos). This was the man dragged out into freezing temperatures in his underwear after ICE knocked down his door (without a warrant), because they thought two other men (of Thai origin I think) were living there. The ICE agents attitude was that they must be living there, and ChongLy was hiding them. That being wrong does not cost those ICE agents anything, and that is the source of the problems.
Putting on my pedant's hat here. Franklin may well have said something similar, but the maxim you mention is broadly known as Blackstone's Formulation (or ratio)[0] after William Blackstone[1], another Englishman.
Many sayings are ascribed to Benjamin Franklin. And some of them, he actually said.
If the end goal is that the broad, general public are intimidated, then they're not necessarily "finding the wrong people." With the current "semi random" enforcement with many false positives, nobody feels safe, regardless of their legal status. This looks to be the goal: Intimidate everyone.
If they had a 100% true positive rate and a 0% false positive rate, the general population would not feel terrorized.
What I'm saying is that congress and the public should be holding them to their word and asking where all this Palantir money is going if the stated intent of "targeted operations/individuals" is completely misaligned with operational reality.
Generally speaking, that is a tactic of oppression, creating a general sense of fear for everyone. Anyone can be arrested or shot.
There is a difference between what you are seeing and what is actually happening.
99.9% of the time they are finding the right people, but "illegal alien was deported" is as interesting a news story as "water is wet".
They're bringing in a lot of US citizens here in Minneapolis/St Paul, including a bunch of Native folks.
The sex offender they'd been looking for at ChongLy Thao's house had already been in jail for a year.
The Dept of Corrections is annoyed enough about the slander of their work that they now have a whole page with stats and details about their transfers to ICE, including some video of them transferring criminals into ICE custody https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/combatting-dhs-misinformation/
I am pretty nervous about the possibilities for trampling peoples' Constitutional rights in ever more sophisticated ways, but the current iteration can't even merge a database and then get accurate names & addresses out to field agents. (That doesn't stop the kidnappings, it just makes it a big waste of money as adult US citizens with no criminal record do by & large get released.)
All the data signal keeps in the cloud is protected by a pin and SGX. Pins are easy to brute force or collect, SGX could be backdoored, but in any case it's leaky and there have already been published attacks on it (and on signal). see https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.... and https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attac...
I'm sure that people who actually work in intelligence agencies could think of more reasons.
It's not hard to find long posts of me calling the people in the Trump administration "profoundly stupid", with both my "tombert" alias and my real name [1]. I'm not that worried because if Palantir has any value they would also be able to tell that I'm deeply unambitious with these things, but it's still something that concerns me a bit.
[1] Not that hard to find but I do ask you do not post it here publicly.
Then you are part of the problem. Get off your ass and do something, before it's too late. FFS!
My wife is a Mexican immigrant. She's a citizen now, but that doesn't appear to be something that matters to this organization. There is no way in hell I am going to put her in jeopardy just to go protest.
But I think we know from history, and other (attempted) authoritarian takeovers, that it only gets worse until people stand up and push back.
It's in their best interest to make everyone feel there's nothing they can do, there's no use in protesting etc etc.
I do think it works! And in addition to protests in the streets, and strikes, I think consumer boycotts would work. If a percentage of people stopped buying anything other than the necessities a lot of US companies would really feel it.
I guess I am trying to say that there are multiple ways of fighting this, and without going into which is “better”, I think I am doing a little and I dispute being “part of the problem”. As I said, I vote in every election I am allowed to vote in, and I haven’t missed one in a bit more than a decade.
Palantir is SAP with a hollywood marketing department. I talked to a Palantir guy five or six years ago and he said he was happy every time someone portrayed them as a bond villain in the news because the stock went up the next day.
So much of tech abuse is enabled by this, and it's somewhat more pronounced in America, juvenile attitude toward technology, tech companies and CEOs. These people are laughing on their way to the bank because they convinced both critics and evangelists that their SAAS products are some inevitable genius invention
> Spyware delivered by text > In August, the Trump administration revived a previously paused contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to The Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto with expertise in spyware.
> Little is known about how ICE is using Paragon Solutions technology and legal groups recently sued DHS for records about it and tools made by the company Cellebrite. ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about its Paragon Solutions contract and whether it is for Graphite or another tool.
> Graphite can start monitoring a phone — including encrypted messages — just by sending a message to the number. The user doesn't have to click on a link or a message.
> "It has essentially complete access to your phone," said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and policy group focused on privacy. "It's an extremely dangerous surveillance tech that really goes against our Fourth Amendment protections."
Deals with Flock, and so on. It makes no sense for Palantir to be the one doing those deals rather than the Party. They've been doing so for a long time now. That's the whole point of data brokers, on this site alone there are hundreds of comments and posts about how the Party abuses those to get around laws on mass surveillance - can't legally (or are too incompetent to) gather data ourselves? Just buy it off a data broker. And Snowden showed us more than a decade ago that even without them they can just.. not care about the "legal" part.
Hopefully they can unwind these groups, because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against. They don't seem to have a sense for when they have gone beyond protesting and have broken the law. There's this culture about them, like protesting means they are immune to law.
If this all ties back to funded groups who are then misinforming these people about how they should behave to increase the chance of escalatory events with the knowledge that it will increase the chance of these inflammatory political highlights to maximize rage, it won't surprise me.
If they want to follow ICE around and protest them, fine, but that's not what they're doing. These people are standing or parking their cars in front of their vehicles and blocking them. They'll also stand in front of the street exits to prevents their vehicles from leaving parking lots and so on. They refuse to move, so they have to be removed by force, because they are breaking the law. Some people are just trying to get arrested to waste ICE's time, and it's particularly bad because Minneapolis police won't help ICE.
A lot of video recordings don't even start until AFTER they've already broken the law, so all you end up seeing is ICE reacting.
Any time someone dies, there'll have to be an investigation to sort out what happened. Maybe the ICE officer made a mistake, but let the evidence be presented. Being that this is Minneapolis, hopefully they do a better job than the George Floyd case. I absolutely recommend you watch the entire Fall of Minneapolis documentary to get a better sense for what the country may be increasingly up against in multiple states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPi3EigjFA
i think people know exactly what theyre up against: a lawless executive, many members of which have never had to work in places where they are held accountable to the constitution before.
its more important for the government to follow the constitution than for citizens to follow the law. if the government isnt following the law, there is no law
He wasn't killed for owning a gun or carrying a gun.
He wasn't killed for laying hands on the officer.
He wasn't killed for resisting arrest.
It was likely the entire combination of things that caused him to demonstrate he was a credible threat to their lives and reaching for an object. No matter what you think, Alex made a whole string of mistakes. The officer may have also made mistakes. With any luck investigation will reveal more details.
I'm not predisposed to assuming that Alex is innocent and the officer is guilty, because there is a lot of activist pressure to push exactly that perspective. I prefer to preserve the capacity to make up my own mind.
> With any luck investigation will reveal more details.
Kristi Noem said: "This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement." She even went so far as calling this an act of "domestic terrorism". At this point, do you seriously believe there will be a neutral investigation?
I don't know why he was being beaten on the ground, that seemed a little excessive. Not sure how many times he was shot, but generally if law enforcement ever makes the determination to shoot they do it to shoot to kill.
They knew he had 1 gun, so he could have 2 guns. The officers don't see the angle most of the camera angles see. They see the perspective they see, from themselves. That is the perspective that will matter by law. What situation were they in and what did they see when they made their decision?
You have the luxury of seeing a perspective the officer did not see, and the officer has the luxury of seeing a perspective you did not see.
People who are in favor of throwing the officer's life away without knowing all of the details are doing basically doing exactly what they're accusing the officer of in suggesting that he threw away this person's life without knowing all the information.
I don't know what Kristi Noem is on about, but she's a political appointee and not an investigator.
When the shots were fired, he was restrained by several agents and did not pose any immediate threat.
> Not sure how many times he was shot
It was ten shots, fired by two agents. That is a lot of shots.
Yes, the shooting itself was very likely an accident by grossly incompetent agents. (You can hear an agent shout the word "gun", which probably triggered the other agents to immediately start firing.)
However, it was the ICE agents who started the very situation that led to this tragedy: One agent violently pushed a women from behind. Why? Alex tried to help her and he immediately got peppersprayed in the face. Why? Then he was wrestled to the ground. Why? Then he was beaten to the head. Why?
All these actions are already outrageous in themselves. It is worrying how police brutality has been normalized in the US.
It is pretty rich to blame Alex when it was really the ICE agents who started this whole mess!
In fact, the videos are so damning that even Stephen Miller had to backpedal and admit that these agents "may not have been following proper protocol".
> I don't know what Kristi Noem is on about, but she's a political appointee and not an investigator.
What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?
It may very well be an accident, miscommunication, or people even misinterpreting some of the things shown in the video. We'll find out eventually.
It could be argued that both the activists and the officers contributed to the situation getting to where it was. The activists shouldn't be following them around and harassing them, even if it is legal to do so up to a limit. The officers should have kept their cool, even with the whistles. The activists shouldn't have broken the law, whether the officers broke their protocol first or not.
Do not harass anyone who has a gun if you aren't willing to accept the risk that it could escalate into you losing your life. If he went in knowing that risk and accepted it, then he went out doing what he believed in. If he was misinformed that he was entering a safe situation where his life wasn't at risk, then he was lied to.
It's not rich to blame Alex at all. That doesn't mean it's entirely his fault or that his own mistakes justify his death, only that if you're going to make a string of mistakes don't choose that moment to be when you are harassing people who have guns. If anything good comes from this being so public, it'll be that if people do choose to harass law enforcement at least they can learn to be safer about it.
These officers know that the second they kill someone they will be unmasked. They don't get to kill people and remain anonymous. Each officer has a gun assigned to them and they know which bullets came from what gun. Generally, if an officer kills someone, it's because they felt justified in making the decision. They'll have to sort out what that justification was, even if it involved a chain of mistakes by the officer or other officers that created a cascade.
> What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?
I do not have any particular positive or negative opinion about DHS or their capacity to investigate. It has to be better than the local justice system there.
What I do know based on past performance is that Minneapolis courts have severely underserved justice. I think JD Vance referred to them as kangaroo courts. Not sure if that's precise or accurate by whatever definition, but I would never trust their court system.
So where do you see the potential threatening behavior? When the agent shoots Alex in the back, he is kneeling on the ground and being restrained by several agents. He has not acted in a threatening manner before the shooting nor did he physically attack the agents. The DHS report does not mention any threat either and they have already reviewed bodycam footage.
> Do not harass anyone who has a gun if you aren't willing to accept the risk that it could escalate into you losing your life.
As long as you're not attacking an officer/agent with a weapon, that risk should be very close to zero. Otherwise you're sending a very chill message to the general public.
> I do not have any particular positive or negative opinion about DHS
So you have no issues with the initial statements by Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Stephen Miller?
Unfortunately, when the shot went off he was still fighting with them, actively resisting and not complying. Fighting with federal cops like that is a good way to get killed. He played a stupid game and won a stupid prize.
"There is no indication", yeah so about misinformation...
That's not how I understand it.
> Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.
It would be good if you'd watch this review.
It's relevant because you said you didn't know. The review provides information that helps you to know.
> These activists appear to have followed the federal law enforcement.
Nothing illegal about that at all.
> That highly suggests they knew exactly who they were. ... No reasonable court is likely to determine that they were unaware who they were dealing with.
That's not relevant.
What's your point? No reasonable court would find that the activists did anything wrong, while they certainly would find two federal employees ("officers") are culpable in the murder of one of those activists.
> The officers didn't show up unannounced to the front door of someone who happened to be an activist.
So?
> Nothing illegal about that at all.
The first thing I said is that it's not illegal.
> No reasonable court would find that the activists did anything wrong, while they certainly would find two federal employees ("officers") are culpable in the murder of one of those activists.
The videos don't show all the events leading up to the moment he was shot, but multiple federal laws were broken just in the videos we do have. Murder has a specific definition and nothing here suggests murder.
I double checked, and you are right.
The one I meant to link is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN73-gn90Q
- One of the first things he states is that this is irrefutably cold blooded murder. That is absolutely legally and logically false. It could be murder, but that would require information that is not present in any of these videos, because murder has a very specific definition. Look up the definition. If this guy was law enforcement he should know the difference.
- He then claims that Alex is being pushed back to the curb and that Alex is complying, when you can see in the video that Alex seems to lean his weight into the officer in resistance.
- Alex physically lays hands on the officer which is a bad idea, but this guy never mentions that. If he was LEO, it is very careless to overlook this observation.
- Alex is wearing glasses and yet this guy never mentions this when claiming Alex is blinded by this spray. The activists look prepared to get sprayed and are wearing glasses and goggles. You can see this more clearly in better footage here: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/minute-minute-timeline-fatal...
- He's talking about how the weapon is removed, but not talking about how that doesn't mean there is no longer a weapon in the situation. If you have 1 gun, you can have 2 guns. He claims he is completely unarmed, but the officers cannot know if that is true in that moment. They don't have the benefit of hindsight.
- He claims he points the gun at the back of his head and shoots, but that is not what the video shows. Whether that is what later evidence shows is another matter, but that is not what is clear in this video.
- He complains that Youtube is going to demonetize this. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't want to enable monetization on a video about someone dying like this, because it just stinks of profiting from someone's death. If he left monetization on, that lowers my opinion of him, but that's just an aside and not relevant.
If you want my honest opinion of this guy's analysis, it is that he either does not have the military and law enforcement qualifications that he says he does, or he is intentionally misrepresenting the facts, or he is simply being very loose with language and biased towards an interpretation. Either way, this is not an objective analysis. I can't speak for the rest of the videos on his channel and nobody is perfect, but at least on this topic in this specific video the number of logical errors he makes is staggering.
He was pepper sprayed and on the ground surrounded by 6 agents when he was killed. At the time when an agent said that he had a gun (this was after his gun was removed), he was physically pinned with his arms restrained. He wasn't 'reaching for an object'. He was carrying his phone in his hand before he was restrained and shot a dozen times.
The only investigation being done is by the DHS, who is blocking all other state level investigations. The same DHS who lied about easy disproven things that were recorded and destroy evidences.
What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
I don't know what you're referring to about DHS lying about disproven things and destroying evidence. If you can give me links I'll look into it.
> What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?
I've seen enough video to know that it's not impossible the officer reacted within the spirit of the law. To get a sense for that requires testimony from the officer that fired the shot. Please watch court cases some time and you'll get a sense for how the application of these kinds of laws work. I'm not a lawyer, but if you ever have to defend yourself against someone you'll be thankful the laws work the way that they do.
We have a justice system for a reason. It doesn't always work, but it lays out a process for evaluating evidence. Why do we do it that way? We do it that way, because it is not that uncommon that perceptions, witnesses, videos and many other things can be deceptive. They can make you believe things which are not true. So you try to establish all of the relevant facts as they apply to the law. Not based on how you feel, but based on the law.
It actually hurts some of the witnesses that are obviously activists, because it means they aren't unbiased objective observers, but are predisposed to a perspective and have a possible agenda in mind which risks reducing the quality of their testimony. A law enforcement officer that thinks he might be found guilty also risks their testimony being weak. The video quality is also often bad and there are people obstructing important details at times. All of those things have to be considered.
Of course when you are emotionally invested, you might want them to just rush to what you obviously see. Again, you will be very thankful that the justice system generally doesn't rush to those conclusions so readily if you ever have to defend yourself in court when you know you're innocent.
Why is it so important to you that other people see what you see before any investigation is complete? Look at how courts handle video evidence to gain some perspective on why your thinking which seems to rely so heavily on video evidence alone is simply flawed.
Don't trust your eyes. That is the final and most essential command.
What you are saying is, trust your eyes alone! Pay no attention to what you can touch or what people involved might have to say. That is the final and most essential command.
It goes both ways. With your eyes that you trust so much, hopefully you can see at least that.
At least, while decrying civil disobedience, you differ from the administration in one important aspect: You think there should be accountability for police shootings. That's different than the ICE leader, the DHS leader, the FBI director and the Vice President.
Law enforcement face a lot of violent resistance, so it can be very reasonable for them to see an uncooperative person as a serious threat to their life. If they kill someone, because they believe them to be a lethal threat even if that was not the reality, their perspective absolutely matters to the outcome.
Civil disobedience is basically understood to be breaking the law in a civil manner. What I'm seeing in a lot of videos is not civil disobedience. One expected attribute of civil disobedience is non-evasion, but resisting arrest is essentially attempted evasion.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/
Again, I don't think anyone should have died, but to my eye I can tell the people who are unreasonable and lacking in critical thinking, because they have already prejudged and sentenced people as if they've already sat through the entire court case and had their own hands on the gavel as it went down.
Social media, videos, news, activists and more are incentivized to rile people up. Let it be investigated.
I'm not sure if you've been paying attention at all lately, but saying "let's investigate" with the current administration is farcical at best.
When the government wants to oppress people, they surveil the activists trying to fight oppression.
I've heard from people who have worked with the Signal foundation that it was close to being endorsed for private communication by one branch of government, but that endorsement was rescinded because another branch didn't want people knowing how to stay private.
The US government recommended Signal to for personal communication. See this article, in the section "Signal in the Biden administration and beyond":
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/27/biden-authorized-sign...
And here is the government publication:
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
The only problem is that Telemessage was wildly insecure and was transmitting/storing message archives without any encryption.
> Do not use a personal virtual private network (VPN). Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface. Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies. However, if your organization requires a VPN client to access its data, that is a different use case.
> Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface.
That's true. A VPN service replaces the ISP as the Internet gateway with the VPN's systems. By adding a component, you increase the attack surface.
> Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies.
Certainly true.
> if your organization requires a VPN client to access its data, that is a different use case.
Also true: That's not a VPN service; you are (probably) connecting to your organization's systems.
There may be better VPN services - Mullvad has a good reputation around here - but we really don't know. Successful VPN services would be a magnet for state-level and other attackers, which is what the document may be concerned with.
Here’s the facts:
- Protesters have been coordinating using Signal
- Breaches of private Signal groups by journalists and counter protesters were due to poor opsec and vetting
- If the feds have an eye into those groups, it’s likely that they gained access in the same way as well as through informants (which are common)
- Signal is still known to be secure
- In terms of potential compromise, it’s much more likely for feds to use spyware like Pegasus to compromise the endpoint than for them to be able to break Signal. If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
- The fact that even casual third parties can break into these groups because of opsec issues shows that encryption is not a panacea. People will always make mistakes, so the fact that secure platforms exist is not a threat in itself, and legal backdoors are not needed.
Sort of. They wouldn't use such a client vulnerability but a protocol vulnerability is essential for the data-collection-at-scale the NSA is now infamous for.
https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/new-leaks-on-police-phone...
Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. But I'm curious to hear Americans view on matters?
As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok.
Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk?
Stuff seems rough over there, if they actually are, take care everybody! Also please tell me how things actually stand inside the US cause it's making very little sense right now.
If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems.
If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have been abducted by federalized lunatics, or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps, things seem urgently and unimaginably bad.
If you're politically involved, things seem tenuous, at best. You likely know someone who either feels justifiably terrified by what's going on, or someone whose life has been seriously impacted by it.
I've spent several months successfully combating one of YC's contributions to all this mess. Tonight, federal law enforcement fired pepper rounds, flashbangs, and tear gas into a crowd of protestors who were noisy -- not violent, not even causing property damage, just noisy. One of the officers aimed the tear gas weapon directly at a protestor's head and caused a serious head injury (the kind that causes convulsions and foaming at the mouth after impact). And, they'll get away with that.
The local police department was flying half a dozen drones directly over this, but they are only there to surveil and look for an excuse to put on riot gear.
There were an assortment of reporters there, but most of them have editors or owners that won't run much of a story about any of it. A few politicians showed up, but they made a short speech and then left immediately. The building where this all happened is in a city center, so, just a block away, life and traffic continues as normal and most people are entirely unaware.
So that's also why nobody's really been making an organized 2A effort either. For most people, this isn't "real", in the sense that it isn't something they're experiencing, and for those that are experiencing it, they're trying to walk a tightrope that resists the current administration without spiraling into a widespread civil war.
As a European, I find the use of "concentration camp" to be a very strong word. Trump and its administration are often touted as a Nazi and such. How much of this is hyperbole, and how much of this is real?
Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people. Is this really what is happening in the US?
Note: this is not snark to defend Trump, I'm French and I could not care less. I genuinely want to understand. I feel like the Nazi lexical field is much much weaker in the US, and people are more eager to use it over there than here in Europe.
But there is some cause for concern regarding the detention centers and the lack of oversight.
For example, even Congress members have to provide 7 days of notice if they wish to visit a center [1]. So, the only real oversight is from the executive. And these centers are often ran by private companies somewhat notorious for bad conditions and lawsuits related to bad conditions / civil rights violations.
Here’s a story about where we’re holding families and children:
https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/27/inside-the-dilley...
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-facilities-homeland-securit...
It is often useful to differentiate between "concentration camps" and "death camps" or "extermination camps". The Nazis had both. Some of their concentration camps were focused on concentrating and detaining people, some of them also systematically killed them -- they are not the same. If you fail to make this distinction, then saying "America has concentration camps" could make it sound like they're running extermination camps.
The US does to my knowledge not yet have those, nor as large-scale application of concentration camps as Germany did, and whether you even want to use the term "concentration camp" rather than something more like "detention facility" is up to you, but the federal government certainly has camps where people detained by ICE are being concentrated. Sometimes they are also subject to human rights abuses and/or die there.
Here's one of these camps, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana
Here is a list of people dying under ICE detention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detentio...
Thats a textbook concentration camp. You are correct in your descriptions and distinction from extermination camps, concentration camps are not that rare even these days around the world in troubled places.
They are as name suggests just to herd bunch of people behind the fence, not much more. Of course, the reasons are usually far from nice and thus due to at most OKish treatment even there some sad things happen due to amount of people crammed together for a long time.
In Europe during WWII we had tons of concentration camps all over conquered Europe but only few were actual extermination ones, usually converted/expanded from concentration ones. When allies were coming nazis often turned concentration -> extermination due to orders given from above.
I do agree that there are three slight between "concentration", "death", and "extermination" camps when speaking about Nazi Germany. In France virtually only "concentration" is used in history classes as an umbrella term for all three. It's only very recently (less than 5 years) that I've seen people start to use the more nuanced term. (as an example, any French will tell you that Auschwitz is a concentration camp while it was, in fact, a death camp).
Yet I stand behind what I said about the word "concentration camp" be a strong and heavy word, since those were integral part in the final solution.
I'm not denying that the US has detainment camps akin to the "gentlest" camps from Nazi Germany, far from it. However, I fail to see the difference between e.g. the East Montana one and a large-scale 5k inmate prison, other than it's less regulated than a federal/regular prison thus with more abuse, and filled with regular people instead of criminals. According to the linked Wikipedia articles, the camp has been dubbed after the Alcatraz prison (known for all sorts of violations).
I may be wrong, and they may be indeed set up by ICE and the government to torture and kill the immigrants. I have a hard time to believe it though, as making a detainment camp to frighten and push immigrants to "go back" would me much more effective and less controversial. My guess would be the intent is the latter form of facility, but ends up being the former due to being staffed with ICE and not professional prison crew.
At any rate, even having detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much. We're quick to point fingers at China and their labor camps for Uyghurs, but this is on the way. (as with the Nazi discussion, this is still far from what china does: ad-vitam detainment, children born in captivity, forced sterilization of people, forced religion, etc).
How do you suggest enforcing immigration law when millions have entered your country illegally? (If you believe in enforcing it all.)
How we handle it in Europe is not perfect either, as immigrants tend to be put in hotels and costly amenities, but at least it's a humane way to do it. Plus, be better at sending them back if they are a problem (I won't use the term "deportation" because it's a word heavy with meaning since WW2).
So an illegal immigrant can just walk out of the center if they want? That sounds like you don't believe in enforcing immigration law.
This was all very well understood and hashed out through law and precedent over many decades.
and for the record I dont care what Obama did. some fairly dubious things. does that justify any of this?
Just a note that Nazism was systemic primarily about a race: atheists with ethnically Jewish backgrounds were targeted, converts were few but they would have been considered 'Aryans'. It's an important distinction because many groups (specifically the Muslim Brotherhood) try and draw false equivalence between their beliefs and actual innate characteristics.
These are all stories about the facility the 5 year old toddler from last week is kept, a facility known as "baby jail".
https://www.proskauerforgood.com/2018/06/pro-bono-for-immigr... https://www.aila.org/blog/volunteering-in-family-detention-s... https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/stories-reve...
ICE detention centers are not comparable to a 1942 nazi death camp, but comparisons to a 1939 concentration camp seem apt
First concentration camps were create right after the election 1933 and the gas chambers were not invented yet. They were used against political opposition first, minor criminals second and only then Jews/homosexuals/etc. The regime had to consolidate power and invent the gas chambers first. The deportations, general violence, arrests on made up excuses, exclusion of jews and opposition from public life happened at the beginning.
Trumps rhetoric against Somalis in particular has strong echoes. So does the strategy of arresting and beating people on ethnic membership only.
> Nazis were systemic against a religion
Kinda yes kinda no. Religion was competitor against power ... but klerofascism was a thing. The pope was kinda neutral. And then you have places like Slovakia where catholic church priests were not just facilitating holocaust, but literally leading it. Religion was fairly frequently anti-semitic itself.
> Trumps rhetoric against Somalis in particular has strong echoes
From what I just read about (just discovered this whole ordeal originates from a special status Somalis enjoyed in the US), I don't find anything wrong with what was said at the beginning. That's government policy at work. Indeed, the situation worsened ending with Trump openly talking about revenge against the Somalis, which is just nuts. Unless I missed more details, it's not an actual parallel as the Jews were scapegoats for the whole economic ruin of Germany after WWI (ruin caused by France and others).
> Religion was fairly frequently anti-semitic itself.
About religion, we need to look at the big picture of Europe, and realize that anti-semitism and eugenism was trendy among intellectuals of the time and basically the hot thing for think tanks. The tracking of Jews, handicapped, etc was only possible because people were kinda enclined to follow it. And more horribly so, parts of the catholic church.
This is why I wrote a religion, not religion. They were helped by the rules of Judaism that makes the religion and race the same set of people.
At any rate, I do have a better picture now of what is happening and what is colloquially called "concentration camps" by Americans in this context, thanks!
In case you missed the rhetoric, illegal immigrants as a whole are being blamed for economic ruin.
Immigrants including Somali are blamed for economic situation, lack of housing, meat price. And just like Jews back then, they are accused of being the source of criminality, rape, child abuse. And as before, by actually criminal government (Literally Trump accused people attacked by ICE of that raping kids. Go figure.) I genuinely believe it is OK to not closely follow what Trump, Vance and Miller write and say. But, if you don't, maybe you should not make confident assumptions about their rhetoric.
> ruin caused by France and others
Common here. You are switching one scapegoat for another.
> This is why I wrote a religion, not religion. They were helped by the rules of Judaism that makes the religion and race the same set of people.
The racial component of nazi ideology came from Germans themselves, they perceived it as science. They thought they are being scientific men. In fact, quite a few atheistic Jews were shocked to find they are the hated Jews themselves. German jews were frequently atheistic, integrated, married Germans a lot and considered themselves Germans. Race theory was not inspired by Judaism and was not helped by Judaism. You are kind of blaming the victim here.
> At any rate, I do have a better picture now of what is happening and what is colloquially called "concentration camps" by Americans in this context, thanks!
European historians, writers, politicians, journalists use concentration camp like I did. YOU did confused it with extermination camp. It was you who simply did not knew the term is not limited to the single digit number of nazi extermination camp, that nazi had many more concentration camps and that the term was routinely used for non german concentration camps too.
Correction, criminal illegal aliens. Some false positives have occurred and those people get released. Stop lying.
I must be one of those comfortable and oblivious tech workers because I don't know about any concentration camps in the US. So you'll have to tell me what this is about.
[0] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/like-handmaids-tale-footage-shows-...
These are concentration camps, or at least so close that I’m rhetorically OK with it. All of the famous concentration camp programs of history started the same way. And there’s always an excuse for why “no no no, our program is different, these people are illegal, we have to operate like this (suspended legal rights and oversight) to stop the bad people, it’s not targeted by race/religion/etc it’s just the bad people all happen to be like that…”
This is not a good place to be.
Scope of camps: https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/
Formal suspension of habeas was enabled en-masse by: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/thuraissigia...
"concentration camp" isn't a root command line term to people with critical thinking skills.
Anyone who is neither a state citizen or federal citizen and does not have a valid VISA (or some equivalent) is an unlawful invader.
Again, this may come as a shock to someone stuck in a radical far left bubble, but most Americans' sentiment, the Americans who are busy raising their families, the ones who actually pay all the taxes that pay to house and feed all of these unlawful invaders stuck in limbo is: they are lucky we don't just kill them all.
I know it's shocking to those stuck in a radical far left bubble, but it's the reality. The state governments and federal governments were formed to protect what the founders wrote: "our posterity". Not every third world rando who shows up for the gibs Biden promised rather than fix their own country.
If you want to be effective in your activism, try to avoid "rhetorical correct" terms. Those terms only work on a particular lower class and only piss off the people with critical thinking skills because it comes across as trying to bullshit them in a malicious way (which it is).
edited: to add "(or some equivalent)"
Hemingway was right when he said “There are many Americans who are fascists without knowing it.”
If you think what you've seen is bad, consider how bad the stuff you don't see is, and then consider how bad it is for those who aren't the type to post on HN.
>the type to post on HN.
When's the last time you saw a Trump supporter on this site? The userbase here is considerably further left than a very left-wing state such as California. That will very much be reflected in what gets posted here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791909
Today, several. They made themselves known in several threads related to recent events.
It's against the guidelines to call out posts/posters, but you can use the HN Algolia to list the most popular threads from this week/month and you'll see plenty of them.
I think it should be fine for you to link a few "I support Trump" comments from the past week? Note that believing the Trump administration is correct on a particular issue, or that they are being unfairly criticized, is not the same as advocating that people vote for Trump. I wasn't able to find anything I would consider actual Trump support from a quick skim of recent threads. I don't believe I've ever seen it on HN.
They demonstrate it through their actions and misinformation tactics. You'll find many outright wrong comments on the recent ICE shootings, and many emotionally charged comments suggesting it's good that people got what they deserved.
They'll also misinformation about the types of undocumented people, and how many there are. These are obvious falsehoods, including things such as claiming random citizens are actually terrorists when they're just not. Or claiming we somehow have 100 million undocumented people.
If someone is parroting official speech from the DHS, which these days is almost always outright lies, then we can safely assume they are a trump supporter. We're well past the point of healthy conversation or skepticism. If you believe just about anything this administration or DHS says, you are closer to a cult member than a rational, reasoning human.
You can support deportation without being a trump supporter.
But if you willfully ignore the scale, the lack of due process, and try and make it binary deportation/open borders, the Trumpometer starts reading stratospheric.
California is also hardly a far left state, it still has more trump voters than Texas.
Many in this very thread, actually.
>The userbase here is considerably further left than a very left-wing state such as California.
Considering any fixture in American politics "very left-wing" is already an indicator of how skewed right the perspective is. The signature policy goal of the stereotypical "far-left" American politician (Bernie Sanders) is a government healthcare system already present in many countries around the world, including many less developed than the US.
I suspect (for no concrete reason in particular besides a feeling) that the readership of HN is fairly similar to California in political demographics. Active commentators are considerably more left-wing due to selection effects.
By US standards, California is very left-wing. International standards are not super relevant. (I'm also a bit skeptical of the cliche that the Democrats are a right-wing party internationally. For example, Obama endorsed Trudeau in Canada. But again, not super relevant.)
Democrats were also just a big tent party for a long time, with more 'real right wing' members than 'real left wing' members, maybe that's the reason for the platitude.
> a very left-wing state such as California.
seeing any US state being described as "very left-wing" is interesting to me, think it just shows how different these views are depending on who you ask. i'd describe California as Centrist. sure, socially open, no issue with sexuality or heritage. but also, free markets, corpo power, $$$, generally pro-system. the Orange is disliked heavily, but after all it's not the system which is the problem, it's the Orange!
> The userbase here is considerably further left
can't agree, from my own experiences of discussing political topics on here. again, socially open, free minds, sure. but positive towards Silicon Valley, VC-funding, investments and a general lean towards Imperialism(for freedom, of course, not the bad kind). yes, overtly racist comments get downvoted until they're dead.
"further left than very left-wing" could be the description of an anarcho-communist, self-hosted mastodon instance, not a US state.
to end on a funny note, https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQAfP-2...
sorry for being pedantic, and maybe wrong. please show me y'alls POV, i'm not saying that i'm right, it's just kind of my opinion, man.
California is considering a wealth tax which is already causing billionaires to flee the state.
>to end on a funny note, https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQAfP-2...
It's the Europeans who want us to ship more weapons to Ukraine.
well, you chose the one "good" example, where weapons are actually used for defense against a different Imperialist. what about the money going towards the Palestinian Genocide? what about other wars/invasions/operations, started or backed by Democrats/Bi-Partisan support.
> California is considering a wealth tax
a one-time tax of 5% on the net worth of residents with over $1 billion, bunch of commies! some decades ago, wealth tax was a high, double-digit number.
even so, do you think a one-time 5% wealth tax is enough to be called very left-wing?
It's interesting that in the conflict you have the greatest familiarity with, you support greater US involvement. In other conflicts, you appear to fall back on simple thinking like "dropping bombs is bad, therefore the US is bad".
I would suggest that many Americans have internalized the simple message Europeans have been sending for years: "dropping bombs is bad, therefore the US is bad". And that's why we lack enthusiasm to help Ukraine. We know helping Ukraine will be added to our rap sheet as supposed warmongers.
Personally I am quite envious of the Swiss, and think a Swiss foreign policy would be very good for the US. We have to stop trying to take responsibility for what is going on in other continents. Dropping bombs is bad, therefore the US is bad -- in Ukraine, Israel, everywhere really.
>even so, do you think a one-time 5% wealth tax is enough to be called very left-wing?
By US standards, yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793420
Actually, I like using HN because I find it has a much higher proportion of right wing or centrist thinkers than Reddit, or at least less downvote propensity towards those groups. And crucially, I won't get banned from HN just for voting for Trump, unlike a terribly large number of subreddits. This userbase is definitely more right-leaning than Reddit, of that I'm sure.
This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?
If it's that easy, why did we spend 20 years in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat by goat herders holding AK-47s?
A quick review of the last 100 years will educate you on the viability of asymmetric warfare.
In Vietnam, the US was fighting an army backed by the Soviet Union and China that had anti-aircraft and artillery.
No, the US insurgency would turn into a Grozny unless the insurgents get backing from China or some other serious player.
There was never a "defeat" indeed but the taliban grew in numbers manifold over the course of the occupation so saying you defeated them in hours is also a funny take.
This is my point: the war was over almost immediately, and since there was never any intention of permanently colonizing Afghanistan the occupation always had an expiration date.
On the other hand, the United States already lives in the United States, there's no 'waiting it out.'
If things get that hot, there will be substantial defectors and various state and federal security services fighting each other.
What could happen in this scenario would be either local military defecting or guerrilla warfare while the US military targets them from afar. You can easily bomb anyone back to Stone Age in hours, but taking control of the ground can be a lot more challenging if the locals don’t cooperate.
Anyway, a full-on civil war is a very unlikely - and undesirable - scenario.
US and coalition held Kabul (mostly) and their bases, and that was about it. Rest of the country was lets say contested territory, never really conquered, never yielding to Kabul government or coalition.
Ambushes, attacks, suicide bombers were daily grind. Not really conquered territory, is it.
Whether it was or wasnt defeat - when you see soldiers desperately running away from the country in a very similar fashion that happened in Vietnam, I struggle to not describe it as a full military defeat. The fact that it was orchestrated by politicians doesn't change much.
To get rid of the libs…they live in dense cities, trump would just have to lob a missile at Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, etc…it’s a war he can actually win quickly. Heck, why do you think it’s so easy for him to sh*t stir right now with a few strategic ICE surges. It’s easy when 90% of the left in Minnesota lives in one urban area.
I very much doubt, at this point in time, that anybody in the military would follow that order. The correct response to that order is to arrest the president. Their oath is to the Constitution not the president.
Even with a room full of sociopaths, a president ordering a missile sent to Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, etc. is the kind of thing that makes the stock markets very unhappy, what with those missiles hitting expensive business property and/or staff and/or customers.
Even if the military and the local business leadership are all on board with the plan, foreign investments will crater, and the US needs that even just to handle the lack of balance in the budget.
And that's all true even without the 2nd. I don't, and never have, bought into the story Americans tell about the 2nd keeping them safe from tyrants: it's neither powerful enough to do that, nor necessary to do that. But all those easy-to-access firearms and training to use them would make the second civil war extra brutal.
The Battle of Athens, Tennessee is one example of 2A rights being used against government successfully. The Fat Electrician has a great video about it.
It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement.
The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.
Too narrow. It secures an individual right, not a federal mobilization clause.
> Isn’t this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk?
Only if you think the second amendment is an on demand partisan defense force. It is not. It is a personal guarantee and a reserve of capacity, not a subscription service where “second amendment supporters” are obligated to show up on cue.
> It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective.
“Latent” is largely the point. Deterrence is not measured by constant use, and a right is not refuted by the fact that strangers do not take on extreme personal risk to prove it to you. The first line checks are still speech, courts, elections, oversight. This right exists for when those fail.
> Exactly what the constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.
If power has drifted, enforce the constraints. It is the second amendment, placed immediately after speech and assembly, not the third or the tenth. Do not redefine the right into irrelevance and call that proof it failed.
It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.
Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants.
Presumably that also isn't fixed. So even if rifles might have been sufficient in the early US even though the government had cannons, rifles may not be sufficient when the government has chemical weapons and armored cars.
So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? For Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter in lots of conflicts the US weren't involved in (or were involved in on the anti-government side!) the answer seems straightforward enough: in foreign countries which also don't like your government. Without a bunch of neighbors and rival powers which really didn't want the US in Iraq/Afghanistan, could the insurgents have done much?
Who do you propose should arm the resistance in the US, if government supported "police" paramilitaries run amok? (Let's for the sake of argument not get into whether that has happened yet). It's going to have to be quite an impressive level of support, too, to stand up against systems developed precisely against that sort of eventuality and battle-tested in the US' sphere of influence.
It depends on the numbers. Do they have 100,000 guys with guns but you have a hundred million with knives? Then you have a chance. But your chances improve a lot if your side is starting off with something more effective than that.
> Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants.
You don't need parity, you need a foothold to leverage into more.
> So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons?
In a civil war, you take the domestic facilities and equipment by force and then use them. But first you need the capacity to do that. Can 10,000 guys with knives take a military base guarded by a thousand guys with guns? Probably not. Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably.
Then the government has to decide if they're going to vaporize the facility when you do that. If they don't, you get nukes. If they do, now you have a mechanism to make them blow up their own infrastructure by feigning attacks. And so on.
Heck no, they can't. Even if they could, the government's advantage isn't just in weapons. Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning.
I think your proposal reads like bad power fantasy fiction. You can resist a powerful authoritarian/occupying government with force, but not without a lot of foreign backing - like in Iran right now - and I don't think you are prepared to ask the Russians for help. It would of course open a huge can of worms if you did, and you'd be right to ask if the world where you win with such support will even be better than the world where you lose.
Well that settles it then.
> Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning.
It's almost like anonymity and private communications tech belongs next to weapons on the list of things needed to resist authoritarianism.
> not without a lot of foreign backing
Why does it require any foreign backing whatsoever? You're not going to do it if you're three people, but a civil war is when some double digit percentage of the country is on the other side. You don't think that's enough people to supply substantial domestic resources?
You're right, private communication is an essential tool of resistance, more important than any weapons. But if you start buying up old Blackberries to give to your kids and all your friends, don't you think that gets you on a watchlist in itself? Not only should your 10000 people have guns to take on a military base, they should have impeccable infosec too?
Pretty much all civil wars in history had foreign backing for one or more sides. It seems no one ever had enough domestic resources to confront the domestic resource control machinery - which makes sense when you think about it. Though the more optimistic way to look at it was that if you had that level of control, you'd win without a civil war.
What about it strikes you as absurd? A country's military is spread all over the place. It's entirely practical to overwhelm it in a specific location by concentrating your forces there. You then have access to more powerful weapons in order to do it again.
> But if you start buying up old Blackberries to give to your kids and all your friends, don't you think that gets you on a watchlist in itself?
There are about a billion PCs and laptops made in the last 20 years that can run Linux and whatever communications software you want. If owning a laptop gets you on a list then most of the population is already on the list, and if the list contains everyone then it contains no one.
> Not only should your 10000 people have guns to take on a military base, they should have impeccable infosec too?
Have you considered the other side of that coin? All of these geniuses have their own forces and infrastructure being tracked into the poorly-secured databases of all of these private companies. Compromise those databases and drones start showing up in vulnerable places that weren't expected to be known. But to stop tracking everybody you have to stop tracking everybody.
The thing where members of The Party can turn off the telescreen doesn't actually work. If the millions of people who work for defense contractors are being tracked, you've got a significant vulnerability. If they're not, guess who was already working to infiltrate your defense industry to begin with.
> Pretty much all civil wars in history had foreign backing for one or more sides.
That's just true of wars in general. But also, supposing that something like this were to happen, where there was a sufficient fracture that it isn't immediately obvious who would come out on top, every foreign government would then have to position themselves. And then why would support have to come from some disreputable despots rather than e.g. Canada or Western Europe?
> Though the more optimistic way to look at it was that if you had that level of control, you'd win without a civil war.
If you have 100 people and they have a million, you lose. If you have a million people and they have 100, you win. If it's not that unbalanced then both sides fight until the cost of fighting gets higher than the cost of bargaining.
There are more privately owned guns than people in the US. We are already profusely armed.
We're going in circles. The Afghans won. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791876
to actually do the job of taking out the taliban would require going into pakistan to stop them in their bases.
in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms
We are quite far from a situation of mass repression of citizens in the United States like you see in Iran. But if it came to that, I imagine the 15 million+ veterans in this country might have something to say about it. They outnumber active duty military personnel by a factor of 5.
And even Iran had to pull in outsiders because their military wasn't willing to fire on their own people.
Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.
This is not like Ukraine where there are lots of underground manufacturing facilities.
If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost.
this would very obviously not be the case if California needed them for war, or had been in on again off again war already for a decade
Californians frequently will tell you that we’re in a housing “crisis” and then oppose all housing. I’m sure when another crisis arrives it’ll be different.
What’s the other “crisis” popular as a cause in California? Climate change? Man, this state must be at the forefront of fighting it then. Oh what’s that? Ah, wind and nuclear opposed by local homeowners. I see, I see.
Oh yes, when the next crisis arrives I’m sure it’ll be different. We’re just waiting for a real crisis, guys. Any second now.
Not suggesting anyone tries it, but modern warfare has evolved. Just like the tanks changed warfare in WW1, and tanks/planes changed warfare in WW2, drones are changing warfare once more.
a $10000 drone took out a multi million dollar Russian warship, and while not exactly 3D printed (at least not all of it), drones are cheap enough to manufacture to be expandable, especially if they can target and destroy things that are not that.
For comparison, a single cannon/mortar shell fired on the Ukrainian front costs €3500, and they fire up to 10000 of them per day. Making a few hundred $10000 drones is cheap compared to that, and while they likely don't hold the same "barrage level" destructive power, they are focused weapons and can destroy much more with less.
https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m
https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848...
I'd say the left is actually much more hypocritical. Just a few years ago they had essentially no issue with the government taking everyone's guns. Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years, and then they start calling the right "hypocritical"...
> “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities.
https://x.com/NRA/status/2015224606680826205?ref_src=twsrc%5...
(they then go on to say "let's withhold judgement until there's an investigation" despite them passing quite extreme judgement, with a direct lie, and getting their judgment extremely wrong when there was lots of video showing it wrong when they posted...)
In light of their large change of attitude, the initial critiques were quite correct.
In another Minnesota case, they refused to defend a gun owner that was shot for having a gun, despite doing everything right when stopped by police.
Other gun associations besides the NRA have been more principled and less partisan.
Rep. Massie is barely a Republican, he's pretty much the only one willing to go against Trump on anything. Right now the Republican party is defined by one thing only: slavish obedience to Trump. For Republicans' sake, and the sake of the Republic, I hope that changes soon.
Gun rights people understand that owning a gun comes with certain responsibilities. The accusation of "hypocrisy" seems to be based on a cartoon understanding of gun rights from people on the left. Find me a gun rights person who previously claimed that resisting arrest while armed is all fun and games.
https://policelawnews.substack.com/p/cbp-involved-alex-prett...
The real thing you need to understand is that this fascist movement will always find some grounds to characterize its targets as worthy of othering. If (when) you get tripped up by it, no amount of conforming or having supported it is going to redeem you in the mind of the mob. Rather it's going to be people just like yourself condemning you.
[0] this one seemingly based on an outright shameless lie of "resisting arrest"
Fixed that for you.
(If you had made a concrete point, I would have sought to understand and address it. Instead you basically just did a wordy version of "nuh-uh")
It wasn't too much for you to ask, but apparently my response was too much for you to handle. I brought up Kenneth Walker precisely because that was a situation for which the dust settled long ago and so we don't need to make such predictions. But to this you merely said "I have no opinion"
You then went on to poison the discussion with your own preemptive "I'm not listening" nonsense - "something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing"
Perhaps it might shock you, but some of us opposed to this regime are actual principled libertarians. I'm a gun owner who actually believes in the natural right to keep and bear arms. My opinion of the NRA is that its main function is fundraising from the gullible, which is why they can't avoid leaning into the culture war bullshit.
You're also welcome to make a prediction, but label it as a prediction rather than a statement of fact.
From my perspective, most of what you're saying is either (a) not substantive/outright disingenuous, or (b) I don't have much to add. If there is a particular point you really want me to respond to, you're welcome to highlight it and I will consider responding (but honestly probably not, for the reasons I gave).
Intellectual honesty requires engaging with points in good faith, not just nitpicking and throwing out high handed dismissals like a high school debate club.
"You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple."
- Kash Patel
“I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign."
- Kristi Noem
“With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.”
-Donald Trump
Here's how one gun rights group responded to some of the statements you quoted:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-gro...
What? I thought it was pretty clear that I don't consider an armed citizenry to be doing us any good. The government can take the guns, I don't give a shit. It should also stop arming Police and other goons. We can all slug it out in the streets with batons ;)
Americans, yes - not illegal immigrant invaders. As it would turn out, American citizens aren't ready to die for these people just yet.
Pretty normal unless you're an illegal immigrant. Despite what the media tells you and all your pearl clutching coworkers are told to think by said media.
Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?
If you live anywhere else, which in most cases are places thousands of miles away, it's business as usual. You have money, you go to work, the grocery store is full, you see your friends on the weekends. The only bad things in life are home prices and the news.
While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis.
2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of conservatism, liberals are the group the law binds but does not protect, and they are the group the law protects but does not bind.
In the US, Republicans managed to stack the judicial system with acolytes in a well organized, long term operation over years. They broke rules to steal Supreme Court seats, giving them a majority. They control all branches of government. In that situation, the president has massive power to do what he wants. So he is.
Trump doesn’t really seem to care about any issue really. He’s not much of an ideologue. But his advisors certainly are. Stephen Miller is an open fascist who’s playing Trump like a fiddle and loving every minute of the chaos.
But for most of those of us lucky enough to be citizens, most of the time, we’re just dealing with institutional dysfunction exacerbated by Federal dysfunction. Funding cuts, broken commitments, uncertainty.
We also are all seeing the Federal government pre-emptively brand the citizens it’s new gunning down in the street every two weeks or so “domestic terrorists” and posing with signs saying “one of ours, all of yours,” and so on. So it’s very clear that the government is now building right wing paramilitary forces to try and intimidate us. Clearly that’s not working too well in Minnesota, however!
Liberal Americans overall are: 1. Disgusted with Trump et al 2. Keeping relatively calm and carrying on, because he genuinely did win the popular vote in a free and fair election 3. Figuring out constructive ways to deal with ICE, pressure the Democratic Party to pick better candidates, and thinking about how to protect elections in 2026 and 2028.
On a day to day basis, life feels normal where I live, for me, for now.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...
The question I was getting at is why those of us disgusted by Trump are protesting less vigorously, despite his government being much worse this time around. It’s a phenomenon widely noted.
For me, that largely comes down to the fact Trump not only won 2024 fair and square, Biden really was manifestly not up to the task of governing. Biden, and careerist Democrats hoping to ride on Biden’s coattails to another term in the White House failed utterly at the critical moment.
A democracy or republic isn’t guaranteed to deliver good governance. The primary goal is to enable peaceful transitions of power.
Trump is threatening that, explicitly. But how to actually address that threat is less clear.
In 2016, we were outraged to see a turd like Trump win. But at that time, the story wasn’t about electoral threats and fascism, it was his disgusting personal character.
The election threat only really manifested on Jan 6. It failed, he exited office, and was facing prosecution. It looked potentially done and dusted, and like the Democrats in federal government were successfully dealing with the problem, as is their role. We were ridin’ with Biden.
Then they slow walked the prosecution that mattered. Biden got on stage to debate Trump and we were absolutely horrified. Then we noticed how vacant he was at other public appearances. It was “my god, he’s not just sleepy, he is incapacitated, and they’ve been lying about it to us for who knows how long?”
Then there was the last ditch effort to field Kamala instead, another weak candidate who wasn’t even liked in the Biden admin. That was pathetic.
So we got Trump. And it wasn’t “we could have had ultra-qualified Hillary, but we got this POS from out of nowhere” like in 2016. It was “holy shit, I am extremely disappointed in my own party.” Nothing added up. We lost trust in our own party and leadership, and it hasn’t come back. Nobody’s excited for any Democrat. We all just know Trump’s gotta go and we’ll line up for Any Democrat (TM). But that doesn’t mean we are proud to do so. It’s a bitter, demoralizing pill to swallow.
Of course fundamentally, we are dealing with all the normal politics problems. Bad voting system, fake news, social media brainwashing, economic illiteracy, checked out voters. American presidential history (and its history as a whole) is full of depressing candidates and terrible shit, political violence, and disenfranchisement we’ve only even approximated eliminating for the last 61 years, since the Voting Rights Act.
So I am hopeful that in the grand sweep of things, we will pull through and keep finding ways to make progress. I think the main thing right now is to keep your energy, hope and belief in the future. They’d like to take that away, and I just won’t let them.
The US media is downplaying things because they are terrified of Trump, who now has either direct or indirect control of most of it.
If you're talking about EU media, I can't assess, but I did see a clip of an Italian news crew getting harassed in Minneapolis that's fairly accurate.
It's bad. Really bad. I never thought this would happen in the US. But it's also inept. Really inept. Minnesota is super-majority white, but has taken great pride in being a home for refugee communities, and has gained many from around the world. Minnesotans are, of all the places I've lived in the world, the most open-hearted, caring, and upright moral I've encountered as a group. Hard winters make people trust community. The Georgy Floyd murders, and the riots afterwards, have made communities very strong as they had to watch out for each other, there were no police that were going to come.
For this area with hundreds of thousands people, there are only 600 cops, but 3000 ICE/CBP agents swarming it, a HUGE chunk of their forces. Yet people self-organized to watch out for their schools and their neighbors. Churches serve as central places for people to volunteer to deliver meals to families that can not leave the house due to the racialize abduction of people. Several police chiefs have held news conferences where they say in so many words "You know I'm not a liburul but my officers with brown skin are all getting harassed by ICE when they're off duty, until the show that they are cops, and that's pretty bad." A Republican candidate for Governor withdrew his candidacy because he felt he couldn't be part of a political party that was doing such racialized violence against his own people, and his job was literally to be a defense lawyer to cops accused of wrongdoing!
The deaths are so tragic, but because Minnesotans have been so well organized, so stoic, so non-violent, it fully exposes ICE/CBD for the political terror campaign that they are. That the entire endeavor has nothing to do with enforcing the law, it's all about punishing Minnesota for being Minnesota, for its politics, for its people. If the legal deployment of cameras and whistles and insults and yells is enough to defeat masked goons who wave guns in people faces, assault non-violent people with pepper sprays directly to the eyes, and tear-gas canisters thrown at daycares, then these stupid SA-wannabes are not going to win.
I live in a coastal California bubble that's even whiter than Minnesota, but here we are all rooting for Minnesota. I was talking to another parent today at the elementary school, an immigrant from Spain, a doctor, whose husband is from Minnesota. They are rethinking their choice of staying in the US.
The second amendment thing was always a charade. There are a few people that think it's for protection from the government, but what they really mean is it's for shooting liberals. There's no grander principle. There are a bunch of people that enjoy guns as a hobby, and support the 2nd amendment for that. But we all know that the time for armed defense against the government is only when you're in a bunker in woods or when you're storming the capital to overturn an election because you've been tricked into saying it's a fraudulent election.
They are buffoons, as the Nazis were, but they are very unpopular buffoons and I think the past week shows that after a few more years of grand struggle, normal americans will win. It will be hard. We need to have truth and reconciliation afterwards, and the lack of that after the Civil War and after January 6 are huge causes in today's struggles.
I'm just glad Minnesota is defeating ICE/CBP, as many states would give in to violence faster, and many states would give up faster.
How do you figure?
> I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying.
Media coverage of the Pretti shooting has been awful. All seem happy to show the slow-mo recap of the officer disarming Pretti, but none show him reaching for/toward his holster in the moment before being shot (0:12-13 in this video https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1qm4b0v/slow_m...). If the officer heard the "he's got a gun" callout but didn't see him be disarmed, this would obviously justify the response.
> As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok.
This is the reason for the second amendment. Trump and some others have seriously fumbled the messaging on this point. The issue isn't that Pretti had a gun, nor that he had a gun at the protest, but that he had a gun at a protest, obstructed law enforcement (a felony), then resisted arrest. Of course, doing so didn't mean that "he deserved it". Fighting the cops while armed with a firearm was extremely reckless and stupid, but that alone doesn't justify a shooting. Most attacks from the left are (whether honestly or disingenuously) based on only these facts, but ignore the most pertinent fact in play here, which is that cops have rights, too. Among these is the right to defend themselves. If a police officer perceives an imminent threat of lethal force, they are permitted by law to use lethal force in self defense. That is why it was so reckless for Pretti to fight the cops--because it is extremely easy, when fighting someone who is armed with a lethal weapon, to reasonably perceive an imminent threat of lethal force. Pair this with Pretti's aforementioned rapid movement of his right hand toward his hip in the moment before the first shot, and it is not a stretch at all to see this shooting as a justifiable use of force. Tragic, of course, but still legally justified.
> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about?
2A supporters often spitball about scenarios that might justify a revolution. I've never heard anyone suggest that they would fight for protestors' imagined right to fight cops with total immunity from consequences.
That said, do not rely on a single or even a few Americans for insight into what is going on, as you might get a wildly different perspective from each one, as a consequence of the billions of dollars put into generational propaganda and subliminal mind control out here. We are a nation divided.
That article is from a local food publication that has largely shifted to covering all ICE behavior in the greater LA area. It's a good place to get a better picture of the kind of stuff that has just become background noise to the degree that it doesn't make the news elsewhere. People could also throw a few bucks their way if they think documenting this is important.
And I'll point to a single example from 13 hours ago[2] for the "the deporting of illegal immigrants is not oppression" type of people like that other commenter. Just a video of a nameless person, taken who knows where, for who knows what, screaming and crying out. This just doesn't make the news, but it's happening countless times every day all over the country in the name of the American people.
[1] - https://lataco.com/daily-memo-january-27th-border-patrol-att...
For the average American citizen, status quo.
For the scofflaws and illegal immigrants, the realization that accountability for their actions might be right around the corner must be unnerving.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
Turns out they were right.
https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/
https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
There isn't really anything you can do with that information. The first value is already accessible via other methods (since the phone companies carry those records and will comply with warrants). And for pretty much anyone with signal installed that second value is going to essentially always be the day the search occurred.
And like another user mentioned, the most recent of those warrants is from the day before they moved to username based identification so it is unclear whether the same amount of data is still extractable.
Ironically enough Reddit seems to have a pretty good take on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qogc2g/comment/o21aeh...
I was genuinely surprised when I went to Reddit and saw that as the most voted comment on the story.
The lookups go through a secure enclave, the system is architected to limit the number of lookups that can be done, and the system has some fairly extensive anti-exfiltration cryptographic fuckery running inside the secure enclave to further limit the extent to which accounts can be efficiently looked up.
And of course you can also remove your phone number from contact discovery (but not from the acct entirely) but I'm not sure how that interacts with lookup for subpoenas. If they use the same system that contact discovery uses, it may be an undocumented way to exclude your account from subpoena responses.
The rest of what they say however is pretty spot on. The priority for signal is privacy, not anonymity. They try to optimise anonymity when they can but they do give up a little anonymity in exchange for anti-spam and user-friendliness.
So of course the ending notes of "use a VPN, configure the settings to maximise anonymity, and maybe even get a secondary phone number to use with it" are all perfectly reasonable suggestions.
And re: defaults the default behavior on signal is that your phone number is hidden from other users but it can be used to do contact discovery. Notably though you can turn contact discovery off (albeit few people do).
>We have also worked to ensure that keeping your phone number private from the people you speak with doesn’t necessitate giving more personal information to Signal. Your username is not stored in plaintext, meaning that Signal cannot easily see or produce the usernames of given accounts.
Extremely non trivial. What I'm hearing is "security by obfuscation".
I don't really think Signal tech has anything to do with this.
As a reminder... if you don't know all the people in your encrypted group chat, you could be talking to the man.
For users who configure Briar to connect exclusively over Tor using the normal startup (e.g., for internet-based syncing) and disable Bluetooth, there is no Bluetooth involvement at all, so your Bluetooth MAC address is not exposed.
Signal does give out phone numbers when the law man comes, because they have to, and because they designed their system around this identifier.
Signal can still tell law enforcement (1) whether a phone number is registered with Signal, and (2) when that phone number signed up and (3) when it was last active. That's all, and not very concerning to me. To prevent an enumeration attack (e.g. an attacker who adds every phone number to their system contacts), you can also disable discovery my phone number.
While Session prevents that, Session lacks forward secrecy. This is very serious- it's silly to compare Session to Signal when Session is flawed in its cryptography. (Details and further reading here https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ ). Session has recently claimed they will be upgrading their cryptography in V2 to be up to Signal's standard (forward secrecy and post-quantum security), but until then, I don't think it's worth considering.
I agree that Briar is better, but unfortunately, it can't run on iPhones. I'm in the United States and that excludes 59% of the general population, and about 90% of my generation. It's not at fault of the Briar project, but it's a moot point when I can't use it to talk to people I know.
The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.
The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.
If there's one thing we learned from Snowden is that the NSA can't break PGP, so these people who live in the world of theory have no credibility with me.
I never saw a single speck of anything I ever sent to anyone via PGP in there. They had access to my SIGAINT e-mail and my BitMessage unlocked, but I used PGP for everything on top of that.
Stay safe!
I assume because of the baseband stuff to be FCC compliant? Last I checked that meant DMA channels, etc. to access the real phone processor. All easily activated over the air.
Indeed. The only reason this is not used by customer support for more casual access, firmware upgrades and debugging is a matter of policy and the risk of mass bricking phones and as such this is not exposed to them. There are other access avenues as well including JTAG debugging over USB and Bluetooth.
FCC devices are certified / allowed to use a spectrum, but you must maintain compliance. If you're a mobile phone manufacturer you have to be certain that if a bug occurs, the devices don't start becoming wifi jammers or anything like that.
This means you need to be able to push firmware updates over the air (OTA). These must be signed to avoid just anyone to push out such an OTA.
The government has a history of compelling companies to push out signed updates.
And even then, a trusted participant could not understand they're not supposed to give their private keys out or could be rubber-hosed into revealing their key pin. All sorts of ways to subvert "secure" messaging besides breaking the crypto.
I guess what I'm saying is "Strong cryptography is required, but not sufficient to ensure secure messaging."
SimpleX does better than Session because the address used to add new contacts is different from the address used with any existing contact and is independently revocable. But if that address is out there, you can receive a full queue of spam contacts before you next open the SimpleX app.
Both Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to storage DoS as well.
- identify who owns the number
- compel that person to give unlocked phone
- government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person
Corollary:
Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read
It's much more likely that the government convinces one member of the group chat to turn on the other members and give up their phone numbers.
Genuinely, from outside, it seems like your government doesn't give a damn on what they are and aren't allowed to do.
The district courts will eventually back me up on this. Our country has fallen a long way, but the district courts have remained good, and my case is unlikely to be one that goes up to appellate courts, where things get much worse.
There’s an important distinction: the government doesn’t care about what it is allowed to do, but it is still limited by what it is not capable of doing. It’s important to understand that they still do have many constraints they operate under, and that we need to find and exploit those constraints as much as possible while we fight them
And if I die in jail because I won’t unlock my phone: fuck ‘em, they’ll have to actually do it.
I don’t plan on being killed by the regime, but I don’t think I would’ve survived as a German in Nazi Germany, either. I’m not putting my survival above everything else in the world.
etc, etc. So it goes
Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that motivating ability. I don't know that the Dems have anyone as motivating as Obama line up. The Dems seem to be hoping that enough people will be repulsed by the current admin to show up.
How do you explain Biden getting so many more votes than Obama even while Trump improved with black and Hispanics over past Republican candidates?
US population in 2008: 304 million
US population in 2020: 332 million
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
Barring enormous turnout differences, pretty much every US election gets more raw votes than the last.
Simple enough explanation… 2020 was a massive outlier.
If you forgotten, the topic is GP saying Biden didn’t motivate voters. Well, that does not seem correct.
What's weird to me is that a lot of people lost that motivation over the next four years. If they found Trump scary in 2020, they should have found him scary in 2024.
Why would Trump be so unpopular to boost Biden in 2020, then do so much better in 2024?
1. He was President at the time, and people blame the President for what's happening (COVID then, recession now). Same deal now.
2. It didn't wind up being Trump/Biden in 2024 at all.
For what office? President? Do you live in California?
By the end of his first term, the danger was hard to miss, and the attempt to remain in power after losing the election should have cemented it for everyone.
I was unhappy with Biden and Harris. I voted for them in 2020 and 2024 anyway because I understood the alternative.
I don't get it, was there anything surprising about him after his inauguration? He sure sounded dangerous on the campaign trail.
I just do not understand this sentence at all. The writing was clearly on the wall. All of the Project 2025 conversations told us exactly what was going to happen. People claiming it was not obvious at best were not paying attention at all. For anyone paying attention, it was horrifying see the election results coming in.
I just pray they run Newsom this time. Despite his "being from California" handicap, I think he should be able to easily beat Vance by simply being a handsome white man with a white family. Vance is critically flawed and will demoralize much of the far right IFF his opponent doesn't share those same weaknesses.
What evidence went before a judge prior to the two latest executions in Minneapolis?
Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
No, not really, because in the two killings you can vaguely argue they felt threatened. Pointing a gun to someone's head and demanding the password isn't anywhere close to that. Don't get me wrong, the killings are an affront to civil liberties and should be condemned/prosecuted accordingly, but to think that ICE agents are going around and reenacting the opening scene from Inglorious Bastards shows that your worldview can't handle more nuance than "fascism? true/false".
Precisely.
There's no question that ICE is daily trampling civil liberties (esp 4th amendment).
But in both killings there is a reasonable interpretation that they feared for their lives.
Now should they have is another question. With better training, a 6v1 < 5ft engagement can easily disarm anyone with anything less than a suicide vest.
But still, we aren't at the "run around and headshot dissenters" phase.
... Did you watch the videos from multiple people filming?
Yeah, did you? Any more substantive discourse you'd like to add to the conversation?
To be clear about the word "reasonable" in my comment, it's similar to the usage of the very same word in the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt".
The agents involved in the shootings aren't claiming that:
- the driver telepathically communicated their ill intent
- they saw Pretti transform into a Satan spawn and knew they had to put him down
They claim (unsurprisingly, to protect themselves) that they feared for their life because either a car was driving at them or they thought Pretti had another firearm. These are reasonable fears, that a reasonable person has.
That doesn't mean the agents involved are without blame. In fact, especially in Pretti's case, they constructed a pretext to began engagement with him (given that he was simply exercising his 1st amendment right just prior).
But once in the situation, a reasonable person could have feared for their lives.
Sure, all things being equal, a person on the Clapham omnibus, yada, yada.
However, specifically in this situation it is very frequently not "median people" in the mix, it is LEO-phillic wannabe (or ex) soldier types that are often exchanging encrypted chat messages about "owning the libs", "goddamn <insert ethic slur>'s" and exchange grooming notes on provoking "officer-induced jeopardy" .. how to escalate a situation into what passes for "justified homicide" or least a chance to put the boot in.
Those countries that investigate and prosecute shootings by LEO's often find such things at the root of wrongful deaths.
>That doesn't mean the agents involved are without blame. In fact, especially in Pretti's case, they constructed a pretext to began engagement with him (given that he was simply exercising his 1st amendment right just prior).
Was there anything else you would like to add as an observation?
Eventually we got used to letting the feds slide on all the good things to the point everything was just operating on slick ice, and people like Trump just pushed it to the next logical step which is to also use the post-constitutional world to his own personal advantage and for gross tyranny against the populace.
The civil rights act of 1875, which also tried to bind on private businesses, was found unconstitutional in doing so, despite coming after the 15th amendment. But by the 60s and 70s we were already in a post-constitutional society as FDRs threatening to pack the courts, the 'necessities' implemented during WWII, and the progressive era more or less ended up with SCOTUS deferring to everything as interstate commerce (most notable, in Wickard v Filburn). The 14th and 15th amendment did not change between the time the same things were found unconstitutional, then magically constitutional ~80+ years later.
The truth is, the civil rights act was seen as so important (that time around) that they bent the constitution to let it work. And now much of the most relied on pieces of legislation relied on a tortured interpretation of the constitution, making things incredibly difficult to fix, and setting the stage for people like Trump.
Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.
I'm sure the Israeli spyware companies can help with that.
Although then they'd have to start burning their zero days to just go after protestors, which I doubt they're willing to do. I imagine they like to save those for bigger targets.
I’m also curious what they could get off of cloud backups. Thinking in terms of auth, keys, etc. For SMS it’s almost as good as phone access, but I am not sure for apps.
The problem with mass surveillance is the “mass” part: warrantless fishing expeditions.
If you're willing to kick in doors to suppress legal rights, then having accurate information isn't necessary at all.
If your resistance plan is to chat about stuff privately, then by definition you're also not doing much resisting to you know, the door kicking.
But yes... it does limit what can be read. My point is it's not perfect.
Celebrite or just JTAG over bluetooth or USB. It's always been a thing but legally they are not supposed to use it. Of course laws after the NSA debacle are always followed. Pinky promise.
They technically have logs from when verification happens (as that goes through an SMS verification service) but that just documents that you have an account/when you registered. And it's unclear whether those records are available anymore since no warrants have been issued since they moved to the new username system.
And the actual profile and contact discovery infra is all designed to be actively hostile to snooping on identifiable information even with hardware access (requiring compromise of secure enclaves + multiple levels of obfuscation and cryptographic anti-extraction techniques on top).
Now, whether FBI and friends would be determined to use PII obtained in this way to that end—is a point of contention, but why take the chance?
Better yet, don't expose your PII to third parties in the first place.
Settings > Privacy > Phone Number > Who can find me by number > Nobody
I know right and that would keep you hidden from Average Joe, but not US government. The mechanism to match your account to your phone number remains in place.
That is to say: it allows a determined party to largely remain anonymous even in the face of upstream provider's compromise.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-supreme-court-s...
"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
-- Letter from the Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr: https://people.uncw.edu/schmidt/201Stuff/F14/B%20SophistSocr...
That's life, if you can't take that heat stay out of the kitchen. It's also why elections are a much safer and more reliable way to enact change in your country than "direct action" is except under the most dire of circumstances.
No one is arguing that people who practice civil disobedience can expect to be immune from government response.
I think it's different with illegal "penalties" like being mauled by a dog or an extrajudicial killing. While those leaders of the civil rights movement faced those risks, I don't think King is asking people to martyr themselves in that passage, but to respect the law.
In contrast to accepting punishments from unjust laws, I think there is no lawless unjust punishment you should accept.
Accepting jail over 1A protected protests only proves you're weak (not in the morally deficient way, just from a physical possibilities way) enough to be taken. No one thinks more highly of you or your 'respect for the law' for being caught and imprisoned in such case, though we might not think lesser of you, since we all understand it is often a suicide mission to resist it.
My point is about civil disobedience, not disobedience generally. The point of civil disobedience is to bring attention to unjust laws by forcing people to deal with the fact they they are imprisoning people for doing something that doesn't actually deserve prison.
Expecting to not end up in prison for engaging in civil disobedience misses the point. It's like when people go on a "hunger strike" by not eating solid foods. The point is self-sacrifice to build something better for others.
https://www.kqed.org/arts/11557246/san-francisco-hunger-stri...
If that's not what you're into -- and it's not something I'm into -- then I would suggest other forms of disobedience. Freedoms are rarely granted by asking for them.
I'm not even really sure why I'm getting so much pushback here. I've thought this administration should have been impeached and removed within a week of the inauguration in 2017. I just am not sure where all this "why won't you admit that things are so bad, and shouldn't be this way" is helpful, when Trump was democratically elected. When you have a tyranny from a majority, the parallels to MLK are very clear, and you can't expect that change with come without sacrifice.
Civil disobedience is only nice and easy when you're sect is already in power, which -- when we're talking about people who generally support liberal democracy -- it has been since probably the McCarthy Era.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
A group chat coordinating use of force may be tough.
They surely can. But the point was more than the people in power don't really need Signal metadata to do that. On the lists of security concerns modern protestors need to be worrying about, Signal really just isn't very high.
it will be quite easy for a prosecutor to charge lots of these people.
it's been done for less, and even if the case is thrown out it can drag on for years and involve jail time before any conviction.
The real protection for the legal protesters and observers in MN is numbers. They can't arrest and control and entire populace.
The FBI is weak now compared to what it was even two years ago.
prosecutors may take their time and file charges at their leisure.
However, neither Border patrol nor ICE have been exhibiting thoughtfulness or patience, so I doubt they're playing any such long game.
The whole reason cops love ALPR data is anyone's allowed to collect it, so they don't need a warrant.
Tow trucks have ALPR cameras to find repossessions. Plenty of private options for obtaining that sort of data; you can buy your own for a couple hundred bucks. https://linovision.com/products/2-mp-deepinview-anpr-box-wit...
> This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem
I was not saying it's not a problem that the feds are doing this, because that's not what I was replying to.
I mean, carrying a weapon is a 2nd amendment right, but if I bring it to a protest and then start intimidating people with it, the police going after me is not "Government intimidation of the practice of constitutional rights".
Protesting is a constitution right, but if you break the law while protesting, you're fair game for prosecution.
I live in NY now. Just today, I got a message from a close friend who also did SF->NY "I'm deleting Signal to get more space on my phone, because nobody here uses it. Find me on WhatsApp or SMS."
To a naïve audience, Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother maintaining yet-another messenger whose core competency is private messaging?" Signal is reasonably mainstream, and there are still a lot of people who won't use it.
I suspect you'll have an uphill battle using something even more obscure.
Aside: I see similar attitudes when I mention I use VPN all of the time
much more closer to the $5 wrench attack
https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...
Assuming they dont have disappearing messages activated, and assuming any protestors willingly unlock their phones.
Or they are running any mainstream iPhone or Android phone, they've unlocked the phone at least once since their last reboot, and the police have access to graykey. Not sure what the current state of things is, since we rely on leaked documents, but my take-away from the 2024 leaks was GrapheneOS Before First Unlock (BFU) is the only defense.
Notice even unlocked doesn't allow FFS.
[1] assuming standard security settings of course.
GrapheneOS isn't quite as secure in the real world. Pixels continue to have baseband and OOBConfig exploits that allow pushing zero interaction updates, or system memory access.
It only goes up to iOS 18 since that was the latest version at the time.
Here is an article about the leaks: https://archive.ph/JTLIU
> The document does not list what exact types of data are included in a “partial” retrieval and Magnet declined to comment on what data is included in one. In 2018, Forbes reported that a partial extraction can only draw out unencrypted files and some metadata, including file sizes and folder structures.That is greatly reduced since the releases of the Pixel 9 and 10.
Or you know, the 2nd amendment.
Id be willing to bet that ICE would have a much smaller impact if they would be met with bullets instead of cameras. In the end, what ICE is doing doesn't really matter to Trump, as long as MAGA believes that things are being done, even if nothing is being done, he doesn't care.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-you-cant-have-gu...
I hope you realize that civil unrest is coming. Maybe not in a month. Maybe not even in a year. But at some point, after Trump fucks with elections and installs himself as a 3d term president, and the economy takes a nose dive as companies start pulling out of US, peoples savings are destroyed, and states start being more separationist, you are gonna see way worse things.
Im just saying your reaction to it is predictable
This has always been the absurdity of the moronic claims of the 2nd amendment being to overthrow government tyranny: You may own the gun legally, but at no point will your actions be legal. If you've decided the government needs to be overthrown, you are already throwing "law" out the window, even if you have a valid argument that the government you are overthrowing has abandoned the constitution.
Why the fuck do you need legal guns to commit treason? Last I checked, most government overthrows don't even involve people armed with private rifles!
If you are overthrowing the government, you will need to take over local police stations. At the moment, you no longer need private arms, and what you are doing isn't legal anyway.
Meanwhile, every single fucking time it has come up, the gun nuts go radio silent when the government kills the right person who happens to own a gun. Every. Single. Time.
It took minutes for the "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" people who raised a million dollars for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend himself for driving to a protest in a different state while armed to the teeth to of course get to shoot someone to turn around and say "Actually bringing a gun to a protest makes you a terrorist and you need to be shot". Minutes. They have also put up GoFundMes for the guy who executed that man.
If you are too scared to stand up to your government without a fucking rifle, you have never been an actual threat to your government, and they know that.
For most conservatives, it all comes down to "liberal=bad, conservative=good". They will vote for Trump as long as Trump as seen as conservative.
The second amendment is literally in the constitution for the EXACT reason where if a governing entity decides to violate the security and freedoms of people, the people have the right to own weapons and organize a militia.
Plus nobody really needs to die. Having enough people point guns at them is going to make them think twice about starting shit. Contrary to popular belief, ICE agents aren't exactly martyrs for the cause. There are already groups of people armed outside protecting others, for this exact reason.
You are the actual fed lmao.
and apparently it now a perfectly valid reason for the state to execute someone without being charged or a trial.
A Chinese bot farmer who says we should be shooting each other? Agitator.
A neighbor who says "If I see LEO murder someone, I'm taking them on"? Not an agitator.
That's not what was said here though
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-complies-percent-us-go...
It wasn’t paywalled for me, BTW.
But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.
If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)
I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
But that's not an example of something that would be illegal to say in a chat. It would be an example of something that's illegal to do regardless of the chat.
Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened.
Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.
This is confirmation that this wasn't being investigated until just now. This is surprising, I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.
You assume competence. Have you heard (or heard of) Kash Patel?
The goal is to prevent ICE / BP from doing their jobs. Which I rather suspect is not actually legal.
Thinking they're incompetent doesn't change that. Thinking the specific laws they're (nominally) enforcing are evil doesn't change that. Thinking that national borders are fundamentally illegitimate doesn't change that.
Perhaps the FBI had been ignoring this out of incompetence. Perhaps they'd been ignoring it as a form of protest. Either is interesting.
1) get the name & some other info from the person being abducted so that their family can be contacted
2) record the encounter so that ICE/CBP has some check on their behavior, or legal action can be taken in the future to prosecute them for violence and destruction of property
3) recover the belongings of the person abducted and ensure family/friends can get these things, as often wallet, cell phone, shoes, coat, and vehicle (even still running) are left behind
4) get a tow truck for any vehicle left behind, preferably from one of the tow services that is towing for free or low cost
4) connect family/friends with legal resources, if needed, or simply let them know that their lawyer needs to get to the Whipple Building ASAP
None of those things are illegal. In some of the small rural towns in Minnesota, there aren't observers there, and the phones/vehicles/wallets of people kidnapped from Walmart are just... left in the parking lot, in the snow. It adds insult to injury to have your phone & wallet gone, your car window smashed in, and a big fee from the municipal towing lot if you're a US citizen who is then released from detainment 12 hours later. And if you're not a US citizen but you have legal status, you want your family to get an attorney working ASAP to ensure you're not flown to Texas -- because if you're flown to Texas, even in error, you need to get back on your own (again without your wallet/phone/etc if those things didn't happen to stick with you).
Not to mention they keep releasing people with no phone & no jacket, even no shoes, into the zero or negative degree weather we've been having.
As clearly seen in multiple videos, including at least one video of almost every major incident we're supposed to get outraged about, yes, they clearly do.
> Not to mention they keep releasing people with no phone & no jacket, even no shoes, into the zero or negative degree weather we've been having.
How come the cold weather doesn't justify ICE wearing "masks" which often appear to just be face/neck warmers?
No. The goal is to protest ICE / BP doing their jobs in criminal ways.
Here's what I'm interested in: anyone know what Penlink's tools' capabilities actually are? Tangles and WebLoc. Are they as useful as advertised?
Don't write anything that you don't want LEO to read.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/nyt-6-federal-prosecutor...
We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.
You can demand answers from Congress, but until a significant portion of the GOP base demands answers, they are just going to ignore your demands. As of now 39% of Americans support the administration. Also, you can't hold SCOTUS responsible, only Congress can.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/us/politics/military-poli...
People resigned to send the message to the public: the integrity of the office had been compromised, and the lawyers (lawyers!!) couldn't stay due to their ethics. This is a difficult thing to understand for people that lack ethics.
If you boss asks you to do something that is a legitimate request, and you refuse for personal reasons, that's on you.
It is in no way "corruption".
Reported for personal attack.
But, yeah, any state prosecutions (likely especially the first) is going to (1) get removed to federal court, and (2) go through a wringer of federal litigation, likely reaching the Supreme Court, over Supremacy Clause immunity before much substantive happens on anything else.
OTOH, the federal duty at issue in in re Neagle was literally protecting the life of a Supreme Court justice riding circuit, as much as the present Court may have a pro-Trump bias, I wouldn't count on it being as strong of a bias as it had in Neagle.
See where this is going ?
I admit, US propaganda is very good at projecting an image of strength. I strongly doubt it is prepared for a civil ground war, based on all available evidence. It cannot even keep other nation states out of critical systems. See fragile systems for what they are.
If you're imagining a large scale revolt, figure that the revolutionaries will be outnumbered by counter-revolutionaries, even without the military. (Which would also include police forces amounting to millions more.)
https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/trump-voters-on-medicai...
https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/voters-in-trump-c...
Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution. I would expect especially DHS to basically become a non-functional (or even seditious) department if they prosecute those guys and they could purposefully make the president look bad by making his security apparatus look incompetent.
Won't help if the prosecuting sovereignty isn't the one they work for (state vs federal charges.)
Also won't work if the agency is disbanded and they are dismissed en masse before the prosecution happens.
Unless, as Doge showed us, you ignore the law, fire them anyway, and the SCOTUS says, "Yeah, whatever."
The person in front said "I've got the gun, I've got the gun", and I can tell that quite clearly in the videos.
> here antifa community organizers are escalating non stop in hopes that someone dies [...] in hopes they can radicalize people
I think this rhetorical frame highlights how many people don't believe in protest. Expressing disdain for trampling of civil liberties is not 'escalation' any more than the curtailment of fourth amendment rights that inspire the protests.
I am not attacking you (I believe we should all be able to express how we feel with respect to the government). I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
That means there is an even better version that what I saw and heard which means normies will figure out fairly quick this was not malicious intent. Perhaps malicious incompetency but certainly not an intentional execution.
I just want to highlight a reason why you may feel that this level of unrest is meant to "radicalize people".
I would accept that if these were just protesters, stood at the side of the road holding up signs but a number of them are far from it. They have formed military squads, dox agents and attack them at home and in their personal vehicles, coordinate their attacks between multiple groups of "vetted" agitators. They are tracking their personal vehicles and their family members. They are blocking traffic and forcing people out of their cars. At best this is an insurgency being coordinated from out-of-state agitators and at the behest of the state governor. They are egging people on to break numerous laws, obstruct federal agents, throw bricks at agents or anyone they think is an agent, use bull-horns at full volume in the ears of anyone supporting the agents. I could go on for hours regarding all the illegal shenanigans. So yeah these are people trying to radicalize others and trying to get people hurt or killed. This is primarily occurring in sanctuary cities where the government is actively encouraging their citizens to attack federal agents. That is not even close to anything that resembles protesting and is not anywhere near a protected right.
I also blame President Trump for not invoking the insurrection act and curtailing this very early on.
Some people say "he was a protestor and protestors who bring a gun to a protest deserve to be shot (FAFO)".
You say he's not a protestor, so as an observer he deserves to be shot because somehow he was interfering.
And your characterization of citizens forming "military squads" is also fascinating. What does that mean to you, in detail? Does it mean... uniforms? central coordination? simulated exercises? None of those are the case here.
Who are the out of state agitators?
Why do you think the governor is involved? I think you've been watching a lot of Cam Higby & friends. This is their rhetoric. And I know some ppl who've changed their name to Tim on Signal to troll you back.
Feel free to listen to the actual speeches of Mayors Kaohly Her and Jacob Frey. They have consistently urged staying peaceful and resisting the provocations to violence of both the agents and outside provocateurs. They know we're under the knife of the Insurrection Act and everything is under a microscope. We know it too.
The incredulity that people like you have about the level of organization points to your lack of involvement in your own communities. Have you ever organized a PTA fundraiser to raise $25,000 for school activities? Have you ever had to sign up three children across one daycare, an elementary school, and a middle school for summer camp activities, six months in advance, coordinating all the different schedules? Let me tell you -- doing these things develops a lot of skills that then carry over very easily into organizing a patrol at pick-up and drop-off at the Spanish immersion daycare. That's the "military force" you're up against. In my neighborhood an old lady organized her senior building to send people over to stand around the Spanish immersion daycare daily, because ICE/CBP keep showing up even though all the employees have work authorization and have been background checked.
You're right: it's not protesting. It's just showing up for your neighbors. Bearing witness, even in a Christian sense.
My main question is how you might frame the protests (comprising legal and potentially illegal behaviors) in the context of how the US was founded, or in the French revolutions. Were we in the 1750s, would your assessment about how to go about protesting be the same?
Here, I'm not making arguments about what is or is not similar, just trying to understand how you view historical political upheaval from the perspective of the people who lived in those times.
edit: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/01/27/congress/pr...
Apparently the agents yelled 'he's got a gun'
The founding of the nation was far more violent and laws were sparse but I am sure you know how complex of a question you are asking. There are multi-volume books and movies created around that mess. I would never want a return to those times and behaviors that we are purportedly evolved beyond.
What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants. I am told it is for voting purposes to get more delegates but it can't really be worth it. At least in my opinion it would not be worth it. All of that said I am not in favor of kicking people out that have been here for decades and that had properly integrated into our society. That I could see people protesting if they were in fact just protesting.
My issue with the current tactics is a loss of our Bill of Rights privileges (note this doesn't depend on citizenship), which really can only go poorly from here.
> What I do not understand is why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants.
There's an easy argument about maintaining Constitutional rights for every person—once we stop doing that, we're essentially finished as a democracy.
The majority of people being removed are not criminals of any sort whatsoever. It's tricky to get data about this as DHS is releasing very political statements[1] but many have been in the US for decades and have no criminal records in Minnesota. Also, Minnesota is not a liberal state—being a Democrat means different things in different parts of the country, and things are quite 'centrist' there; I say this to discourage porting sensibilities from other states.
1. DHS Highlights Worst of the Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens Arrested in Minnesota Yesterday Including Murderers, Drug Traffickers, and an Illegal Alien with TWENTY-FOUR Convictions - (this is the title of the relevant webpage)
edit - To distill my perspective, I am worried that we will lose our rights, not because I am alarmist, but because this has happened in several democracies this century, notably Turkey (but also cf Hungary, Poland, the Philipnes). Even amongst undemocratic nations, strongmen are upending institutions (China, but also more recently in West Africa).
The only way the US can escape is by continually standing up for what rights we still have.
Most are not violent.[1] Many of them are “here for decades and that had properly integrated into our society” just like you said, or are attempting to integrate and be here legally, so people are defending them. If the government can trample one group over the worst crimes of a few of its members, it can trample any group for any reason, so we must stand together to protect our freedom.
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convi...
ICE is not targeting violent illegal immigrants. They are targeting legal residents, immigrants with pending asylum cases that allow them to stay, US citizens that happen to look like immigrants maybe, people that are legally recording their activities in public from a safe distance, all kinds of people really.
they are protesting masked armed thugs running around their neighborhood smashing windows and dragging people out of cars because they happen to feel like it. running up to people and pepper spraying them in eyes for saying things they dont like. and yes, shooting them.
I think everyone can understand someone saying 'wtf, no' in those circumstances. except you.
At this point I think the only thing that will work is organizing a month where the nation stops spending money and going to work.
Not even bothering to run the established investigation playbook when law enforcement kills a civilian is a major departure, and one worth noticing. But if all you do is go "same old same old", then you can safely lean back in your chair and do nothing as the problem worsens, while calling yourself so much smarter and more insightful than the people around you.
I agree that the "same at it ever was and always will be" attitude isn't great. It's defeatist and I choose not to live my life that way, even if it would be much easier mentally.
I think part of the reason I see this attitude so often is that, especially since 9/11, a large portion of the US population has decided that the police and military are infallible and should be trusted completely, so any large-scale attempt at reform runs into these unwavering supporters (and, in the case of the police, their unions).
- Overly broad qualified immunity
- The power of the police unions
- Lawsuit settlements coming out of public funds
- Collusion between prosecutors' and the police
These are all issues that need to be resolved to restore the sanity in policing.
At the federal level, the FBI needs to be reigned in...somehow. They all to often work outside the bounds of their defined role and powers. This isn't a new problem and one could argue it has been an issue since the beginning.
Whether they behave like civilized people or like thugs should be besides the point regardless of your political leaning in the matter of the system. Naturally from a basic human perspective civilized law enforcement is much more preferable than the alternative, but they aren’t your friends!
But the kind of white people we have here have never really had anything in common with those people so now that the Feds are coming after people of the sort of political persuasion they identify with for the first time since, the 1970s it "feels" like they're just now going after white people.
Now a lot of those same patriot right types are cheering this on if not enlisting.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170201130225/http://www.nytime...
Moreso in blue cities, I have no idea what point you're making there other than crime you've seen on TV is scary.
Yes, I hope future administrators go up and down the chain of command looking at everyone who was involved in the cover-up, and charges them with conspiracy to commit murder, but a future Democratic administration will at least identify and prosecute the murderers themselves. While Republican administrations will conceal the identity of the killers and continue to have them out on the streets
The question is, can the State of Minnesota put together enough evidence to convict these agents for murder and conspiracy to commit murder without the involvement of the federal government?
If so, we could see cases brought as early as this year.
If not, then the next question is can Democrats get them enough information by controlling one branch of the federal government. In that case, we could imagine a prosecution brought in 2027.
Otherwise, if we need Democrats to control the executive branch to get enough information it might be 2029.
I don’t think it will take long, because the State of Minnesota will have put the case together and be waiting to go. So the question will be how quickly can they get any necessary evidence, incorporate that into their case, and then bring charges.
They'd have to fight the feds for jurisdiction and will unfortunately likely lose that fight.
That’s simply not how the system works. There’s no one assigned entity with “jurisdiction” over a crime.
The state and federal governments are dual sovereigns and each are empowered to enforce their own laws. It doesn’t even violate double jeopardy for the Feds and a state to prosecute the same actions.
The only thing that matters is if the state can obtain enough evidence that they feel they could secure a conviction before a jury of the shooter’s peers.
The federal sovereign can usurp the state sovereign's courts jurisdiction and use jurisdiction removal[] to try the state charge in federal court. This is exactly what happened when Lon Horiuchi was charged by a state for killing (sniping) an innocent unarmed mother with a baby in her hands, and part of how he got off free.
Given the feds are always keen to do this when possible, it's not for nothing that they do it.
Yes, if the State of MN brings a criminal charge against a federal agent, the case will be removed from a State Court to a Federal Court.
But the MN prosecutor will be in the federal court prosecuting the case. The law that will apply to the case will still be MN state law.
It will be a federal judge, and federal court rules about procedure, but MN state law and MN state prosecutors.
Just parroting back what I've said then simply declaring I don't understand it (despite explicitly acknowledging the state charge would be tried in federal court) just looks terribly misguided when you lied with your smug quip "that's not how it works", when apparently you pretend as if you knew all along jurisdiction was relevant and would be fought over.
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?
If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.
Federal felony
You seem to be glossing over the key piece of that statute. Peaceful protest is protected by the first amendment (free speech, right to assembly).
You can interpret it however you like.
Could easily have been hurt by their own flashbang devices or caught it in a car door.
The finger was completely removed and pictured separately.
> Could easily have been hurt by their own flashbang devices or caught it in a car door.
I can't fathom either of these explaining what I saw.
I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.
Did you expect the government to charge people in good faith? It doesn't matter it if it's true or not, even putting them in the slammer for a long time while awaiting trial and forcing them to hire expensive attorneys is a win.
The post you replied to didn't ask what they might be charged with. It asked what they "plan" to charge.
And you replied with internet rumor nonsense. It's actually fine to say "I don't know" or simply not reply at all when someone asks a question to which you do not have an answer.
What this reads as is a bunch of credulous X users trying to one-up each other and looking for reasons that Trump and his cronies are not once again lying to your face.
It is neither necessary nor particularly useful for them to be running plates for reasons you've already identified.
That's exactly what they have done - shared the information pointing to the organized attempt to interfere with the ongoing federal operation. This is a crime.
Physically obstructing them is interference. There are countless videos where protesters can clearly be seen to do this, even as they are then defended as supposedly "merely exercising free speech rights".
That's another angle that needs to be discussed more often with respect to Trump's DoJ: if you're impaneled on a grand jury for charges coming out of these investigations, you don't have to give them a bill.
- Know others very personally or not at all.
- Don't take a phone to any event without it being in a proven good RF blocking bag.. I wished they made a bag that allowed taking pictures and video with audio.
- New people can potentially be liabilities such as crazy, stupid, undercover cops or adversaries, and/or destructive without a care.
- Avoid people who think violence is "the way" because there's rarely a positive or politically-acceptable offramp for it.
- Destruction of property can be effective non-violent resistance in limited circumstances, e.g., The Boston Tea Party, but that's becoming a criminal in the eyes of the current regime and 95% of rebellions fail.
I'm pretty sure that almost everyone would generally consider destruction of someone else's property to be a crime.
1. Some rando on X saying "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" doesn't mean said rando actually did infiltrate a signal group.
2. Signal was not the app Hegseth, et al. used. They used TM SGNL, which is a fork of Signal. But that's a minor nit.
3. Encryption is not the same thing as authentication. And authentication is somewhat meaningless if you let everyone into your encrypted group chat.
Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone
Cam Higby has close to 400 thousand followers and routinely gets multiple millions of views on his tweets, including almost 23 million views on his pinned "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" tweet. And this tweet is the start of a thread that provides quite a lot of (watermarked) evidence that he did, in fact, infiltrate such a group.
When you mention an anecdote about shooting a hunting dog in your autobiography, that shows something beyond just being a "true believer" or stooge. That is willingly pointing out that you are willing to act out your lack of empathy through violence towards an animal.
I'm not a clinician (and haven't met Noem) but that just seems to me to be something indicative of a personality disorder.
Miller is different. He has his own agenda, a lot of which has becomes trumps agenda. But trumps agenda changing does not change what Miller’s agenda is.
I could imagine we'll see the same thing again, before or after the midterms, and Miller and Bessent are two I expect to see have a dethroning at some point simply on account of Trump never taking responsibility for anything.
That and I've seen both try to speak "on behalf" of Trump, something the authoritarian personality doesn't appreciate.
However some of that logic is based on 1st round Trump not being as senile and insane as 2nd round Trump. It's possible his weakening cognitive faculties have made him even more open to manipulation.
He’s not an idiot. He knows how much damage he can absorb and how to position himself to not take more than that. He never positions himself as the implementation person who will take the hits. He’s the idea guy, and the manipulator/cheerleader. He doesn’t seem to expect trump to take care of him for his loyalty, so he doesn’t position himself to require it.
I think ultimately he won’t be thrown under the bus because his relationship with Trump is mutually beneficial, and they both see it as transactional. For both of them, the other is a means to an end. Soul mates in hell I guess.
Maybe I'm just really hung up on the dog thing, but that is the crux of it. There's basically no one who hears a story of shooting a dog for misbehaving and thinks, "yeah, that'll show the libs". That's not a story out of a politician's biography as much as it is a story out of a book profiling a serial killer's childhood.
71% of American households have pets [0] and there's a good chance that those who don't have had at least one in the past. There was absolutely no benefit to including that in the book, and I'd be stunned if the publisher didn't at least try to talk her out of putting it in there, given her political ambitions. If they didn't try to get it cut, they didn't do their jobs; if she ignored them, then she really does display a tendency to take pride in behavior that is recognized across the political spectrum in American society as cruel and antisocial.
She genuinely gives me the creeps.
[0] https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...
He’s going to jail in a way Trump isn’t. That’s ultimately a fall guy.
So when a right wing 'reporter' highlights people are doing things within their legal right, there's an investigation straight away.
But they can release the Epstien files when the victims themselves are asking them to.
> if that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people
That's not how the justice system works, you can't just go on fishing expeditions to find a crime.
You don't. You could even order sim cards off ebay/amazon if you wanted to, which definitely doesn't have any KYC.
Source?
>As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it.
Why collect it then? Imagine having a service promising "lets people use phones without revealing identity" but for whatever reason asks for a bunch of info, then brushes it aside with "yeah but you can fill in fake information so it's fine".
>Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
Your inability to take any criticism without resorting to personal attacks is crystal clear.
As many have already stated, Signal is overwhelmingly secure. More secure than any other alternative with similar viability here.
If the feds were actually concerned about that, publicly "investigating" Signal chats is a great way to drive activists to less secure alternatives, while also benefiting from scattering activist comms.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"
Like searching a vehicle database? That's available to all sorts of people, like auto body repair shops.
Taking a photo of a license plate? Nothing illegal about that.
Taking a photo is legal. Running plates through law-enforcement/ALPR systems is not, and auto body shops don't have that access.
Real-time identification != observation - it implies unauthorized data access.
In fact the first clue that they look for is having Illinois Permanent plates because that is a strong indicator that they are using rental vehicles. That doesn't take a database, it's just a strong signal that can be confirmed by other evidence.
I think the choice of the verb "scanning" indicated it clearly enough.
This doesn't seem to have been remotely as much of an issue in states where local law enforcement cooperates with ICE and where protesters generally don't physically get in the way and don't resist arrest on the relatively rare occasions of arrest. This seems, to me, unlikely to be a coincidence.
Were they doing that? I haven't read the article, that's why I'm asking.
Also, what is the outrage about? This administration has deported the least number of people compared to all previous administrations. Obama deported 3.1 million people, ten times more than Trump today. Same ICE, same border patrol.
2. Their death is the outcome of the outrage.
You don't have to agree with the criticisms but to not even be able to understand why people are upset stretches believability.
And 'different tactics' doesn’t explain the reaction gap, as i said, under Obama there were 3.1M+ deportations and at least 56 documented deaths in ICE custody (https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/re...) with nowhere near this level of outrage. What changed is media framing and amplification, not the existence of harsh enforcement.
> And 'different tactics' doesn’t explain the reaction gap, as i said, under Obama there were 3.1M+ deportations and at least 56 documented deaths in ICE custody
You continuously ask this same question, get an answer, and ignore it. ICE enforcement was not the same under Obama and Trump even if Obama had high deportation numbers. The deaths in that report were from medical issues or neglect. Horrible, absolutely, but not shootings, not American citizens, and not protesters.
Maybe instead of assuming everyone is a stooge that can only do what the media tells them, consider they may actually have some legitimate grievances?
18 U.S.C. § 1505 - Obstruction of Federal Officers (this includes ICE itself - obstructing or interfering with an ICE arrest is a crime)
18 U.S.C. § 118 - Obstructing, resisting, or interfering with federal protective functions
Those other two laws seem like an even weirder fit for the fact pattern in this subthread.
If "ICE vehicle has been identified, everybody go there" is followed by mobbing vehicles, blocking movement, inducing agents to disengage, or warning targets to evade arrest, that crosses from protected speech into actionable conduct.
See Brandenburg v. Ohio (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492)
Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
> Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.
None of that matters _today_, because _today_ the law is different.
For example, a lot of people thought it was wrong that federal agents could cover their faces. Sacramento agreed. Now there is a law preventing it.
A wide array of policy issues related to the targeting and manner of execution of Trump’s mass deportation program, not the number of deportations.
Also, a number of specific instances of violence by the federal government during what is (at least notionally) the execution of immigration enforcement.
> why are they only upset in one city?
People are very clearly not “only upset in one city”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_mass_deportat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good_protes...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/24/protests-ale...
And there's a lot of truth to that which a lot of people need to reconcile with.
The fact that we don't have DACA solidified into a path towards citizenship by now is just sad.
During Obama's term the leaders of DHS / ICE were not blatently lying about events captured on film and evading legitmate investigations into deaths at the hands of officers.
During Obamas term people with no criminal record were not being offshored to hell-hole prison camps with serious abuses of human rights.
From your linked article:
If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their jobs.
I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
Are you pro or against this?
Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.
Yes, but physical impediments are physical impediments. The protesters have been repeatedly seen to impede, or attempt to impede, ICE physically.
What do you have against crime?
Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
The explicit coordination of things like: vehicle blocking, personnel blocking, personnel removal, disruptive distraction could clearly qualify.
How the courts choose to interpret & prosecute is up to them.
That is who is alleged to be impeded.
Interpreting masked officers in tactical gear as kidnappers, or claiming that a patch saying “ICE” is insufficient identification, is not a legally valid basis for suspicion or resistance.
Sure, most of the people kidnapping people off the streets and incarcerating or deporting them without due process in violation of the constitution are federal officers. But unless they identify themselves clearly, you’d be stupid to not resist.
Publishing locations alone is not conspiracy to commit a crime. If ICE is impeded as a result of this information, that’s not enough. Conspiracy requires the government to prove that multiple people intended to impede them.
That the law is written in a way that an individual rate-payer may believe they understand its application is irrelevant to the way it actually is. "The Law" is not necessarily the written corpus of enumerated regulations, but also the judicary's day-to-day interpretation of the written text, tempered by exhortations from (hopefully) decent legal minds arguing before the court. That's the theory, anyway.
Can we help somehow?
I am a democrat who does support ICE. If there are any issues, as there are given the numbers, they should be investigated. There have been many instances where an “execution” is claimed but they, the agents, were reasonable to assume imminent harm and self defense.
Our mainstream news outlets are openly calling the "official" versions from the Trump administration what they are – lies. The video evidence is clear to anyone watching: this was murder. No amount of spin changes what the footage shows.
As citizens of a country that knows firsthand how fascism begins, we recognize the patterns: the brazen lying in the face of obvious evidence, the dehumanization, the paramilitarized enforcement without accountability. We've seen this playbook before.
What Americans might not fully grasp is how catastrophically the US has damaged its standing abroad. The sentiment here has shifted from "trusted ally" to "unreliable partner we need to become independent from as quickly as possible." The only thing most Europeans still find relevant about the US at this point is Wall Street.
The fact that the FBI is investigating citizens documenting government violence rather than the government agents committing violence tells you everything about where this is heading.
To see DOJ use its power the way we've seen (and I know the original story here is only with FBI at this point), it makes me think there should be some equivalent of anti-SLAPP laws but aimed at federal prosecutions. Some way to fast track baseless charges that will obviously never result in anything and that are just meant to either (a) punish someone into paying a ton of lawyer fees, (b) to intimidate others, or (c) grab some short-term headlines.
Always use encryption for anything. Encrypted messengers are great, but I would never trust Signal. It requires phone numbers to register among other issues, has intelligence funding from places such as the OTF, and their dev asset Rosenfeld is a whole other issue.
and what is NBC "news"'s motive/agenda for framing this info the way they are?
"LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
NBC News is what some call a mainstream media source. They typically publish/report factual news that uses moderately loaded words in headlines such as this: 'Trump threatens border security shutdown, GOP cool to idea.'
Story selection tends to favor the left through both wording and bias by omission, where they underreport some news stories that are favorable to the right. NBC always sources its information to credible sources that are either low biased or high for factual reporting.
A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 42% of NBC News’ audience is consistently or primarily liberal, 39% Mixed, and 19% consistently or mostly conservative. A more liberal audience prefers NBC. Further, a Reuters institute survey found that 46% of respondents trust their news coverage and 35% do not, ranking them #5 in trust of the major USA news providers."