>particularly high profile example would be the plot to kidnap a state governor a few years ago.

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.

They've been doing it from day 1.

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.

> The FBI infiltrating political groups of all stripes is to be assumed by default at this point.

That (US domestic political groups, anyway) is their job, after all?

> As to actually acting on what they learn, within this context yeah that would be troubling.

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.

Organized as in they have meetings, serve cookies, and coffee? Most likely not. These anti-ice groups seem to be extemporaneous meetups.

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.

Preventing out-of-control federal officers from committing crimes is NOT criminal. Especially when you don't even know if they ARE federal officers, and won't show their faces, badges, or warrants.

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Here's one the members of that group: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/tennessee-woman-sentenc...

> 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?

'protested' by forcibly precenting individual civilians access to medical care? Sure, this seems the same.

> 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.

Maybe that was also bad. And maybe the current admin is still more brazen, less accountable, more selfish and more vindictive. Why even bring this up? Should we not care about this because other people did bad stuff?

That is more proof that the democratic party isnt corrupt and do care about fair elections(in the eyes of the public). He SHOULD have been thrown in jail and he IS a criminal.

> So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate?

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?)

> In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network.

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 absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually and without having to protect your face/identity. It was enshrined in the First Amendment as a fundamental check on the federal government in order to recognize the natural right of a self-governing people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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.

Protesting is a fundamental human right and obligation. It is something that you should do as casually as you would voting, volunteering, and taking out the garbage: something you do from time to time when the moment demands it.

See also: https://enwp.org/Chilling_effect

> Protesting is not something you should do "casually”

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.

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That seems like quite a stretch from reality. I just know the glowies enjoy lurking websites where people openly post how to use Tor.

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These groups exist to observe and document the actions of federal agents and share that information with their communities. That is constitutionally protected activity.

>The people in these groups are coordinating for a specific reason: to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs.

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.

> to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s textbook Obstruction of Justice. It is illegal to prevent an officer from doing their job.

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.

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> The people in these groups are coordinating for a specific reason: to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s textbook Obstruction of Justice. It is illegal to prevent an officer from doing their job.

If that's the case, then why has no one been prosecuted on those grounds?

Portland Ave at 32nd St E is a one-way two-lane road with a bike/bus lane. It was formerly a three-lane one-way road.

One of the victims was blocking half the low traffic road and intending for people to pass freely on the other half. The other was filming from a distance.

Conspiracy to impede and obstruct criminal behaviour is not a crime, it's legitimate self-defence.

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.

All they'd learn that way is that that phone number has a Signal account, when it was registered, and when it was last active. In other words, it doesn't tell them whether it's part of a given Signal group. (See https://signal.org/bigbrother/.)

They publicly publish these requests. You can see how little information is provided — just a phone number and two unix timestamps IIRC. https://signal.org/bigbrother/

I might be misremembering or mixing memories but i remember something about them only storing the hash of the 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

But does it? In what way?

That's true for any system where you have contacts linked. Same thing happens when you have names and avatars.

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

No. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454478

What better alternatives do we have? Not tying my account to a phone number, but rather saving thirteen words, is exactly the UX I've always desired. I don't even need privacy, but I hate losing things when I inevitably lose my phone number.

Bots can authenticate just as well as human users. Both bots and trolls are completely different set of issues that cannot easily be solved, regardless of your approach.

Apparently, one member of the group uploaded a personal photo as an avatar.

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.

> Does that not amount to a threat?

"If you touch me, I'll break your jaw" has been ruled by courts to not be a threat.

One model for this type of behaviour/response in reaction to feelings of shame is known as the "Compass of Shame" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233600755_Investiga...)

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.

ICE isn't doing police work (police are somewhat accountable to their local populace for keeping people safe), they're ostensibly (selectively) enforcing federal immigration regulation.

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.

Until that moment, the general sentiment about the government and the internet is that they are too incompetent to do anything about it, companies like Microsoft/Apple/Google/Snapchat are actually secure so lax data/opsec is okay, etc.

Meanwhile, the whole time, communications and tech companies were working hand in hand with the government siphoning up any and all data they could to successfully implement their LifeLog[1] pipe dream.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

> Snowden, agree with him or not, showed us that reality blew away our imagination.

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.

Considering the US military has historically had capabilities a decade ahead of what people publicly knew about, anyone who said it just wasn't possible probably wasn't a serious professional.

Which claims? HN around that time was taking anything and everything and declaring it conclusively proved everything else.

I honestly have no god damn clue what was actually revealed by the Snowden documents - people just say "they revealed things".

The NSA tried to do this during the Snowden leaks!

There were stories like "look at how we stopped this thing using all this data we've been scooping up"... but often the details lead to somewhat underwhelming realities, to say the least.

It might be that this stuff is very useful, but only in very illegal ways.

In addition to terrorist stuff, they are probably passing of bunch of stuff to the military or defense industry to do things like fine tune their radar to cutting edge military secrets.

They can do parallel construction or use "undercover" informants etc.

Cops use those systems to make easy arrests for things like active warrants, stolen vehicles and they feed into systems that keep track of where licensed vehicles are and when.

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.

The algorithm was sorting punch cards and then putting the cards in different stacks on a table.

We can only hope that the surveillance state is still working with the same algorithm…

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I've generally held this position, but assume a sufficient combination of models could do a lot more than was possible before.

Do you mean false positives? A false negative would be "we checked to see whether Alice was in the country illegally, and the computer said no but the actual answer turned out to be yes".

>think this is mostly because they don't care about false-negatives. They have forgotten the idea that our justice system was supposed to hold true to: "better a hundred guilty go free than one innocent person suffer" (attributed to Benjamin Franklin).

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blackstone

But they were wrong about the Thai people living there. That's the poster's point. Not that they don't care, but that they were wrong from the get-go because they don't actually have good information.

Yes obviously, but as my central point was, it is the complete opposite of their narrative of targeted operations backed by data.

That's exactly what I'm saying though. I agree that their intent is manufacturing fear and uncertainty.

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.

They are going door to door in the neighborhood I grew up in.

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.)

The evidence goes strongly against your claims.

[Citation needed.]

Which is not much different than how the January 6th people were caught.

As ever xkcd holds true - https://xkcd.com/538/

How exactly am I part of the problem? I vote in every election I'm allowed to vote in, I didn't vote for Trump, I donate to political organizations that support causes I believe in. Because I don't go outside and hold a sign that no one is going to read I'm enabling this? Get off your high horse.

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.

So are you saying that the first amendment should protect government insiders leaking personal employee info to the public for the purposes of endangering those government employees, and to cause harm to their families? based on subjective opinions on whether the people think the actions of said employees are just or unjust?

That's wild if so. That's quite the precedent to set.

Note: I don't support ice or their actions. nor do i support vigilante justice.

Can't argue with their 110% conviction rate, North Korean tactics work.

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4th amendment???! Osama killed that decades ago… they may as well take it off the books… Once we were OK having our junks touched to go from here to there the 4A effectively ceased to exist.

You only have rights you exercise. Don't let the cops trample on your rights. Though... this does seem to work better for white, rich, older dudes than for other people.

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s/searching for/manufacturing

Remember, they're accusing the people they killed of heinous motives for their narrative. They can't find it, so they make it up. Keep filming, y'all.

you're aware that LEO are citizens right? with rights as well?

the fine nation of law enforcement, which has only colonised the united states for its own good and to bring civilisation to the heathen masses

... that is correct.

Of course, if you're taking up arms to resist/overthrow a government, then you should be entirely anticipating that the government will shoot back. Or shoot first.

If protest is approaching/crossing the line into insurgency, people need to seriously consider that they may be putting their life on the line. It's not a game.

In which case it's no longer relevant because nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun. The idea was cute enough back when the firepower the government had to use against the people was limited to muskets and cannons, but currently the idea of guns being used to overthrow a government with a military like the US is a complete joke.

Today you'll still find a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters insisting against common sense regulations because they need their guns to stop government oppression and tyranny yet you can open youtube right now and find countless examples of government oppression and tyranny and to no surprise those guys aren't using their guns to do a damn thing about any of it. In fact they're usually the ones making excuses for the government and their abuses.

There are reasonable arguments for supporting 2nd amendment and gun ownership but resisting/overthrowing the government is not one of them. That's nothing more than a comforting power fantasy.

The text of the second amendment, as written, would seem to indicate that the premise of the second amendment is to arm "a well-regulated militia" (which was relevant to the government that adopted the second amendment, as it had no standing army).

It was basically crowdsourcing the military. We've been running through all the various problems with that idea ever since, including:

- oops, turns out not enough people volunteer and our whole army got nearly wiped out; maybe we need to pay people to be an army for a living (ca. 1791)

- oops, turns out allowing the public to arm themselves and be their own militia can lead people being their own separate militia factions against the government, I guess we don't want that (e.g. Shay's Rebellion, John Brown and various slave rebellions fighting for freedom)

- oops, turns out part of the army can just decide they're a whole new country's army now, guess we don't want that (the civil war)

- oops, turns out actually everyone having guns means any given individual can just shoot whomever they like (like in hundreds of school shootings and mass shootings)

- oops, turns out we gotta give our police force even bigger guns and tanks and stuff so they won't be scared of random normal people on the street having guns (and look where that's gotten us)

Honestly, the whole thing should've been heavily amended to something more sane back in 1791 when the Legion of the United States (the first standing army) was formed, as they were already punting on the mistaken notion that "a well-regulated militia" was the answer instead of "a professional standing army".

No it isn't -- that's an ignorant myth. Madison was the last person in the world who would have endorsed overthrowing his new government ... the Constitution is quite explicit that that is treason and the penalty is death. The first use of the 2A was Washington putting down the Whiskeytown Rebellion.

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[citation needed]

cell phone cameras work both ways.

Postgres can aggregate many data sources of private data. So can SAP. So what is it about their tech that you think makes it different? SAP is a good comparison.

It's not just the what, it's the how.

And you have it completely upside down. The federal government serves the people, the people do not serve the feds. If, while attempting to enforce federal law through ICE, the feds break the Bill of Rights, they are doing more harm than good. We can live with a few illegals. We cannot leave the house if we expect to be murdered in cold blood on the street by the federal government. The instigating event of the American Revolution was the Boston Massacre, where protesters were shot and killed by British soldiers. Sound familiar?

It feels very strange to read someone describe these events as ‘LARPing as martyrs’ when there have been multiple tragic deaths.

Boot leather can't taste this good.

I have seen the videos. He was already on the ground, fixated by several ICE agents, when he was shot 10(!) times. That was after he had been peppersprayed and beaten to the head. At no point did he actually draw or reach for his gun. There was absolutely no reason to shoot him.

> 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?

> As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIOwTMsDSZA

This is just lunatic speech. The one place he didn't have a gun was in his hands. You're out here acting like if he'd had a gun strapped to his ankle it would have been proof beyond any doubt he was intending to shoot and kill ICE officers.

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.

There are multiple videos from multiple angles and a multitude of witnesses.

The only investigation being done is by the DHS, who is blocking all other state level investigations. The same DHS who lied about easy disproven things that were recorded and destroy evidences.

What are you waiting or expecting from a investigation to make up your mind?

He was killed for carrying a gun. How do I know that? Thats what they've been saying over and over again. Absolutely gross.

Yeah, the victim is investigated. Kill anyone evading arrest. Bring in the tanks.

> Don't let your compassion be weaponized.

It's telling on yourself that you think compassion for other people, the core idea that other peoples needs might be more important that your own, is objectively a weapon. You're not wrong that there's a lot of disinformation about, but from a purely historical view, the one position that has never been right is fence-sitting.

No, of course not. I don’t think it’s a crime to be punished.

I’m just saying I think you’re helping an authoritarian regime, and I think that’s bad.

I’m saying it because I think you should feel shame, not to suggest you should be punished beyond those basic social consequences.

Neither of them were abiding by the law. Nor were either of them executed. Such hyperbole.

This kind of made up bullshit makes you look like a total lunatic.

One person showed up with a gun, the other tried to flee (or run over) an officer.

There aren't a lot of things I would claim Russia is a leader in, but state sponsored hacking and spying on its own people would both definitely make the list. That's not to say no one has cracked it, but if the Russians couldn't do it there aren't many who could.

The best part is that, in trying to comply with this guidance, the government chose Telemessage to provide the message archiving required by the Federal Records Act.

The only problem is that Telemessage was wildly insecure and was transmitting/storing message archives without any encryption.

Recommendations to the private sector don't condone violating security and retention laws for people working in the public sector.

I don't think I agree with the following from this guide:

> 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.

Come on, man. We're talking about classified information, not general OPSEC advice. I worked in a SCIF. Literally every piece of equipment, down to each ethernet cable, has a sticker with its authorized classification level. This system exists for a reason, like making it impossible to accidently leak information to an uncleared contact in your personal phone. What Hegseth did (and is doing?) is illegal. It doesn't even matter what app is used.

The only reason you think this is because all of your opinions are predetermined by MAGA elites.

As mentioned by someone else, they just need to take the phone of a demonstrator to access their signal groups.

https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/new-leaks-on-police-phone...

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When Trump saw the video of Renee Good's execution, he faltered. He hadn't seen that before.

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> which prevents the government from bringing a case

Genuinely, from outside, it seems like your government doesn't give a damn on what they are and aren't allowed to do.

All they have to do is pretend to be a concerned neighbor who wants to help give mutual aid and hope that someone in the group chat takes the bait and adds them in. No further convincing is needed.

They'll just threaten to throw the book at you if you don't unlock your phone, and if you aren't rich, your lawyer will tell you to take the plea deal they offer because it beats sitting in prison until you die.

If you aren't saving people's phone numbers in your own contacts, signal isn't storing them in group chats (and even if you are, it doesn't say which number, just that you have a contact with them).

Signal doesn't share numbers by default and hasn't for a few years now. And you can toggle a setting to remove your number from contact discovery/lookup entirely if you are so inclined.

Which is just a redux of what I find myself saying constantly: privacy usually isn't even the problem. The problem is the people kicking in your door.

If you're willing to kick in doors to suppress legal rights, then having accurate information isn't necessary at all.

If your resistance plan is to chat about stuff privately, then by definition you're also not doing much resisting to you know, the door kicking.

> it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.

I'm sure the Israeli spyware companies can help with that.

Although then they'd have to start burning their zero days to just go after protestors, which I doubt they're willing to do. I imagine they like to save those for bigger targets.

There are multiple companies that can get different amounts of information off of locked phones including iPhones, and they work with LE.

I’m also curious what they could get off of cloud backups. Thinking in terms of auth, keys, etc. For SMS it’s almost as good as phone access, but I am not sure for apps.

or convince one member of a group chat to show their group chat...

I'm confident the people executing non-complaint people in the street would be capable of compelling a citizen.

Or just let the guy to enter the country after unlocking her phone.

https://xkcd.com/538/

Is the message on storage zero'd out or just deleted?

It's worth noting that the way Signal's architecture is set up, Signal the organisation doesn't have access to users' phone numbers.

They technically have logs from when verification happens (as that goes through an SMS verification service) but that just documents that you have an account/when you registered. And it's unclear whether those records are available anymore since no warrants have been issued since they moved to the new username system.

And the actual profile and contact discovery infra is all designed to be actively hostile to snooping on identifiable information even with hardware access (requiring compromise of secure enclaves + multiple levels of obfuscation and cryptographic anti-extraction techniques on top).

Note that Threema has had a recent change in ownership to a German investment firm. Supposedly nothing will change but I can’t help but be wary

The literal point of civil disobedience is accepting that you may end up in jail:

"Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."

-- Letter from the Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr: https://people.uncw.edu/schmidt/201Stuff/F14/B%20SophistSocr...

> protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power.

They surely can. But the point was more than the people in power don't really need Signal metadata to do that. On the lists of security concerns modern protestors need to be worrying about, Signal really just isn't very high.

This is the price we pay to defend our rights. I would also expect any reasonable grand jury to reject such charges given how flagrantly the government has attempted to bias the public against protesters.

> make it seem like the participants have access to some sort of ALPR data to track vehicles

The whole reason cops love ALPR data is anyone's allowed to collect it, so they don't need a warrant.

I was replying specifically to this:

> This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem

I was not saying it's not a problem that the feds are doing this, because that's not what I was replying to.

That seems like a weak argument.

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.

Palantir steps in indeed

If they could arrest people for what they've been doing, they would have already arrested people. And they have arrested a few here and there for "assault" (things like daring to react when being shoved by an annoyed officer), but the thing that's really pissing DHS off is that the protesters and observers are not breaking the law.

Conspiracy requires an agreement to commit an illegal act, and entering into that agreement must be intentional.

> Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother ..."

Aside: I see similar attitudes when I mention I use VPN all of the time

In past instances where Signal has complied with warrants, such as the 2021 and 2024 Santa Clara County cases, the records they provided included phone numbers to identify the specific accounts for which data was available. This was necessary to specify which requested accounts (identified by phone numbers in the warrants) had associated metadata, such as account creation timestamps and last connection dates.

Which of those links actually say that your phone number is private from Signal? If anything, this passage makes it sound like it's the reverse, because they specifically call out usernames not being stored in plaintext, but not phone numbers.

>We have also worked to ensure that keeping your phone number private from the people you speak with doesn’t necessitate giving more personal information to Signal. Your username is not stored in plaintext, meaning that Signal cannot easily see or produce the usernames of given accounts.

> it'd be extremely non trivial

Extremely non trivial. What I'm hearing is "security by obfuscation".

If you follow the X chatter on this, some folks got into the groups and tracked all the numbers, their contributions, and when they went "on shift" or "off".

I don't really think Signal tech has anything to do with this.

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Your point is correct but irrelevant to this conversation.

The question here is NOT "if Signal didn't leak your phone number could you still get screwed?" Of course you could, no one is disputing that.

The question is "if you did everything else perfect, but use Signal could the phone number be used to screw you?" The answer is ALSO of course, but the reason why we're talking about it is that this point was made to the creator of Signal many many times over the years, and he dismissed it and his fanboys ridiculed it.

Is there any reason they didn't use email? It seems like something that would have been easier to keep some anonymity., while still allowing the person to authenticate.

Briar and Session are the better encrypted messengers.

I remember listening to his talks and had some respect for him. He could defeat any argument about any perceived security regarding any facet of tech. Not so much any more. He knows as well as I do anything on a phone can never be secure. I get why he did it. That little boat needed an upgrade and I would do it too. Of course this topic evokes some serious psychological responses in most people. Wait for it.

I have no idea if that was true 20 years ago, but it's not true now. XMPP doesn't have this problem; your host instance knows your IP but you can connect via Tor.

I think the deal is you marry the strong crypto with a human mediated security process which provides high confidence the message sender maps to the human you think they are. And even if they are, they could be a narc. Nothing in strong crypto prevents narcs in whom ill-advised trust has been granted from copying messages they're getting over the encrypted channel and forwarding them to the man.

And even then, a trusted participant could not understand they're not supposed to give their private keys out or could be rubber-hosed into revealing their key pin. All sorts of ways to subvert "secure" messaging besides breaking the crypto.

I guess what I'm saying is "Strong cryptography is required, but not sufficient to ensure secure messaging."

Yes. Cheap–identity systems such as Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to this, and your only defence is to not give out your address as they are unguessable. If you have someone's address, you can spam them, and they can't stop it except by deleting the app or resetting to a new address and losing all their contacts.

SimpleX does better than Session because the address used to add new contacts is different from the address used with any existing contact and is independently revocable. But if that address is out there, you can receive a full queue of spam contacts before you next open the SimpleX app.

Both Session and SimpleX are trivially vulnerable to storage DoS as well.

There are a lot of solutions to denial of service attacks than to collect personal information. Plus, you know, you can always delete an account later? If what Signal says is true, then this amounts to a few records in their database which isn't cause for concern IMO

I think maybe OP was using the traditional definition of the word, and hopefully not trying to imply we have Treblinka’s across the US.

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...

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?

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...

Fellow European. They are not death camps, but what information does come out of them does sound a lot like concentration camps, already prior to Trump coming to office.

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...

The first nazi concentration camp was founded in 1933, gas chambers and systematic killing were only added in 1941 when the "final solution" was implemented. Those last four years are the most well-known period, but for the majority of Hitler's rule concentration camps were just what it says on the tin: camps where undesirables were concentrated. Places that became overcrowded, hotbeds for disease, labor camps and places of medical experimentation. Plenty of people died there even in that period, but from causes like illness, work accidents, malnutrition and bad medical care.

ICE detention centers are not comparable to a 1942 nazi death camp, but comparisons to a 1939 concentration camp seem apt

> The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people.

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.

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Are those not people? Right into the 'subhuman' rhetoric?

Then you need better reading glasses, unless you killing of two innocent people is actually people guilty or illegals.

For example reported on The Majority Report: https://youtu.be/rapv7V78SZo

There aren’t Nazi-style extermination camps in the U.S., but an extermination camp is just a subset of concentration camps. There are large-scale immigration detention facilities, with 60k+ people on any given day, where tens of thousands of people are held without criminal trials. Enforcement often targets identity proxies like race, accent, neighborhood, sweeps up citizens and legal residents, uses expedited deportations with effectively suspended habeas, and operates with extremely limited judicial oversight and blatantly ignores judicial rulings.

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...

> When's the last time you saw a Trump supporter on this site?

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.

Most techies are libertarians and/or moderates. They definitely live in liberal hot spots, but they aren’t going out of their way to address social wrongs and protest. Heck, most Californians are moderate, mostly concerned about making money and living the good life, the only reason they are called liberal at all is because Pete Wilson alienated most of the states Hispanics from the Republican Party in an ill planned illegal immigration witch hunt. It didn’t just go from Reagan to Newsom overnight, the change was mostly for anti-racism reasons.

California is also hardly a far left state, it still has more trump voters than Texas.

>When's the last time you saw a Trump supporter on this site?

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.

California isn't "very left-wing". It's liberal, centre-left if you're being kind. The democrats are a centre-right party with some mildly-leftist pockets of members.

Almost 40% of California voted for Trump. The political polarity of a group can be measured in multiple ways. If you measure it by the views of its elected representatives or leaders of its institutions, it will look quite extreme because every 55/45 gets converted to a +1. In other words, you can have nearly 30% of a state being against gay marriage, yet "obviously" California is extremely gay-friendly.

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.

unrelated tangent, sorry. i agree with your comment, just ranting/venting about a detail.

> 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.

I'm a Trump supporter, generally. I see a lot of comments at the bottom of threads by people who I assume also are. The reason you don't often hear this admission when you're in a forum with downvotes like this one is twofold. One, obviously, the person gets immediately downvoted, so those posts are harder to find. Two, if a person admits to it in a post, that often functions as a thought terminating trigger for everyone else involved, and it doesn't matter what point he was trying to make; the interlocutor just calls him a racist or something and moves on.

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.

> The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. 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.

There are examples of 2A being used against tyrants in the US. Just not the federal level. The higher up you are rebelling against the more people you need to support you. The point of 2A is that you don't need to continue to suffer under tyrants because they have guns and you don't. If you decide it is 2A time before everybody else you are just an idiot. Actual rebellion requires support of the people and planning.

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.

https://youtu.be/tdIK3JFIWNI?si=AalvJNhY7597HRsq

USA is not Russia. I don't think an order could ever be made to level a "rebellious" city, and even if it were, it would never be followed.

That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan...

It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.

Ukraine is taking out tanks and helicopters, as well as infrastructure daily, using 3D printed drones and AliExpress electronics.

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.

It also applied to other things existing at that time, like warships, canister shot in cannons or machine guns.

Have you seen expensive tanks and helicopters being taken out by 500$ drones? No? I have a surprise for you

Massie is the odd man out out of 1000s of Republican politicians in being willing to publicly criticize his own party. He is very not typical. Everybody else marches in lockstep with whatever insanity trump puts out.

The NRA is not a very honest or good gun association, their immediate statement was quite different:

> “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.

It's not hard to find examples.

"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

> Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years

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 ;)

Nobody said he was? Are you in the right thread?

Interesting, that was a work I wasn't familiar with.

The point is that the overwhelming majority of the country isn’t facing down ICE brutality right now, not the way Minneapolis is. So yes, most are much less immediately and violently affected by Trump. Hence, calm.

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.

Yes, there are many ways to help from out-of-state!

Call your senators and representatives to hold ICE accountable. It's fine to enforce the law but they cannot be breaking other laws doing it.

Boycott business that support ICE for as long as ICE is being so heavy-handed. Enterprise rents them cars, Hilton Hotels puts them up, Target & Home Depot allow use of their parking lots for staging and their bathrooms. Get rid of your Ring doorbell, which partners with Flock. Call the companies and tell them what you're doing.

Donate money to any one of these MN orgs: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Get prepared. There's no reason to think this won't come to you once they pull out of Minnesota. Meet your neighbors, especially those of color. Start a Signal chat with them. Read how to start a Rapid Response Network [1]

[1] https://docs.proton.me/doc?mode=open-url&token=J5A88MFHRR#hI...

And very sincerely: thank you.

You should look up the number of lawsuits German politicians dish out for being criticized online. Funded by the tax payer of course.

So you claim that all 12,000 arrests in the UK and all 3,500 arrests in Germany for online speech are justifiable? https://x.com/croucher_miles/status/2010716875190161614?s=46

Except it does mean exactly that if you have money

Is any law enforcement guaranteed to be exactly correct? No, because every person is fallible, and every system is made up of fallible people. This is why we separate arrest (police) from trial (judge) and judgment (jury), to mitigate those risks.

To malign a system because it is imperfect is to be unrealistic. Surely, we should minimize those harms, but they are not a reason to abdicate our laws.

FYI, as a center left from a European perspective that is a beautiful picture of just how right-leaning American politics is. The Democrats is such a big tent it contains pretty much the complete political spectrum in Europe, but for the actuall politics they have been doing, at least regarding economics (excluding identity politics) they are pretty solid right / center right from a European perspective.

I would probably argue the opposite, given that Y Combinator is a venture capital firm. This would be more true for Lobsters than here.

(Edit: to go further, it's like... ok, if HN is far-left, what does that make Bluesky? What does that make the Fediverse? It feels almost reductive to compress the range of HN onwards down to "far-left".)

Yikes - I know that emotions are understandably running hot right now, but you can't attack another HN user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. (The same goes in the other direction, of course - indeed, in all directions.)

I'm sure you know that we ban accounts that break the rules like this. You've been a good HN member for a long time, so I don't want to do that.

The best way I know of to make the moderation point here is the "you may not owe" pattern (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) - in this case: you may not owe people who disagree with you on critical political issues better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Yeah it’s a slightly blurry line. What metric are you using? I’d say Seattle is way ahead of Minneapolis in terms of economic influence.

Indeed, as sibling commenter notes, it's not to prevent ICE from doing their jobs. Observers do not take physical actions to block ICE/CBP. Observers are there to

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.

> The goal is to prevent ICE / BP from doing their jobs.

No. The goal is to protest ICE / BP doing their jobs in criminal ways.

Here's the iPhone spreadsheet from the 2024 leak: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qZESd9Zj5HkMZnIjLStS...

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

> Pixels continue to have baseband and OOBConfig exploits that allow pushing zero interaction updates, or system memory access.

That is greatly reduced since the releases of the Pixel 9 and 10.

Never fear, the 2nd amendments days are numbered too. Trump just said 'You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns' (the 'in' in this context being 'outside')

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-you-cant-have-gu...

Nothing about the 2nd amendment legalizes shooting law enforcement officers.

This has always been the absurdity of the moronic claims of the 2nd amendment being to overthrow government tyranny: You may own the gun legally, but at no point will your actions be legal. If you've decided the government needs to be overthrown, you are already throwing "law" out the window, even if you have a valid argument that the government you are overthrowing has abandoned the constitution.

Why the fuck do you need legal guns to commit treason? Last I checked, most government overthrows don't even involve people armed with private rifles!

If you are overthrowing the government, you will need to take over local police stations. At the moment, you no longer need private arms, and what you are doing isn't legal anyway.

Meanwhile, every single fucking time it has come up, the gun nuts go radio silent when the government kills the right person who happens to own a gun. Every. Single. Time.

It took minutes for the "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" people who raised a million dollars for Kyle Rittenhouse to defend himself for driving to a protest in a different state while armed to the teeth to of course get to shoot someone to turn around and say "Actually bringing a gun to a protest makes you a terrorist and you need to be shot". Minutes. They have also put up GoFundMes for the guy who executed that man.

If you are too scared to stand up to your government without a fucking rifle, you have never been an actual threat to your government, and they know that.

Fed

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That's a strange take. It also feels like exactly what they are hoping to have happen. Encouraging gun violence is not something condoned, so not sure why you are posting that nonsense. Are you an agitator?

https://archive.ph/copyn

It wasn’t paywalled for me, BTW.

Not sure what difference that makes, it's not like the current regime limits their actions to respect constitutional bounds.

Sure. Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?

Because the question was what they might be charged with, not what they did.

Did you expect the government to charge people in good faith? It doesn't matter it if it's true or not, even putting them in the slammer for a long time while awaiting trial and forcing them to hire expensive attorneys is a win.

Intimidation, or threat at the very least seems applicable here if you have any idea of what's going on in Minnesota and what these Signal chats are being used for.

This statute defines the conditions where free speech transitions to criminal activity.

You can interpret it however you like.

Blocking law enforcement's vehicles and their person (I saw several protestors put hands on officers), when they are conducting arrests, certainly seems to fit the bill.

If you threaten to kill somebody then follow them around for days at a time, is that intimidation?

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"Sh*thole countries" was projection

How is it corrupt? The DA chose to resign, they weren't forced out.

It is going to get a lot worse. Trump's eventual goal is to send the military to all Democrat-controlled cities. Back in September Trump gathered military leaders in a room and told them America is under "invasion from within". He said: "This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within."

Presidential pardons have no impact and their liability for state-law murder charges (though federal seizure of crime scenes and destruction of evidence might, in practice.)

I'll eat your hat if any of these goons ever see in the inside of a holding cell

That depends, the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired. And POTUS needs the civil service to execute his policy goals so his fellow party members and possibly himself can get re-elected.

Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution. I would expect especially DHS to basically become a non-functional (or even seditious) department if they prosecute those guys and they could purposefully make the president look bad by making his security apparatus look incompetent.

But pardons only apply to federal crimes… murder is a state offense.

They're wearing masks. Have they been identified?

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I would disagree to a certain extent. "Law enforcement is not your friend" is a good mindset as a citizen. You should never hand them information without a lawyer and you should always push for oversight.

I agree that the "same at it ever was and always will be" attitude isn't great. It's defeatist and I choose not to live my life that way, even if it would be much easier mentally.

I think part of the reason I see this attitude so often is that, especially since 9/11, a large portion of the US population has decided that the police and military are infallible and should be trusted completely, so any large-scale attempt at reform runs into these unwavering supporters (and, in the case of the police, their unions).

Furthermore, going back as far as I remember, if you take part in a protest the police personally disagree with they will use violence against you regardless of your occupation.

Nothing cynical, that’s just the truth. They’re called law enforcement for a reason, not emergency hugs.

Whether they behave like civilized people or like thugs should be besides the point regardless of your political leaning in the matter of the system. Naturally from a basic human perspective civilized law enforcement is much more preferable than the alternative, but they aren’t your friends!

The only significant difference is that law enforcement is treating white people the way they've always treated everyone else. Which is a difference in degree, but not character.

By before, what do you mean? COINTELPRO?

cmon man seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter?wprov=...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/newb...

Depends on the race of the engineer. If you're gay or live in a blue city/state then you also lose your protection

It’s conditional on whether you are affirming the opinions of your employer or oppositional

I'll be sure to bring my mechanical keyboard and secondary vertical monitor out in public so they'll know I'm one of the good ones.

There is no protected class from malevolent government. Everyone from oligarchs down to the have nots can be targets. Let's not keep relearning that lesson.

Engineers are just workers

The lack of a legal limit means they are never safe from justice catching up, even decades later. This lawless administration won't last. Some perpetrators may die of natural causes before that point, but 2026 and 2028 elections aren't far away.

It's literally not a joke, probably the most egregious example of a completely unqualified doormat that will do whatever dear leader wants. It's also by design, no roadblocks for the fanta menace.

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Yet, he was. Are there any points in the list that aren't correct. ("Like for real?")

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Their daycares, or their "daycares"? Not clear which one you mean.

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You're projecting a values claim on the American wars in the middle east on me that I didn't make. It's pretty clear that the ME wars were all around bad and evil.

It doesn't change the organization and tactics used to identify targets are the same methods and strategies used by insurgent groups to select targets and attack. AQI was very sophisticated for the technology they had. Their warriors were brave, cunning, and true believers with efficacious systems for what was available to them.

Twenty years of that, plus the rest of the middle east has now made it particularity common knowledge how to run insurgency cells worldwide. This combined with American expertise brought back and with people legally aiding these groups in setting up their C2 structures with what is effective and what works is no surprise.

This investigation should be no surprise to anyone. They use these techniques because they work. They are so effective at target acquisition, monitoring, and selective engagement that if they flipped from their current tactics to more violent ones it would be a large casualty event.

"bystanders"

What's needed is MNPD sharing their data around the criminal illegal aliens with ICE so that they can execute the deportation orders that have already been issued by judges.

The structure of your message implies you are not American. DHS posts the people they deport here:

https://www.dhs.gov/wow

It's really hard to go down that list and say "yeah i'd rather have these people here than have ICE deporting people".

Like i've said over and over, the tactics used are the distilled what works from those insurgencies honed over decades. They are incredibly effective. The network that was built (several max signal chats, organized territory, labor specialization) has essentially created an effective targeting mechanism.

This isn't a bunch of people organically protesting, this is an organized system designed to "target" ICE agents. The only difference is the payload delivery between physical disruption vs weapon based attacks.

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Not a lawyer, but there's a lot of back and forth around jurisdiction between local and federal enforcement. If the President directs the DoJ to not fight to own the investigation over local, then it is up to the Executive Branch.

They are running communications rings geographically distributed across the city via Signal. They organize into specialized roles for identifying suspected agents (spotters), tailing them, and moving to contact with ICE. They use the ARMY SALUTE[0][1] method to handle their reports.

Anyone who ran convoys in the Middle East, patrolled, or did intel around it will know this playbook. The resistance is impressive because it's taken lessons learned from observing the US Military overseas dealing with insurgencies.

0 - https://www.usainscom.army.mil/iSALUTE/iSALUTEFORM/ 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHIPEVj0pRo

>I thought they had KYC laws like prepaid cash cards.

You don't. You could even order sim cards off ebay/amazon if you wanted to, which definitely doesn't have any KYC.

>The stores would ID you

Source?

>As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it.

Why collect it then? Imagine having a service promising "lets people use phones without revealing identity" but for whatever reason asks for a bunch of info, then brushes it aside with "yeah but you can fill in fake information so it's fine".

>Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.

Your inability to take any criticism without resorting to personal attacks is crystal clear.

Yes, but it's harder than just buying an esim from silent.link (or whatever) and installing it. The biggest issue is that phones have IMEIs that you can't change, so even with an esim you bought "anonymously", that won't do you any good if you install it to your iPhone that's linked to you in some way, eg. bought in Apple store with your credit card, inserted another SIM/esim that has your billing information, or simply the phone has pinged cell towers near your home/work for an extended amount of time.

For max privacy, remember to buy the phone anonymously as well. Be cognizant of links to non-anonymous IPs, emails, and identities.

Nobody has been charged.

There is nothing unlawful about scanning license plates. You are allowed to photograph them in the same way you are allowed to stand around writing them into a notebook if that activity is your idea of fun. Where do people get these ideas?!

"Unlawfully scanning license plates"? What does that even mean?

Like searching a vehicle database? That's available to all sorts of people, like auto body repair shops.

Taking a photo of a license plate? Nothing illegal about that.

Can you rule out the much less technically advanced explanation that this information was crowdsourced? And people are simply observing the license plates that are plainly displayed?

Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.

> > > Why is our tax money being wasted on this?

> > The fascists won. That’s why?

> No, they haven’t.

Yes, they did, that’s why they are able to use the executive branch of the federal government to enforce their wishes at the moment, with virtually no constraint yet from the legislative branch, and no significant consequences yet for ignoring contrary orders from the judicial branch.

They may lose at some point in the future, but something that might happen in the future is irrelevant to the question of why what is happening now is happening, and it is happening because they won. Unambiguously.