Do you mean just technically trivial? I agree with that.
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.
The FBI infiltrating political groups of all stripes is to be assumed by default at this point. A particularly high profile example would be the plot to kidnap a state governor a few years ago.
As to actually acting on what they learn, within this context yeah that would be troubling.
>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.
> 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.
There are many anti ICE activists that are organized. ACLU and Indivisible are two such groups. There are many instances of people obstructing federal agents by anti ICE activists and protesters.
You claimed organized crimes; not simply organized resistance. What crimes are they organizing?
Resistance itself is not criminal, especially when many of the actions they are resisting are themselves illegal. In fact, it is our civic duty to resist illegal or immoral actions by the government.
If you don’t believe the criminal activity is organised, you can find the PDFs distributed in the Signal groups which contain instructions on violating the law.
No, this misses their point. They are organized and some within the organization commit crimes, that does not mean the crime is organized. Hence asking about whether you consider ICE to be such an "organized crime" group because they can be described as (1) an organization (2) some members of which have committed crimes.
> If you don’t believe the criminal activity is organised, you can find the PDFs distributed in the Signal groups which contain instructions on violating the law.
What PDFs can be found and what criminal activity do they refer to?
That's not a PDF file from a Signal group, it's a video in a tweet. Do you have an actual PDF and can you point to where that PDF instructs people to commit crimes?
> Comment above mentions laws.
Yes, and a list of laws is a non sequitur. I was asking for evidence of your claims, which you've yet to provide. Does it even exist? Perhaps. Does it contain instructions to, er, bite off fingers? Doubtful.
Edit:
Reading the table of contents from the file depicted in that video, nothing jumps out as something which might contain instructions for committing a crime. There is no such PDF being distributed in 1000-member Signal groups which instructs its readers to commit crimes.
> That's not a PDF file from a Signal group, it's a video in a tweet.
Of a PDF file from a Signal group encouraging people to violate 18 U.S.C. § 111 which makes it illegal to forcibly resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with federal officers.
Maybe finish this conversation on your own. I’m out.
If this were true we would have a lot more violence from the left on our hands, but time and again the more violent acts seem to come from the right - see the sibling comment for references.
The left surely is not without violence, however it’s often (from what I’ve seen) reactionary or in self-defense. It’s rare to see left-leaning actors committing large-scale violence like school shootings, theater shootings, family massacres, plotting to kidnap elected officials, attempting to overturn elections, etc.
The only thing remotely similar from the left I can think of, in America, was the Weather Underground and they tried to ensure the buildings they bombed weren’t occupied, though iirc a night security guard they didn’t account for died in one (and from what I’ve heard from one of the leaders was that he was incredibly remorseful).
>comments like that just make me thing people on the left are just good at violence
That's as may be, but it's not for a lack of trying by the right. In fact, the overwhelming majority of political violence comes from the right[0]:
"There were about 300 acts of political violence in the United States from the January 6 attack to the 2024 election.[46][45] According to the research, that was the largest surge since the 1970s.[45] Political violence during the 2024 election was also at its highest since the 1970s, and most recent violence came from right-wing assailants.[46][2]
As of 2023, political violence comes "overwhelmingly from the right", according to the Global Terrorism Database, FBI statistics, and other research.[3][41][48] The Anti-Defamation League found that all of the 61 political killings in the U.S. from 2022 through 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists.[49] A Princeton University study reported that the number of cases involving harassment and threats against local public officials had increased 74% in 2024 compared with 2022, totalling 600 cases.[50] Serious threats against federal judges doubled from 2021 to 2023 according to the U.S. Marshals Service.[25]"
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.
Do you agree with the ICE agent who said "You raise your voice, we erase your voice?" Is that an acceptable thing for federal officers to do, or is that unconstitutional, criminal violation of civil rights?
No badge, no warrant, with faces covered, indiscriminate attacking people. That's a criminal, not law enforcement. We already have seen people impersonating ICE agents to kidnap, rob, and rape. There's a reason police don't cover their faces.
It’s illegal to interfere with ICE when conducting actual ICE business, but time and again they’ve been shown to be looking for people with no reason to be under investigation let alone arrest. In Pretti’s murder, they were looking for a “violent criminal” who had um….traffic violations, from years prior, and was ummm here legally? And that’s just the most high profile case. If they can’t get their shit together and actually do their job without resorting to executions of citizens and deporting children to counties they’ve never been to, then it is very much our civic duty to stand up to them.
Ken White, AKA popehat, said that the administrative warrants the ice agents sign themselves, are the equivalent of Ron Swanson's "permit" that says "I can do what I want". They're not signed by a judge, which is required by the 4th amendment.
They’re relying heavily on administrative warrants, which don’t have the legal force of a judicial warrant and are more like an internal departmental memo.
In particular, administrative warrants don’t authorize entry into a private home without consent, don’t compel state or local law enforcement to act, don’t function like a criminal warrant, and don’t override 4th amendment protections.
Having to rely on judicial warrants would get in the way of one of their primary goals, which is to pacify the US population through fear. It’s why they now use the murders they’ve committed as threats.
As I said, it's more like an internal departmental memo. It serves a purpose internally, but trying to use it outside of that context is mostly a category error.
That's not correct. It's a "warrant" in the literal sense: it authorizes federal immigration agents to detain someone for civil immigration violations. Since they're not judicial warrants, there are constitutional restrictions on how they can do that, which I enumerated in my previous comment.
The game ICE is playing takes advantage of the exact misunderstanding you've described - that anything called a warrant must be a judicial warrant. That's not the case, they're just exploiting people's bad assumptions.
I don’t like political power being used to go after an intimidate opponents at all, but we can’t pretend that it wasn’t a constant during the previous admin.
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.”
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?
It is deliberately obtuse to pretend that a group 60 year old women were "forcibly" preventing anyone from doing anything. They stood in a hallway and sang hymns.
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.
> 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?
I think that counts as assault and the individual should have been charged and that's exactly the point about the precedent.
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?
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.
I doubt that, but I only mentioned it because I just learned about that literally last night while watching video of a few police training officers review/discuss the video of the ND
> Now a situation has been created where everyone involved in those Signal chats could be...charged with conspiracy.
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]
> "An administration that has repeatedly abused its power in order to intimidate and punish political opponents"
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?
> 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?
When you let the cat out of the box yourself, don't blame when it starts scratching the couch. Never in history was ever an American ex-president targeted and hounded like Trump was. Democratic party brought the 3rd world style politics of "go after your opponents when you come to power" to the USA.
I could say the same thing to you. Go back a few more years to his first term, to his campaign. He is absolutely the main architect of the chaos that has ensued. You don't get to start fights and then get mad when people fight back. The selective outrage you're demonstrating here is baffling.
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.
They had already been outed by internet sleuths possibly, but not necessarily, informed by leaks from the police. The FBI is making a press release about an investigation only to save face because the criminal conspiracy is already common knowledge among those interested. In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network. They have well-publicized, patently unlawful dragnet signals intelligence collection capabilities. The targets are people who organize openly on Zoom and Discord, and broadcast volumes of their ideology on bumper stickers, Mastodon, and Blue-Twitter. So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate? I feel like ICE is Floyd/BLM repeated as farce.
> 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.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
…
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.
>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.
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 $$.
> However, the situation has also been significantly escalated by often-violent obstructionists
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.
> 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.)
Yes, I think there would've been massive protests against the US federal government doing anything at all to be effective at deporting illegal immigrants. Significant numbers of ideologically-dedicated people think that not allowing foreigners to immigrate to the US or deporting foreigners who have illegally immigrated is an immoral, Nazi-equivalent policy that they have a moral obligation to disrupt. The masks and other shows of force from federal immigration enforcement are a reaction to the protests designed to keep individual ICE agents safe and effective; and to demonstrate to illegal immigrants that the federal government is serious about deporting them, violently if necessary, in order to try to incentivize them to leave voluntarily.
> 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.
We're not talking about an interpersonal relationship, we're talking about mass political actions and the authority of national-scale governments.
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.
To me the obvious synthesis is that the Trump-sphere was lying about what immigration enforcement means, and the public is unhappy when they're shown what Stephen Miller and friends understand enforcing immigration law to mean.
Martin Luther King said while all should aim to follow the law and obey, if a law is unjust then one should break it proudly and in the open.
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.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually and without having to protect your face/identity.
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.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually
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.
> 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.
Law enforcement only works when the people have trust in those doing the enforcement.
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.
Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
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?
> Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
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
We have things called subsidies for that reason. Agribusiness companies of all sizes including megacorps get tons of money in subsides for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, those subsidies go towards purchasing lobbyists, growing profit margins, and paying executives instead of lowering food costs to Americans.
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?
> 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.
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.
> It's absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
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.
IANAL but I don't think it's so cut and dried that creating a crowdsourced map of publicly visible ice operations is illegal. Yes such a map could be used by illegal immigrants to avoid detention. It could also be used by law abiding citizens that want to avoid the hubbub these operations cause or by legal us citizens that don't wanna be targeted just for being in the neighborhood. It seems like a decent lawyer could make a case that publishing the location of an ice operation is not the same as acting with intent to interfere with the operation.
Which law makes it illegal to track ICE? If there isn't a law against it, but you think the government should arrest people for it anyway, then you don't support rule of law.
The obvious retort is "obstruction". Of course it doesn't hold up to scrutiny because courts have consistently held that obstruction has to be a physical act. Simply being nearby, filming or calling them names doesn't count.
Is kicking out tail lights and spitting at agents obstruction?[] Because he definitely appears to have done that about a week before his death. Though that doesn't merit death.
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.
Two things can simultaneously be true. That the legal criteria of obstruction have been reached, and also that the Federal apparatus routinely oversteps both the constitutional and the most essential natural rights.
Just know the King interprets spitting and kicking tail lights as a 'shot at the King.' Pretti took his shot at the King, with his cosmetic accessory piece gun tucked in his waistband, at about 4 out of 100. And expected the King to meet him with something other than 100 or 0. In that light, I'll concede of the possibility he was morally right, but I also think he was a fool. If his goal all along was to kneel, let himself be disarmed, then quietly accept his execution like a bitch -- what did he even get out of it? He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
> He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
That's not even remotely true - currently the MAGA pro-Trump crowd is cleaving on gun rights .. the big lie about the need for ICE / DHS is unravelling and now Republican support for ICE is dropping.
Last time around Trump said "take the guns and due process later" and then did an illegal (as ruled by the court) ban on bump stocks. No one following Trump with eyes wide open was under the illusion trump was a champion of gun rights.
People brainwashed or ignoring facts have seen differently, but the brainwashed crowd is already seeing this event the way they want to see it. The MAGA crowd who want to overlook Trump's views on guns will have no problem sweeping this to the side under the heading of "violent agitator suppressed" just as they made excuses for every other time Trump shat on gun rights.
So, free speech, licenced carry, local community resisting unlawful warrents, etc are all ok?
Voting, in the USofA, is ineffectual - it takes years to make change and the choices are essentially shite .. barely a Democracy, more a Republican Autocracy by design.
Of interest:
On Monday, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, appointed by President George W. Bush, suggested his patience with ICE had run out. After officials apparently ignored his order to permit a detainee to have a bond hearing or release him, he ordered Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, to appear in court on Friday to explain why he wasn’t in contempt of court. On Tuesday, the government released the detainee.
Today Schiltz canceled the Friday hearing but went on to rake ICE over the coals. He identified “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases” and commented, “The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated.”
“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” Schiltz warned that he would haul Lyons or other government officials into court if they kept ignoring court rulings. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” he wrote.
The USofA is literally a country founded on the principle of not allowing Kings or autocracts, certainly not federal authority, step on states right and self determination.
He chose option (3). Kick the tail light out, spit a bit, literally verbally asked to be assaulted, let himself be disarmed, kneel, and quietly submit his head for execution. What was the point exactly? The guy wasn't using any more logic beyond whatever spur of the moment emotional response he had.
I can understand resistance, but whatever he was doing looks more like he had some onset of an impulse control related mental illness.
Wile I don't think they deserved to loose their lives over it, calling them "innocent" is quite dishonest. They were at the very least intentionally being a nuisance and in most cases breaking actual laws in the process.
>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.
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.
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!
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.
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,
The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die. Get arrested, get booked, have your friends pay your bail, and then have a media circus around the court cases that result. This seems lame and takes some self-control to do, but it works really well.
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.
>The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die.
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?
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 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.
> 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.
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.
Yeah, this is what I don't get. People have the right to peacefully protest (and they should). However, once you actively get in the way of official federal policing business, you are no longer a peaceful protester. Interjecting yourself into already stressful situation will only make things worse for you.
> get in between a federal officer and a suspect, and hope you don't get shot
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?
> No. It's not. Governments are not natural. So you have no "fundamental" rights here.
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.
God doesn't have a typewriter, as far as I know. When he gets one I hope he clears up which 99.9% of human religions are heretical and which 0.01% are divine law, that would be really helpful.
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.
Since the existence of God is implicit in your assertion, are you suggesting he isn’t omnipotent, or have you come up with a new definitional concept of ownership? Or maybe you just don’t believe in the existence of typewriters.
Barring physical limitations, what you can and can't do is ultimately determined by what the society you are by and large a part of deems to be acceptable behaviour.
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.
If you believe rights are what God and the Constitution grant, then they're meaningless. Some piece of paper has no real–world relevance. Cops shooting people in the face has real–world relevance.
The comment was not an appeal to religion. It's making the point that the notion of intrinsic rights is philosophical, and there must be a greater authority above all human systems if there can be a right at all. Otherwise, it's just something that the prevailing authority allows.
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.
Muhammad is not a god, and he was very insistent on that point. The Buddha is also not seen as a god is most traditions. Elohim, Allah, and Ahura are generic terms for God or gods.
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.
…or, Baal, Nature, Reason, etc. take your pick, heck probably even AI; which would “happily” explain it to you and answer all your “clever” questions, unlike me.
I'm not asking "clever" questions. You clearly state that rights are given by a divine being. Since humans for thousands of years have had different ideas about "god", I'm simply asking which of those beings is the one that grants rights.
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.
> 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.
Realistically, we now know that the Hunter Biden Pardon (preemptive) is available and the Capitol Riots Pardon (mass pardon) is available. Given that, it’s only optimal for an outgoing cynical Republican President to preemptively pardon his allies on the street.
> Neither is violently undermining our Constitutional order.
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.
> Is this something you want applied _against_ you?
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.
Most of these groups are centered around a neighborhood, or a school, or a church. For anything school related, people are very suspicious of outsiders trying to join. Churches and neighborhood groups might be more open, I suspect, but still gotta get somebody who lives there or goes to the church to vouch for you.
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.
Most people are not professional conspiracists and know how to handle secret meetings, communication etc.
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)
Funny how HN discussions about the development of encrypted messaging apps often include remarks from commenters about the need for a "group chat" feature
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
I didn't say anything about court. When you say "ruled a homicide", that does not include people on the Internet thinking it was a homicide. It is a judicial term of art that applies only after a formal police investigation has come to such a conclusion. If you don't mean "ruled a homicide" then please don't say it.
> applies only after a formal police investigation
Not true, the medical examiner will "rule" on this, not the police. I don't know if the Hennepin county examiner has said so, but we don't need to wait for that with the several angles of video available to us. We're in the court of public opinion, not law. If you disagree that it was a homicide, then say that. I don't understand the motivation to play lawyer here and obfuscate. We're not making arguments in court and there is ample evidence of what happened.
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.
Don’t be disingenuous. 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.
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.
These groups exist to observe and document the actions of federal agents and share that information with their communities. That is constitutionally protected activity.
Their stated purpose and their actual function can be different, and speech that would otherwise be free can be illegal if involved in incitement, bribery, collusion, etc.
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.
>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.
> 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.
> 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?
First you are lying. Second, noise is not an obstruction. It is ok and legal to produce whistles.
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.
>> Filming officiers performing their jobs is not obstruction
> This is irrelevant, because many people have been observed physically obstructing officers, whether or not they were filming at the time.
The OP made a point and you constructed the strawman of a hasty generalization.
This is disingenuous.
>> while ICE men literally openly threaten to kill people who are no threat.
> Please show me where you think this has happened.
Re: "You raise your voice, I erase your voice," - January 27, 2026
Free speech is a right and I support their right to say whatever they want. They are subject to their own policies beyond that.
> 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),
You are cherry picking. He was an observer, among other things.
>> and then are proud of their murdering colleagues
> Please show me where you think this has happened.
I'm not trying to get you to agree with anything, but it's not constructive to continue. Many of your questions are asking other people for information that is readily available. Not everyone needs to agree on everything, but I don't think it's hard to understand the various sentiments.
> This is irrelevant, because many people have been observed physically obstructing officers, whether or not they were filming at the time.
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.
> 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.
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.
People are arguing the actions of ICE officers is warranted because they're being obstructed and harassed, blowing whistles is obstruction and harassment, their actions include shooting murdering people in the streets.
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.
> None of the argument has to do with "harassment"
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.
>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.
This is an inaccurate description of what they are doing. For example Renee Good was actively blockading a street, by placing her car perpendicularly across it. Some may be engaged in observation, but that is not broadly the case, and organizationally, their apparent goal is to obstruct.
If she was trying to blokade the street she was doing a pretty bad job. A car goes past hers in the video where the murderer shoots her three times and calls her a "fucking bitch" while her corpse weights down the gas and her SUV goes careening down the road.
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.
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.”
> 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
I am talking about 8 USC chapter 12 subsection II (<https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12>). This is the law that defines how immigration works in the US, and how illegal aliens are removed. ICE is the Federal agency assigned to the task of locating and removing illegal aliens. Even if you don’t like that illegal aliens are being removed, it is illegal to try to prevent a federal agent from doing just that. Instead you should be trying to change the law so that the job doesn’t exist.
Why change? I've just randomly clicked through, and it is a good law, for example :
(1) Right of counsel
The alien shall have a right to be present at such hearing and to be represented by counsel. Any alien financially unable to obtain counsel shall be entitled to have counsel assigned to represent the alien. Such counsel shall be appointed by the judge pursuant to the plan for furnishing representation for any person financially unable to obtain adequate representation for the district in which the hearing is conducted, as provided for in section 3006A of title 18.
When you're saying that ICE is executing that law, are you saying that the guys sent to that Guatemala prison were afforded that right of counsel and were given a lawyer? Or anybody else in those mass deportations.
I also couldn't find in that law where it makes it legal to randomly catch dark skinned people on the street, including citizens.
There are two conceptions of law currently in the US. The first is what we see on TV, with lawyers and judges and law enforcement attempting, most often successfully, to apply a set of rules to everyone equally.
The second conception of law is what the federal government is doing now: oppression of opponents of the powerful, and protection of the powerful from any harm they cause to others.
We are currently in a battle to see which side wins. In many ways the struggle of the US, as it has become more free, is a struggle for the first conception to win over the second. When we had the Civil War, the first conception of law won. I hope it wins again.
It was always people who ruled, it's just more apparent when the people who rule are bullies itching for a fight, who care even less about the appearance of consistency.
For moral accountability, it should always in the end be "I say", not "the law says". No one should "just be obeying orders", they should make choices they can stand behind on their own judgment, regardless of whether some group of possibly long dead legislators stood behind it or not.
The ICE picks brown skinned people without any order or warrant and makes them sign voluntary deportation, no hearings/attorneys/etc. That "works" even for the people who has a valid applications say for asylum, temporary protection status, court orders protecting them from deportation, etc. as long as they sign that "voluntary" thing. It "works" even for citizens! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Guzman
That is just simply not true as was illustrated by many stories in the news. And in particular why would the ICE then use that checklist - young, Latino, tatoos ... -> gang member to extradite (to Guatemala).
And what final order of removal were for example the US citizens picked by ICE subject to?
> ICE has also deported full adult citizens, eg: Pedro Guzman, Mark Lyttle, etc.
Per your sources, these happened in 2007-2008, so that hardly seems relevant to the current discussion. Trump is not responsible for law enforcement overreaches that occurred under GWB.
> Currently there's a running problem simply having access to the names and files of those that disappear into the ICE Gulag.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
allow to birth? Only God does that. US does entice tourists by granting citizenship to anybody born on US territory. If you don't like it - change the Constitution. If you aren't changing it, then you want it for some reason.
Edit: to the commenter below - what "moral" has to do with the Constitution provision? I mean beside the general understanding that Constitution is a law and following law is in general a moral thing, and that US Constitution was generally an attempt to write a good moral thing.
I first have to ask: do you personally think it makes sense that couples can enter the US illegally, remain in the US illegally until a child is born, and have that child automatically become a citizen? Do you think it is moral? Why?
But just to clarify, GP was asking you whether that particular path to citizenship exists in other developed countries.
I do think it's moral and makes sense to make people born here citizens. It prevents the formation of an underclass of stateless residents who do not have rights. The idea of Jus Soli goes back a long time, rooted in English common law.
And yes, lots of other countries have similar policies in place. Racists act like it's something that is only a thing in the United States, and that it was only created by the 14th Amendment, and have managed to dupe many others to become ignorant of history.
This has nothing to do with racism, and the implication is offensive. In the age of English common law, nations and states were conceived of fundamentally differently.
> This has nothing to do with racism, and the implication is offensive.
The history of the 14th amendment, Jus Soli, and birthright citizenship have loads of racism in their debates and history. I'm not necessarily calling you a racist here, I'm just pointing out many racists do these things for racist reasons. But you are the one suggesting the citizenship rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment is immoral.
If you're truly ignorant of the history of the 14th Amendment and it's connection to racism you really need to read up on the US Civil War.
> In the age of English common law
We're still living in the age of English Common Law in many ways. It guides a massive part of our legal theory. I point to it because it seems you're taking the position the US is rare in its application of Jus Soli, as if only we made it up somewhat recently.
For practically all free white babies born to immigrants living in the US even before the 14th Amendment Jus Soli was the standard. Racism prevented granting this right to others.
What moral reasons do you give to not give citizenship to those born here? How is the 14th Amendment immoral?
> But you are the one suggesting the citizenship rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment is immoral.
I am not suggesting any such thing. I am suggesting it specifically about people who are born to those who did not have a legal right to be in the country in the first place.
The 14th amendment was passed primarily to protect slaves whose families had been in the country for generations, and the presence of whose ancestors was explicitly solicited by slave-owning citizens.
> I point to it because it seems you're taking the position the US is rare in its application of Jus Soli
I'm not. I'm supposing that it's outdated, and was not designed to reflect considerations like mass amounts of illegal immigration — especially from poor countries to much wealthier bordering ones, in an world where wealthy countries provide a social safety net that medieval Brits couldn't even have dreamed of.
Edit: as a sibling comment points out, the progenitors of English common law also could not have foreseen a world of ordinary people wealthy enough to travel internationally and have children abroad because citizenship in other countries would be favourable to their family. They could not even have foreseen a world in which the common folk could travel from England to France within hours on a whim.
The text of the 14th Amendment in regards to birthright citizenship:
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside
So now that we have that to reference...
> The 14th amendment was passed primarily to protect slaves whose families had been in the country for generations
Where is the generational requirement?
> presence of whose ancestors was explicitly solicited by slave-owning citizens
I don't see anything explicitly talking about slavery here.
Sure sounds like someone is trying to rewrite the amendment here. Sure seems to me it says "all persons", not just "all persons who were multi-generational slaves before the passage of this amendment".
> was not designed to reflect considerations like mass amounts of illegal immigration
You mean all those immigrants didn't think about the idea there could be massive amounts of immigration? The passage of the 14th Amendment happened in 1868. That's 18 years after the massive wave of immigration from the Irish Great Famine of 1845. That's after the massive migration of Asians during the California gold rush of 1849. You really think the writers were just fully ignorant of the potential of mass migrations?
I'll grant you they probably would not have imagined the amount of social safety net we have today, but I just can't agree they couldn't think about massive waves of people migrating for economic reasons. Those were definitely very salient issues at the time. Although it wouldn't be until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1889 that they actually took real action to significantly close the gates of US immigration. And they did so on racial lines, go figure.
My family came here before the passage of the 14th Amendment by pretty much just showing up and staying here for a couple of years. Their kids automatically became citizens at their birth even for the parents that never actually applied for citizenship. This is how it was for most of this country's history.
You've still not directly given me a reason why birthright citizenship is immoral. I've given you arguments as to why it is moral; it prevents the creation of an underclass of residents without full rights, something I'd hope we could both agree is immoral and bad. Can you tell me how granting citizenship to children of those without proper residency is somehow immoral?
> What moral reasons do you give to not give citizenship to those born here?
Why should someone on vacation be able to automatically tap into already-limited social safety nets for their children? They have contributed next to nothing.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I kind of thought this was an American ideal, something we'd put on one of our most notable national monuments. Nah, sounds like some libtard crap I guess.
> But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. - 1 Chronicles 29:14
> Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:19-21
> John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” - Luke 3:11
> Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. - Luke 12:33
Back to your statements...
> They have contributed next to nothing.
And neither did you when you were born, and yet you got citizenship right off the bat. Should we have some kind of requirement that one must pay in enough money in taxes to qualify for citizenship? Maybe bring back poll taxes?
> Both that monument and the Declaration have zero authority in our government or system of laws.
And yet we enshrine them and make monuments out of them. Why would that be if they have zero relevance to our way of life and our nation's ideals, even if we haven't perfectly followed them in history? Why shouldn't we continue to reference them when we decide what to do going forward?
We're talking about morality in the US here. >62% of Americans say they're Christian. Citing the bible in discussions about morality in the US seems pretty relevant to me. Can you tell me how its not?
I also gave additional arguments and points unrelated to ancient texts, but you're not bothering to respond to those. What a joke.
> lots of other countries have similar policies in place
"Lots" of countries that nobody is clamoring to obtain citizenship in. Exactly one of them has a higher HDI score than the US, all of the rest are 20+ positions lower.
How many pregnant American tourists are specifically traveling to Brazil to birth their children as citizens there?
If you are a citizen child and your parents are arrested and subsequently incarcerated for breaking the law, you will be placed in foster care absent a suitable alternative guardian.
In this case, the children are being kept with their families. Who else should take them? Foster care?
Parents don't just magically get a free pass to break the law because they birthed a child.
>Do the children of immigrants have fewer rights than other citizens?
Your response doesn't even approach answering it.
Why is that? Are you unwilling to answer such a question? Did you misunderstand?
Your comment was completely unrelated to the question I asked. Especially since my parents are long dead (51 years and 28 years) and I haven't relied on parental support in 35+ years.
As I mentioned, I'm the child of a non-citizen immigrant. Do you claim that I have fewer rights than other citizens? If so, which rights, and what justification do you use to make such a claim?
I am not talking about your rights: this is a strawman argument. Nobody is talking about you, an adult citizen - was the context difficult to follow?
Maybe English isn't your first language: when people are talking about "children" - they don't mean typically "adult child."
The children (see: not adults) of illegal immigrants who are deported don't have "less rights" in this case than a citizen child.
Let's follow the thread:
> US citizens were extradited? Who? To where?
>> Invariably someone will shoot back with "citizen children of illegal immigrants."
>>> Do the children of immigrants have fewer rights than other citizens?
How exactly does your "my rights!!!" diatribe make sense in context here? Why would "adult children" be the implication in this sentence?
In case you weren't aware: there has been much recent controversy about families being deported together despite their children being citizens - this is what I was referring to. As an adult citizen, you would not be subject to deportation as you do not need a guardian. Find something else to be outraged about.
>I am not talking about your rights: this is a strawman argument.
Whose rights should I be talking/concerned about? Are my rights unimportant? Shall we just go ahead and strip me of my citizenship because I'm not talking about what you want me to talk about?
It's literally the question I asked and your position on that specific question I wanted to understand. I did not misrepresent your belief/argument, rather I asked you to elucidate your thoughts on a specific question.[1]
That's not a strawman argument, that's being curious about your beliefs and understanding of the laws of the United States.
In fact, your initial reply to my comment was, in fact, a straw man as you argued against a claim that I never made -- that somehow asking about the rights of the children, their age is irrelevant, as everyone is someone's child, of immigrants only related to the minor children of undocumented immigrants -- I made no such claim, except in the straw man you set up.
If you didn't want to answer that question, you were under no obligation to reply to me at all. Yet you chose to do so and argue against a claim I never made.
So it was you, not me who engaged in "refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction."[0]
[1] I suppose that my question could (as you apparently did) be considered a non-sequitur. Definitely not a straw man, as I didn't argue for or against anything. Rather,I asked for your beliefs/understanding of US law and the US Constitution.
Edit: Clarified the difference between a straw man and a non-sequitur -- in case GP's first language isn't English.
People who natively speak English do not assume "children" means "adult children." Obviously everyone is "someone's child."
Citizen children have rights, illegal immigrants have rights. Nobody's rights are being violated when parents who chose to illegally immigrate are deported.
Be angry somewhere else. Nobody was talking about your rights or rights at all.
>Citizen children have rights, illegal immigrants have rights.
Finally, progress! Thank you. Just to clarify, does that mean you believe that all citizens, regardless of whether they're born in the US, the children of US citizen(s), as well as those who are naturalized all have the same rights?
What about non-citizens present (leaving aside diplomats here) in the US? Do you believe that they are under the authority of the US Constitution, US code and the laws of the state/local area where they are?
If so, do the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments, as well as 8USC12[1] apply to those folks?
>Be angry somewhere else.
Who's angry? Not me. I wasn't angry before and I'm not angry now. What would give you that idea?
Or is that just more projection (straw man indeed!) from you?
>Nobody was talking about your rights or rights at all.
That's not really true. I was talking about my rights, as well as the rights of others.
If you don't wish to have this conversation, you're under no obligation to engage with me. I won't be insulted or "angry" either way. I'm sorry that my thought processes seem to get your hackles up. That certainly wasn't my intent.
The point of the Executive branch is to decide how to execute the law using limited resources. The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here. In the past, AGs used their discretion to target dangerous immigrants and low-hanging fruit.
The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
> The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here.
Sadly true. Traditionally most removals happen at the border where illegal aliens are easier to detect and where they can simply deny entry. Biden neglected to do that quite deliberately. He made speeches about it.
Trump did increase ICE’s budget though.
Anyway, https://www.dhs.gov/wow has twenty thousand examples of dangerous criminals who were insufficiently targeted by previous administrations if you’re interested.
> The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
This is the stated motive, sure, but the observed motive is different. Any time a “protester” sees what they think is an ICE operation their first actions are to try to save the people ICE is there to arrest. Yelling and blowing whistles to warn illegal aliens that ICE are present is just the start. Those Signal groups were training their members on how to surround officers and wrestle the arrestees away from them. They have no actual care at all for warrants; that’s merely an excuse for lawless behavior.
Why are ICE agents targeting Minneapolis? - the current estimate is 3,000 ICE agents that outnumber the Minneapolis-St. Paul police, sworn officers, 3-to-1 in a state with damn near the lowest actual numbers of actual undocumented immigrants.
Clearly this MN deployment is not about efficiency in rounding up criminal immigrants, it's a political power move designed to intimidate that has already been (unsuccessfully) used to leverage access to vote rolls, etc.
As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
On a related note, are you aware of the initial moves by both Stalin and Hitler before they each became infamous?
To quote a US historian:
In a constitutional regime, such as ours, the law applies everywhere and at all times. In a republic, such as ours, it applies to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for openings, for cracks to pry open.
One of these is the border. The country stops at the border. And so the law stops at the border. And so for the tyrant an obvious move is to extend the border so that is everywhere, to turn the whole country as a border area, where no rules apply.
Stalin did this with border zones and deportations in the 1930s that preceded the Great Terror. Hitler did it with immigration raids in 1938 that targeted undocumented Jews and forced them across the border.
> As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
Since you’re not an American, I’ll forgive you for forgetting that all matters of immigration are given to Congress, (that is, the Federal government) to regulate. This is not a matter of Federal overreach.
As for Hitler and Stalin, your comparisons are inapt. They were motivated by antisemitism, ie racism. While racism and antisemitism are, sadly, on the rise in the United States, that blight is concentrated in the universities and colleges where the faculty and students feel free to hold rallies where they chant about the destruction of all Jews in the world.
Say whatever else you want about Trump, but he is clearly motivated in opposition to this rise in racism. To imply otherwise is to admit your ignorance or political bias.
again, what the law says and what the ICE does is 2 very different things. Otherwise, explain how that law provides for random picking off the street dark skinned people, including citizens, that ICE has been doing.
Does murdering someone who is driving away from you prevent immediate harm to you? Uncontrolled moving vehicles with bricks on the accelerator are very dangerous.
Self–defence is extremely limited in scope. Basically, if someone is about to stab you, you can do anything necessary to prevent that stabbing. Self–defence doesn't include that after someone fails to stab you and runs away, you can shoot them while they are running away. It doesn't include revenge. If you shoot someone who fails to stab you and runs away, it is murder like any other shooting. Self–defence doesn't include shooting someone who invades your house and isn't currently trying to hurt you, that is castle doctrine.
You assume the consequent with your language; a dead person is not necessarily a "brick on the accelerator"; and human reaction time is a thing. Officers are expected to make decisions in the moment that are reasonable given the totality of circumstances up to that point, without the benefit of hindsight. The decision to shoot was clearly made before the SUV could at all be said to be "getting away"; if you're a trained LEO (or even just someone with a firearm and specific self-defense training) you are going to fire multiple shots.
Regardless of Good's intent (which is irrelevant to the self-defense case), at the moment the vehicle was put into drive, it was clearly pointed straight at the officer (after straightening out from the first point of the two-point turn) and only began turning later. And she was being counseled to "drive, baby, drive", which does not exactly suggest being careful. The fact that this posed a serious threat meeting the standard for self-defense is pretty easy to argue, especially given that he actually was struck by the vehicle.
The left front wheel of the SUV can be seen (in the video from behind) to spin in place for a moment on an icy road; it's unclear exactly what the officer perceived in that moment, but it could very easily be argued that the officer reasonably believed he could prevent the car from moving forward by shooting, and by the time it was moving forward it was too late. Again, human reaction time is a thing.
Cars move forward and backward. They do not move sideways. A car is not about to move sideways and crush you. If you kill a driver of a car to the side to prevent her from driving sideways into you, the technical legal term for you is an idiot, and you are guilty of murder.
Cars turn. No part of my argument relies on cars being able to move sideways. Ross was clearly in front of the vehicle as it began to move forward. Ross was demonstrably struck by the vehicle, with multiple pieces of corroborating evidence.
By virtue of the car continuing to turn during continuous burst fire. Human reaction time is a thing; officers (as well as responsible gun owners with self-defense training) are taught to fire multiple shots when shooting in self defense (and it actually weakens their legal argument if they don't).
> 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?
She was fully within her legal rights, as has been pointed out many times by US civil rights lawyers including those that have successfully defended MAGA people deplatformed during the past administration.
> any opposition is a crime of impeding and obstruction
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.
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.
> blocking half the low traffic road and intending for people to pass freely on the other half.
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.
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.
> The behaviour being impeded and obstructed is not criminal. It is, in fact, law enforcement.
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.
If you believe that, then the right process is for the legal system to deal with it. If you feel aggrieved by the legal system you should vote to change it. Nowhere in the social contract is it even remotely acceptable to act as a vigilante and respond with violence.
Following the social contract in the face of gross violation of the social contract is a foolish and immoral enablement of even larger violations.
When the other party to a contract violates the contract, you don't keep following your side of the contract. That is literally not how contracts work.
> Nowhere in the social contract is it even remotely acceptable to act as a vigilante and respond with violence.
That's not a truism, as evidenced by the word "revolution". If a law is unjust, one is perfectly justified to openly flaunt it and even be proud while doing so.
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
It would be absolutely trivial for the FBI to hash every single assigned phone number and check which one matches. Hashing only provides any anonymity if the source domain is too large to be enumerable.
You don't even need to think about how the hashing scheme and salt is set up. If Signal can check if a phone number matches the hash in any reasonable amount of time (which is the whole point of keeping a hash in the first place) then the FBI can just do that for all phone numbers with very realistic compute resources once they get Signal to cough up the details of the algorithm and magic numbers used.
If the Signal Messaging LLC is compromised, then "updates", e.g., spyware, can be remotely installed on every Signal user's computer, assuming every Signal user allows "automatic updates". I don't think Signal has a setting to turn off updates
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
They aren't allowed to tell you by law, and courts work with prosecution to keep implementation details away from the public, and investigators will engage in parallel construction to obfuscate the sources of evidence. That's just on the normal law enforcement side.
Once you get into the national security side, the secrecy is even higher.
"Carrying this speculation a step further, it is possible that the available tools have been compromised either in individual instances or en masse. Even where security products are open-source, adequate security evaluations are difficult to conduct initially and difficult to maintain as the products evolve. Typical users upgrade their software when upgrades or packages are offered, without even thinking of the possibility that they may have been targeted for a Trojan horse."
Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press: Cambridge, 2007), 372
You can't sign up without one, and it being an option means people who are in danger won't do it.
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.
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 <-----
If you are extra concerned, turn on disappearing messages. This is highly suggested for any group chats like the ones being discussed. You should also disable read receipts and typing indicators.
I would imagine that the issue that people have here isn't so much that you can hide from other users, but whether or not you can hide your information from the company behind Signal. I'd assume that if you can't hide from the company, then you can't hide from the US government. We know that you can extract messages from a compromised phone because they aren't encrypted at rest. Which I guess would mean that even if you have disappearing messages and similar, your messages could proably still be extracted from a group chat with a comprimised user in it.
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).
Signal's messages are encrypted at rest though? Because Android and iOS are both full disk encrypted.
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.
So just a point for people to be aware of, and that this isn't unique to Signal. Android and iOS can read your Signal messages under 1 of 2 conditions:
1) Toast notifications include messages
2) Keyboard
The first one is obvious as the OS has to see the message. So someone *with access to your phone* (already compromised) might be able to read messages (or at least partial) through this mechanism. Signal allows you to turn this off and if you're concerned, you should do so.
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.
Nitpick:
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.
This is HN, so don't write as if this was Twitter. We don't need to be shallow. I'm not AI, so I mean this with all due respect and not just because an AI won't say this: you can fuck off.
> When the phone is taken from you, you'll not be typing them in anyway.
Your phone can be compromised without it being taken from you. You're smart enough to be able to figure that out :)
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.
You will need to implement some very invasive issuing mechanism to ensure that only those with a pulse can procure new keys. Even then, keys will still be bought or stolen - as was the case with pre-Elon Twitter checkmarks.
In Europe some countries have ID cards which have a private key on it. If you report it stolen it goes into the revocation list and they issue a new ID card to you.
Keep in mind that with secure messaging, if the other side gets compromised, your chats with them are compromised. This seems obvious, but with signal groups of a large size, they're effectively public groups. Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.
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.
> Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.
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.
It doesn't mean much if it isn't the default, even then people who got it prior to that use phone numbers, you can protect yourself maybe, but not other people in the group. But it's good they're doing this now.
Not traitor, but compromised user. Given enough targets, one of them will have their device compromised. Of course the FBI has access to things more powerful than pegasus I'm sure (Just guessing).
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.
Bitmessage is/was awesome, but it fundamentally doesn't scale.
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.
Maybe they should investigate why the idiots in ICE tried to get into the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis and then threatened staff when they were denied access.
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.
> 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.
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.
I don't think that it's reasonable to see this behavior as anything but threatening given the location and the ample context provided by ICE's behavior up to this point.
> 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.
> “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.”
I think it's important to assess the quality of the comments - they aren't bringing facts, just stating opinions; doing so quickly and agreeing with each other. You can test this out - pick a few names on the comments that disagree, ctrl+f, and you'll quickly find one individual with 29 comments at the time of writing all over the thread; with a handful of others with 1-4 responses.
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.
In my comments, I add opinions after the facts. Nor have I been donwvoted to oblivion. IMO, the people who I reply to aren't really acquainted with the facts.
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..
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.
I don't live in the US and do agree that Trump is hectic at times. I don't really argue for ICE because of some emotional reason.
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.
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"
definitely seems to imply that 'doing something wrong' justifies any reaction up to and including being shot in the head or magdumped in the back?
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.
While I do agree that this was tragic sequence of events, then the whistle protesters, carrying a gun and then getting between an officer and the woman is what brought it to the current conclusion.
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..)
Protesting ICE while they work is constitutionally protected free speech.
You are saying that people should give up their most important rights simply to avoid inconveniencing the government. It is the grossest form of bootlicking I've ever seen.
It may just be that soon the protesters discover that you can simply go and hug a criminal as "protest" and then blame it on law enforcement should anything negative happen to them. I guess your interpretation would still be that it's "constitutionally protected free speech"? I beg to differ and also think the legalities of these situations will likely be hashed out soon enough.
With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible.
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised.
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.
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.
> Until that moment, the general sentiment about the government and the internet is that they are too incompetent to do anything about it
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 question the wisdom of that path though. Like yes the government can probably read a lot of your stuff easily, and all of it if they really want to. But why does that mean you have to live like a medieval hermit in a hut in the mountains?
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
Maybe he wanted that regardless (remote hut life), and this was just a final push for change. I can see myself, under different circumstances (no family) to enjoy such life and hardships (and simplicity) it brings, at least for some time.
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.
> Maybe he wanted that regardless (remote hut life), and this was just a final push for change
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”.
I can’t speak to his reasoning and he made no explanation as to why he chose that living choice path to me, but I just view it as another choice he made to disconnect. Circumstantially with the rest, it would not surprise me if it was related to his time with the government, but it could be unrelated in motive, but related in result.
That was not the sentiment, at least not in my experience. There was a far more pervasive and effective argument - if somebody believed that the government is spying on you in everything and everywhere then they're simply crazy, a weirdo, a conspiracy theorist. Think about something like the X-Files and the portrayal of the Lone Gunmen [1] hacking group. Three borderline nutso, socially incompetent, and weird unemployed guys living together and driving around in a scooby-doo van. That was more in line with the typical sentiment.
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.
The sentiment you're speaking of was definitely there, my response is more about how people felt about the government and, say, cybercrime.
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.
> 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.
Why are you asking here, versus going to Google and reading the original article from The Guardian? Or the numerous Wikipedia links that are on this page?
You can read about PRISM, Upstream, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, NSA Section 215 (PATRIOT Act) in a lot of places. But essentially they collected all call records and tapped the Internet backbone and stored as much traffic as they could. It’s not all automatic but it’s overly streamlined given the promises of court orders. Which were rubber stamped.
Again: which experts were saying what was impossible, which was then revealed to be possible by the Snowden documents?
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.
You know how it's considered a kind of low-effort disrespect to answer someone's question by pasting back a response from an LLM? I think equivalently if you ask a question where the best response is what you'd get from an LLM, then you're the one showing a disrespectful lack of effort. It's kind of the 2026 version of LMGTFY.
If you still want a copy-paste response to your question, just let me know – I'm happy to help!
They're not trying to use the data to act efficiently (or in the public good for that matter), and they sure as fuck don't want you to see it. They're trying to make sure that they have dirt on anyone who becomes their enemy in the future.
I've often said we're recreating Brazil [1] instead of 1984. It's an excellent film if you haven't seen it btw, and in many ways rather more prophetic and insightful than 1984. But the ending emphasizes that incompetence just leads to a comedy of absurdity, but absurdity is no less dangerous.
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]
> I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
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.
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.
Would be nice if we had some form of statistics in a way that wouldnt endanger any of the intel that just tells the general public "we dont just sit here collecting PB of data daily"
Any statistics that didn't endanger the intel would also be unverifiable and easily falsified, and therefore not particularly trustworthy for the proposed purpose.
I honestly tempt fate for fun to see how good police surveillance tech is the last few years.
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.
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.
> ... I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
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.
- 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.
It sure would be convenient if they were always ineffective. Sadly there have been periods in history where governments have set themselves to brutality with incredible effectiveness.
Hitlers security group that transformed a small section of the SS into brutal killing machines happened rather fast and that is what people are talking about when they are digging up the Totenkopf wearing brown shirts. These never existed in the United States of America and never will. Not even the modern day skin-head neo-nazi's or the neo-nazi militias could be compared. They would have been extinguished by the SS nearly instantly for daring to wear the insignia.
The brownshirts were actually the SA, a police force Hitler originally used for years to brutalize people before the formation of the SS. The SA are very similar to modern day ICE being made up of militant supporters (like proud boys, J6’ers pardoned) who are willing to commit violence without provocation or any fear of being prosecuted for their violence.
The SA was eventually hung out to dry, because Hitler feared Ernst Röhm had too much power (among other reasons)— by executing SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives (die Nacht der langen Messer)…
To say the violence of the SS was quick to be extreme really forgets the ten plus year road they took to get there. I’d really suggest, as disheartening and sad as it is, to read about all this yourself. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the US right now are astonishing. It’s almost as if someone in the White House is using history as a playbook.
Which sort of goes full circle since Hitler took a lot from how brutal and racist the US towards slaves and non-whites.
It's noteworthy at this point in time that there is a contradiction. The government is currently ramping up Palantir and they are using "precise targeting" of illegal aliens using "advanced data/algorithms". And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
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.)
I 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).
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.
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.
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.
> we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
Generally speaking, that is a tactic of oppression, creating a general sense of fear for everyone. Anyone can be arrested or shot.
> And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
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.
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.)
How does Palantir defeat Signal's crypto? I suppose it could be done by pwning everybody's phones, but Palantir mostly does surveillance AFAIK, I haven't heard of them getting into the phone hacking business. I think Israeli corps have that market covered.
My guess is that Signal has been compromised by the state for a very long time. The dead canary is their steadfast refusal to update their privacy policy which opens with "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." even though they started keeping user's name, phone number, photo, and a list of their contacts permanently in the cloud years ago. Even more recently they started keeping message content itself in the cloud in some cases and have still refused to update their policy.
I can easily think of reasons why an intelligence agency might not want to act immediately against members of a group they're interested in, simply because they've managed to identify those members.
I'm sure that people who actually work in intelligence agencies could think of more reasons.
I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest or do anything terribly interesting, but at this point I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid publicly criticizing this administration. Palantir is weird and creepy and has infinite resources to aggregate anything that the government wants, and they could be building a registry of people who they're going to deem as "terrorist-leaning" or some such nonsense.
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.
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.
I'm sorry, that sucks, it's a bad situation to be in :(
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 don’t really disagree in principle, as I said I do try and donate to organizations that help with these things (e.g. ACLU, EFF).
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.
While we’re getting rid of the first amendment maybe we should also get rid of the fourth and fifth amendment too since they make law enforcement harder? I’m sure cops in North Korea have a much easier and safer job.
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.
Government employee names are public information. What it sounds like is you want to keep that information secret, and maintain a literal secret police.
It is not surprising that people don't agree with you.
Government accountability in the face of a violent secret police being imposed upon communities and murdering innocent people.
Honestly answer: what is the purpose of literally every government publishing lists of their employees' names, where they work and how much they make, which includes police and teachers of small children?
And your answer is quite disengenuous and intellectually dishonest. They want to obstruct the law and dox ICE officers to bully them and their families. That much is very obvious. There is nothing secret about ICE lol, and nothing innocent about impeding law enforcement (not that they deserved to be shot).
Don't ask questions if you don't like the answers lol
> There is nothing secret about ICE lol
Then who are they? I can give you a list of every cop in my municipality, county and state, their names, where they work, where they live, exactly how much money they make, their benefits and so on.
Anyway, honestly answer:
> > Honestly answer: what is the purpose of literally every government publishing lists of their employees' names, where they work and how much they make, which includes police and teachers of small children?
There are protesters that are obstructing law enforcement. It is undeniable that such protestor exist and this HN thread is about going after those people.
The thread is about going after people on Signal who are tracking officer locations. There are entirely legitimate reasons to want that information including exercising your first amendment rights at that location.
And there are illegitimate reasons too like going there to obstruct law enforcement operations. Since there are people obstructing law enforcement, the mechanisms that which such groups of people operate need to be investigated.
That’s not the standard. It doesn’t matter whether there could be illegitimate reasons. There could also be illegitimate reasons for using Google Maps. It’s still allowed.
What matters is the intent of the people publishing the information, which the government will need to prove was illegal.
Yes, it is horrible for people to break the law. Glorifying it for protesting purposes is destructive to a civilized society and downgrades us to a third world country.
I see the problem here. So, actually, the ones in masks who are randomly assaulting (sometimes murdering) nonviolent bystanders are ICE, not the protestors. Hope that helps.
I am talking about protestors who obstruct law enforcement and their operations. Protestors who threaten regular people and law enforcement. Protestors who damage other people's property. Protestors who violate noiseordnance. Protestors who are trespassing.
I am not referring to actual bystanders. Implying that I am is purposefully being ignorant of what I am talking about.
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.
I’m reminded of (I think) people in Shanghai complaining that their posts about covid lockdowns were censored, saying “we have free speech”. And if you believe in universal rights, they’re right. They do.
The question is whether the government will respect and protect those rights or not.
Seems like citizens are the ones who need protection from law and immigration enforcement, considering the public executions we've all witnessed in the past week or so.
If ICE agents were actually in danger or subject to "vigilante justice", the administration would be CROWING about it SO LOUDLY we'd never hear the end of it. They're spending their entire working days searching for evidence of it. They can't hardly wait!
The comment was trying to replicate the same feelings as “people of color” but in regards to a lifestyle choice instead of an immutable characteristic, hence my flabbergasted statement at the audacity
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.
I'm pretty sure that if people are taking up arms to resist their government, things have already gone far enough down that path that they feel their lives are in jeopardy.
> Just this week there were Catholic PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist ICE in Minneapolis
Episcopal (the US branch of the Anglican Communion), not Catholic, and it wasn't conditioned on going to Minneapolis, it was a statement about the broad situation of the country and the times we are in and what was necessary for them, with events in Minneapolis as a signifier, but not a geographically isolated, contained condition.
Everything seems fueled by social media radicalisation, and the social media side of things is very much 'gameified', all about scoring likes/upvotes/followers (and earning real revenue) for pushing escalating outrage.
A vehicle can be just as deadly as a firearm. And vehicles had previously been used aggressively by the protestors.
There were claims (no idea if true) that the agent who fired the fatal shots had been dragged down the road and injured in a previous vehicle-based altercation.
If him being previously injured affected his mental state such that he needed to kill someone who was not presenting an immediate threat to life, he should not have been on duty.
Well… she accelerated in drive with a federal agent in front of the vehicle, while ignoring other federal agents to stop and get out of the vehicle, he THEN drew his gun from the holster, she the hit him with that car.
Her mental state was clearly not peaceful or rational - while armed. If she had made better decisions she would be alive.
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.
>nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun.
The Chechens in the first Chechen war more or less did so by starting with guns and working up the chain via captured weapons. Eventually gaining complete independence for a number of years, against a nuclear power.
I think that it's fair to say that the military power Russia had in the 90s was very different from what the US has today. Even back then, as you say, the war still wasn't won with rifles and handguns. That isn't to say that what the Chechens accomplished wasn't impressive though.
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.
The source is from one of the preeminent scholars of the indigenous history of North America. Get the book if you don't like the website it was published at.
> In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms"...
This was posited as the nice sounding reason for the second amendment, when the more accurate reason was to ensure citizens had guns to drive out the indigenous peoples and steal their lands.
We rather quickly saw the federal government rolling over the people even with weapons in the Whiskey Rebellion.
But it's still very funny seeing the Right wrestle with "wait, the other team has guns?!" and "wait, Trump sounds like he wants gun control?!" right now when this claim has been the basis of their argument for decades.
In 46, Madison was discussing foreign danger in response to Hamilton in 29. but... thx for providing a citation. That's a much better response to downvoting.
> This essay examines the relative strength of the state and federal governments under the proposed United States Constitution. It is titled "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared"… he describes at length in this paper a series of hypothetical conflicts between state and federal government. Madison does not expect or hope the constitution to lead to the kind of conflict between state and federal authority described here. Rather, he seeks to rebut the arguments that he anticipates from opponents of the constitution by asserting that their "chimerical" predictions of the federal government crushing state governments are unfounded
Meh. Palintir is optimized to sell data to the government. Said governments usually don't care about the quality of data about any one individual. Wear sunglasses when you go out and stay off facebook and it's amazing how little palintir signal you send up. Bonus points if you created an LLC to pay your utility bills. But... Palintir is not as good as you seem to be implying.
>With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced
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
You don't need sophisticated tech to cause damage, you just need access to data. Palantir is dangerous not because it has some amazing technology that no one else has, it's that they aggregate many data sources of what would be considered private data and expose it with malicious intent (c.f. any interview with the Palantir CEO). Reading my email doesn't require amazing programming, it just requires access.
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.
Why would they be the ones cutting deals to gain access to data? The Party is cutting those deals and has been for ages. Deals like these:
> 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.
Palantir is not the only threat, Paragon is equally nasty. Any company with a mission to enable fascism or supremacism is a problem. Palantir is very open about what they strive to do. I have no doubt their tech is mediocre, but their motive is as malicious as it gets.
Of course they're threats. In the exact same way that companies such as AWS/Amazon and Meta, their motive isn't any different. If you think Bezos and Zuckerberg are even a sliver more ethical than Palantir execs I've got some bad news for you.
It's not illegal to track law enforcement, but if any of their still visible chats show intent it will hurt them. They'll also want to find out how many people in the group chat are outside of the US, if any money was being exchanged, etc.
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
> because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against.
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
If you're talking about the Trump administration, they're surrounded by lawyers and constantly battling things up to supreme court decisions, which is not what lawless looks like. ICE is also enforcing existing laws that simply haven't been enforced in recent years. Whatever you think about those laws, they are the laws. Many people agree those laws need to be reformed, but elect people who are willing to change the laws. Unfortunately congress has trouble passing laws around some of these more controversial issues, so it'll probably stay this way for many more decades.
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?
The people voted for mass deportation of the tens of millions of illegals that were let into the country and lawlessly given "sanctuary." The federal government is attempting to enforce the laws on the books, laws that were voted into statute by the democratically elected representatives of the people. No one is going to be murdered in cold blood on the street simply for leaving the house, but they could be if they brandish a weapon while seeking out officers and attempting to prevent them from enforcing the law.
So 2nd amendment yeah? I have a license to concealed carry in PA. You are saying I should be murdered in cold blood on the street? Again, this is PRECISELY what the bill of rights and our constitution is all about. Have you read Common Sense? Please try to get through it. It explains many things but chief among them is that the government exists only to ensure the maximum freedom of the people from fear. "Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid". That is what America is all about. If someone comes into my city to evict violent illegals, yes, I voted for that, and would again. If someone comes in to my city to a) Evict legal immigrants of color, b) Take children away from parents c) Murder good citizens in cold blood, e) Punish political enemies, or f) attack, beat, and tear gas nonviolent protesters? Well as an actual American who believes in and understands the US Constitution, I will be right there, next to those protesters, and looking to abolish and defund whatever godless and ethic-free agency is purporting to carry out the will of the People.
An American VA Hospital ICU Nurse was disarmed and executed. Which crime is it OK to be chemically and physically assaulted before being disarmed and shot dead?
As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest. He had a gun on him, which is not in itself a problem, but he had already broken the law 3 times by this point and the fact he had a gun on him instantly escalates the potential threat. They don't know if he has multiple guns on him or just the one. Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.
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.
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?
Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.
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.
> Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.
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's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that. Saying it doesn't make it true. Even if your honest perspective is that this is the case from the camera angles you've seen, that isn't necessarily what the officers see. What the officers see matters in cases like this. They can only make decisions based on the information they have.
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.
> It's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that.
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?
> So where do you see the potential threatening behavior?
If you are laying hands on officers, leaning your weight against them, not obeying their commands, asking them to assault you (verbally, potentially), resisting arrest and struggling on the ground, that string of behavior should concern anyone. Imagine you AREN'T a police officer and someone is behaving that way to you. Of course you'll be on guard more than if it was just someone walking down the sidewalk with their bag of groceries.
Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat. As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for. When someone is that uncooperative, it is very reasonable to throw away assumptions that they aren't a threat to you.
Whether what the officers experienced justifies escalating to lethal force I don't know, but that is what they'll have to find out.
> 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.
So, if an officer hasn't been shot in the head first, they shouldn't react? Guns can come out quick and kill a person almost instantly. There's very little time to react. That is why officers request people to listen to what they say and respond reasonably so you don't put them in a situation where they miscalculate your threat level. This is true even if you're not dealing with an officer. Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them. You don't have to like that, but if you ever do need to defend yourself, you would be glad the laws are like that. Otherwise people who defend themselves end up becoming a victim twice where they survive an attack and then end up in prison just for legitimately defending themselves.
> So you have no issues with the initial statements by Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Stephen Miller?
I don't really know what any of those people were saying, but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims. If you want to be better, then don't try to be better by becoming the very people you disagree with.
> Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat.
If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.
> As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for.
He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!
> Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them.
How can you be a posing an imminent threat if you're not behaving in a threating way? At no point did Alex actually try to attack an agent or make any verbal threats against their life.
> I don't really know what any of those people were saying
Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.
> but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims.
If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.
> If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.
It's not clear from the videos that they have full control of all of his limbs and it seems more like he's keeping his arms tightly tucked in to resist which leaves some range of motion. The moment that he first gets shot, he's not laying flat against the ground under full control of the agents.
You have way more confidence about the amount of control they have of him than the officers seemed to. There are videos of him being highly uncooperative and violent. In the video of the killing, he's also clearly being uncooperative. It would logically follow based on his past behavior and also the way the officers feel they need to react that he's continuing to be uncooperative on the ground.
> He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!
You're assuming 2 things here which an officer should know they cannot assume.
1. That he's fixated. You have high confidence of this, but even watching the video frame by frame this is not fully clear. You are leaping to a conclusion that it does not seem like the video evidence can guarantee.
2. That's the only gun or weapon he has on him. He could have a gun holstered under his jacket too, which would be within reach. After all, supposedly he reached for his phone, so that is a non-fixated range of motion and they could have believed it to be a gun, reasonably.
> Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.
I mean, I don't follow this case. I don't even know who Stephen Miller is. What I do know is there are videos and I have seen the videos along with the things people are claiming are obvious based on the videos alone. I also know that even if public statements are made, those are not law and are generally not guaranteed facts of any sort. That's what court cases try to sort out. If public officials are saying things which turn out to be false, why would that surprise anyone? It doesn't mean they lied, but they are suffering from the same kinds of nonsense that a lot of people in these comments are, where they make assumptions that are not always supported by the evidence. When society gets stupid, courts are even more essential.
> If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.
This is true. You are correct. I do not support spreading lies or disinformation or just jumping to statements which have a decent chance of being inaccurate or misinterpreted. They might have said something which has some support, but which is more political language than accurate legal language just like people are invoking the word murder oblivious to its meaning.
So yes if you become a public official, ideally you don't lie unless it's for some kind of essential national strategy, because public trust has value. Not sure what else you want to know about it.
At the very same time, just because you are not a public official does not mean you should say anything you want and make any claims you want about videos. It doesn't matter what everyone else is saying. A lot of people are talking with their hearts, which is nice and we need heart, but hearts are dumb. That's not controversial.
Most of us are contributing to public trust or deteriorating public trust by some measure in daily life and in every comment we write. Do you think your statements within the past week would make people have trust in their society, or would you say in reflection that your statements erode trust in society?
There are forces at work both from outside our country and within our country that are absolutely encouraging the reduction in trust. They will amplify any opportunity they can find to do so. There's a non-zero chance that Alex was an unwitting participant in that. You don't have to make the mistake by taking the same bait.
Officers aren't perfect and mistakes were probably made. You don't have to be a Harvard professor to know the video looks bad. That's not the point. Even if it looks bad, a lot of the claims people make about what happened and about what the video shows are not supported by what the video shows. Simple.
> The moment that he first gets shot, he's not laying flat against the ground under full control of the agents.
Well, they certainly felt they were under control, otherwise the four other agents wouldn't just stand around and watch.
The problem is that they send badly trained agents with guns to patrol cities where they meet people who are (rightfully) angry at what ICE is doing. That's a recipe for desaster.
It's no secret that ICE has significantly lowered the barrier to entry and shortened the training duration. In fact, there are reports of agents being deployed before they completed their training. Apparently, they don't do proper background checks either since some agents have been found to have a criminal record. Finally, ICE is intentionally recruiting in rightwing circles, using white nationalist language.
> I don't even know who Stephen Miller is.
I have a hard time believing this. How is this even possible for anyone with even a passing interest in US politics? If that is really true, that's quite an embarrassing admission.
> that's what court cases try to sort out.
Who says the case will go to court? What if they just close the investigation?
> They might have said something which has some support, but which is more political language than accurate legal language
Why speak in the subjunctive? Why don't you look up what they said? How can you assess the credibility of an agency when you don't seem to know much about it?
> or would you say in reflection that your statements erode trust in society?
I see no reason for saying that. But if there's someone who is eroding trust then it's the Trump administration with their egregrious lies, their contempt for the rule of law and their staggering corruption.
> The problem is that they send badly trained agents with guns to patrol cities where they meet people who are (rightfully) angry at what ICE is doing. That's a recipe for desaster.
I think ICE is trained to do the job that they're trained to do, but I don't expect riot control and protest management is part of that standard job training. That is part of why it is so dangerous and stupid for local government to prevent the local law enforcement that does have that training from helping keep these environments safe.
The local policies are getting people killed. The local posture of hostility and delegitimization of ICE creates a dangerous environment and it is divorced from reality.
> I have a hard time believing this. How is this even possible for anyone with even a passing interest in US politics? If that is really true, that's quite an embarrassing admission.
I don't know that I'd say it's embarrassing. Don't really know who he is and I expect most people don't know who he is, because I consume far more information than most people. It's also not as critical, because people are making claims about what the videos show that are not supported by the videos themselves. As far as I know, Stephen Miller was not present during any of these events. He wasn't shot. He wasn't shooting. He wasn't protesting. He wasn't in these videos. Forcing some kind of arbitrary need to know other people to delegitimize thoughts seems very much like an emotional argument especially since no strong reasoning has been provided for why knowing him is critically relevant for making an observation within the videos.
> Who says the case will go to court? What if they just close the investigation?
It's complicated, because there has been evidence of Minneapolis court corruption. In the Renee Good case I think the FBI and the state of Minnesota were going to work together in that situation and that's how it would have worked, but the local corruption was too hard to swallow and they backed out. You cannot have an impartial investigation in the place that handled the disastrously corrupt case around George Floyd.
It looks like they're going to do something similar here even though I think people said this was CBP rather than ICE. Here again the FBI was already involved, but they're now taking the lead on it in cooperation with the DOJ: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-pretti-shooting-fbi-invest...
> Why speak in the subjunctive? Why don't you look up what they said? How can you assess the credibility of an agency when you don't seem to know much about it?
I have no idea what a subjunctive is. It doesn't help when you try to misdirecting attention to some random guy who wasn't there and various public statements. None of it matters. If people make a claim about a video that isn't supported by the video, they have to provide other evidence that does support their claim. People here were just making absolute statements about what the video definitely shows as if the video by itself is the entire proof of their claim. All I'm saying is that they're incorrect. It will be true 100 years from now, because information has limits.
> I see no reason for saying that. But if there's someone who is eroding trust then it's the Trump administration with their egregrious lies, their contempt for the rule of law and their staggering corruption.
You could make a fair argument that he is employing a strategy that makes it easy for activists and politicians to attack him which stokes anger. A lot of what he does is rhetorical devices and monument building to achieve deals. It wouldn't be so messy if he limited dealmaking to regular deals, but he makes everything a deal. Even Trump himself is a deal, so he builds himself up as a monument the same way he does every other thing.
He believes monumental deals are easier to get people to pay attention to and get investment in, so they are in many ways easier to do than small deals. He inflates everything to get things done, whether that's walls or greenland deals. The problem is, it actually works. He's not always right and his strategy doesn't always pay off, but it pays off often enough that there's no reason for him to stop.
Some people go into a maniacal moral panic over it and emotion oriented news and comedy media abuses it, which ends up actually looking way more dishonest than they even paint Trump. These terrible late night shows and opinion news networks are so lost in their bubbles that they are far worse for the country than Trump could ever be. You could argue that it's Trump's fault that these shows got so bad, but in a way I've always gotten used to politicians being wrong or flexible with their words, but I still had the expectation that the news would be straight with me about what events were occurring on a day. That illusion was destroyed.
I don't have to like Trump or align with his morals to appreciate that many of the things this administration is getting done are basic fundamental national interests that a lot of the normal establishment politicians have been trying to achieve for decades without luck. He's unconventional, but the threats we face have gotten so large that we no longer have the luxury of doing things slowly.
> I think ICE is trained to do the job that they're trained to do
The number of ICE agents has more than doubled in one year (from 10,000 to 22,000). These new agents have not received proper training and many have been recruited from problematic backgrounds.
> but I don't expect riot control and protest management is part of that standard job training.
Well, because they are not meant to be patrolling US cities in the first place. Currently, there are 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis alone. That is 5 times more people than Minneapolis own police roce! 13% of all ICE agents are currently deployed in a city that makes up 0.15% of the US population. The purpose is very clearly to terrorize a democratic city that resists ICE unlawful and inhumane practices.
> In the Renee Good case I think the FBI and the state of Minnesota were going to work together in that situation and that's how it would have worked, but the local corruption was too hard to swallow and they backed out.
That's certainly not what happened. Stop kidding yourself.
> Don't really know who he is and I expect most people don't know who he is, because I consume far more information than most people.
If that is true, you're willfully uninformed. How can you even make any qualified statements about the Trump administration without knowing one of its most influential people? How can you assess the credibility of the DHS without knowing the (very prominent) people who are in charge?
> which ends up actually looking way more dishonest than they even paint Trump.
Don't worry, the Trump administration is doing all the heavy lifting here. We've reached a point where reality has surpassed the wildest satire. We can listen to Trumps speeches over here in Europe. We see what the administration is doing. There are no excuses!
Your seemingly levelheaded words are just thinly veiled complicity with the MAGA movement. In your last paragraph you really let the mask slip.
> The number of ICE agents has more than doubled in one year (from 10,000 to 22,000). These new agents have not received proper training and many have been recruited from problematic backgrounds.
I don't know if their training is sufficient or not for the job they're actually tasked with, but it seems to not be resulting in dead people in every other city.
> Currently, there are 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis alone. That is 5 times more people than Minneapolis own police roce! 13% of all ICE agents are currently deployed in a city that makes up 0.15% of the US population. The purpose is very clearly to terrorize a democratic city that resists ICE unlawful and inhumane practices.
Well, if the local police don't assist, you're going to end up with more ICE than other cities since some of them have to try to do the job of the police too. Sanctuary cities may also have a higher proportion of the people ICE is going after, so it would logically follow that more ICE resources may be needed there which could inflate the numbers twice.
> That's certainly not what happened. Stop kidding yourself.
Well, I did look into the George Floyd case. It was not a fair trial. If you care about fair trials, and you do like the word embarrassment, that trial was an embarrassment to all US courts. These Minneapolis protester deaths are the closest things we've seen since then as far as I know in terms of them being promoted in the public for manufacturing outrage for political gain. It's like activist organizations know Minneapolis is a particularly good place to farm this so they push harder there. It was so easy for them to incite riots and city burning, that's the kind of imagery you like to get pushed national if you're a resistance movement.
> If that is true, you're willfully uninformed. How can you even make any qualified statements about the Trump administration without knowing one of its most influential people?
I probably know of them, but not by name then if they're that influential. You're still missing the point that they aren't relevant here. Whoever they are and whatever DHS does, there are laws that exist that apply. There are officers and protesters in a video. An event took place. You don't need to know the current temperature on Mars in order to estimate whether a claim about the event is supported solely by the video evidence. You know this, because you're pushing back against people making claims about what's in the videos too. You're getting lost in the weeds here.
It's like saying, "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you know the video is proof it was murder!" or "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you can tell the officers had him fully and confidently restrained!". It is not logically supportable.
> How can you assess the credibility of the DHS without knowing the (very prominent) people who are in charge?
The George Floyd case was so bad, that what I'm saying is no matter what you think of DHS, they can surely do a better job than that. It's one of the worst cases of the execution of justice I can recall in my lifetime. Courts do sometimes get things wrong, but that was another level.
At the same time, I can understand the concern that if these protesters are fervently and emotionally anti-Trump then get killed by DHS, serious activists may feel uncomfortable that DHS is part of the executive branch which Trump has legal authority over. There have also been lies spread about complete legal immunity of Trump and him being a king which aren't reality, but if it contributes to distrust in the executive branch handling the case that's probably a legitimate issue of public trust. That element existed somewhat in the George Floyd case, because the local police department was part of the executive branch and people didn't trust the police, so the judicial branch took it. That is fine, except for how the courts handled it.
Either way, DOJ is involved with the case now.
> Don't worry, the Trump administration is doing all the heavy lifting here. We've reached a point where reality has surpassed the wildest satire. We can listen to Trumps speeches over here in Europe. We see what the administration is doing. There are no excuses!
Being European doesn't mean you can't have an opinion and it's not unique to you alone that you don't understand Trump, because most people don't understand Trump. I highly doubt you see what the administration is doing, because it's very rare.
There's the law, there's what they say, there's the action, there's the goal, there's what was achieved and then there's what achieving that actually produces as an effect. Most of what is occurring aligns with vanilla strategic national interests of the US that goes back many administrations. Maybe the surface level optics and culture are different, but make no mistake that this is just the US being the US.
In short, if you think it's not about China, its probably about China. If you think it's about Greenland, it's about China. If you think it's about ending NATO, it's about China. If you think it's about immigration, it's about China.
If you don't know what China has been doing and why they've been doing it. If you don't know the things Xi Jinping has been saying. If you don't know what China has been doing in the South China Sea, or in propping up dictatorships, etc. I highly recommend, whatever your political feelings are, you dig deep and spend a couple thousand hours just consuming information about China and the history of communism.
Almost everything we're doing in the US and around the world right now can be explained from that concern as an organizing principle. Trump is just an instrument of that.
You're one of the rare people who understands Trump? (Yet you don't know who Stephen Miller his?) Give me a break! Your whitewashing of the Trump administration is mindboggling.
Stop pretending ICE and the whole administration is acting lawfully. Their disregard and contempt for the law is all too obvious. ICE is patrolling cities, breaking into homes without warrants, kidnapping people without due process and throwing them into internment camps with horrible inhumane conditions. People are rightfully angry for being terrorized.
I did not mention Stephen Miller because he is relevant for the shooting, but for the assessment of the DHS as a whole. If you have actual confidence in the DHS to lead an independent investigation of its own agents, considering the people in charge, you must be very naive.
Your country has taken a sudden and deep authoritarian turn and is right on its way into fascism. We've seen this in our own countries 90-100 years ago, it looks and sounds all too familiar. The past few months have already shown that the democratic system is in fact very fragile and can fall apart faster than people would have thought. Better wake up until it's too late!
Set a reminder for yourself in 20 years to think back on these times. Not all of your thoughts about these times will be correct, because almost nobody is 100% correct about all of the things all of the time. Recall how sure the media was about this and that, but it never panned out. It will be illuminating.
Thanks, but luckily I can recognize authoritarianism and facism when they're happening. No need to wait 20 years. We're seeing similar tendencies all over Europe and your fucking government is supporting them.
Fascism isn't possible here without stealing control of education and other institutions in a bunch of states, but what Trump has been doing is increasing education freedom. A similar argument is made with socialism and communism. "Socialism is not communism!", but you can get to communism through socialism. It's just that, in the US to do that you have to control education and other institutions in numerous states simultaneously. Marxists did try that and it's why we've had the culture war here, but we've been pushing back.
Fascists and communists also like to control language. It was Marxist movements trying to control language here and cancelling people, with widespread pressure campaigns to divide communities. Trump's unfiltered rhetoric drove them crazy and created space in the public sphere for people to speak their mind even if it wasn't politically correct. So Trump has also helped freedom of speech.
There are several other issues like that which are being addressed. It's not that everyone thinks Trump is a beacon of morality and sanity, it's just that he's getting things done that are legitimately helping address the country's challenges at the moment in time we're in.
Putting pressure on Venezuela and Iran with CIA, Mossad and the military has probably significantly delayed China's move on Taiwan. It may have even contributed to Xi Jinping's timing in arresting the last of his military high command which is unprecedented.
We'll be ok here in the US and our behavior today is in line with some pretty traditional national strategy. We were in luxury mode for too long, so part of what is happening is we're playing catch-up, which tends to involve some rudeness and chaos.
The Sig P320 that an agent took off of him went off while it was in a federal cop's hand. This is the same Sig P320 that the US Army rejected and was mass recalled for going off on its own.
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.
BS! You can clearly see/hear on the videos that the agent fires the first shot. You've claimed that Alex' weapon went off as if this was a fact. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Otherwise the DHS would have included it in their report.
The very start of the incident is an officer chasing a woman, she slips and falls, the officer chasing her catches up and then Pretti pushes the officer away.
That's almost certainly not the start. It's very common to not show what you did to agitate the officers and to only record after they come after you. If there are longer videos I haven't seen them, but its a very common tactic to cut out critical context to maximize emotional reaction on social media.
So I checked it out, but it's not really relevant. These activists appear to have followed the federal law enforcement. That highly suggests they knew exactly who they were. The officers didn't show up unannounced to the front door of someone who happened to be an activist. No reasonable court is likely to determine that they were unaware who they were dealing with.
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.
You probably linked the wrong video, because the video you linked is not relevant.
> 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.
Thanks for grabbing the correct link. So I checked it and here are my thoughts.
- 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.
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.
They don't necessarily know that's the only gun he had and the officers aren't Neo, seeing every camera angle at once. What you see from your outside perspective is not what they see. They have to act based on the information they have, which is why it's important you listen to law enforcement for your own safety. All the whistles make that harder, which might be part of the point.
Again: he was on the ground, with his eyes sprayed with mace, and he was, at least until seconds before he was shot, physically restrained. It doesn't matter if he could potentially have had another gun. They aren't Neo but there were six of them surrounding him, and the one who shot him only took eyes off to mace another protestor.
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?
In the case of George Floyd, that was local police. In this scenario, these are federal law enforcement officers so it probably is correct for this case to be handled federally as far as I know.
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.
Good lord. There's no helping you if you cannot see with your eyes, my friend. I'd have to be blind to not see this poor man trying to defend a woman, then tackled, beaten, disarmed, shot dead in the back and head with 10 bullets.
I've seen enough of these kinds of situations to know it's easy to trick people into seeing what you guide them to see. It's like lying with statistical charts, but more insidious.
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.
Your eyes matter. Videos matter. It's just, they aren't the only things you should factor in. Why have ears, if sight alone is enough? Why have touch, if sight alone is enough?
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.
Dude. My dude. Seven different angles. There's no mistaking what happened. You would trust the judgment of someone else when there's that much contrary evidence to what they are claiming? Do you not make your own judgments in your life?
7 different video angles or 7000 different video angles doesn't really change this. What will matter is the testimony of the people combined with the evidence that exists. They'll have to go over the full timeline of events with radio chatter, officer testimony, testimony of activists, make assessments of who are being the most credible and objective observers, look into these claims about a gun misfiring and so on.
There is no version of this where nobody made mistakes and mistakes don't mean someone should have to die, but laws exist for a reason and you don't know what each person was experiencing simply after watching a video.
Video evidence does not generally have infinite credibility in court, because it is often a limited perspective on the reality of what happened. The cameras can only catch sound waves and photons, but almost the majority of everything important that occurred is invisible. If the audio had much value, all the whistles ruined some of that. It may even turn out that the whistles contributed to this death, because it weakened officer communication. Maybe there could be a justification for involuntary manslaughter by people blowing whistles if they were blowing them precisely with intentions like that. I don't know.
We just don't know and claiming these videos show everything you will ever need to know is simply logically false.
Your response strains credulity and suggests complicity. If you tell me an investigation is necessary to prove he is a criminal, perhaps that makes sense. But here you are saying an investigation is needed to prove he should not have been murdered in cold blood. That's bloody nuts. Investigations matter, but there's a point where the burden of proof switches sides. In this case, there would need to be incontrovertible evidence that this man was secretly building a bomb, and even that does not justify execution on the street. Do you understand how this country works, or are you a foreigner? Perhaps where you live, one is not innocent until proven guilty. That might explain your inability to come to judgments, you believe the man murdered must prove he was not a terrorist.
I think you're confused. Someone died. They contributed to their own death with their actions as did many other factors. It was an unnecessary death that could have been avoided. The officers might have made mistakes as well.
You weren't in Alex's head. You weren't in the officer's head. All you know is what you think you know, but aren't even sure you can know it. That is what investigation is for.
You keep using words like murder despite there not being sufficient evidence for that.
Alex broke many federal laws, spit at officers, laid hands on them, attacked their vehicles and broke their tail lights while they were in the vehicles and so on.
I do not know what kind of person Alex was when he was being civil in his own life, but in his most public representation he has shown himself to be an unhinged criminal. Maybe he thought his criminal behavior was justified, but that is a separate matter. It also doesn't mean he deserved to die.
Acting that way though, makes it a lot easier to make the case that officers believed he was a credible threat to their lives in a court case. It doesn't even only have to be valid in court, it could have legitimately been true in that recorded moment that in all of the chaos and with this guy's crazy behavior, they really believed he might have had another weapon and would have used it.
Don't get manipulated into using words like complicit to try to divide the country.
Ahh, now it's clear. He was a boy scout and a choir boy and an ER nurse. A truly good person. But somehow he was an "unhinged criminal" trying to protect a woman. According to who? ICE? Kristi Noem? Liars and fascists, my friend. Take a look in the mirror and then read "Common Sense" to educate yourself about why this country was founded, and what it means to be an American, because you seem lost.
Civil disobedience exists and does not deserve a death sentence.
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.
From a sort of naive perspective it doesn't matter whether it's police or not. If you kill someone illegally, you should be held accountable for it. In many cases, whether it's illegal depends on how reasonable it was to do so. This is where it being law enforcement starts to matter even more.
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.
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.
That's not how the law works. In a case like this, all the events that led up to the moment he was killed are relevant as per the supreme court. They'll have to investigate both the officer and the activist and see how the law applies to it.
This wasn't civil disobedience. It was stalking law enforcement and then aggressively interfering. Not a capital crime, but still a recipe fir suicide by cop.
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.
What you are basically saying is that justice is unjust and vigilantes are the solution, because the legal system operates under the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty.
You don't want to live in a world where you are guilty until proven innocent, because you might like it when you're the one wagging the finger, but you'll be crying for the old ways once it's turned on you.
You're not arguing in good faith, which is clear from your other replies, but I'm not saying vigilantes are the solution, just that compassion is not a weapon.
But also, just within your moral framework, I think it's really important to understand that the systems of justice have been compromised and we are, right now, seeing people treated as guilty until proven innocent. It's just not happening to you. It *is* happening to people like me.
Let me say that again: I'm not saying that vigilante justice is better, only that the legal system has become vigilante justice. People who share my moral values are being gunned down right now. And people like you are spreading excuses about how its shades of grey.
Well, if he's innocent until proven guilty and you agree with that, why do you need someone to prejudge their guilt and tell them they are on the wrong side of history by not prejudging? That really does come across as promoting vigilantism.
You've clarified that you don't support vigilantism...so, what benefit do you get from someone deciding guilt beforehand?
Why is it your position that people should not wait until investigations are done and it has been combed through in court? What purpose does that serve if not for vigilantism?
It sounds like you are aiming primarily for a political benefit or a sort of emotional moral validation through cultural acceptance of your view. This is why we have courts, because people can become very emotional and invested in an outcome. It can become a critical part of your identity and world view that someone be guilty. Those are generally presented as cautionary tales in history books, not the example to live by.
> Congress has been in a state of relative gridlock for many years, across multiple administrations whether republican or democrat.
Let me stop you right there. It's not a both sides issue, is it? It's one side forcing gridlock? A party of obstruction, even.
> People thinking that Trump is a king or dictator are delusional, because the US doesn't work that way. If Trump rounded up thousands of US citizens and simply burned them alive, he would be arrested by the military and impeached by congress, because there are red lines that basically everyone agrees on.
No, and it's very important to you that you think that's true, because then people who disagree aren't just wrong, they're mentally ill. The only Trump Derangement Syndrome is the people thinking he's fit to be in any kind of leadership position.
The problem is that we're seeing people treat Trump like a king to a worrying degree, and he has gotten several of the traditional rights of kings that made people depose kings, like immunity to prosecution. And we're seeing things that were formerly thought to be absolute red lines like rounding up citizens and deporting them to Venezuelan prisons will absolutely be tolerated by his base. People like you constantly assure us that there are red lines he won't be allowed to cross, and then defend him when he does cross them and deny ever saying that thing would be wrong.
> Let me stop you right there. It's not a both sides issue, is it? It's one side forcing gridlock? A party of obstruction, even.
There are still things they agree on and pass legislation for, but on many other issues they both obstruct each other. The actual details of that aren't as relevant as the fact that they have trouble passing legislation and can't be relied on for many important issues at present.
> No, and it's very important to you that you think that's true, because then people who disagree aren't just wrong, they're mentally ill.
If he was an authoritarian dictator king tyrant master emperor, I would care, but he's not, so I don't care. The evidence does not support that position. There's a lot of rhetoric, propaganda, sound bites, teases and more, but those do not produce reality. They produce perspective.
> The problem is that we're seeing people treat Trump like a king to a worrying degree, and he has gotten several of the traditional rights of kings that made people depose kings, like immunity to prosecution.
This is false. The supreme court decision did not fundamentally say that he was immune to prosecution. That is what was spread about it to foment anger, but I read the actual language of the decision and it's just a lie.
> And we're seeing things that were formerly thought to be absolute red lines like rounding up citizens and deporting them to Venezuelan prisons will absolutely be tolerated by his base.
Unless you're talking about something I haven't heard about yet, they were not legal US citizens and they were not sent to Venezuelan prisons. There was someone who had some kind of temporary legal status and so there were complexities around it, but they weren't a US citizen.
> People like you constantly assure us that there are red lines he won't be allowed to cross, and then defend him when he does cross them and deny ever saying that thing would be wrong.
I don't know anyone like me. It's common for people to be unable to navigate the gray area. It's either black or white. You are either "with us or against us". That's just purely juvenile. Does Trump have some moral failings? Sure. Is he some kind of arrogant character? Sure. I think on one side, some people will get so stirred up into such a moral panic that they'll believe any false thing about him. On the other, some people get so caught up in his reality distortion field that they'll believe anything he says. If you fully give up and end up settling into one of those grooves, you lose all sense.
"Congress has been in a state of relative gridlock for many years, across multiple administrations whether republican or democrat. As a result, presidents have increasingly been leading by executive order rather than legislation. That is not Trump's fault, that is just the state of the country."
"People thinking that Trump is a king or dictator are delusional, because the US doesn't work that way. If Trump rounded up thousands of US citizens and simply burned them alive, he would be arrested by the military and impeached by congress, because there are red lines that basically everyone agrees on."
So presidents are acting more like kings, but Trump... isn't?
Does pardoning people who commit acts of violence in your name not sound like a king?
Or what about pardoning people who donate do your campaigns?
"Talk about taking over Canada or Greenland is just rhetoric to get better deals and improve ally strength, because this is what Donald Trump has been doing since the 1980s. Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."
You think Donald Trump has been _strengthening_ our relationships with allies? In what manner has he done that in your mind? Is it the tariffs, the denigration, or the threats that are helping? And how does Canada talking about moving away from the US at Davos, then confirming it again later play into that? Is our allies cutting off signal intelligence actually a sign that our bonds with them is getting stronger?
Just trying to understand.
"Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."
Which part of US national strategy is that exactly? Sure Maduro is pretty universally condemned by anyone paying attention, but so are plenty of other authoritarian regimes? Is part of the national strategy leaving the ruling class exactly the same as the one the apparently corrupt dictator we deposed had and then extorting it for millions of barrels of oil? Does the richest country in the world, which also is the largest oil producer and has plenty of access to a very stable world oil market need to resort to extorting barrels of oil from foreign dictators as part of national strategy?
If it's just part of our national strategy, why'd the rational change so frequently and why does no one seem to have heard that before Trump decided to start focusing on it and amassing weapons off their coast?
"This doesn't mean you have to like a current president personally or morally, or even agree with everything they are doing, but at least you can gain more perspective around what is real and what is not."
> So presidents are acting more like kings, but Trump... isn't?
No US president is a king, because the US doesn't have kings. The country isn't structured that way. Most countries legitimately do not understand this, because almost no countries are structured the way the US is.
> Does pardoning people who commit acts of violence in your name not sound like a king? Or what about pardoning people who donate do your campaigns?
A king is a very specific thing and you don't need to be a king to have a power which has been delegated to you.
> You think Donald Trump has been _strengthening_ our relationships with allies? In what manner has he done that in your mind? Is it the tariffs, the denigration, or the threats that are helping? And how does Canada talking about moving away from the US at Davos, then confirming it again later play into that? Is our allies cutting off signal intelligence actually a sign that our bonds with them is getting stronger?
When people watch news or listen to world leaders talk, it comes with a sense of authority. Many people are predisposed to automatically think that is the end of it, that they've found the truth. Like clockwork, Trump says some big bold thing that gets people talking and he does this to produce the kinds of results he's after that other people have trouble getting. It gets him a lot of criticism and hate, but he's been doing this since the 80s or even earlier.
He creates a "monument", because he says that nobody cares about deals that aren't monumental. The small uninteresting deals don't get much attention. People don't invest in it. As a result, he thinks small deals are actually harder to do than big deals. So he makes everything a big deal. He's a big deal. Ukraine is a big deal. Gaza is a big deal. Canada is a big deal. Greenland is a big deal.
Now, in order to be credible, he has to be known as a person who does get some big things done. So what you do is you see what can you actually do, and you do the biggest thing you can get done. Now you have credibility. You use that credibility as leverage to make larger claims and people will take your larger claims seriously, even if people who are anchored in reality may have the sense to know that larger claim is a bluff. He bluffs so much. If you remember that old youtube video of trading up from a paperclip to trade all the way until you get a car, it's like that.
So much talk about threatening to leave NATO, or destroying NATO by invading Greenland or any of that nonsense only makes NATO stronger. It makes them say, "hey, we need to be more independent. maybe we can't fully rely on the US if they're talking like this. let's invest more." When they invest more in their military, now the whole alliance is a little stronger. This is important, because World War 3 may be coming and we either need our allies to join us in some way in South East Asia, or we'll need them to be able to hold their own in Europe.
It amazes me the stuff he gets away with, but he's not any kind of threat to democracy.
> Which part of US national strategy is that exactly? Sure Maduro is pretty universally condemned by anyone paying attention, but so are plenty of other authoritarian regimes? Is part of the national strategy leaving the ruling class exactly the same as the one the apparently corrupt dictator we deposed had and then extorting it for millions of barrels of oil? Does the richest country in the world, which also is the largest oil producer and has plenty of access to a very stable world oil market need to resort to extorting barrels of oil from foreign dictators as part of national strategy?
We were already in Venezuela in the 1900s. It is estimated to have upwards of 300 billion to over a trillion barrels of oil. That dwarfs basically every other country. Oil is important for global stability and we still haven't discovered any energy solutions that fully erase dependence on oil. So long as it is needed, it has to come from somewhere. If Russia and China control it, that risks oil being traded primarily in some currency other than USD, even propping up some reserve currency. Venezuela also had Russian and Chinese military hardware, with Russia recently agreeing to send them missiles. That allows for comparisons with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were also a stopping point for the shadow fleets which were breaking international law and helping fund Russia's war in Ukraine. Iranian terrorist groups were also operating in Venezuela. It was also at risk of becoming the next North Korea, but with both nukes and oil. It would've been a nightmare for freedom, democracy and global security.
Trying to flee is famously not a justification for murder, if anything it's the opposite. You're literally kicking someone while they're down. Or, uh, shooting them. Obviously a fleeing person is not a threat to your life, which is the ONLY justification for a shooting.
It's not relevant because neither are justications for a shooting.
Why did George Floyd counterfeit a 20 or whatever? I don't know, but I do know he deserved due process, not a public execution. Regardless of your political affiliation.
Also, nobody tried to run anyone over. That's just straight up not true and I won't humor it, so don't bother.
There is a video of the woman either doing a getaway or a runover. I don't quite get why would you do that while you are being stopped by law enforcement. And it's also apparently dangerous.
You're missing the point. None of this matters. You're purposefully not addressing the underlying problem - extrajudicial executions - because the conclusion must make you uncomfortable.
Today, the punishment for fleeing is not execution. The conversation ends there. Everything else is just noise, and you know that, so stop.
So anytime an officer kills a person with a gun, that is now justified?
Despite the fact that the man in question that was killed had a legal permit for said gun AND 1 of the ICE agent even took his gun away and despite this was shot to death while lying on the ground?
So where is the urgency? Not enough KDA ratio to score high enough on the scoreboard?
Your version seems to be that they randomly opened fire. Another version is that a gun went off, not all of the officers knew where the victims gun was, they had also heard someone yell "gun", so after the first shot they opened fire.
It's not that you can be shot at by law enforcement when you are carrying a gun, but that you can be shot at when there is an apparent reason that you are firing at them with it. I'm sure ICE isn't happy about how the events turned out either. But for the protesters: just don't bring a gun!
Sure you have, but carrying a gun also comes with both responsibility, and also may be interpreted that you would use the weapon. To be clear, I'm not arguing the point that it's illegal to carry a gun to a protest, but that it's just not wise.
If you have the right to bear arms, but law enforcement officers can shoot you if they spot that gun, then you don't actually have the right to bear arms.
You do have the right to bear arms but bearing arms conveys a meaning, that you'd see a reason to use it, so if you have a gun at an event where there are ample amounts of law enforcement present, against who would you be protecting yourself?
You should elaborate, because if this is the sentence you want, it's no different: Cops can kill at will if they have reason to believe that the other will kill.
They can kill when they have a reasonable basis for assuming they are facing an imminent threat to their lives or addressing a threat to public safety (but NOT to prevent criminal activity that isn't life threatening). That isn't the same thing as a license to kill, and they are accountable for charges like murder when they don't meet a "reasonable officer on the scene" standard. I don't consider that to be "at will" (likened to "at will employment") so much as "at their discretion."
Interesting. When people who stormed the Capitol openly carried assault rifles, MAGA had no problem with it. They called them patriots and peaceful protesters.
It's not about people carrying a gun at all, it's that should you carry a gun to a protest and should you engage in resisting to law enforcement while doing that. Had this person been perfectly still, he'd be still alive. (And also, had he not had that gun, but still resisted, he'd likely would have also been alive.)
> Had this person been perfectly still, he'd be still alive.
Again, I'd like to see you stay perfectly still after getting peppersprayed in the face without any reason. At no point was he threatening and attacking ICE agents. He was trying to help another woman who had just been assaulted by agents. They created the very situation that led to this tragedy.
There was a reason if you watched the video, it was the "help" of putting his hands on one of the officers. And bringing a gun into a situation like this.
There was a lot of whistlers, but I think the woman being helped was one of them, so this was what started the chain of events.
If someone were to follow me around while blowing a whistle then that would be quite irritating. What would you do in this situation?
Alex seemed to put hands on an officer. Whether this was well meaning in his head, it might have not seemed so to the officer. (Keep in mind that he had a constant whistle in his ear!)
Follow the protocol. If you lose your nerves because of people blowing a whistle, you're in the wrong job.
> Alex seemed to put hands on an officer
Where do you see that? All I see is that he raised his left hand in a protective manner, likely to keep the agent at a distance and protect himself from the pepper spray. After that gesture he turns away from the agent to help the woman on the ground. That's when they grapple him from behind and wrestle him to the ground. At no point did Alex behave in a threatening way or physically attack an agent. The DHS report does not mention any threating behavior either.
Clearly you're not on the wrong job. Find me some info materials on how cops need to be resistant to either mental or physical violence.
I'm sure we'll get a longer investigation into this matter. But it just doesn't seem like a pre-planned killing because they could get away with it, but a tragic sequence of events that you so much wish to bend your way.
I'm not claiming that this was a pre-planned killing. But it was more than just a tragic sequence of events because the agents were very much at fault here. They behaved aggressively and obviously did not know how to properly deal with an ordinary protestor (who clearly was no threat to the agents at any point).
Alex had a gun with him. If he wanted to appear non-threatening he simply shouldn't have brought it to the event.
I do maintain that this was an unfortunate sequence of events, but I think as this is investigated further, the guilt found on the officers will be small to none.
> This is the ordinary protestor a little over a week before the event
Wow, he kicked an ICE agent's car. The agents must have felt extremely threatened as they didn't even bother to arrest him...
How is this relevant to the shooting again?
> If he wanted to appear non-threatening he simply shouldn't have brought it to the event.
Carrying a gun in a state that allows conceiled carrying cannot be considered a thread in itself. Alex did not behave in a threatening way at any point during that whole situation.
Say officers report that Alex was aggressive on the day he died but there is no video material. The events from a week ago support those statements, as clearly Alex is a man that is quite worked up and capable of physical aggression.
Well, the larger sequence of events goes back to the group of people interfering with police work, including the woman whistling along with an officer. She got pushed which was where Alex entered. (Alex had already had a brief contact with the officers minutes before the fatal sequence of events.) Alex also had a gun with him. This eventually led him to being shot.
The researched why will surface likely soon. But as of now, carrying a gun to a protest isn't something that helps with looking harmless.
These were accidents, not court proceedings where you have weeks or months to think things over.
My prediction is that if you investigate them, then in the case where the woman was trying to drive away, the officer likely has no fault at all, as the drive may have easily be interpreted as driving towards him. On the armed protestor occasion, there might be some fault as the gun seemed to have gone off unexpectedly. But it won't be punished too hard, if at all, as the victim was actively escalating the situation.
These weren't punishments ("death sentences" as someone else called them). These were accidents where the victims themselves were (mostly) at fault.
Uh huh. It seems to be a small proportion of American man-children that don't understand what's happening, the rest of the world sees it plain as day. Anyway, you obviously didn't actually watch the videos. Try opening your fucking eyes next time.
> You should forgive yourself instead, become part of the grown-ups!
Or maybe you also have amnesia? In case this is hard to understand, you implied (intentionally insultingly) that I'm not a grown-up. So you invited ridicule on yourself. I think people like you are fucking idiots and I love having an excuse to tell you because you decided to stop being civil.
Well, you argue for interference with law enforcement. I don't see how that helps "the cause", it also puts the participants in danger. I.e, the few deaths that have already occurred.
First, it is the duty of law enforcement to recognize a situation that can and should be de-escalated. The public is not an cannot be responsible for that, and it doesn't justify murder if they aren't. "Interference", while in my opinion very warranted here, doesn't constitute an imminent life threat to Law enforcement nor the public, and it is not permissible for them to use lethal force in that situation. Aside from killing wantonly and happily ("fucking bitch"), law enforcement in this case is acting illegally on administrative warrants, violating the Constitution to enter houses they do not have legal warrants for, being masked and unidentifiable (and thus unaccountable for their actions to the public) when they commit attrocities in the public view (why would a legitimate police force need to hide its face) and generally being a public menace. It is your civic duty and a proud American tradition to stand up to lawless police forces.
They were not accidents. No one accidentally draws, aims a gun and shoots. If that whole sequence is accidental, that person shouldn't be in charge of a weapon.
What I'm saying is that he did have a gun, this particular gun was taken away, then he was apparently reaching for something else, which may have been mistaken for a gun, hence the shot. Or, the officer fired at him for some other suspicion. Regardless, you don't have perfect information in a situation like this. The guy wasn't behaving peacefully either.
My suggestion would be to obey orders, don't bring weapons to protests, don't resist when you're being detained. And so on.
What order was he disobeying? They pepper sprayed him and dragged him to the flor, he didn't have a gun in his hands, no danger at all, so why shoot him? He wasn't grabbing anything, you see his hands are free in the video.
And not behaving peacefully (who would when you are pepper sprayed and are hitting you in the head) shouldn't (in a decent country) be a reason to be shot.
Or better, so that you can think about. Pretti was standing there filming. What should have he done to "obey"? What was his mistake before they pushed him? Before they sprayed him? Before they dragged him to the ground, back to the street? Before they hit him in the head?
What should have he done to prevent being shot?
Well, exactly. My recommendation would be not to carry a gun where there is law enforcement already there. Or if you do, don't resist capture.
I.e, I maintain that this was an accident. The police didn't want to shoot this person, nor did the person want to use his gun. But it appeared like that to both sides which then caused the event that followed.
I'm not claiming that the ICE agent wanted to shoot Alex. I think the shooting itself was a case of gross incompetence. However, they intentionally attacked and assaulted Alex without any immediate reason. How are supposed to stay calm when you get peppersprayed in the face out of the blue?
The confiscated gun went off and the officers thought it came from the person being detained so they shot him. Waiting out to be shot would have been incompetent had he really been shooting.
Alex put hands on the officers first so there was an apparent reason.
Do you have any source for this? If that was the case, the DHS would have reported it as it would support their narrative.
> Alex put hands on the officers first so there was an apparent reason.
This not true! Alex moved in front of the ICE officer who just violently pushed the woman to the ground. He had this cell phone in his right hand and he raised his left hand in a protective manner. He does not even appear to touch the agent at any moment. This is when he got peppersprayed in the face. Then he tried to help the woman up. This is when an agent grapples him from behind and Alex gets wrestled to the ground. At no point did he behave in a threatening manner! You can clearly see this in the videos.
I think he did have his hand(s) on the officer right after he raised it. To me this "protective raise of the hand" looked like taking his hands off of the officer. Also, while Alex may have had protectiveness as a thought in his head this may have not seemed so to the officers.
Regarding shooting, what seems clear that shooting started after the gun was taken from Alex. At the discovery of it an officer also shouted "gun", after this guns were drawn and then shots were fired. Which gun went off first doesn't appear from the videos, but after the first one did, I assume that the rest of the shooting was due to the first shot being interpreted as the victim starting shooting, as not all of the officers saw that the gun had already removed.
Still, don't bring a gun to a protest, don't engage in any physical activities with law enforcement, don't stop them from doing their work, don't walk and whistle along..
So why did you claim Alex' gun went off? You have been spreading gross misinformation. Maybe take a step back and reflect before you come up with new theories.
I'm sure it will be known soon-ish where the first shot came from. It's just that the first one likely caused the rest of it as the surrounding officers didn't know who was shooting.
Say it turned out that the first shot was fired due to an officer misinterpreting something for a gun, because "gun" was yelled, would that turn this into anything else than an accident?
The best way to appear not to have a gun, nor appear dangerous at all, is not bring a gun to a protest.
Again, why did you claim that Alex' gun went off as if that was a fact?
> It's just that the first one likely caused the rest of it as the surrounding officers didn't know who was shooting.
No need to speculate. If you watch https://youtu.be/i8kFcK-X-vQ?t=108 you will see that the first agent shoots Alex in the back one time and another three times while they all move away. Note that Alex has been restrained the whole time. One second later, you hear 6 more shots. This is where the second agent got involved. At this point, Alex has already been lying on the ground.
> because "gun" was yelled, would that turn this into anything else than an accident?
At best this was an accident, but even then it was the agents fault for misinterpreting the situation or the DHS's fault for deploying badly trained agents. (Hearing the words "Gun!" does not give officers the permit to shoot, unless they perceive an imminent threat to their or someone else's life!) However, if you watch the video above, you can see that an agent removes Alex' gun right in front of the agent who fires the first shots. There are lots of open questions.
> The best way to appear not to have a gun, nor appear dangerous at all, is not bring a gun to a protest.
The act of conceiled carrying alone does not make you a threat. Alex never behaved in a threatening way.
Instead of putting the blame solely on Alex, maybe ask yourself what the agents could have done to deescalate the situation, what kind of people the DHS recruits as ICE agents and if their training is appropriate for urban policing.
> Again, why did you claim that Alex' gun went off as if that was a fact?
This seems to be what people suspect. It's less likely that an officers own gun goes off as they are familiar with it.
I don't put blame on Alex, solely (read!). But the ill meaning callouts of ICE being this and that, occupation, isn't correct either. I don't think you people in the US have actually lived under an occupation, so these words are easy to use.
Regarding being threatening: well, if you carry a gun to a protest and engage physically with an officer (subjectively and to me) is threatening. It also seemed threatening to the shooting officers.
Who? Not even the DHS people claim this! And why did you initially present it as a fact?
> It's less likely that an officers own gun goes off as they are familiar with it.
Again, you can clearly see/hear on the video that the agent fires the first shot. No gun went off. Why do you make stuff up?
> It also seemed threatening to the shooting officers.
I very much doubt it. At the best the agents were just badly trained and did not know how to handle someone who carries a gun (in a state that allows conceiled carrying).
I presented it initially because this has been what people think: https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_ There are many more people opining this, both as these more produced videos to simple social media postings. I still do present you the opinion that likely the confiscated gun went off which started the rest of the shooting.
The first shot is not "clearly seen" as far as I can tell.
If Pretti, and the first fired shot, didn't seem threatening then the shooting wouldn't have happened..
I'm happy that you know how law enforcement works, how to behave in critical situations and that it actually is possible to have perfect awareness of any situation. If you are this good, I'd suggest to join the force yourself, as you have a clear advantage in doing that kind of work.
> I presented it initially because this has been what people think:
Maybe in some MAGA podcast circles. This has never been more than pure speculation. Again, why did you present it as a fact?
Let's assume the gun went off. I'm sure the person holding that gun would have noticed that. Why wasn't this reported, especially as it would support their case? This just doesn't make any sense at all.
> The first shot is not "clearly seen" as far as I can tell.
It very much is. Did you even watch the video I've linked? It shows the very moment the first shot is being fired. Are you seriously claiming it is not the agent who is firing that shot? Again, not even the DHS is disputing that the agent fired the first shot.
That video does not show anything. Stop being ridiculous! Again, don't you think the agent who took the gun would have noticed that it went off?
That's not a serious theory that needs investigating. I have no idea where you're getting all your "information" from, but I can tell you that you need to reflect on your media consumption. You're in a bubble.
The police is just as human as you and me. This person was carrying one gun - he might have more weapons on him. He was also resisting the takedown while the gun was found.
You make it seem as this was just a random guy walking with a phone, and was shot.
He didn't have a gun when he was shot, what are you talking about? He didn't even have a gun in his hand. Or you mean that you can accidentally shoot somebody who had a gun, at some point in the past?
I think you can shoot someone if you have reason to believe that somebody has a gun. In this particular occasion the guy did not have another gun.
(Hence I'm calling it an accident, where the police officer may be at fault. Though, other commentators saying it was cold blooded, a death sentence, deliberate, etc. is not true. Nor is generalizing this particular situation to changes in government type. These people really want to portray their political opponent as bad as they possibly can.)
You should not carry a gun to a protest, not engage physically with an officer nor resist when they start arresting you after that.
You should watch the video. While seem to be an accident, a way to avoid it would have just been not bring a gun in the first place nor engage physically with law enforcement.
These actions in general to restrict law enforcement to do their job isn't helping either. Protest in front of government buildings, not follow police around.
You should watch the video, the police are the ones who engaged physically: pushed Pretti, pepper sprayed him, dragged him on to the street, hit him on the head repeatedly, and then got scared and shot. You can protest wherever you like that's legal. If police cannot handle that (start fights and then get scared and shoot) they shouldn't be police.
Also, it is absolutely legal to follow police around. It doesn't make sense to make something legal while justifying getting shot for it (unless you want to make it illegal eventually).
No, they started the engagement. What's wrong with trying to help somebody pushed to the street? Or are you recommending just letting police push people with cell phones to the ground and pepper spray them, unless you want to be shot dead?
A wise man told me, you know signal works because its banned in Russia. I also find it incredibly ironic that they have a problem with this, when the DoD is flagrantly using signal for classified communications.
I have full confidence in Signal and their encryption but this argument doesn't make sense to me. It could be the opposite, that Russia knows it's compromised by the US government and don't want people using it. I don't believe that's the case but the point is you can't put too much weight on it.
They aren't taking issue with Signal, per se... they are upset that people are sharing the whereabouts and movements of ICE officers. Signal just seems to be the medium-of-choice. And this just happens to give them a chance to declare Signal as "bad", since they can't spy on Signal en masse.
My personal connections who are in the military use it for texting from undisclosed locations.
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.
> 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":
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.
Military personnel are currently only allowed to use Signal for mobile communications within their unit. Classified information is a different story, though.
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.
> 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.
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.
I have seen anti-Signal FUD all over the place since it was discovered that protesters have been coordinating on Signal.
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.
The downside of opsec is that it breeds paranoia and fear about legal, civic participation. In a way, bullshit investigations like this are an intimidation tactic. What are they going to find - a bunch of Minnesotans that were mad about state-backed killings?
They actually used a hackish third party client (interesting since Signal forbids those) which stores message logs centrally, assuming it’s for required USG record keeping. Turns out that it’s possible to invite unwanted guests into your chat whether you’re a protestor or a government official. (It also appears that government contractors still write shitty software.)
> If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
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.
That’s only for targeting. From what I understand ELITE does not include device compromise or eavesdropping. If feds want to compromise a device that has Signal, they would use something like Pegasus that uses exploits to deliver a spyware package, likely through SMS, Whatsapp, or spear phishing URL. (I don’t actually know which software is currently in use but it would be similar to Pegasus.)
True, physical interception is probably the easiest method, at least for short term access. Once the captured user is identified and removed from the group they will lose access though.
Tracking the murderers who executed citizens in the street and then fled the scene of the crime and any sort of trial or investigation? That ICE and Immigration and Border Patrol? I wonder why. And since when is tracking public officials operating in public in the capacity of their government jobs illegal?
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
No, the ones on broadcast television news where they go scene by scene breaking down any claims of Alex being at fault being bogus lies that you are now repeating.
I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
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.
Yes, but I’m not going to unlock my phone with a passcode, and unlike biometric unlock they have no way to force me to unlock my phone.
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
They are, but again, district courts have been pretty good, and I would be out of jail in <30 days, unless my case goes up on appeal.
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.
Yes and all of the credulous rubes still whinging about how they "can't imagine" how it's gotten this bad or how much worse it can get, or how "this is not who we are" at some point should no longer be taken as suckers in good faith, and at some point must rightly be viewed as either willfully complicit bad faith interlocuters, or useful idiots.
Learning about WWII in high school, I often wondered how the people allowed the Axis leaders gain power. Now I know. However, I feel we're worse for allowing it to happen because we were supposed to "never again".
Agreed. To see "Never Again" morphed into "Never Again for me, Now Again for thee" has been one of the most heartwrenching, sleep depriving things I've witnessed since some deaths in my family.
Watching it in real time, I still don't understand it. I could see how Trump won the first time around; Hillary Clinton was unpopular with most people outside of her party's leadership, but the second just seems insane. The kinds of things that would happen were obvious to me, and I am no expert.
Two party system. As many people didn't like Hillary, clearly there were a lot of people unhappy with Biden->Harris. When you don't like the current admin's direction and/or their party, there's only one other party to select. I think there were plenty of voters that truly did not believe this would be the result of that protest vote.
Protest votes are probably overstated, I think most of it comes down to people staying home. Everybody in America already knows what side they're on, and they either vote for that side or not at all. Virtually all political messaging is either trying to moralize your side or demoralize the other, to manipulate the relative ratios of who stays home on election day.
> I think most of it comes down to people staying home
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.
2024 was a massive outlier. First black woman ever, and the first time a candidate got swapped out mid-campaign. You can't extrapolate much from that one.
I think people were highly motivated in 2020 because of Trump, not Biden. The turnout would have been similar for any credible candidate running against Trump.
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.
And then in 2024 they were 100% opposite motivated for Trump to win popular vote, increase with every demo except for white women, and move almost every single county in the country to the right?
Why would Trump be so unpopular to boost Biden in 2020, then do so much better in 2024?
Newsom is an extremely strong candidate. Vance has several critical vulnerabilities that can demoralize right wing voters if the election is handled properly, and the Republicans really don't have anybody else. Rubio maybe, but Rubio won't be able to get ahead of Vance.
Prior to 2020, I usually voted for third parties so I do understand that kind of thinking. The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office; it seemed early on like congress and institutional norms would restrain him. To swing the popular vote in the 2024 election, almost all of the third party votes would have needed to go to Harris, so I don't think that's sufficient to explain it.
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.
The norm in 2016 was that candidates didn't make a serious attempt to do the more outlandish things they talked about in their campaign. When they did, advisers would usually talk them into a saner version of it, or congress wouldn't allow it.
Trump 45 had "adults in the room". Trump 47 has nothing but sycophants. The end of Trump 45 started eliminating the adults in the room, but there wasn't enough time left for him to do much drastic. Trump 45 felt like even Trump was shocked he won and there was no real game plan. The transition team was woefully unprepared. Trump 47 had 4 years of prepping with the aide of things like Project 2025. Trump 47 hit the ground running.
> The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office;
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.
Not the second time, the third time. Remember that Biden whooped Trump's ass once and could have whooped his ass a second time, but the donor class (career retards) got cold feet when they were forced to confront his senility, and instead of letting the election be one senile old man against another senile old man, they replaced Biden with the archetype of an HR bitch. I hope nobody thinks it a coincidence that the two times Trump won were the two times he was up against a woman. Americans don't want to vote for their mother-in-law, nor for the head of HR. And yes, that certainly is sexist, but it is what it is.
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.
Worse, I often wondered how some people collaborated. Now I know that many people would rather have a chunk of the population rounded up and killed than lose their job.
"Whoever can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
and
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
You have to remember that "the government" is not a monolith. Evidence goes before a judge who is (supposed to be) independent, and cases are tried in front of a jury of citizens. In the future that system may fall but for now it's working properly. Except for the Supreme Court... which is a giant wrench in the idea the system still works, but that doesn't mean a lower court judge won't jettison evidence obtained by gunpoint.
The courts may (still) be independent, but it feels like they are pointless because the government just wholesale ignores them anyway. If the executive branch doesn't enforce, or selectively enforces court judgements, you may as well shutter the courts.
I would say if you ever want to prosecute these people, then you're going to need a mountain of evidence. Having all these court decisions they flagrantly violate for 4 years is going to great evidence at their trials. It may not give us much solace now, but all of their defenses are going to rest on intent, and it's going to be helpful in proving their state of mind that they willfully defied federal court orders, lied to judges, etc. Because they control all the evidence of their own criminality within the Executive branch, we should expect a lot of it will be destroyed when they are gone. Establishing independent records now through court proceedings will preserve those records past the administration end date.
There's a pretty big difference between getting killed in an altercation with ICE, and executing someone just because they refuse to give up their password.
Not really. ICE breaks into your home — remember they don't need a warrant for this. Demands to see your phone. It's locked. Holds a gun to your head and demands you unlock it. You refuse. Pulls the trigger.
Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
>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".
> 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.
> 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).
They haven't for a long time, just that most of the time they were doing things we thought was for good (EPA, civil rights act, controlled substance act, etc) and we thereby entered a post-constitutional world to let that stuff slide by despite the 10th amendment limiting the federal powers to enumerated powers.
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.
14th and 15th amendments were binding on government. The civil rights act was binding on private businesses, even those engaging in intrastate trade.
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.
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.
> 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.
Cellebrite still requires the device to be confiscated. So if they are trying for mass surveillance, they'll have to rely on phishing or zero day exploits to get their spyware on the device to intercept messages. These tend to get patched shortly after being seen in the wild (like the recent WhatsApp one), so they need to decide if its worth it to burn that zero day or not.
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.
I mean they have a lot of tools to figure out who you are if they catch you at a rally or something like that. Cameras and facial identification, cell phone location tracking and more. What they also want is the list of people you're coordinating with that aren't there.
It's even easier than that. They're simply asking on neighborhood Facebook (and other services too, I assume) groups to be added to mutual aid Signal groups and hoping that somebody will add them without bothering to vet them first.
I think disappearing messages only works if you activate it on your local device. And if the man compromises someone without everyone else knowing, they get all messages after that.
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.
I wonder whether the protesters could opt for offshore alternatives that don't require exposing their phone number to a company that could be compelled to reveal it by US law. For example, there is Threema[1], a Swiss option priced at 5 euros one-time. It is interesting on Android as you can pay anonymously[2], therefore it doesn't depend on Google Play and its services (they offer Threema Push services of their own.) If your threat model includes traffic analysis, likely none of it would make much difference as far as US state-side sigint product line is concerned, but with Threema a determined party might as well get a chance! Arguably, the US protest organisers must be prepared for the situation to escalate, and adjust their security model accordingly: GrapheneOS, Mullvad subscription with DAITA countermeasures, Threema for Android, pay for everything with Monero?
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).
Perhaps you're right that they couldn't be compelled by law to reveal it, then! However, I can still find people on Signal using their phone number, by design. If they can do that, surely there is sufficient information, and appropriate means, for US state-side signals intelligence to do so, too. I don't think Signal self-hosts their infrastructure, so it wouldn't be much of a challenge considering it's a priority target.
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.
Yeah it should be technically feasible to do "eventually" but it's non trivial. I linked a bunch of their blogs on how they harden contact discovery, etc. And of course you can turn contact discovery off entirely in the settings.
Settings > Privacy > Phone Number > Who can find me by number > Nobody
> And of course you can turn contact discovery off entirely in the settings.
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.
Just being owned by an offshore company doesn't mean that they still can't be infiltrated. But as you pointed out, just because Company A creates an app does not mean that Company B can't come in later to take control.
The alarming extent of US-affiliated signals intelligence collection is well-documented, but in the case of Threema it's largely inconsequential; you can still purchase the license for it anonymously, optionally build from source, and actively resist traffic analysis when using it.
That is to say: it allows a determined party to largely remain anonymous even in the face of upstream provider's compromise.
It appears to be primarily getting agents into the chats. To me the questionable conduct is their NPSM-7-adjacent redefining of legal political categories and activities as "terrorists/-ism" for the purpose of legal harassment or worse. Whether that is technically legal or not it should be outrageous to the public.
I don't think it's much of a problem at all. Many of the protesters and observers are not hiding their identities, so finding their phone number isn't a problem. Even with content, coordinating legal activities isn't a problem either.
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."
That's not the point of civil disobedience, it's an unfortunate side effect. You praise a martyr for their sacrifice, you deplore that the sacrifice was necessary.
It's not that the point of breaking a law is that you go to jail, it's that breaking the law without any intention of going to jail isn't a sacrifice. 'Martyrs' who don't give anything up, who act without punishment aren't celebrated, they're just right.
It makes it a problem that's inherently present for any act of civil disobedience, unless you truly believe that you can hide from the US government. I'm pretty sure that all of the technical workarounds in the world, all of the tradecraft, won't save you from the weakest link in your social network.
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.
This works when protesting an unjust law with known penalties. King knew he would be arrested and had an approximate idea on the range of time he could be incarcerated for. I don't know if it's the same bargain when you are subjecting yourself to an actor that does not believe it is bound by the law.
What? No, he didn't. The police went after peaceful civil rights protesters with clubs and dogs. They knew they could be badly hurt or killed and did it anyway.
Oh, apologies, I'm not saying that King didn't risk considerable injury or death. I'm saying that I don't think he is talking about that in this particular passage. The passage gp quoted is about how accepting lawful penalties from an unjust law venerates and respects the rule of law.
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.
If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
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.
>If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
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.
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.
If your point is to ignore the history and political philosophy of civil disobedience because "times are different now," then just grab your gun and start your civil war already... because that's where you've concluded we're at.
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.
Materially impeding law enforcement operations, interfering with arrests, harassing or assault officers, and so forth is not 1A protected and is illegal. There’s lots of this going on and some of it is orchestrated in these chats. They may nevertheless be civil disobedience, maybe even for a just cause, but I have no problem with people still being arrested for this. You obviously cannot have a civil society where that is legally tolerated.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
Importantly this definition references an individual’s conscience. Seditious conspiracy is another matter. Here is the statute:
> 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.
> 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.
Some of the signal messages I've seen screenshotted (granted screenshots can be altered) make it seem like the participants have access to some sort of ALPR data to track vehicles that they think are ICE. That would probably be an illegal use of that data if true.
The government falling victim to ALPR for once might actually be the push we need to get some reform. That said, they'll probably try to ban it for everybody but themselves. Never before have they had such comprehensive surveillance and I don't expect them to give it up easily.
I remember having to explain to you that the CFAA doesn't apply to German citizens in Germany committing acts against a German website, so I'll take that legal advice with a few Dead Seas worth of salt.
The statement was made to point out that this is an example where a phone number is enough metadata to to problematic for privacy. It stands on its own. It doesn't need more context or purpose.
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.
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.
Remember that most of the participants in J6 walked away and were later rounded up and arrested across the country once the FBI had collected voluminous digital and surveillance evidence to support prosecution.
The J6 insurrectionists committed real crimes, and it's very good that they were rounded up, but afaiu most of the evidence had to do with them provably assaulting officers, damaging property, and breaking into a government building. Not that they messaged other people when they were legally demonstrating before the Capital invasion.
The real protection for the legal protesters and observers in MN is numbers. They can't arrest and control and entire populace.
People were also charged for coordinating and supporting J6 without being there, e.g. Enrique Tarrio of the "Proud Boys" was charged with seditious conspiracy based on activity in messaging apps. If people in these Signal chats were aware that people were using force to inhibit federal law enforcement, which some of the leaked training materials suggest is most likely true and easy to prove, and there are messages showing their support or coordination of those actions, I assume they could face the same charges.
Right, usually law enforcement gets chat logs from a participant (search warrant for a phone, informants, undercover FBI agents, etc) and uses the metadata to connect messages to a real person's identity.
Fortunately for us (or really unfortunately for us) most of the competent FBI agents have been fired or quit, with the new bar simply being loyalty to the president.
The FBI is weak now compared to what it was even two years ago.
Most are probably just keeping their heads down, trying to wait out this administration. When you're in that kind of cushy career track, you'd have to be very dumb or very selfless to give it up.
Was starting to think about setting up a neighborhood Signal group, but now thinking that maybe something like Briar might be safer... only problem is that Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.
Why wouldn't you just use random abandoned forums or web article message threads? Iirc this is what teenagers used to do when schools banned various social media but not devices. Just put the URL in a discrete qr code that only a person in the neighborhood could see.
I spent a dozen years in SF, where my friend circles routinely used Signal. It's my primary messaging app, including to family and childhood friends.
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.
They weren't though? Signal requires a phone number to sign up and it is linked to your account but your phone number is not used in the under the hood account or device identification, it is not shared by default, your number can be entirely removed from contact disovery if you wish, and even if they got a warrant or were tapping signal infra directly, it'd be extremely non trivial to extract user phone numbers.
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.
Yep however that only exposes a value of "last time the user registered/verified their account via phone number activation" and "last day the app connected to the signal servers".
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.
I think that's a fair assessment on their part however it's worth noting that your phone number does not serve as your account ID. It can be used to look up an account but there are caveats to that.
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.
Others mention you must still register with a phone, although you can remove it from your account after you go through the username stuff? Usually HN is pretty good about identifying that the default path is the path and that opt-out like behavior of this means very little for mass usage.
It's not that you can remove it from your account entirely. Your account is still linked to that number. It's that you can remove the number from contact discovery.
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).
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.
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.
Yeah. It's notable they didn't crack the crypto. In the 90s when I was a young cypherpunk, I had this idea that when strong crypto was ubiquitous, certainly people would be smart enough to understand its role was only to force bad guys to attack the "higher levels" like attacking human expectations of privacy on a public channel. It was probably unrealistic to assume everyone would automatically understand subtle details of technology.
As a reminder... if you don't know all the people in your encrypted group chat, you could be talking to the man.
Yes, but they have their own weaknesses. For instance, Briar exposes your Bluetooth MAC, and there's a bunch of nasty Bluetooth vulns waiting to be exploited. You can't ever perfectly solve for both security and usability, you can only make tradeoffs.
Briar has multiple modes of operation. The Bluetooth mode is not the default mode of operation and is there for circumstances where Internet has been shut down entirely.
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.
Both Session and Briar are decentralized technologies where you would never be able to approach a company to get any information. They operate over DHT-like networks and with Tor.
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.
Signal's use of phone numbers is the least of your issues if you've reached this level of inspection. Signal could be the most pristine perfect thing in the world, and the traffic from the rest of your phone is exactly as exposing as your phone number is when your enemy is the US government who can force cooperation from the infrastructure providers.
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.
I talked to Moxie about this 20 years ago at DefCon and he shrugged his shoulders and said "well... it's better than the alternative." He has a point. Signal is probably better than Facebook Messenger or SMS. Maybe there's a market for something better.
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.
email is notoriously insecure and goes through servers that allow it to be archived. also, email UIs tend not to be optimized for instantaneous delivery of messages.
I wasn't assuming the actual messages would go through email. I assumed they just needed that for a onetime setup. Isn't that the only reason for using a phone number currently?
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.
> He knows as well as I do anything on a phone can never be secure
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.
There are hobbyist groups that tinker with these things. They are just as lazy as me and do not publish much. One has to find and participate in their semi-private .onion forums. Not my cup of tea. Most of it goes over my head and requires special hardware I am not interested in tinkering with.
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.
Tor has the problem that you frequently don't know who's running all the nodes in the network. For a while the FBI was running Tor exit nodes in an attempt to see who messages were being sent to. maybe they still are.
Is that good? According to the wikipedia page it seems last stable release was 9 years ago. Is anyone using that? Last time I had a look at XMPP everybody was using OMEMO.
Sorry, I don't pay attention to anyone who disses PGP. I don't care if it's easy to misuse. I focus on using it well instead of bitching about misusing 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.
Before my arrest (CFAA) I operated on Tor and PGP for years. I had property seized and I had a long look at my discovery material, as I was curious which elements they had obtained.
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.
Would be curious to know (if you're willing to share) how you were found if you were working to obscure / encrypt your communications. What _was_ it that ultimately gave you away or allowed them to ID you?
if you sign PGP messages with a key you associated with your identity, the have high confidence you sent emails signed with that key. i.e. - PGP does not offer group deniable signatures as a default option.
wow. that's a phenomenally bad policy. There are many legit critiques which can be leveled at PGP, depending on your use case. [Open]PGP is not a silver bullet. You have to use it correctly.
It's not a sock puppet in the usual sense. Every time I log in I create a new account, and it lasts until I get logged out for whatever reason. But I'm not having conversations between multiple accounts that I control, if that's what you mean.
Suppose they didn't require that. Wouldn't that open themselves up to DDoS? An angry nation or ransom-seeker could direct bots to create accounts and stuff them with noise.
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
What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.
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.
People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement.
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.
The US has less than 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's incarcerated. So we're already exceptional in terms of numbness to incarceration.
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.
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:
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.
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).
Legally. With due regard to the rights of those involved, and when detention is necessary, with humane treatment. In particular honoring due process, where people have the right to to at least be seen by a judge. The right to communicate with their families, and when deportation is necessary, send them to their country of origin instead of another continent entirely or paying some prison somewhere to detain them indefinitely. That when people are detained at all it on the orders of the a judge, expressed in a warrant. That while under detention they should have access to legal services, and have an avenue to complain about their treatment if necessary.
This was all very well understood and hashed out through law and precedent over many decades.
I basically agree, but even Obama built detention centers, no? I don't think anything you advocate is incompatible with detention centers or detainment camps.
That’s not the way things are being run now. People are being detained and sent to camps without warrants. There are complaints about conditions and no observers are allowed. People from South America are being dumped in Africa, detained in foreign prisons without trial, deported without a hearing. Killed with no investigation.
and for the record I dont care what Obama did. some fairly dubious things. does that justify any of this?
I don't support the "way things are being run now" or even what Obama did, necessarily. Just objecting to the narrow point that "detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much".
Well, you could build centers that are not prisons. Not resorts or holiday camps, but start with not crushing the balls of the people in there.
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).
> Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities.
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.
I understand the sentiment, but it’s the correct term for such facilities. You don’t need gas chambers to qualify. As far as I know, the terms is also used for historic ethnical imprisonment facilities for Japanese people in the USA, which seems very comparable.
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".
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.
The thing is, while I agree we are closer to the 1933 definition of what a concentration camp is, it's not 1933 anymore as 1945 happened since. The meaning of words change and are tarnished by history, as is the meaning of symbols. The swatiska was a peace symbol before the 3rd reich, and pepe was just a frog 10 years ago.
> 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!
The meaning of "concentration camp" did not changed. European historians and writers use them exactly like I did. So does wikipedia. In particular, European historians writing about WWII can not possibly limit the meaning of that word to extermination camp only, because concentration camps as such played pretty important role the whole time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
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.
People that broke the law entering the country whom have no right to be there yes, with reduced rights as they are non-citizens. This is internationally universal. What is your point?
Even if they might not be citizens, they are humans, people. With human rights.
Categorizing one group of humans as being less deserving of basic human decency than others, is, for a lack of a better word, nazi rhetoric.
While one of these seems like an accident where the officer may have some blame, then both of them can be avoided if you don't behave aggressively or don't show up with a gun at a protest. I.e, bad things sometimes happen, but they are not the situation you wish it to be.
And this is a clear give away you haven't seen either footage of the actual killing.
I don't know of any nice, calm, non-roided ICE agent who would say "fucking bitch" to a person that was shot and killed because they drove away from them.
Nor do I know of any officer in general who would be considered an upstanding on-duty officer doing so, especially one where they push you to the ground for filming, pepper spray you, put you to the ground and then shot you 10 times.
I’m no fan of guns but showing up with a gun is not illegal or criminal in itself that deserves instant death sentence. So you might want to introspect what you’re saying here.
I have introspected this thoroughly. What I'm saying is if you're confiscated a gun in some highly urgent situation, then the people doing the seizing get even more tense in their mental state, so accidents are easy to make.
While it may be worth it to investigate the situation and there may some blame on the officer, then the allusions people are making (perhaps not you) are completely out of whack.
I'm sure it's inconvenient if your party or candidate lost the presidential election, but you shouldn't turn to lying for retribution.
Calling this an "accident" is a pretty huge stretch I must say. They dumped rounds in the guy while he was collapsed face down on the pavement and unarmed.
If they didn't know they shouldn't have been firing at him. Soldiers in active warzones wouldn't be given such considerations and allowed to just blast people that they don't even know are armed. There is no excuse.
I would like to see any situation where an average citizen could kill somebody in a similar manner and be given the benefit of the doubt. Because "He may or may not have been armed, I don't really know because I couldn't see" would not fly in any US court for any other random civilian.
Police (and people in general) react to what appears. They can't stop time, strip-search Pretti, find nothing, then continue.
I could also say "there is no excuse for you to not understand why ICE did what they did". No point in these judgements, they don't help your argument.
The entire protest isn't a plain protest. They could do their whistling and marching on a public square, yet they walk and whistle along with law enforcement. (I guess the new way to rob a bank would just be to walk in there with the guards, but say that you're protesting and talk about the letters of constitution?)
How is filming in public an "obstruction"? Do cameras or filmers have telekinetic powers? If you then tell me what is the safe radius where this telekinetic power is neutralized. Would an 800mm lens from 500 yards away be safe?
It is if you are doing it during a police operation.
There is also no fixed radius. E.g, if there is a police op in one apartment, you are filming in another, but there is a wall in between, then the distance is miniscule. If you're walking along with the officer and filming the op as it happens, then you are in the radius. Even worse if you're also whistling.
It's been established many times that it is perfectly legal in US law to film US police on US soil .. there's been state by state settings of acceptable distances, etc.
ICE / DHS / Border patrol aren't US police, of course - they are immigration enforcement agents with more limited powers despite assertions by the current US federal administration to the contrary.
It doesn't seem to be legal to interfere with police work https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_, e.g, film or whistle during an operation. The constitution doesn't apply as naively as you think.
The video gives vague platitudes about filming limits just saying "do not obstruct" well duh, now define what not obstructing means, show case laws about the right radius or whatever else to film. No where does the video show he was "legally obstructing" the policework, just cites that a filmer must not obstruct.
I'm sure that the investigation into the Alex Pretti event will give you more exact platitudes to rely on. Unlikely will its determination concur with yours, unfortunately. (But the future will tell, right!)
For Alex Pretti, there is already a video found where he kicks a police car's tail light loose during an earlier protest (while also carrying a gun to that event, too), so circumstances are stacking against him, unfortunately.
I'd say, simply don't bring a gun to a protest! As then police won't need to do split second decisions about whether you are using lethal force against them or not.
To me saying "simply don't bring a gun to a protest" is according to constitutional law the same as saying "just don't say politically inflammatory things around officers who might accidentally interpret it as a personal threat and beat you".
If cops are too pussy for their job they can quit anytime, nobody's stopping them. The public should not have to give up firearms just because cops piddle their pants ehile being armed armoured ten times as much.
The Alex Pretti shooting is what started this thread (way up).
Though back to filming, while it's legal to just film a cop, then it may not be while an operation is ongoing. If you film the operation in quiet then I guess it's up to debate whether that is interfering with police work. But the protesters were also whistling along with the officers, i.e, giving away that they're there, etc.
A banks not public property and the people being shot weren't engaging in any crime. A bank can decide what they allow in or not. Its extremely astounding you seem unaware of this. Your "analogy" is completely confused and meaningless.
It does: in context of an active war having a gun won't surprise anyone. In context of arresting someone and seeing a gun on that person makes that person appear lethally dangerous.
Why? If you are arrested for a parking ticket do you expect to be shot if you also happened to be carrying? It's understandable if one feels scared of someone wielding a firearm while confronting them. Therefore we should shoot any cops who attempt to come near us since they are armed and getting into an interaction with us and they appear lethally dangerous.
Nobody is stopping illegals from being deported. They just hace to prove illegality first. If you believe otherwise, I am more than happy to recommend you for imprisonment and deportation first before asking questions.
Not all warrants are same. Some warrants ICE use don't have legal powers of court issued warrants for example. So yes, its just a piece of nosy Karen paper and you can prevent them entry to your house for example for certain types of warrants.
I'm sure an investigation into this particular case will surface what kind of warrant (or other legal document) they were carrying out and whether whistling along with police carrying out their work was interference or not.
If you know who was going to be captured and how this was only a "Karen" warrant , which doesn't constitute non-interferable police work, post to any source!
You seem to have difficulty with English, maybe its not your main language. What part of the warrant type being immaterial for third parties having a right to film the cops was difficult to understand?
Why do you say "not all warrants are the same" while them being different is immaterial?
Also, why even "protest" at these events when the people targeted by ICE haven't determined to be illegal immigrants? They can just present their basis for legal immigration and be done with it.
Ask ICE why they are acting like violent terrorists. Why are you asking protestors who have a legal right to free speech, to carry firearms, to protest in a public space and to film in a public space?
You are probably from one of the lesser countries in the world which is why your confusion. In sane countries people don't need "permission" from the government to engage in speech.
I spoke about warrants because you are the one who brought up "court orders" out of thin air and you clearly showed you had completely made it up since you neither knew about the fake Karen warrants and nor about the proportion of real court orders and fake warrants. I can print a paper saying "Ultra Real Serious Warrant for Arrest of kreetx" too. Would you listen to me and get arrested by me?
> or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps
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.
I believe this[0] article shows the other side of that door. To clarify, I believe the seeming lack of justice system involvement is what chafes for most.
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 may come as a shock to someone stuck in a radical far left bubble but people who are not either a citizen of one of the several states or not a citizen of the federal government (nor both) are not parties to the agreement that is the constitution.
"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).
There’s always an excuse. “They” are always unlawful invaders. “They” are always a danger to our children and our posterity. “They” are always not deserving of the same rights as “us”. The excuse is always “justified” in the eyes of fascists and people fooled by their rhetoric.
Hemingway was right when he said “There are many Americans who are fascists without knowing it.”
> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?
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.
Also consider that there are 340 million people in the US. With that sort of population size, you can construct whatever narrative you want out of daily video clips of 1-in-a-million events.
>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
> 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.
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.
dang has mentioned several times that witchhunting is against the rules, and I'm not going to compile a list of witches for you, mostly because it is both toxic to communities and not conducive of interesting conversation, especially when you can just use the HN Algolia yourself.
Trump supporters aren't stupid, they understand they lose credibility if they just say they have blind faith in Trump.
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.
The scale is a temporary correction measure due lack of enforcement in previous years.
Determining that someone is in the country without citizenship, visa or other valid permission and what country they can be deported to is all the due process that is warranted. This is hardly US-specific, most non-western countries are much much harder on illegal immigration. You don't have an inherent right to be in other countries. Trying to frame this as an decision that needs court proceedings for every single deportee is an attempt to make deportations effectively impossible.
>The scale is a temporary correction measure due lack of enforcement in previous years.
This at minimum shows trust in Trump that the implementation is temporary.
>This is hardly US-specific, most non-western countries are much much harder on illegal immigration.
Bit of an odd duck. I would say that what the US lacks, is what Australia introduced in the 2000's, Temporary Protection Visas. The issue was that we had a bunch of asylum seekers without status filling up camps and generally being hunted down by feds. But the solution wasnt like, judge dredd ultra violence, we just created a class of visa to cover the situation. People left camps and joined society in an orderly fashion until the Visa expired or their eligibility for another class of Visa was determined. Then we cracked down on people who could not obtain those visas. Almost every crackdown that came after the introduction of TPVs needs to be viewed in that light. Like yes, we have offshore camps for asylum seekers, but the courts keep forcing a number of those people to be admitted on various grounds often netting TPVs. NZ has a similar system without the offshore camps.
The recurring story I get out of the ICE raids is always some person permitted to legally enter the country, but without status. Their lawyers will claim they are permitted to stay while their status is determined. The story is always one of attempted compliance with the law. But maga cries illegal and demands immediate deportation. That's the kind of legal grey area that can be easily solved with legislation. There's no need for cops to be the determining factor. People are generally accepting of enforcement action once due process has been seen to be done, and theres nothing about the current situation that even smells a bit like due process.
Honestly they have issues, and have become a massive political football, but we also dont have cops shucking masses of people out of their homes mid visa application.
>You don't have an inherent right to be in other countries.
Countries don't have inherent rights that exceed human and negative rights. Countries are for humans or they aren't worth having.
The US has been covertly but actively exploiting a deliberate grey area in immigration since before Mexico requested they start paying more than lip service toward border enforcement and actually return Mexican labourers rather than keeping them in limbo.
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.
I am pointing out that HN is not very representative of the US political spectrum, and opinions about what's going on in the US will be filtered based on that. You're largely just hearing from one set of partisans here.
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 are (or were) considered "right wing" on some stuff and really "left wing" on other stuff. It's really futile trying to compare the political parties with different incentives internationally and putting a single left/right wing label on them.
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.
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.
That's the problem with trying to put political opinion on a one dimensional scale. California is definitely very far left wing on the matters that concern the discussion at hand, that is illegal immigration and law enforcement actions related to it.
Thats not left/right, thats lib/auth. But I guess you cant scare people with "ooooh the government likes elements of civil freedom" it just isnt spooky enough, you gotta try and tangle it up with leftism somehow to really push the point home.
>seeing any US state being described as "very left-wing" is interesting to me, think it just shows how different these views are between US and Euro. 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!
California is considering a wealth tax which is already causing billionaires to flee the state.
> 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?
>well, you chose the one "good" example, where weapons are actually used for defense against a different Imperialist.
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?
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.
Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.
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?
> 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 plenty of examples of asymmetric warfare where the stronger party crushed the weaker one. WW2 was full of such examples. People point to Afghanistan and Vietnam as if they apply in every situation, for some bizarre reason (I assume motivated reasoning).
The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.” The military simply isn’t the right tool to lift a nation out of poverty and eventually the voters got bored.
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.
Lol thats so untrue, are we already at the phase of rewriting this recent history?
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.
>The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.”
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.'
I don’t think it’d be easy to get a Chinese ABM to Minneapolis without anyone noticing.
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.
The rebels (against the American regime) were all rural, ballistic missiles weren’t very effective when your enemy is wandering around the desert coming in out of rural Pakistan.
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.
If Trump bombed a US city there are enough people that would head to DC for his head he wouldn't last long. This is not Iran.
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.
Before such missiles even get launched, there's a serious risk of the US military saying "you are no longer 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.
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.
> 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?
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.
> 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.
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.
As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.
Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely.
Yeah realistically if there was actual mass repression of citizens (i.e. things like "courts" have essentially ceased to be a factor in much of anything), simply going on strike would be a pretty good start. You demonstrate peacefully, and carry arms as a deterrent so they can't crush the demonstrations the way they did in Iran.
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.
> 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?
Look, I don't want to be mean because if you're in the US right now you're in a situation which sucks. But that situation of 10000 people with guns seizing a military base to bootstrap an effective civil war, is just so absurd I don't even know how to begin.
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.
> that situation of 10000 people with guns seizing a military base to bootstrap an effective civil war, is just so absurd I don't even know how to begin.
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.
Knives are basically obsolete technology in military terms. Firearms are not obsolete; that's why almost every soldier (or "paramilitary") carries one. Your technological parity point is technically correct, but it doesn't really apply here.
There are more privately owned guns than people in the US. We are already profusely armed.
I'm not contesting that you're armed. I'm not contesting that guns can still be "useful". But not in resisting a government with anti-"insurgence" drones battle tested against various levels of resistance from Palestine to Ukraine to Afghanistan.
The Afghans won - not without foreign support, by the way - against a foreign occupying force, in the end by promising a lot of amnesties to people who had been working with the occupying government, and convincing them to turn en masse. Promises which they from what I understand, mostly kept. They fought for years and died in droves, then they suddenly won "without firing a single shot", figuratively speaking, with diplomacy directed at their own countrymen. I'm sure there are some lessons to be learned there for resisting your own government too there, but I really only mentioned them as a place where anti armed insurgence technology has been extensively battle tested by the government you're considering picking a fight with.
If you don’t care about how many you kill, these kinds of insurgencies can be ended. I don’t think the US Armed Forces could be convinced to attack their fellow Americans but if they did it would be worth remembering that the Warsaw Uprising ended poorly for the uprisers.
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.
> 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
I don’t think it’s that obvious. The US was delayed in building shells for Ukraine because they couldn’t scale up production at a factory on account of it being historically listed. It’s been 10 years since Ukraine was first attacked in Crimea and we’ve been involved on again off again.
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.
People in Iraq and Afghanistan were willing to eat grass and blow themselves up to resist the foreign invaders. How long do you think Meal Team Six will keep going if they can't get to a Burger King?
If the US military wasn't willing to simply flatten cities all over Iraq and Afghanistan, why would you expect them to do that in their own country to their own homes and family members?
Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd.
I would say Iran is a much better illustration of what happens when your citizenry is disarmed. The crowd isn't very scary. They don't pose a real threat. There's little risk in crushing them. They can't fight back meaningfully.
the insurgencies in Afghanistan at least were difficult to suppress because they based of out pakistan, a supposed american ally and notable nuclear power.
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
>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.
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.
I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances:
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"...
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.
(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.
I don't see inconsistency between the two NRA statements. Your interpretation seems imaginative/unsupported.
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.
Always being able to come up with some exception [0] doesn't mean that you're not being hypocritical, it just means that you've tricked yourself into being unable to see it. For another incident that resulted in a widespread display of hypocrisy, look at the public reactions to what happened when Kenneth Walker exercised his right to night time home defense - one of the basic scenarios the NRA is always rallying around. But I'm sure you've settled on some coping excuse for that one as well.
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"
I have no opinion on Kenneth Walker. I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy without any supporting evidence. The flip side of your "exception" point is that you have to actually understand what the person said, and what they believe, before you claim hypocrisy... something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing.
All I want people to do is link to evidence of hypocrisy when they claim it. Argue with an actual person instead of your hallucination of them. Was that too much to ask?
You say hallucination, I say reasonable prediction based on past behavior.
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.
To me, this is the substantive point. It's about intellectual honesty. That's the key thing for me.
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).
The point about the NRA's reaction to Kenneth Walker was made in my first comment, and highlighted two comments ago.
Intellectual honesty requires engaging with points in good faith, not just nitpicking and throwing out high handed dismissals like a high school debate club.
Well I don't have much to add to that point. I wasn't taking the position that the NRA is generally good. I'm glad you provided a concrete example, but I was more interested in concrete examples surrounding this incident in particular. I want accusations of hypocrisy to be paired with such concrete examples, if your accusation implies they should be readily available. It's a procedural point--if you accuse someone of hypocrisy it's always good to have some evidence to back it up.
If you mean to say that officials in Trump's administration are hypocritical, then say that. But many are accusing thousands of rank-and-file gun rights supporters of hypocrisy on a thin to nonexistent evidence base.
Here's how one gun rights group responded to some of the statements you quoted:
You didn't say "rank-and-file gun rights supporters", you said "right-wingers". These are all MAGA, which today, whether you like it or not, is the majority of "right-wingers". MAGA lives on a lack of principles, and that's why it's popular. Things are getting real now, huh?
> 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 ;)
It’s the same as in the EU or Britain or the US ten years ago, where unauthorised migration is handled by law enforcement, except in some states the organised vigilante groups form this article exist and endanger everybody. The government hasn’t run amok: the laws are the same.
> 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.
Americans, yes - not illegal immigrant invaders. As it would turn out, American citizens aren't ready to die for these people just yet.
Depends which side you’re on and how far. If you’re far-left, you’re thinking the administration is the Fourth Reich, you’re watching movies with Leonardo DiCaprio doing terrorist attacks on border patrol, and fighting the Gestapo. If you’re far right, you’re thinking the administration isn’t going far enough, Trump “is a cuck”, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if they had just protested in front of a government building.
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but most places for most people are fine. Good even. Great, by historical standards. But that just goes to show how much room the US has to decline, and how well off the average American really is by global standards, even if they don't subjectively feel that way. Donald Trump and the politics of the last few decades have definitely been pushing things the wrong direction, but most people in most places live relatively well, by global standards. As it is, all we would need is a decade of politics and policies gently tugging the right direction and we'd be good to go.
Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?
Kind of both at the same time.
America is a huge place.
So if you live in Minneapolis, or in one of the cities where ICE is heavily targeting immigrants and are non-white, it's as bad as the media makes it sound.
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.
Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population.
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.
What you describe seems to fit the term 'Dual State', and you live your day to day life in the normative state. I hope foe your sake you don't get much contact with the prerogative one.
It doesn't feel like you keep calm 'because he won the elections'. It's either that citizens can't do much in the US, fear of getting killed is real especially when disobeying police orders, or, you aren't too affected by Trump's actions to act.
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.
They should have had an open convention. I said this on reddit before the elections and was heavily downvoted for whatever reason. People don't want to face reality. Trump's election this time around was much easier to explain and both parties have now lost the trust of the people.
> 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?
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.
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.
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]
> The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.
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.
Some people are investigated because they spread lies, insults and threats. Things that would be investigated (and punished) as well, if done "off line".
The freedom of speech does not mean "freedom to harass, threat or insult people".
The oppression of free speech seems to be happening much more in the USA, where you are not allowed to criticize the politics of the ruling party any more.
Deportation of illegal immigrants happened in the previous administrations and nothing like the current chaos unfolded.
I grant that some people protesting against the raids are likely doing that because they don't want illegals to be deported,
but I suspect most of the pushback is against the way this whole thing has been set up and the way agents handled the encounters with protesters so far, leading towards a spiral of distrust and a polarization of the issue.
There seems to be an indication that many of the ICE agents have been insufficiently trained to perform police work in a proper and safe way. and instead behave very aggressively. The abuse of racial profiling is making non-white citizens (including native Americans!) feel unsafe too. To make things worse, there is a loud group of people who are cheering the though guys from the sidelines/armchairs.
People who share those concerns are not necessarily pro-illegal immigration. I know things can be done differently because they have been done differently.
But in this case, one political movement is leveraging the deportation rhetoric to rile up their base, providing another political movement the ammonito to call them tyrannical and riling up their base, which in turn causes the first movement to justify their aggressiveness as counterinsurgence.
This doesn't lead to a good place and it has nothing to do with the fact that the country deserves a sane immigration policy.
The current immigration situation is utterly broken, but it has become such over time (and has many complicated facets) but the idea that this can be fixed in a haste by applying lunt force is the product of a new low point in politics.
This misses the point of how "deportation", snatching of those from communities and decision-making for whom is illegal is actually occurring, and how people are being snatched with disregard to their actual state as a citizen, resident or otherwise of the United States of America.
When facial recognition is said to outrank any other proof, such as a birth certificate, one cannot claim to be operating in good faith when one allows for fallible systems to decide the lives of American citizenry, encourages false imprisonment and allows for violence to be recklessly committed against people who were guilty of no crime at all.
(also, the United States and Canada are alike in their statuses as countries formed of immigrants; we close the door now simply because we feel those coming today are ineducated or don't fit our racial preferences? No different than was done to Chinese people say a hundred years prior.)
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.
These things are not being separated though. Your agents are executing citizens in the street. This is not about illegal immigration at all. It's just straight up oppression.
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.
From another European perspective I think it says more how absurdly left leaning European politics have become. The US is much more in line with historical norms as well as with non-western societies today.
From my perspective right-leaning economic views have won. We have new public management, we have privatisation, we have death of unions, and we have reduction in wealth and inheritance tax over the board (with some exceptions), and increased inequality.
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.
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.
It's bad, we are living under Hitler 2.0 in every single sense of the word. He admires Hitler and says he keeps Hitler's books by his nightstand.
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.
To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)
While being the focus, Minnesota is not the only place it's happening. For example, ICE took at least 15 people in the Los Angeles area today[1].
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.
People aren't shooting yet because they know it will turn into a blood bath and should only be used as a last resort. Also as bad as it is in some areas, vast swaths of the US are still only really seeing this in the news. I think the outcome of whats going on in Minnesota will be a sign of whats to come so we won't be waiting long. If citizens start shooting at government employees though, it will be chaos, the US population has had a VERY negative attitude about the government for a long time now.
For anyone downvoting this, I don't see you fighting to the death over this, why do you expect others to do it for you and then complain when they don't? I guarantee many of you would be screaming about terrorism if people were shooting back right now. You can't have it both ways.
> Patel said he got the idea for the investigation from Higby.
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.
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.
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.
> Observers do not take physical actions to block ICE/CBP.
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?
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.
Where has there been any allegations iPhone before first unlock has been bypassed?
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.
Thanks. That's not really bypassing iPhone before first unlock. It says only 'partial' metadata, so it's likely just looking at encrypted blobs and making guesses just like file recovery tool would on an encrypted drive. So it's a bit of a marketing gimmick to "leak" that document
> 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.
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.
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')
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.
Sure there is the usual hypocrisy but IMO what's more interesting is that, based on some posts that pop up on my FB feed, there has been a real backlash among gun nuts and people like Rittenhouse himself.
Ah yes, there is the uncomfortable feeling deep in your gut that you suppress, but a part of you knows it can happen.
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.
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?
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.
I wish we would stop using that word 'agitator', while I understand the subjective idea that someone is just trying to stir up trouble, it kind of undermines the idea that we should be able to express opinions no matter how distasteful.
and apparently it now a perfectly valid reason for the state to execute someone without being charged or a trial.
Nobody said start showing up and shooting ICE. I simply said, "met" in the sense of standing your ground. ICE would not be a problem if they did things legally, like they did under Obama.
There are already people on X who have infiltrated chats and posted screen captures. Getting the full content of the chats isn't going to be difficult. They have way to many people in them.
Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links.
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.
> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis
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.)
One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
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.
> Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
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.
I don't think the idea is that the speech in the chat is inherently illegal; it's that it could be used as evidence of illegal activity. Using that example - if someone in the chat asks about plate XYZ at 10AM, and if a phone linked to "Bob" posts to the group chat at 10:04 AM that license plate XYZ is used by ICE, and the internal logs show that Bob queried the ICE database about plate XYZ at 10:02 AM, and no one else queried that license plate in the past month, that is pretty good evidence that Bob violated the CFAA.
> Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
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.
- Don't join giant group chats unless you're Whiskey Pete inviting journalists into a "clean" opsec group.
- 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.
Yeah Cam Higby & friends have "infiltrated" the Signal groups. It's not that hard frankly, and most of the chats emphasize that 1) they're unvetted, 2) don't do anything illegal, anywhere, including taking a right on red if the sign is there saying not to 3) don't write anything you don't want read back to you in a court of law. Higby and friends do have "How do you do, Fellow Kids?" energy in those chats.
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?
Schrödinger's HN story: Is it a tech story (in which case it's uninteresting) or is it a political story (in which case it's against the rules)? It's both.
I heard a totally unsubstantiated rumor that the participants were sending (ICE agent) plate numbers to people with NCIC access to run the plates. If that's the case it would be a pretty easy felony charge for all involved.
I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.
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.
No, I don't expect the Trump administration to operate in good faith.
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.
Several undercover reporters have reported this. They are obviously lying. If the administration confirms the same, they are obviously lying. Who shall we believe then? The NYTimes?
These "undercover" reporters have screenshots, surely they could show one of actual crimes instead of something that you keep willfully misinterpreting as such. We've already given you the mundane explanation, but it seemingly relies too much on people being able to work together as social creatures and not enough on a technological system.
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.
You keep saying this, but there actually is a legal standard for this, and following people around, yelling at them, none of that is interference with public acts.
> following people around, yelling at them, none of that is interference with public acts.
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".
18 U.S.C. § 372 — Conspiracy to impede or injure officer
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.
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.
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.
I've seen pictures of someone with a damaged finger. Given the wild differences between video evidence and what the top levels of the administration claim happen, I think a healthy degree of scepticism is warrented.
Could easily have been hurt by their own flashbang devices or caught it in a car door.
The point is to establish that the protest has not been entirely peaceful, which raises the possibility of conspiracy covering non-protected actions. The subthread is about what they plan to charge people with, not about exactly what actually happened and whether it meets legal standards. That's what investigations and trials are for.
Or, at the very least, what they want to try to convince a grand jury to indict people on.
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.
Just a reminder that we're dealing with propagandists here.
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.
And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:
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.
> 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.
Currently they are attempting to strip our second amendment rights. They murdered a man in the street, from hands up to shit in the back in under 20 seconds, merely for lawful possession and in direct violation of the 2nd amendment. The President is bumbling around today mumbling "you can't bring a gun to a protest" when yes the 2nd amendment directly allows that.
A lot of people that care a lot about the 2nd amendment saw the photo of Pretti's gun on the ICE rental car seat, and they saw a well-used, well-cared-for weapon that was clean and seen a lot time at the range. They saw that it can happen to somebody just like them.
The core belief of the Trump administration is that there are two groups: an in-group which the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group which the law binds but does not protect. --Someone far more insightful than me
As often happens these days, I’m confused at the hysteria here.
Police messed up and someone got killed. I feel like outrage is warranted if nothing is done about it, but after seeing the videos I’m fairly confident this won’t get swept under the rug. Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
Because the people doing the investigating are on the side of the people who committed the crimes. And the people who voted for them seem predisposed to vote for them again, even if this gets swept under the rug.
News cycles go fast. Outrage is quickly forgotten. Now more than ever, as there are new outrages coming on the heels of the last.
ICE, a federal agency and not a state or municipal police force, had a man face down and unarmed. There were what, half a dozen of them? He was completely subdued. They then shot him in the back.
The reason I think it was a mistake is that the shooting happened right after one of the agents yelled “gun gun gun”. I am not involved in law enforcement, but as far as I know that is typically yelled when a person is threatening with a gun, not when they’ve been disarmed. Then when the agent(s) hear “gun gun gun” they panic and start shooting.
The way ICE was engaging initially did appear unreasonably hostile from the context that I saw, though the videos I saw did not appear to contain the entire engagement. Also police should be trained well enough to not panic in that situation, ideally. But it really doesn’t seem as simple as “random street execution” based on what I’ve seen.
He was face down on the ground and they already pulled his gun off him. They clearly do this regardless of which angle you’ve seen. He was not a threat.
I am actually pretty understanding of the pressures that LEO’s face and how unless I actually experience it I can’t fully get it, despite my political leanings. But that video was truly something to behold and I regret seeing it frankly.
This wasn’t a warzone. This was a bunch of “trained” federal agents subduing one person and then deciding to kill him. Blame poor training, blame poor judgment, it doesn’t matter. If this is what we are to expect in a situation like that, then ICE needs to withdraw and be held accountable.
All of this in the name of enforcing borders with our southern neighbors…in Minnesota? Which definitely bears mentioning, because clearly ICE was sent there to retaliate against Walz and not actually as some sort of legitimate effort to deal with illegal border crossings. The insult to injury of all this is this man died ultimately because Trump wanted to sent Walz a message.
This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.
For me, when I assess situations like this, I try to find an explanation that doesn’t require anyone to be cartoonishly evil, since very few people are actually cartoonishly evil in practice. In this case, similar to aviation incidents, there are two cascading failures, neither of which in isolation would have resulted in death, but both of which together did.
Speaking of aviation, it would probably help if there was an NTSB style agency for police killings. If there was an analysis of that type presented publicly I think it could make people feel better.
> This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.
They shot an unarmed, subdued civilian in the back multiple times while he was facedown. What mind reading is necessary here?
People do foolish things when they panic. And the question is panicked mistake vs intentional murder.
My mind does anchor on things that feel too low probability to be a coincidence. The very odd “gun gun gun” shout immediately before the shooting, which very clearly could induce panic, is just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the shooting? And instead they just maniacally decided to kill him, coincidentally immediately after hearing “gun gun gun”.
Like it seems like this structure does not cause your brain to prioritize “gun gun gun” as a likely explanation. Do we just have different mental heuristics? Like I wouldn’t say that this is proof, just that it is my default explanation and that I need reasonably strong evidence to end up with a different default. I wonder what causes you to end up with the other default?
I'm an outsider, I can well understand the ever growing outrage.
In a nutshell, to date, US ICE & DHS interactions have resulted in 10 people shot **, 3 people killed, and established a pattern of high level officials immediately blatently lying and contradicting video evidence.
That pattern includes obvious attempts to avoid investigation, to excuse people involved, to not investigate the bigger picture of how interactions are staged such that civilian deaths are inevitable.
It's good to see the citizens of the US dig in and demand that federal forces and federal heads of agencies be held accountable for clearly screwed up deployments and behaviours.
** My apologies, I just saw a Wash Post headliine that indicates it is now 16 shootings that are being actively swept under a rug.
Is your ignorance intentional? The FBI raided the ICE agents home to remove incriminating paraphernalia and blocked normal investigative processes. Heads of various agencies staffed by Trump loyalists called the victim a domestic terrorist while a video showed him being shit kicked and not meaningfully resisting before being executed by an agent who I would be doing a service to by calling undisciplined.
The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state with heavier illegal immigration on patrols performing illegal 4th-amendment violating door to door raids is already a complete abomination in the face of American’s rights and their constitution.
And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed in the face of all of this?
Let me know how the boot tasted so at least I can learn something from this
> The FBI raided the ICE agents home to remove incriminating paraphernalia and blocked normal investigative processes
Can you share what source you’re using for this? I don’t really know how we could definitively know this happened, and I’m extremely skeptical of most media outlets at this point because I have observed them lying nonstop for years.
> The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state
I believe the official reply to this is that border states such as Texas are cooperating with ICE so there hasn’t been much drama there. That sounds plausible to me. As far as I know they are actively removing people from border states also, and I’m not aware of the people being removed from Minnesota being greater than those removed from Texas relative to state population or number of illegals. Have you seen that actually quantified somewhere?
> And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed
The police make mistakes sometimes. They always have. As long as the process to hold the individuals accountable is followed, I don’t really see what the big deal is, relative to any other time in history. Of course it is a big deal for the people involved and their families and friends, I’m just speaking from the perspective of third parties such as myself and the people I’ve observed in hysterics over this and various other events in the past years.
> Let me know how the boot tasted
I’m not in any proximity to whatever boots are or aren’t coming down, unless we buy into the “every mean-feeling action is a slippery slope to fascism” angle, which personally I do not. We are very far in the direction of permissiveness on immigration and rule of law generally. If we just rolled back to the laws and culture of 1900 for example, this would be tremendously further than anything Trump has hinted at doing. Like for much of American history most people being deported wouldn’t have been allowed to be citizens, at all, no matter how long they were here. It was only about 100 years ago that there was a Supreme Court case testing whether Indians were white for the purposes of citizenship. They weren’t, and they were deported. It’s like people’s view of American history starts in the 1960s. If we reverted to 1850 laws it wouldn’t be some kind of insane totalitarianism, even though that would be going miles and miles and miles further than we are today. It’s like everyone has been led to believe that our own history is evil.
One hint that things are weird is that if you think about the views of the average American man from 1940, the people in hysterics now would regard him as a fascist, which is obviously ahistorical, particularly since everyone’s fascism benchmarks come specifically from that era. The culture has shifted in ways that really don’t make any sense.
A lot of people would disagree with your use of the word “police.”
They wear masks, don’t get warrants before entering houses, regularly arrest American citizens, and are operating far from anything a reasonable person would call an immigration or customs checkpoint.
Also, they’ve been ordered in public (by Trump) and private (by superiors) to violate the law, and have been promised “absolute immunity” for their crimes (by Trump).
One other thing: Trump and his administration have made it clear (in writing) that ICE’s mission in Minnesota is to terrorize the public until Governor Walz makes a bunch of policy changes that the courts have declined to force. So, there’s no reasonable argument to be made that they’re acting as law enforcement.
> Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
I doubt the Trump DOJ will want to prosecute this. Now, if Democrats win in 2028, maybe the Newsom (or whoever) DOJ will-but Trump might just give everyone involved a pardon on the way out the door. And I doubt a state prosecution would survive the current SCOTUS majority.
So yes, there are decent reasons to suspect “nothing to come of this” in the purely legal domain. Obviously it is making an impact in the political domain.
This is what I don't understand about American authoritarians. Historically speaking, if you try to take away the liberty of Americans, they respond with lethal violence.
Britain tried to tax Americans without government representation, and they started sending the tax man home naked and covered in tar, feathers, and third-degree burns. These stories are then taught to schoolchildren as examples of how Americans demand freedom above all else.
If the powers that be keep doing whatever they want without consequence, eventually there will be consequences, and those consequences very well could be the act of being physically removed from their ivory towers and vivisected in the streets.
according to urban dictionary, wolfenstein as a verb means
To kill or utterly destroy a large group of enemies with an extreme overabundance of weapons and items, including throwing knives to the head, poison, stabs to the neck or back, kicks to the chest, shoves off of high ledges, multiple headshots, artillery, panzer rockets, flames, dynamite, mines, construction pliers, airstrikes, or even slamming a door into someone's chest. Wolfensteining a group of enemies requires that every kill be performed using a different method
According to Urban Dictionary, cat as a noun means:
> an epic creature that will shoot fire at you if you get near it. you can usually find one outside or near/in a house. its main abilities are to chomp and scratch but they can also pounce, shoot lasers out of their eyes, be cute, jump as high as they want, and fly. do not fight one unless you are equipped with extreme power armor and heavy assault cannons. […]
> I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
It isn’t. It is like saying “you can do that but you will eventually get beat up.” That is not saying “people should beat you up.” There is a world of difference in those 2 statements. Your accusation hinges on the worst possible - debatably possible at best tbh - interpretation of their statement. It is bait, it is dishonest, and you’re being intentional about it.
This is not a difference of opinion, this is not curiosity, you are just being difficult.
They were prevented from following just policy, and were being forced to perform actions that go against professional ethics, politically driven prosecutions unconnected from fact or law.
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.
I as someone with power over you will repeatedly force you to do an illegal and or immoral act. I have doubt you have the balls to resign rather than follow along, but if you do resign I hope you don't say you were forced out. Be honest.
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."
They are demanding "show me your papers" to citizens, often chasing, arresting and jailing them for being brown, and turning the US into a police state.
Because they are Americans? Under the Fourth Amendment, police cannot demand ID from a pedestrian for no reason. Other constitution violations include 1st amendment (Rümeysa Öztürk), ICE memo allowing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant (violation of 4th), denying due process (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments), etc.
Doesn't matter. You can't suspend constitutional protections when they are inconvenient. And it isn't just violations of the constitution, it is also destroying our relationships with European allies, destroying the planet by ignoring climate change, destroying the environment, destroying our health, destroying American competitiveness by defunding research, destroying consumer protections, etc. And what you were asking, did you ask how bad it is, objectively?
Not sure constitution works like that, that a suspicious person can simply run and you can't check ID.
The opinion to allow visa holders as the Turkish person to exercise political activism is funny, too. Don't you think it's the citizens who the country should look after?
Europe is confused, but is finally coming around to understanding that they need to be able to protect themselves. Let's hope we make it on time :).
You can't really turn around climate without China and India. You may try to cripple yourself to attempt it though, but you'll lose even harder then.
I can also tell you that I've seen public funding on various science projects in EU. While it's convenient for the scientists to live off of these projects, then rarely if ever does much or any value come out of it. No companies nor products. Most of the "digital product" is provided to us by US companies, we don't come even close to having anything like it. EU leaders also somehow think that economic development is a matter of their "decision", but as career public servants they have little to no private experience, and just run public funds in "social circuits" that don't produce much.
The right for the Turkish person to engage in free speech either exists or not. If VISA holders don't have free speech then it must be advertised very clearly so people can avoid taking on a US Visa.
That's your interpretation of the constitution. There are other/more laws and circumstances that nuance the situation (you'll find these if you look into that case).
It's similar to the protesters interfering with law enforcement doing their work: you can't protest anywhere at any time. If you take this strict view of the constitution, you could do many currently illegal things, e.g get out of prison by simply hugging a prison guard and following him out, saying that you are protesting in this particular way; say that you are protesting 24/7 and whistle or make other noises throughout the night, which otherwise would be violate noise ordinance. And so on and so on.
You are commenting to the wrong post. The Turkish person wasn't in any rally, she didn't leak any state secrets, she simply wrote an essay criticizing Israel. Either visa holders have a right to free speech in which case this is illegal,or they don't have a right to free speech in which case it must be advertised far and wide so people can avoid visiting the USA.
No, the video gives nuances into how law and constitution works. I.e, regarding whether visa holders have the right to free speech or not, she was deemed not to. If you look into that case, you'll find the specific reasons.
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.)
Yes, but In re Neagle (1890) is SCOTUS precedent granting federal agents immunity from state criminal prosecution for acts committed while carrying out their official duties (and the act at question in that case was homicide). Now, its precise boundaries are contested - in Idaho v. Horiuchi (2001), the 9th Circuit held that In re Neagle didn’t apply if the federal agent used unreasonable force - but that case was rendered moot when the state charges were dropped, and hence the issue never made it to SCOTUS. Considering the current SCOTUS majority’s prior form on related topics (see Trump v. United States), I think odds are high they’ll read In re Neagle narrowly, and invalidate any state criminal prosecution attempts.
In re Neagle (while, unfortunately, it does not state as clear of a rule as Horiuchi on the standard that should be applied) conducts an expansive facts-based analysis on the question of whether, in fact, the acts performed were done in in the performance of his lawful federal duties (if anything, the implicit standard seems less generous to the federal officer than Horiuchi’s explicit rule, which would allow Supremacy Clause immunity if the agent had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that he acted within his lawful duties, even if, in fact, he did not.)
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.
I just realised another angle: 28 U.S.C. § 1442 enables state prosecutions of federal agents to be removed to federal court. Now, if Trump pardons the agent, does the federal pardon preclude that trial in federal court? To my knowledge, there is no direct case law on this question; there is an arguable case that the answer is “no”, but ultimately the answer is whatever SCOTUS wants it to be.
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.
> Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution.
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.
They don't need to overthrow democracy, they just need to use jurisdiction removal to have the state charges placed in federal court, and then appeal it up to SCOTUS who will overturn the decision.
The US couldn't win a war in the middle east with trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers dead, and tens of thousands substantially wounded. Hasn't won a war since WW2. Is everything going swimmingly? Certainly not. There are 340M Americans, ~20k-30k ICE folks, and ~1M soldiers on US soil. These odds don't keep me up at night. 77% of US 18-24 cohort don't qualify for military service without some form of waiver (due to obesity, drug use, or mental health issues).
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.
There are 340 million Americans, but 80 million of them voted for this administration, and another 80 million were not interested either way. Only about 20% of the population voted to oppose it.
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.)
I have no confidence in the gravy seals of this country, broadly speaking. What’s the average health and age of someone who voted for this? Not great, based on the evidence, especially considering the quality of ICE folks (bottom of the barrel).
Well, they are entirely Presidential pardon proof, but each state usually has its own pardon provisions. Unlikely to benefit ICE agents as a broad class in any of the places where conflicts over their role are currently prominent, though.
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".
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.
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.
Thanks for your response, I think we disagree on a few things but I appreciate your arguments.
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.
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?
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.
> 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
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.
> why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants
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.
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.
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.
Circling back to this, the Minnesota state police moved in and gave the violent rioters a few minutes to disperse. Those that did not have been rounded up, arrested and jailed. I have no doubt they will be released in a matter of hours but it should be peaceful for a few hours at least and the origin of these people will be documented and possibly how much some of them were paid.
congress isn't going to do anything. All it would take is about 20 republican sentors to bring this shit to a halt. They are not doing anything, they all have blood on their hands.
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.
Cynical responses like this are meant to make the speaker sound smart, but actually what you're doing is making further tyranny more likely, because you're deliberately overlooking that-- whatever the existing problems with the FBI-- there is a significant difference between their behavior now and their behavior before.
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 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).
I don't agree law enforcement is not the problem. Its the people in the system that are making these problems worse. You start blaming systems and then its a catch all that does nothing.
I won't disagree that the people inside the system are making it worse but the system is currently setup to incentivize bad behavior.
- 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.
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.
They've always treated white nationalists and other weirdos like this. I mean, the whole "any infraction is a grounds for execution" ROE is very reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, for example.
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.
ICE just hired 12000 Ruby Ridge types as their untrained SA brownshirts. It is inevitable that they have no understanding of basic civics and rage against lawful protestors they see as the enemy.
Back in the 1980s we had jokes about the KKK being a barbecue club for law enforcement. The punchline of the joke invariably hinges on the ambiguity as to whether they're there on the job as informants or "organically".
I guess nothing matters and there's no point to expecting any sort of justice from the system. And at least now I can laugh at those other people being hurt. (</s>)
This is exactly my point. Yes, COINTELPRO was really bad. But it was intelligence and disruption, they weren't executing people on the street and then bragging about how they'd get away with it. Do you not see the difference?
Sorta, if you live in a blue city—so really just a city at this point-then it wraps around a small amount and your local police are, at least when it comes to this crap, largely on your side. ICE is making huge messes and leaving it to the local PD to clean it up which is not exactly endearing. Nobody likes when a bunch of people come in and start pissing in your Cheerios. Especially when those Cheerios are "rebuilding trust with your local community."
Have any of you tried talking to a police officer in real life? If you're just polite to them they treat you like they're your private protection force.
Moreso in blue cities, I have no idea what point you're making there other than crime you've seen on TV is scary.
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.
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.
When the crime is murdering people in cold blood, I will take nailing the “lowliest of perpetrators” (e.g. cold blooded murderers) to the fucking wall.
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
Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly take any small victory. But thinking of it in terms of 2026 or 2028 just means you've kicked the can down to 2030 or 2032.
I mean, these will likely be state cases no matter what.
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.
>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?
They'd have to fight the feds for jurisdiction and will unfortunately likely lose that fight.
> 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.
No, you didn't understand. Poster claimed they would have to fight the feds for jurisdiction. You argued they didn't. Then I set you straight that they would have to fight for court jurisdiction.
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.
In case anyone thinks you're kidding, Kash Patel's embarssing sychophancy includes publishing a election denial children's "book" portraying Trump as a king and himself as a hero.
51 senators voted to confirm this unqualified moron to lead the top law enforcement agency.
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.
Stop acting like we're talking about two kids who did an oopsie
Small town cops in third world countries are more professional than any of these ICE clowns, these mistakes happened because they keep hiring the lowest if the low, both in term of intelect and morality
Sounds like something for an investigation to figure out - wonder why they are fighting that so hard. Also sure sounds like a lot of victim blaming considering he died without ever doing anything warranting his death.
You can add other "real" statements like "the sky is blue" and "water is wet" it still doesn't make it right lol. You can't say "both sides" when one side is a federal agency showing 0 accountability/responsibility/restraint/professionalism and the other is just a dude with a phone who gets between these thugs and a bystander
They fucked it up from A to Z, stop licking the boot.
The "bystander" was walking along with the officers blowing a whistle, and the guy that got between that bystander ("bystander") carried a gun. I don't think it's wise to interfere with police work by walking with them and doing that whistle thing and it's neither wise to bring a gun into this situation.
I'm sure the officers to whom this happened aren't happy either as this turned out, but I don't think they are the the only ones to blame.
Similar with the woman who was shot: should you be doing any police getaways or even driving towards any police officer?
legally. Also the gun he visibly did not reach for. And the very same gun that was carried out of the scene seconds before the first shot was fired.
> I don't think it's wise to interfere with police work
So what? If they were trained for anything other than escalation nothing would have happened, they're ""professional"" ""law enforcement officers"" from a federal agency, not a biker gang
> I'm sure the officers to whom this happened aren't happy either as this turned out
One of them literally claps his hands, it's on video, lmao, you can't make that shit up
> Similar with the woman who was shot: should you be doing any police getaways or even driving towards any police officer?
The one who got killed by a shot to the temple which basically proves the officer was completely out of the way at that time. The one where the officer then illegally fled the scene, packed up his house and then later pretended to be heavily injured and have "internal bleeding" despite being seen totally unharmed multiple times earlier.
What do you think of these sub 80iq ICE retards who just tried to break in the Ecuadorian consulate? Just doing their job I assume? Come on, keep on gargling these balls, idk if you expect to get a medal or something...
How it went down was while the gun was taken away, somebody yelled "gun", then guns were drawn, then the victims gun went off which triggered police starting shooting. If this were the events, the first shot was what unfortunately triggered the tragedy that followed, as the law enforcement officers probably thought that the person being arrested was shooting.
To me this looks like an unfortunate sequence of events rather than your judgement from the high horse of perfect information.
If you go to a protest, best leave your (legal) weapons at home, don't interfere nor resist law enforcement.
Also, if you want a better government, you should vote one in the office and not fuel these events after the fact.
> then the victims gun went off which triggered police starting shooting.
None of the videos show that at all, the victim's gun is safely brought away, clearly visible from multiple point of view
What's also clearly visible is that a masked gentleman from ICE get his gun out, instantly put his finger on the trigger and aim for the victim's back/head
> rather than your judgement from the high horse of perfect information.
Again, they're not a biker gang, they should be well trained and not shoot when someone yells "gun". Some seem to have been scared by their shots coming from their fellow brain dead colleagues.
> don't interfere nor resist law enforcement.
Yes, lick the boot and let the popo do whatever they want regardless of legality
Of course when all you do is gargle the popo's balls, follow orders, believe state propaganda and turn a blind eye when provided with video evidences the whole thing is a simple "unfortunate sequence of events", meanwhile in any other advanced societies it would be an instant scandal with severe repercussions on everyone involved
The people involved can't recreate the past, now with better information. But I can tell you that showing up in a protest with a gun, and also putting your hands on a law enforcement officer aren't good ideas.
Overall, restricting police work but calling these protests, aren't a good strategy either. The presidential vote is over, the majority wants this. It's you who's subject to the losing side's propaganda.
> Overall, restricting police work but calling these protests, aren't a good strategy either.
Happens all the time in dozens of civilised countries without anyone getting magdumped.
> The presidential vote is over, the majority wants this.
Majority... of voters. He's at less than 40% approval right now. And even if, that's not how democracy works, elections aren't a 1 time card to do whatever the fuck you want for the next X years
> It's you who's subject to the losing side's propaganda.
I don't even live in that shit hole, I have no horses in the race, simply eyes to see. Only a rotten americanoid brain could see this and be like "oh well it's really unfortunate BUT ... he kinda deserved it you know, guns and shit"
If you approve of interfering with police work then we won't be finding middle ground here. Perhaps the special ingredient in the US is the popularity of carrying weapons, it's know to cause other shootings as well.
As for approval ratings, I'm sure you know elections work: they happen periodically and the approval ratings don't have a direct effect on current events. Also, deporting illegals (what these protests are against) was on the campaign platform, so it's nowhere near "whatever the f. you want".
As you, I also have "eyes to see" which still makes the basis I'm coming from. And I'm also not American.
It's a good thing FBI has capacity to do more than one thing at a time. Also Trump agreed to allow MNPD to handle the wrongful death investigation.
Two things can be true: the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East, and ICE agents wrongfully killed a man.
> the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East
This is a horrifying and very unpariortic thing to say about people who are trying to prevent their daycares from being tear bombed, prevent masked thugs from beating detained law-abiding citizens before releasing them without charges, from masked thugs killing law-abiding people for exercising basic rights.
King George would have used that language. We sent him the Declaration of Independence, and the list of wrongs in that document is mostly relevant again today.
If you are framing this as insurgency, I place my bet on the strong people fighting bullets with mere whistles and cameras, as they are already coming out on top. If they ever resort to a fraction of the violence that the masked thugs are already using, they will not lose.
I was not aware of that fake daycare propaganda until someone else exposed its meaning later in the thread.
As a parent, you should know that believing this obviously false propaganda requires both 1) a weird and overly specific interest in daycares, and 2) not enough normal healthy exposure to kids to understand what daycares don't let weird freaks come inspect the children. Namely, repeating this obvious lie gives off pedo vibes, and I would never let you near my children after hearing you gobble up that propaganda uncritically and then even going so far as to spread it. Ick
Most child care centers are locked and have obscured doors or windows for children’s safety. Children are also kept in classrooms and would not likely be visible from a reception area. One of the day cares in the video told several news outlets that it did not grant Shirley entrance because he showed up with a handful of masked men, which raised suspicions that the men were agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least one of the centers was closed at the time Shirley arrived because it opens later in the day to serve the children of second-shift workers.
Is there a history of child care fraud in the state?
Yes, but it’s not as widespread as Shirley claims.
Not a MN resident, but both the daycare my child attended before starting school and every daycare in my area have a combination of tinted/obscured windows and strict access control, even for parents (eg: a parent isn't allowed to make a "surprise inspection" without a court order).
If anything, I'd be suspicious of (and not send my child to) any daycare that _didn't_ have those security features.
Please don't spread propaganda lies here pretending it to be a majority of cases to such an extreme. You saw some clips of people investigating doorway entrances and lobby areas and were shocked the lobbies aren't full of children hovering at the exit's threshold because you were told to expect them there. In fact what you saw was someone unable to find any of the evidence that has existed.
Ah yes, Tim isn't running again because there is no truth to it. My god. Some of you are so obsessed with the "narrative" that you'll look at the sun and say it's night.
I don't what you are talking about but it's nonsense and offensive, a bald faced lie so outrageous that people are supposed to be shocked into silence?
The tactics being used are:
* whistles
* recording with phones
* free speech
* communication with neighbors
* sharing with neighbors, ala potlucks
* training each other on legal means of resistance
* caring for people kicked out of detention centers in the dead of winter without their coats or phones
* bringing meals to families that are afraid to leave the house, since the political persecution is largely a function of skin color, as numerous police chiefs have attested when recounting what ICE/CBP does to their officers when off duty.
Calling this "insurgent tactics" instead of neighbors being neighbors is most definitely a perverse and disgusting values assessment. When the hell have insurgents used the whistle and the phone camera as their "tactics"?!
Saying that this lawful activity, all 100% lawful, somehow "impedes federal enforcement of laws" is actually a statement that the supposed enforcement is being conducted in a completely lawless, unconstitutional, and dangerous manner.
Keep on talking like you are, because people right now are sniffing out who is their neighbor and who will betray them when ICE moves on to the next city. Your neighbors probably already know, but being able to share specific sentences like "insurgent tactics" and how cameras are somehow "impeding" masked men abducting people, when days later we don't even know the identity of officers that shot and killed a man on film, who was in no way impeding law enforcement. And the only people who talk about "impeding law enforcement" also lie profusely when there is direct evidence on film contradicting their lies.
There is terrorism going on, there is lawlessness, there is a great deal of elevated crime in Minnesota, but it all the doing of masked ICE/CBP agents that face zero accountability for breaking our laws and violating our most sacred rights.
Trump is morally obligated to deport felon illegals to protect americans. 70 million plus americans voted for it. Trump can't give up because a few thousand people are playing "im not touching you" with ICE.
No, felon illegals are supposed to go to prison and serve their sentence before deportation. You know, because they committed felonies.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor and overstaying your visa is a civil violation and not even a crime. Yet somehow those are the only ones he's targeting. Those, and actual lawful immigrants that say things that he doesn't like.
Yes because the US was famously the good guy in its forays into the middle east.
I love this example because it demonstrates like 5 different levels of ignorance about American politics and foreign relations, plus a good helping of propaganda.
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.
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:
MPD _is_ sharing and coordinating with ICE _when they're supposed to be_. MPD has already transferred ~70 people to ICE for deportation this year alone, after they completed prison sentences (which ICE claimed as their own arrests).
I'm guessing they would be 70 actual undocumented immigrants with actual criminal records then?
Not "brown looking" native americans or "foreign looking" US citizens that have been incorrectly identified and dragged without warrents from their homes and families barely dressed into the snow?
I'm not sure of the immigration status, just an article that called out ~70 transfers from MPD DOC to ICE following incarceration. I'd imagine it's a mix of documented and undocumented immigrants, as being convicted of a crime is a valid reason for the state to revoke a visa.
The people you don't like are always guilty, right? Two people are accidentally killed, somewhat due to their own actions, but do you this can mean nothing else than "oppression".
They were not "accidentally killed". They were shot. Someone decided it was a good idea and pulled the trigger. You don’t end up lodging 10 bullets into someone’s back accidentally.
The current version appears to be that the victims gun went off (in the hands of the police officer), by which the rest of them thought that it was the victim who was shooting, so they shot back.
It's the opposition to the current presidency who is trying to spin it their own way. They want it to get out of hand, that there are masses on the streets, whistling to police doing their work, to create more of such situations, so they could blame the government even more.
Equating civil resistance, even in heated forms like disrupting raids or blocking roads, with decades‑long insurgencies that involved organized armed groups, territorial control, foreign combatants, and protracted guerrilla campaigns is like comparing a neighborhood disagreement over lawn care to Napoleon invading Russia.
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.
So what's the supposed goal of this "targeting" of ICE agents? Because that's a key to the insurgency vs protest thing.
We have chats, organized territory and labor specialization in a company I work for, too. It doesn't say anything by itself. It's just describing a means of human cooperation. Goal is to write software. You can have organized protest movement too. Unless the goal is to overthrow governing authority, or whatnot, it's not insurgency.
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 might not have the capacity to do more considering they still need to redact the rest of the epstein files that show their president is a child trafficking pedophile
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.
So i wonder why he people of the city would act the same way as a group being invaded by a hostile force? Just like the Middle east its the people being invaded, they are the problem, not the invaders.
It's more like Minneapolis has been "chosen" as the battle point by people opposed to Trump in every step. It's the same person leading deportations as under Obama, they deport less than Obama did, yet they have been demonized almost immediately after the Trump administration took over. Why?
During the Obama administration, state and local LEO worked with ICE to deport. Now they are directed not to. Without that protection and cooperation from local officers, it becomes significantly harder and more dangerous to execute these operations. So they put masks on because the local agitators are doxxing them, threatening their families, and making life unsafe for the agents.
So now we have this lack of cooperation from local government that creates unsafe and dangerous operating conditions for ICE. What are they supposed to do? Not enforce the law because the local government says no? We already fought a war about Federal power versus state power. Heck, Obama (whom i voted for 2x) sued Arizona (Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387) over supremacy of the Federal Government with respect to immigration.
There would be no problems if Minneapolis and Minnesota leadership reacted the way other cities like Memphis did. Instead they've explicitly, or tacitly, endorsed this escalating resistance movement. I can't imagine ever putting my hands on a LEO and expecting it to go well, yet they do it freely. Officers are only human, and day-in day-out of this, combined with very real actionable threats against your life, and family life are only going to create more tensions and more mistakes.
This is no invasion hostile force, this is a chosen focal point to challenge the will and ability of this administration to enforce the democratically made laws.
You left out a pretty important detail. Your "insurgents" in America aren't shooting people or planting IEDs. Communicating and protesting, on the other hand, are sacrosanct rights in the US.
You're missing the forest for the trees here. The network and techniques used here are the same, but even more refined and tech enabled, of those insurgency groups. The power is the network of people in their specialized roles that can quickly target the enemy (ICE) and deliver a payload (obstruction).
The FBI has a long history of attempting to infiltrate and destabilize these groups. In the early 2010s there was a push to infiltrate right leaning groups. They especially called out in their published documents disgruntled veterans returning from the wars and unhappy with leadership noting a worry they would use the skills picked up at war at home.
It's absolutely no surprise that the FBI would investigate this behavior.
Not sure what the point of the service is. Given that it's more expensive than other MVNOs, and isn't even more private. You can still buy prepaid SIMs in store with cash, so it's harder to get more private than that. Not to mention this company asks for your zip+4 code (which identifies down to a specific street), and information for E-911. It's basically like Trump Mobile but for people who care about "privacy".
Clearly there is no point in it for you. The stores would ID you. As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it. Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
>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.
The answer to that question is so obvious that anyone raising it must necessarily be doing it in extremely bad faith. It's because the government mandates 911 service, and that the 911 service must be given the user's primary "location" when required. Your "criticism" is hereby redirected at yourself.
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.
To intimidate. They're probably quite aware they'll lose in court. But in the mean time they might discourage some folks from turning out on the street.
Are you under the impression that the current administration cares about what the law says?
"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"
They're "investigating", presumably with data gleaned from arrests and CIs; you have a right to speech, and a right not to be prosecuted for speech, but a much, much narrower right not to be "investigated", collapsing to ~epsilon when the investigation involves data the FBI already has.
Yeah whenever people say “the first amendment is not a freedom from consequences” it is only a freedom from certain consequences (and that freedom only goes as far as the government is willing to protect it). It is a freedom from being convicted. They can still arrest you, you can still spend time in jail, prosecutors can even file charges. A court is supposed to throw those charges out. And in extreme cases you can be convicted and sent to prison for years before SCOTUS rules.
I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.
No. According to the latest reports, while searching for ICE vehicles, the protesters are unlawfully scanning license plates, which strongly suggests they are receiving insider help.
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?!
Why would that even be necessary? They are almost certainly just contributing confirmed ICE plate numbers to an Excel file and then checking against it. Low tech and simple. This “criminal insider” angle is just building a bogeyman.
Journalists doing ride alongs have already identified the system and it doesn't really on "restricted databases", they rely on observation and multiple attestation. In any case, there are indeed commercial services for looking up license plate data, and they rely on watching the notices that are published when you register your vehicle. It's the same reason why you receive all sorts of scammy warranty "notices" when you buy a car.
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.
The crowd sourced lists don't identify the owners of the vehicles, because that does not matter. They identify vehicles that ICE is using, and "likely a rental" is one good signal.
If that was what you meant, you should have said that. Do you have any actual evidence this is happening, or are you just confusing possibility with probability?
I don't buy the claim that it's happening, but they were pretty clearly talking about the lookups, not the photos. They started off by mentioning "insiders".
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.
It literally say it is a crowdsourced list... a completely legal activity. If you can't figure out what the outrage is about after Alex Pretti and Renée Good then you're being intentionally obtuse.
Their deaths are an outcome of the heavy handed immigration enforcement that has caused the outrage. The raw number of deportations is not the only metric. The enforcement tactics of the Obama admin are not the same as Trump's, this is obvious and incontrovertible.
You don't have to agree with the criticisms but to not even be able to understand why people are upset stretches believability.
Duh... You're still collapsing cause and context. The protests preceded the deaths; the deaths occurred during confrontations created by the protests. That makes them an outcome of escalation, not the original trigger.
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.
It doesn't have to be the original trigger, you asked "what is the outrage about?" and those deaths are part of it.
> 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?
I don't know what they think they're doing there. If the most interesting thing they found was the public website leading to a fundraising platform for mutual aid a) there is literally nothing illegal there, and b) you can find that website linked to publicly by conservatively 25% of the twin cities population. It's literally the most prominent fundraising website anyone has been posting.
Wrong. The "protesters" were conducting counterintelligence to locate where ICE was operating. The plan was to disrupt the operation. Like it or not, this is against the law. Period.
I'm not framing anything. There are screenshots of the chats where people literally say "ICE vehicle has been identified, everybody, go there!". This is called interfering.
18 USC 111 does not apply here. Forcible action is an element. The action doesn’t have to be itself the use of force; it’s sufficient that a threat being some action that causes an officer to reasonably fear bodily harm. But obviously the actions we’re talking about on this subthread fall well short of that definition. If they didn't the law would be unconstitutional.
Those other two laws seem like an even weirder fit for the fact pattern in this subthread.
But that's not the end of the analysis. The legal line isn't 'force or nothing'; it's intent + conduct. Speech and observation are protected, but coordinated action intended to impede enforcement is not.
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.
Is that your theory, or is there case law that backs it up? From what I saw the bounds on 18 USC 111 are quite narrow indeed: I found a case where the defendant _fired at federal agents with his shotgun_, and the appeals court threw it out because the jury was incorrectly instructed that they could use the fact that he shot at them when considering he misled them afterwards. But actually, the jury was not allowed to do that. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/199...
Quote: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."
Brandenburg v. Ohio was decided in favor of the appellant. As I suspected, there are no cases of a US court interpreting your theory of the law on 18 USC 111.
There is enough smoke to at least perform an investigation. As I said, this administration has deported 10x less people than the previous administrations.
You seem quite narrowly focused on the number of deportations rather than the methods being implemented. The primary criticisms of the current ICE surge in Minnesota focus on the general aggressiveness and lack of professionalism of these agents, not the deportations numbers.
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.
No, I cannot. One of the undercover journalists was in their group for days.
> 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.
That law enforcement is permitted to hide their faces, drive unmarked vehicles, not display name tags, badges, or uniforms is concerning. Anyone can buy a gun, a vest, and a velcro “police” patch. There is very little that marks these agents as official law enforcement. I’m somewhat surprised that none of these agents have been shot entering a home under the mistaken perception by the homeowner that it’s a criminal home invasion.
Where was the outrage when Obama deported 3.1 million people? Why was there no media coverage? Trump has deported 300k and the MSM is turning upside down. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
No one is upset about the number of deportations. No one is complaining about the number of deportations. If you don't listen to what the complaints are about to start with, you can't argue that they are hypocritical.
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”
> And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?
There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.
There were contemporary criticism of Obama's deportation policy on both the right and the left. I have no idea why you think that is some sort of gotcha that somehow makes the equivalency between Obama and Trump's immigration enforcement valid.
No. The outrage now versus back then is day and night. There were pretty much no protests during Obama’s term, even though the scale of deportations was much larger. That contrast is highly suspicious.
Dragonwriter has already laid out some of the differences for you to research further beyond the single data point of number of deportations. You've asked the same question multiple times but seem to not want to actually engage with the answers so I'll leave it there.
People keep telling you that it has nothing to do with the number of deportations, and you keep insisting that it does. Why do you believe the number of deportations is the most important factor?
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
When talking to someone at-risk of deportation earlier in the year, they asked me, "Why should I do anything differently? Obama and Biden did the same exact shit."
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.
And I agree with you, but that's not what I'm questioning. Given the 10x larger scale of deportations during the Obama's term, why were there no protests?
During Obama's term the practice of warrentless entry into actual citizens homes wasn't widespread.
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.
Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?
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.
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
As many others have pointed out, the deeper issue is the size of the boot, the disregard for citizens rights, the extremes of the offshore gulags, the fevor with which the upper levels embrace the brutality.
I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
Not to add fuel to the fire, but a lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously when Obama himself's been known to brag about how good at killing he is.
You're right that things are significantly worse now, but it's important to recognize that what came before was still bad and in many ways is the foundation for where we are.
Thanks for the response, I'm happy to engage, although I almost missed this as you're well over the fold in my comment history and I have no mechanism for alerting me to replies (nor, I might add, am I looking for one).
With the preamble that I'm not a US citizen, have never thought to apply to be one, have been in and out of the US and many other countries a number of times, and don't play favourites with POTUS(n) on the basis of their asserted party ticket; ...
The upstream question and context here concerns differences between administrations wrt home soil immigration policy, to which I've been focused.
As points of note:
* Allegations of POTUS(X) boasting behind doors are a difference of behaviour from that of POTUS(Y) coming right out and stating they can freely kill in Times Square and get away with while glorifying the deaths of citizens in public and promising perpertrators they'll get away with it and have immunity.
* I'm no fan of remote double tap kills. Full stop. That said;
* POTUS(X) authorising kills in an "inherited" known and ongoing "war zone" known to all is distinct from POTUS(Y) authorising double tap kills from unmarked airframes of civilians in international waters prior to any declaration of war (via Congress or not).
* Regardless, the offshore behaviour of any POTUS is distinct from their behaviour toward their own citizens within their country.
In the arc of all the shitty behaviour by post WW POTUS(n) candidates, the current incumbent has significantly levelled up to achieve Kissinger level disregard for human life on home soil for purely political gain .. and played that hand badly.
That aside, I'm not a Communist - but I do admire Ash Sarkar's shut down of idiotic Obama / Trump faux dichotomy posings by a pompous right wing media pundit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k
I equally admire our PM's "off the cuff" (approximately 15 mins rough note prep time) strip down of an opposition one time PM attempting to pin a third parties bad behaviour on the sitting government on the basis of them making no comment until after a Court case had completed (as per the law here) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNuPcf8L00
It's not relevant to immigration policy, but it is a good example of off the cuff professional level political debate in sitting government.
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.
They are not able to enforce their will unchecked. The legislature is more than willing to turn on Trump when he crosses the line, hence the whole idea of "TACO."
The fascists haven't won because if they did, they would be killing a lot more dissidents in the street. They killed two and the public outcry is so angry that Kristi Noem might be impeached. Democrats are willing to shut down the government to starve ICE if they have to. Even GOP legislators are criticizing Trump, which is a dangerous activity for any Republican looking to keep their seat.
Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot. No one is being prosecuted for the murders, and in fact at least one investigator has quit their career position in the FBI for being asked to bury it.
> Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot
Bovino (Border Patrol “at large” Commander who may or may not have lost that title and been returned to his sector command), not Bongino (the podcaster-turned-FBI Deputy Director who resigned to go back to podcasting), and Homan didn't get Bovino’s job, only his spotlight (he was already the head of border policy for the White House.)
I'm not arguing they've won forever, but having the executive branch and a majority (albiet not a an opposition-proof supermajority) in the legislative branch is significant. I would say MAGA is well represented at the state level also.
I hope the midterms go smoothly and the GOP loses heavily at the polls and legislative power changes hands in January, but I'm not 100% confident of that any more.
I should’ve clarified. They won the 2024 election. And the democrats are controlled opposition who take money from fascists. For all intents and purposes they have won. That may not be a permanent state of affairs.
> I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
I don't think it makes sense to reject an explanation of current events grounded in a battle that is clearly over having been won and the victor using the ground they’ve gained to produce the events being discussed merelt because the broader war isn’t over and that victor may potentially lose some subsequent battle.
Given that Newsom was on a podcast just last week caving to even the slightest pushback, I wouldn't count on him to be bombastic to anyone. He's 100% optics-driven-cowardice.
Well see. Anything can happen. Maybe Im wrong and people this time around do want sanity. Or Trump drone strikes him if he sees him getting too much steam.
Because too many people dismissed the claims that electing Trump would lead to a fascist administration as alarmist. Turns out he meant every word he said during his campaign.
Conspiracy to commit a crime is typically not included in protected speech. Whether you think that's happening here will depend mostly on what side you take, I suspect.
“ 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”
Trump’s speech does not meet that standard. It lacked coordination, targeting, or intent to physically interfere. The Minnesota case is different because it includes coordinated dispatch, targeting of ICE activity, and sharing de-arrest material with the stated intent to impede operations. That coordination and intent is the legal difference.
You keep commenting to cite this statute when you clearly have not actually read what it says. Peaceful protest is explicitly protected by the first amendment.
The statute defines a crime that is distinguishable from peaceful protest/1A. You are free to interpret that however you like in relation to what is occurring.
We are referring to peaceful protest and assembly, which are protected rights, not crimes. You can have a huge group chat or take out a huge billboard and announce your protest. There's no crime to discuss here.
This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech. If all info could be interpreted as impediments to federal officers then phones, the internet, the human voice, etc would be illegal
No, they are organizing legally, of course there will be bad actors, but blocking an agent out of bad faith is certainly less of a crime than a bad faith ICE agent killing someone for their assumptions
We already know that "doxxing" on its own is not a crime, and moreover that [non-undercover] federal agents are not entitled to keep their identities secret.
We also know that legal observation and making noise does not constitute interference.
So those may be their stated reasons, but they will not hold up in court.
There's been lots of legal writing pointing out these statutes basically refer to impeding an officer by threat or physical force, which that statute you cite states. It doesn't refer to anything about providing food to someone who is fearing for their lives and won't leave the home, or communicating about the publicly observed whereabouts of law enforcement.
Are these federal officers? They’re men in masks with camo and body armor kidnapping people off the streets and refusing to show identification beyond a patch that says “ICE”.
Yes, they are federal officers. There is no pattern of mass kidnappings by impersonators occurring here.
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.
Sure, but you should read what "impede" and "interfere" mean both in the regs and court precedent. Following ICE agents around is neither impeding or interfering by current federal court definitions. But yeah... that can change quickly.
“Free speech” is a concept not a law. The first amendment protects certain types of speech. Whether something is free speech or not does not depend on the US government’s opinion or the Chinese government or your mother in law.
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.
Coordinating roadblocks, "dearrests", warning the subjects of law enforcement operations, and intentionally causing the maximum amount of noise in neighborhoods neighborhood are not things you will be able to get a federal judge to characterize as "constitutionally protected speech".
Actually... making noise in a neighborhood is constitutionally protected speech (as I have learned when my neighbors crank the sub-par disco up to 11.)
Also, it turns out the law is interpreted by judges who often (but not always) have careers as attorneys. It is not, thankfully, interpreted by people dropping into the internet comments section.
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.
How many rights can Trump trample in one year? This is a big deal. I realize most of the problems started with the patriot act (most members of congress are culpable for that). We should all have zero tolerance for the erosion of our rights, zero tolerance for fake emergencies!
Anyone organizing your neighborhood and events keep inner circle chats to only people you have personally vetted and use a new group chat for every event/topic and delete the groups for past events.
Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone
Every one is a potential fall guy except the King. First sign you're a liability and under the bus you go. And unless you're on Truth Social you're usually the last to know.
I don't know if I'd classify Noem as a patsy or fall gal, either.
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.
Noem strikes me as a loyalist and a team player through and through, so probably a fall gal.
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.
Trump has loyalty only to himself and in his first term was constantly throwing people under the bus after he decided they were a liability to the Main Character.
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.
Honestly Miller strikes me different. It’s not coincidence he’s survived so long.
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.
She's complaining (via 'sources') that she's 'being hung to try' for parroting Stephen Miller's approved line, so I have a hunch she'll bite their ankles on the way out.
She's an opportunist. For someone like her to be nationally relevant they have to latch onto MAGA and embrace the crazy. See MTG, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz.
To me, those people you list are absolutely opportunists, but there's just something different about Noem. Like they're hedonists who are engaging in a grift and know that they have to sling arrows that will own the libs in order to keep the gravy train rolling. MTG seems to have, at least for a while a few months ago, found her limit on what she'll put up with. Gaetz had at least enough shame/self-awareness to realize that his continued career was untenable at the time he was being considered for AG. Boebert's the girl who told your science teacher to go fuck himself when he caught her smoking behind the high school gym with her age-inappropriate boyfriend.
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.
A lot of comments that don't go along the liberal hivemind are being downvoted and flagged, even though they don't break hacker news rules. If this community can not hear opposing opinions, then let's just ban political and politically charged news from being shared and discussed here.
Ah, yes, that liberal hivemind saying that first amendment rights are a thing and that mild resistance is not grounds for summary execution. Classic liberal hivemind.
Perspective from Central Europe (Austria): I can tell you that essentially nobody here has any doubt that bad faith is at play.
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.
I'm convinced all this talk around Signal, including Hegseths fuckup, is to discourage "normies" (for lack of a better term) from using it. Even in this very HN thread, where you'd expect technical nuance, there are people spreading FUD around the phone number requirement as if that'd be your downfall... a timestamp and a phone number? How would that get someone convicted in court?
I can't believe there are so many boot licking fascist-lovers on hacker news. ICE are executing Americans on the streets and a bunch of people here are defending that. The US is cooked.
Maybe your understanding of things is wrong? Maybe the information you are getting on the situation is misleading?
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.
Many people on hacker news have a reason to care about the united states government's position on signal and their evolving efforts relating to civil rights.
That's not what happened. Watch the video. What you'll see is an undertrained bully with no accountability who was looking for an excuse to use violence. That's why the victim was shot from the side, and why the administration refuses to allow a serious investigation.
Why is it so hard for someone like Trump to admit that a mistake was made by one of his agents, put him in jail and leave Minnesota alone at least for a while?
It was predictable that things would get worse if he didn't back off and tell the truth.
I suspect they're going to find it challenging to turn protected speech into something prosecutable like obstruction - assuming activists exercise even a modicum of care in their wording. Seems like just another intimidation tactic but in doing that, they've also given a heads-up to their targets.
For all the complaints about the previous DOJ, one thing nobody ever argued was that they weren't intending to get convictions. They only brought cases they thought they could win.
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.
The dude was literally just standing there on a public sidewalk with his hands up. He never initiated the altercation or otherwise impeded any lawful investigation.
The agent chose to initiate the altercation during which the victim was pepper sprayed, pinned to the ground by six people, disarmed, and then shot ten times.
Because I was baselessly accused of lying, here's one video taken from the sidewalk (there are probably more copies of this with more views, but it's what came up in my search):
The man coming into frame at :09 is Pretti. As can clearly be seen a few frames later, he is already on the road at this point and walking towards the middle of the road. By :14, as the camera backs up, we can see that the crack in the road he straddled right after coming into frame was in fact in the main traffic lane, not the lane with the stopped white car. (I do not say "parked" because there appears to be a woman sitting behind the wheel who might have the intent to leave, but for the altercation in front of her.) At :22 the camera turns back to Pretti (whose location could be inferred in the interim from his shadow) and he is standing over the median.
From :26 he can be seen making hand gestures, either to direct traffic or otherwise communicate with drivers, such as the one coming into frame and honking a horn. The fact that the horn is honked implies that the driver perceives Pretti as being in the way, and at :28 we can see that car swerve slightly to accommodate him. At :35, as the officer pushes a woman while they are both in front of the stopped car, Pretti is still also in the road. He can then be seen approaching the officer and physically interposing himself between the officer and the woman, and raising an arm to block the officer. He is at this point on the road shoulder, not the sidewalk. As he helps the woman up, both of them get sprayed; at :42 he again physically interposes, as if to shield the woman. He is then pulled up (and presumably already under arrest) and eventually separated from the woman, which he clearly physically resists; then he resists the officers who attempt to wrestle him to the ground. This "ground" is squarely in front of the stopped car. There is an extended scuffle; it takes until :59 for him to be disarmed (although it doesn't appear that any other officer would be able to see that this has happened), and the first gunshot is audible at 1:02.
Regardless of any mitigating factors in Pretti's conduct, or reasons why the shoot would be unlawful (and I have now seen analyses by many lawyers that appear very well reasoned, and there is much less consensus among them than there was in the Good case), the video inarguably shows all the things I claimed:
* He was in the street the entire time.
* He was physically attempting (and mostly successful) to get in between the officer and the woman.
* Because the woman is still in the street, and her interaction with the officer didn't start there (as seen in other video) it is entirely plausible that the officer intends to arrest her for obstruction.
I mean if you see anything in that video other than an ICE "officer" that needs to be in jail I'm very sad to presumably share a country with you. You can argue with me about how cool it is to mace a guy trying to keep a goon from manhandling a woman (don't give a fuck what you think about an "arrest" you are probably incorrectly assuming will happen, he should be in jail for that alone) all you want, but I'm not licking boots with you.
Ok. I'm comfortable with calling a convenient narrow interpretation and over-simplification of the actions of the secret police force "not what happened" regardless of your play-by-play. Technically correct is not actually the best kind of correct.
And remember, they are called "guidelines" for a reason. But thanks for doing your best at policing the tone here, very important work you're doing.
Trying to tone it down here, I appreciate you are providing an outside perspective but these events are very stressful, like I'm watching my country fall apart, and so are a bunch of us here. So expect some serious vitriol even if you are presenting what you consider factual or reasonable analysis.
This character has spent a few thousand words now on this and holds fast in spite of all the contrary evidence, at some point you have to wonder what is going on but I'm happy it's not my problem. He just won't stop, just keeps on digging. Check comment history if you won't believe me it is about as wild as it gets on HN.
I am recounting the events that I personally witnessed on video from multiple angles and which can clearly be seen by any impartial viewer. If you think anything I said is untrue, quote it, and provide actual evidence of it being untrue.
I also did not violate HN guidelines in my comment and it should not have been flagged.
Why is it so important for you to defend government killing citizens? Let’s say they broke the law, neither did anything that would deserve a death penalty much less instant execution by some racist coward wearing a mask.
She was stopped by the ICE pigs and the pig who was “in front” literally walked in front of the car and wouldn’t have been in the way even had she driven off as he was on her front left and she had her wheels turned all the way to right.
People need to investigate the FBI. They would be shocked at their crimes. The recent Epstein news comes to mind but that is only the smallest tip of it.
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."
Hmm? These are mostly news reports of one person calling another person a fascist. Notably, one of the people doing the calling is Donald Trump!
>Last week, after being found guilty of falsifying business records, former President Donald Trump said Americans today live in a “fascist state,” building on his unfounded conspiracy theory that somehow President Joe Biden is behind his prosecution in Manhattan.
There seems to be wild speculation about freedom of speech rights or hacking Signal.
The FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff.
Do you mean just technically trivial? I agree with that.
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.
The FBI infiltrating political groups of all stripes is to be assumed by default at this point. A particularly high profile example would be the plot to kidnap a state governor a few years ago.
As to actually acting on what they learn, within this context yeah that would be troubling.
>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.
That's basically the FBI's MO.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/politics/aby-rayyan-fbi-terro...
Munger's Law - Agents know they'll never get recognition or promotions by rounding up hothead wannabes.
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.
I’m not sure how that’s in any way the same thing.
> 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.
> grassroots political opponents
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.
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.
There are many anti ICE activists that are organized. ACLU and Indivisible are two such groups. There are many instances of people obstructing federal agents by anti ICE activists and protesters.
You claimed organized crimes; not simply organized resistance. What crimes are they organizing?
Resistance itself is not criminal, especially when many of the actions they are resisting are themselves illegal. In fact, it is our civic duty to resist illegal or immoral actions by the government.
It becomes organized crime if they got paid for their actions.
Nice non-sequitur. I asked what crime they allegedly committed, not whether it was organized.
Surely organizing and paying people to do things by itself is not a crime.
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To answer your question, no, I don't think the organized activity is criminal, and I don't believe the alleged criminal activity is organized.
A question for you: using your definition, do you think that ICE is an organized crime group?
Sheriff's deputy gangs are organized criminals working within Sheriff's departments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...
ICE may well be a similar situation.
Ah, so organised or criminal but not both?
If you don’t believe the criminal activity is organised, you can find the PDFs distributed in the Signal groups which contain instructions on violating the law.
> Ah, so organised or criminal but not both?
No, this misses their point. They are organized and some within the organization commit crimes, that does not mean the crime is organized. Hence asking about whether you consider ICE to be such an "organized crime" group because they can be described as (1) an organization (2) some members of which have committed crimes.
> If you don’t believe the criminal activity is organised, you can find the PDFs distributed in the Signal groups which contain instructions on violating the law.
What PDFs can be found and what criminal activity do they refer to?
Tactics PDF from one of the vigilante groups: https://x.com/painquirer/status/2015473753568747638?s=46
Comment above mentions laws.
> Tactics PDF from one of the vigilante groups
That's not a PDF file from a Signal group, it's a video in a tweet. Do you have an actual PDF and can you point to where that PDF instructs people to commit crimes?
> Comment above mentions laws.
Yes, and a list of laws is a non sequitur. I was asking for evidence of your claims, which you've yet to provide. Does it even exist? Perhaps. Does it contain instructions to, er, bite off fingers? Doubtful.
Edit:
Reading the table of contents from the file depicted in that video, nothing jumps out as something which might contain instructions for committing a crime. There is no such PDF being distributed in 1000-member Signal groups which instructs its readers to commit crimes.
> > Tactics PDF from one of the vigilante groups
> That's not a PDF file from a Signal group, it's a video in a tweet.
Of a PDF file from a Signal group encouraging people to violate 18 U.S.C. § 111 which makes it illegal to forcibly resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with federal officers.
Maybe finish this conversation on your own. I’m out.
> encouraging people to violate 18 U.S.C. § 111
Sure, whatever, yeah, it's a PDF file from the Signal group. It doesn't do this, regardless.
Comments like this just make me think people are jealous that right wing groups aren't good at organizing.
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If this were true we would have a lot more violence from the left on our hands, but time and again the more violent acts seem to come from the right - see the sibling comment for references.
The left surely is not without violence, however it’s often (from what I’ve seen) reactionary or in self-defense. It’s rare to see left-leaning actors committing large-scale violence like school shootings, theater shootings, family massacres, plotting to kidnap elected officials, attempting to overturn elections, etc.
The only thing remotely similar from the left I can think of, in America, was the Weather Underground and they tried to ensure the buildings they bombed weren’t occupied, though iirc a night security guard they didn’t account for died in one (and from what I’ve heard from one of the leaders was that he was incredibly remorseful).
>comments like that just make me thing people on the left are just good at violence
That's as may be, but it's not for a lack of trying by the right. In fact, the overwhelming majority of political violence comes from the right[0]:
"There were about 300 acts of political violence in the United States from the January 6 attack to the 2024 election.[46][45] According to the research, that was the largest surge since the 1970s.[45] Political violence during the 2024 election was also at its highest since the 1970s, and most recent violence came from right-wing assailants.[46][2]
As of 2023, political violence comes "overwhelmingly from the right", according to the Global Terrorism Database, FBI statistics, and other research.[3][41][48] The Anti-Defamation League found that all of the 61 political killings in the U.S. from 2022 through 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists.[49] A Princeton University study reported that the number of cases involving harassment and threats against local public officials had increased 74% in 2024 compared with 2022, totalling 600 cases.[50] Serious threats against federal judges doubled from 2021 to 2023 according to the U.S. Marshals Service.[25]"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence_in_the_Unit...
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798601
Do you agree with the ICE agent who said "You raise your voice, we erase your voice?" Is that an acceptable thing for federal officers to do, or is that unconstitutional, criminal violation of civil rights?
> the ICE agent who said "You raise your voice, we erase your voice?"
What are you even talking about?
Watch it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vCdS_c7y6V8
I think that guy’s just as much of an idiot as the vigilantes.
I care more about reining in the overweight GEDstapo agents murdering people in the street than people blowing whistles at them.
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No badge, no warrant, with faces covered, indiscriminate attacking people. That's a criminal, not law enforcement. We already have seen people impersonating ICE agents to kidnap, rob, and rape. There's a reason police don't cover their faces.
They do have warrants, and they are under no obligation to show it to bystanders, and they shouldn’t as it has private information.
It’s illegal to interfere with ICE when conducting actual ICE business, but time and again they’ve been shown to be looking for people with no reason to be under investigation let alone arrest. In Pretti’s murder, they were looking for a “violent criminal” who had um….traffic violations, from years prior, and was ummm here legally? And that’s just the most high profile case. If they can’t get their shit together and actually do their job without resorting to executions of citizens and deporting children to counties they’ve never been to, then it is very much our civic duty to stand up to them.
Ken White, AKA popehat, said that the administrative warrants the ice agents sign themselves, are the equivalent of Ron Swanson's "permit" that says "I can do what I want". They're not signed by a judge, which is required by the 4th amendment.
They’re relying heavily on administrative warrants, which don’t have the legal force of a judicial warrant and are more like an internal departmental memo.
In particular, administrative warrants don’t authorize entry into a private home without consent, don’t compel state or local law enforcement to act, don’t function like a criminal warrant, and don’t override 4th amendment protections.
Having to rely on judicial warrants would get in the way of one of their primary goals, which is to pacify the US population through fear. It’s why they now use the murders they’ve committed as threats.
An administrative warrant is no warrant at all. It's just a lie made up to try to trick people into compliance.
The constitution clearly says who can issue a warrant and it's not random law enforcement officers.
As I said, it's more like an internal departmental memo. It serves a purpose internally, but trying to use it outside of that context is mostly a category error.
The document itself may have an internal purpose, but there is no legitimate purpose served by calling it a warrant. That serves purely to mislead.
That's not correct. It's a "warrant" in the literal sense: it authorizes federal immigration agents to detain someone for civil immigration violations. Since they're not judicial warrants, there are constitutional restrictions on how they can do that, which I enumerated in my previous comment.
The game ICE is playing takes advantage of the exact misunderstanding you've described - that anything called a warrant must be a judicial warrant. That's not the case, they're just exploiting people's bad assumptions.
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I don’t like political power being used to go after an intimidate opponents at all, but we can’t pretend that it wasn’t a constant during the previous admin.
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.
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?
Replied on another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798663
'protested' by forcibly precenting individual civilians access to medical care? Sure, this seems the same.
It is deliberately obtuse to pretend that a group 60 year old women were "forcibly" preventing anyone from doing anything. They stood in a hallway and sang hymns.
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.
> 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?
I think that counts as assault and the individual should have been charged and that's exactly the point about the precedent.
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.
Given that GP refers to the act of throwing a frozen water bottle, I think you two are on the same side.
I doubt that, but I only mentioned it because I just learned about that literally last night while watching video of a few police training officers review/discuss the video of the ND
> Now a situation has been created where everyone involved in those Signal chats could be...charged with conspiracy.
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]
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> "An administration that has repeatedly abused its power in order to intimidate and punish political opponents"
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?
> 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.
> Also, the criminal trial against him started after he assumed office for the second time
Nope. He was convicted even before the election started.
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?
When you let the cat out of the box yourself, don't blame when it starts scratching the couch. Never in history was ever an American ex-president targeted and hounded like Trump was. Democratic party brought the 3rd world style politics of "go after your opponents when you come to power" to the USA.
> When you let the cat out of the box yourself...
I could say the same thing to you. Go back a few more years to his first term, to his campaign. He is absolutely the main architect of the chaos that has ensued. You don't get to start fights and then get mad when people fight back. The selective outrage you're demonstrating here is baffling.
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.
Seems like there are hundreds of people in those groups.
Can't be hard to get into for some skilled undercover cops. TV shows have shown me they do these things all the time!
They had already been outed by internet sleuths possibly, but not necessarily, informed by leaks from the police. The FBI is making a press release about an investigation only to save face because the criminal conspiracy is already common knowledge among those interested. In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network. They have well-publicized, patently unlawful dragnet signals intelligence collection capabilities. The targets are people who organize openly on Zoom and Discord, and broadcast volumes of their ideology on bumper stickers, Mastodon, and Blue-Twitter. So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate? I feel like ICE is Floyd/BLM repeated as farce.
> 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.
It would help if they stopped holding demonstrations in front of facilities with huge amounts of facial recognition technology.
Protesting is not something you should do "casually."
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.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
…
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
>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.
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 $$" would not be support and could not be enforced if it had to be done so overtly, with enforcers paid to enforce it, rather than backhandedly by quasi deputizing other entities in exchange for $$.
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> However, the situation has also been significantly escalated by often-violent obstructionists
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.
> 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.)
Yes, I think there would've been massive protests against the US federal government doing anything at all to be effective at deporting illegal immigrants. Significant numbers of ideologically-dedicated people think that not allowing foreigners to immigrate to the US or deporting foreigners who have illegally immigrated is an immoral, Nazi-equivalent policy that they have a moral obligation to disrupt. The masks and other shows of force from federal immigration enforcement are a reaction to the protests designed to keep individual ICE agents safe and effective; and to demonstrate to illegal immigrants that the federal government is serious about deporting them, violently if necessary, in order to try to incentivize them to leave voluntarily.
> 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.
We're not talking about an interpersonal relationship, we're talking about mass political actions and the authority of national-scale governments.
Factually incorrect.
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.
We are talking about two different things.
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.
To me the obvious synthesis is that the Trump-sphere was lying about what immigration enforcement means, and the public is unhappy when they're shown what Stephen Miller and friends understand enforcing immigration law to mean.
Martin Luther King said while all should aim to follow the law and obey, if a law is unjust then one should break it proudly and in the open.
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.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually and without having to protect your face/identity.
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.
> Protesting is absolutely something you can and should be able to do casually
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.
> 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.
Law enforcement only works when the people have trust in those doing the enforcement.
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.
Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
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?
> Or, get this - they'd go after the people who employ illegal immigrants en masse in those states.
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
We have things called subsidies for that reason. Agribusiness companies of all sizes including megacorps get tons of money in subsides for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, those subsidies go towards purchasing lobbyists, growing profit margins, and paying executives instead of lowering food costs to Americans.
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?
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> 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.
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...
> It's absurd that people cry foul when the government goes after people actively opposing the rule of law.
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.
> Because the whole point of tracking ICE is to help people dodge them.
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.
IANAL but I don't think it's so cut and dried that creating a crowdsourced map of publicly visible ice operations is illegal. Yes such a map could be used by illegal immigrants to avoid detention. It could also be used by law abiding citizens that want to avoid the hubbub these operations cause or by legal us citizens that don't wanna be targeted just for being in the neighborhood. It seems like a decent lawyer could make a case that publishing the location of an ice operation is not the same as acting with intent to interfere with the operation.
Which law makes it illegal to track ICE? If there isn't a law against it, but you think the government should arrest people for it anyway, then you don't support rule of law.
The obvious retort is "obstruction". Of course it doesn't hold up to scrutiny because courts have consistently held that obstruction has to be a physical act. Simply being nearby, filming or calling them names doesn't count.
Is kicking out tail lights and spitting at agents obstruction?[] Because he definitely appears to have done that about a week before his death. Though that doesn't merit death.
[] https://youtu.be/p2TRbFmutrw?t=1023
I scrolled back a little.
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.
Two things can simultaneously be true. That the legal criteria of obstruction have been reached, and also that the Federal apparatus routinely oversteps both the constitutional and the most essential natural rights.
Just know the King interprets spitting and kicking tail lights as a 'shot at the King.' Pretti took his shot at the King, with his cosmetic accessory piece gun tucked in his waistband, at about 4 out of 100. And expected the King to meet him with something other than 100 or 0. In that light, I'll concede of the possibility he was morally right, but I also think he was a fool. If his goal all along was to kneel, let himself be disarmed, then quietly accept his execution like a bitch -- what did he even get out of it? He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
Uhh, right, .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWu7d5YqV9k
> He handed the pro-regime a major propaganda victory and the anti-regime nothing at best.
That's not even remotely true - currently the MAGA pro-Trump crowd is cleaving on gun rights .. the big lie about the need for ICE / DHS is unravelling and now Republican support for ICE is dropping.
Last time around Trump said "take the guns and due process later" and then did an illegal (as ruled by the court) ban on bump stocks. No one following Trump with eyes wide open was under the illusion trump was a champion of gun rights.
People brainwashed or ignoring facts have seen differently, but the brainwashed crowd is already seeing this event the way they want to see it. The MAGA crowd who want to overlook Trump's views on guns will have no problem sweeping this to the side under the heading of "violent agitator suppressed" just as they made excuses for every other time Trump shat on gun rights.
> What is the appropriate action when Federal over reach is so blatent and unaddressed?
In a democracy? Voting, campaigning, running for office. Defintiely not vigilantism - or other people will also get to ignore laws that you like.
> Defintiely not vigilantism
So, free speech, licenced carry, local community resisting unlawful warrents, etc are all ok?
Voting, in the USofA, is ineffectual - it takes years to make change and the choices are essentially shite .. barely a Democracy, more a Republican Autocracy by design.
Of interest:
Letters from an American - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-28-2026The USofA is literally a country founded on the principle of not allowing Kings or autocracts, certainly not federal authority, step on states right and self determination.
What would you have do in on any other authoritarian regime?
If the government comes to your house and kidnaps your wife, is your first instinct 1: let them, don't fight and 2: vote harder?
He chose option (3). Kick the tail light out, spit a bit, literally verbally asked to be assaulted, let himself be disarmed, kneel, and quietly submit his head for execution. What was the point exactly? The guy wasn't using any more logic beyond whatever spur of the moment emotional response he had.
I can understand resistance, but whatever he was doing looks more like he had some onset of an impulse control related mental illness.
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Change of subject. This discussion is about tracking them.
And yet without the video evidence provided by other protestors you'd still be spouting the line that Alex Pretti was brandishing his gun.
Seems like a true believer in what is happening.
Rule of law? Innocent people are being shot.
Wile I don't think they deserved to loose their lives over it, calling them "innocent" is quite dishonest. They were at the very least intentionally being a nuisance and in most cases breaking actual laws in the process.
> They were at the very least intentionally being a nuisance and in most cases breaking actual laws in the process
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.)
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> calling them "innocent" is quite dishonest
You're not actually arguing that American citizens shouldn't be able to film the cops are you? That would be pretty un-American.
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So then what crime or behavior warranted that behavior from ICE?
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Standing in the road? That's pathetic and absurd.
Being a nuisance is not illegal. In the eyes of the law, someone being a nuisance is, indeed, innocent - and to say so is not dishonest.
So now being a nuisance is justification for summary extrajudicial executions?! If people on HN believe this then we’re toast.
That is not at all the argument being made.
>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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze
Nonsense.
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
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 a fundamental human right
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.
> a certain class of protestors
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.
The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die. Get arrested, get booked, have your friends pay your bail, and then have a media circus around the court cases that result. This seems lame and takes some self-control to do, but it works really well.
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.
>The main thing I see these protesters doing wrong is that they seem to freak out and fight back once they get aarrested. This is not how to deal with under-trained law enforcement unless you want to die.
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?
Do you have an example of a person following orders and complying while being arrested, but still being brutally beaten and pepper sprayed by ICE?
Her name was Renee Nicole Good, and she was shot in the face while attempting to comply with orders given.
From the videos I saw, she was ordered to get out of the car. She did not attempt to comply with that order.
fix your heart.
Emotional adhominen response to a factual argument isn't working outside of kindergarten or reddit
Don’t feed the troll. Save your strength.
https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1qjf1vc/observer_bei...
This person is face down on the ground being restrained by three officers. Is the pepper spray necessary here?
With just a single frame to go off of, I can't tell. There's not enough information there.
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 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.
Your framing places nearly all moral responsibility on protesters while treating state action as reactive and inevitable.
> 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.
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.
Yeah, this is what I don't get. People have the right to peacefully protest (and they should). However, once you actively get in the way of official federal policing business, you are no longer a peaceful protester. Interjecting yourself into already stressful situation will only make things worse for you.
> However, once you actively get in the way of official federal policing business, you are no longer a peaceful protester.
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.
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> get in between a federal officer and a suspect, and hope you don't get shot
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.
> between a federal officer and a suspect
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.
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> No. It's not. Governments are not natural. So you have no "fundamental" rights here.
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.
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God doesn't have a typewriter, as far as I know. When he gets one I hope he clears up which 99.9% of human religions are heretical and which 0.01% are divine law, that would be really helpful.
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.
Since the existence of God is implicit in your assertion, are you suggesting he isn’t omnipotent, or have you come up with a new definitional concept of ownership? Or maybe you just don’t believe in the existence of typewriters.
Yeah, the typewriter thing.
Barring physical limitations, what you can and can't do is ultimately determined by what the society you are by and large a part of deems to be acceptable behaviour.
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.
If you believe rights are what God and the Constitution grant, then they're meaningless. Some piece of paper has no real–world relevance. Cops shooting people in the face has real–world relevance.
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The comment was not an appeal to religion. It's making the point that the notion of intrinsic rights is philosophical, and there must be a greater authority above all human systems if there can be a right at all. Otherwise, it's just something that the prevailing authority allows.
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.
Muhammad is not a god, and he was very insistent on that point. The Buddha is also not seen as a god is most traditions. Elohim, Allah, and Ahura are generic terms for God or gods.
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.
…or, Baal, Nature, Reason, etc. take your pick, heck probably even AI; which would “happily” explain it to you and answer all your “clever” questions, unlike me.
What's with the weird quotes? Are you writing your answers in Word and pasting them into here?
I'm not asking "clever" questions. You clearly state that rights are given by a divine being. Since humans for thousands of years have had different ideas about "god", I'm simply asking which of those beings is the one that grants rights.
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.
Governments are natural; nature abhors a vacuum.
Governments which at least pay lip service to the premise of respecting people's rights are another matter entirely.
> 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.
Realistically, we now know that the Hunter Biden Pardon (preemptive) is available and the Capitol Riots Pardon (mass pardon) is available. Given that, it’s only optimal for an outgoing cynical Republican President to preemptively pardon his allies on the street.
That only works for federal charges. Just don’t tell that to the president. Or do, he won’t remember anyway.
> we now know that the Hunter Biden Pardon (preemptive) is available and the Capitol Riots Pardon (mass pardon) is available
No we don’t. Nobody has tested these in court. Trump has no incentive to.
> played by Trump’s book
I'm betting that's exactly what will happen - the FBI will single out some core organisers and let them serve as an example.
If Trump actually wanted to violently undermine the constitutional order there would be a lot of dead judges by now.
Unnecessary when he owns the Supreme Court and his thugs routinely ignore court orders.
Here is a more pedantic description then for you - "undermine the constitutional order by employing elevated (to various degree) amount of violence."
> If Trump actually wanted to violently undermine the constitutional order there would be a lot of dead judges by now
Hitler’s brown shirts didn’t start by killing judges. They started with voter (and lawmaker) intimidation.
> Neither is violently undermining our Constitutional order.
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.
> Is this something you want applied _against_ you?
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.
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Or just got control of 1 person’s phone/account.
"FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff."
Isn't the simply inserting an agent into the secret circle the most time honored way to crack security.
People downvoting don't know 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.
Yea, I just assume any easily joinable movement like this is a honeypot of sorts.
Most of these groups are centered around a neighborhood, or a school, or a church. For anything school related, people are very suspicious of outsiders trying to join. Churches and neighborhood groups might be more open, I suspect, but still gotta get somebody who lives there or goes to the church to vouch for you.
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.
Most people are not professional conspiracists and know how to handle secret meetings, communication etc.
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)
That seems like quite a stretch from reality. I just know the glowies enjoy lurking websites where people openly post how to use Tor.
Funny how HN discussions about the development of encrypted messaging apps often include remarks from commenters about the need for a "group chat" feature
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
More specifically, right-wing agitators joined the chats and posted screenshots online.
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> The Pretti shooting has been ruled a homicide, by the way.
I don't see anything in e.g. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/27/alex-p... to substantiate that; and as far as I can tell there have not yet been any other investigations, and thus no other opportunity for such a ruling.
A homicide isn't a "ruling" in court, it just describes the manner of death. We all saw several ICE agents shoot this man. It's a homicide.
I didn't say anything about court. When you say "ruled a homicide", that does not include people on the Internet thinking it was a homicide. It is a judicial term of art that applies only after a formal police investigation has come to such a conclusion. If you don't mean "ruled a homicide" then please don't say it.
> applies only after a formal police investigation
Not true, the medical examiner will "rule" on this, not the police. I don't know if the Hennepin county examiner has said so, but we don't need to wait for that with the several angles of video available to us. We're in the court of public opinion, not law. If you disagree that it was a homicide, then say that. I don't understand the motivation to play lawyer here and obfuscate. We're not making arguments in court and there is ample evidence of what happened.
"ruled a homicide" is a "ruling"
No it hasn’t. Cite a link if you have one.
>The FBI simply
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.
Don’t be disingenuous. 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.
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.
These groups exist to observe and document the actions of federal agents and share that information with their communities. That is constitutionally protected activity.
Their stated purpose and their actual function can be different, and speech that would otherwise be free can be illegal if involved in incitement, bribery, collusion, etc.
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.
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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.
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.
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>Being Disingenuous
Crying disingenuous when I disagree with you isn't an argument.
>but it won't change anything about what the FBI should and shouldn't do.
What does that have to do with the price of wheat.
>And neither does crying "Nazi" whenever someone does something you don't like.
Why do you suddenly cry "Crying Nazi". Do you have sins to confess?
well, DHS does openly use white supremacy memes in their recruitment posts
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/white-national...
> 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.
> Filming officiers performing their jobs is not obstruction
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?
> 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?
Not to mention that the point is also to alert illegals of the LEO presence so that they can get away.
First you are lying. Second, noise is not an obstruction. It is ok and legal to produce whistles.
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.
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>> Filming officiers performing their jobs is not obstruction
> This is irrelevant, because many people have been observed physically obstructing officers, whether or not they were filming at the time.
The OP made a point and you constructed the strawman of a hasty generalization. This is disingenuous.
>> while ICE men literally openly threaten to kill people who are no threat.
> Please show me where you think this has happened.
Re: "You raise your voice, I erase your voice," - January 27, 2026 Free speech is a right and I support their right to say whatever they want. They are subject to their own policies beyond that.
> 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),
You are cherry picking. He was an observer, among other things.
>> and then are proud of their murdering colleagues
> Please show me where you think this has happened.
10s in - https://youtube.com/shorts/IUBkPWVg3yY?si=eYXwZ5qmL6JmXYjr
I'm not trying to get you to agree with anything, but it's not constructive to continue. Many of your questions are asking other people for information that is readily available. Not everyone needs to agree on everything, but I don't think it's hard to understand the various sentiments.
> This is irrelevant, because many people have been observed physically obstructing officers, whether or not they were filming at the time.
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.
> 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.
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.
Incredible people are taking the position it's ok for law enforcement to execute you in the streets because you're blowing a whistle.
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People are arguing the actions of ICE officers is warranted because they're being obstructed and harassed, blowing whistles is obstruction and harassment, their actions include shooting murdering people in the streets.
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.
> I don't know how else to read it.
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.
> None of the argument has to do with "harassment"
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.
>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.
> This kind of behavior would not be tolerated any more if it targeted other work environments
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.
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This is an inaccurate description of what they are doing. For example Renee Good was actively blockading a street, by placing her car perpendicularly across it. Some may be engaged in observation, but that is not broadly the case, and organizationally, their apparent goal is to obstruct.
If she was trying to blokade the street she was doing a pretty bad job. A car goes past hers in the video where the murderer shoots her three times and calls her a "fucking bitch" while her corpse weights down the gas and her SUV goes careening down the road.
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.
> despite majority support among their constituency
A very vocal minority is not a majority.
You are factually wrong.
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...
It's a majority of Democrat voters.
> 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...
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I am talking about 8 USC chapter 12 subsection II (<https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12>). This is the law that defines how immigration works in the US, and how illegal aliens are removed. ICE is the Federal agency assigned to the task of locating and removing illegal aliens. Even if you don’t like that illegal aliens are being removed, it is illegal to try to prevent a federal agent from doing just that. Instead you should be trying to change the law so that the job doesn’t exist.
Can you quote the part of 8 USC chapter 12 subsection II where it says you get to murder everyone you disagree with?
Why change? I've just randomly clicked through, and it is a good law, for example :
(1) Right of counsel The alien shall have a right to be present at such hearing and to be represented by counsel. Any alien financially unable to obtain counsel shall be entitled to have counsel assigned to represent the alien. Such counsel shall be appointed by the judge pursuant to the plan for furnishing representation for any person financially unable to obtain adequate representation for the district in which the hearing is conducted, as provided for in section 3006A of title 18.
When you're saying that ICE is executing that law, are you saying that the guys sent to that Guatemala prison were afforded that right of counsel and were given a lawyer? Or anybody else in those mass deportations.
I also couldn't find in that law where it makes it legal to randomly catch dark skinned people on the street, including citizens.
There are two conceptions of law currently in the US. The first is what we see on TV, with lawyers and judges and law enforcement attempting, most often successfully, to apply a set of rules to everyone equally.
The second conception of law is what the federal government is doing now: oppression of opponents of the powerful, and protection of the powerful from any harm they cause to others.
We are currently in a battle to see which side wins. In many ways the struggle of the US, as it has become more free, is a struggle for the first conception to win over the second. When we had the Civil War, the first conception of law won. I hope it wins again.
I think the two can be called "rule of law" or "rule of men". I would have thought more people would support "rule of law".
It was always people who ruled, it's just more apparent when the people who rule are bullies itching for a fight, who care even less about the appearance of consistency.
For moral accountability, it should always in the end be "I say", not "the law says". No one should "just be obeying orders", they should make choices they can stand behind on their own judgment, regardless of whether some group of possibly long dead legislators stood behind it or not.
The extraditions are of people who have already had a hearing and are subject to a final order of removal.
You’re really so telling not truth.
The ICE picks brown skinned people without any order or warrant and makes them sign voluntary deportation, no hearings/attorneys/etc. That "works" even for the people who has a valid applications say for asylum, temporary protection status, court orders protecting them from deportation, etc. as long as they sign that "voluntary" thing. It "works" even for citizens! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Guzman
That is just simply not true as was illustrated by many stories in the news. And in particular why would the ICE then use that checklist - young, Latino, tatoos ... -> gang member to extradite (to Guatemala).
And what final order of removal were for example the US citizens picked by ICE subject to?
US citizens were extradited? Who? To where?
Invariably someone will shoot back with "citizen children of illegal immigrants."
Sure, that happens a lot despite Court orders to the contrary.
ICE has also deported full adult citizens, eg: Pedro Guzman, Mark Lyttle, etc.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Guzman
* https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/press-releases/court-rec...
Currently there's a running problem simply having access to the names and files of those that disappear into the ICE Gulag.
> ICE has also deported full adult citizens, eg: Pedro Guzman, Mark Lyttle, etc.
Per your sources, these happened in 2007-2008, so that hardly seems relevant to the current discussion. Trump is not responsible for law enforcement overreaches that occurred under GWB.
> Currently there's a running problem simply having access to the names and files of those that disappear into the ICE Gulag.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
How many other developed countries in the world allow tourists to unconditionally birth citizens?
allow to birth? Only God does that. US does entice tourists by granting citizenship to anybody born on US territory. If you don't like it - change the Constitution. If you aren't changing it, then you want it for some reason.
Edit: to the commenter below - what "moral" has to do with the Constitution provision? I mean beside the general understanding that Constitution is a law and following law is in general a moral thing, and that US Constitution was generally an attempt to write a good moral thing.
I first have to ask: do you personally think it makes sense that couples can enter the US illegally, remain in the US illegally until a child is born, and have that child automatically become a citizen? Do you think it is moral? Why?
But just to clarify, GP was asking you whether that particular path to citizenship exists in other developed countries.
I do think it's moral and makes sense to make people born here citizens. It prevents the formation of an underclass of stateless residents who do not have rights. The idea of Jus Soli goes back a long time, rooted in English common law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
And yes, lots of other countries have similar policies in place. Racists act like it's something that is only a thing in the United States, and that it was only created by the 14th Amendment, and have managed to dupe many others to become ignorant of history.
This has nothing to do with racism, and the implication is offensive. In the age of English common law, nations and states were conceived of fundamentally differently.
> This has nothing to do with racism, and the implication is offensive.
The history of the 14th amendment, Jus Soli, and birthright citizenship have loads of racism in their debates and history. I'm not necessarily calling you a racist here, I'm just pointing out many racists do these things for racist reasons. But you are the one suggesting the citizenship rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment is immoral.
If you're truly ignorant of the history of the 14th Amendment and it's connection to racism you really need to read up on the US Civil War.
> In the age of English common law
We're still living in the age of English Common Law in many ways. It guides a massive part of our legal theory. I point to it because it seems you're taking the position the US is rare in its application of Jus Soli, as if only we made it up somewhat recently.
For practically all free white babies born to immigrants living in the US even before the 14th Amendment Jus Soli was the standard. Racism prevented granting this right to others.
What moral reasons do you give to not give citizenship to those born here? How is the 14th Amendment immoral?
> But you are the one suggesting the citizenship rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment is immoral.
I am not suggesting any such thing. I am suggesting it specifically about people who are born to those who did not have a legal right to be in the country in the first place.
The 14th amendment was passed primarily to protect slaves whose families had been in the country for generations, and the presence of whose ancestors was explicitly solicited by slave-owning citizens.
> I point to it because it seems you're taking the position the US is rare in its application of Jus Soli
I'm not. I'm supposing that it's outdated, and was not designed to reflect considerations like mass amounts of illegal immigration — especially from poor countries to much wealthier bordering ones, in an world where wealthy countries provide a social safety net that medieval Brits couldn't even have dreamed of.
Edit: as a sibling comment points out, the progenitors of English common law also could not have foreseen a world of ordinary people wealthy enough to travel internationally and have children abroad because citizenship in other countries would be favourable to their family. They could not even have foreseen a world in which the common folk could travel from England to France within hours on a whim.
The text of the 14th Amendment in regards to birthright citizenship:
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside
So now that we have that to reference...
> The 14th amendment was passed primarily to protect slaves whose families had been in the country for generations
Where is the generational requirement?
> presence of whose ancestors was explicitly solicited by slave-owning citizens
I don't see anything explicitly talking about slavery here.
Sure sounds like someone is trying to rewrite the amendment here. Sure seems to me it says "all persons", not just "all persons who were multi-generational slaves before the passage of this amendment".
> was not designed to reflect considerations like mass amounts of illegal immigration
You mean all those immigrants didn't think about the idea there could be massive amounts of immigration? The passage of the 14th Amendment happened in 1868. That's 18 years after the massive wave of immigration from the Irish Great Famine of 1845. That's after the massive migration of Asians during the California gold rush of 1849. You really think the writers were just fully ignorant of the potential of mass migrations?
I'll grant you they probably would not have imagined the amount of social safety net we have today, but I just can't agree they couldn't think about massive waves of people migrating for economic reasons. Those were definitely very salient issues at the time. Although it wouldn't be until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1889 that they actually took real action to significantly close the gates of US immigration. And they did so on racial lines, go figure.
My family came here before the passage of the 14th Amendment by pretty much just showing up and staying here for a couple of years. Their kids automatically became citizens at their birth even for the parents that never actually applied for citizenship. This is how it was for most of this country's history.
You've still not directly given me a reason why birthright citizenship is immoral. I've given you arguments as to why it is moral; it prevents the creation of an underclass of residents without full rights, something I'd hope we could both agree is immoral and bad. Can you tell me how granting citizenship to children of those without proper residency is somehow immoral?
> What moral reasons do you give to not give citizenship to those born here?
Why should someone on vacation be able to automatically tap into already-limited social safety nets for their children? They have contributed next to nothing.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I kind of thought this was an American ideal, something we'd put on one of our most notable national monuments. Nah, sounds like some libtard crap I guess.
> But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. - 1 Chronicles 29:14
> Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:19-21
> John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” - Luke 3:11
> Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. - Luke 12:33
Back to your statements...
> They have contributed next to nothing.
And neither did you when you were born, and yet you got citizenship right off the bat. Should we have some kind of requirement that one must pay in enough money in taxes to qualify for citizenship? Maybe bring back poll taxes?
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> Both that monument and the Declaration have zero authority in our government or system of laws.
And yet we enshrine them and make monuments out of them. Why would that be if they have zero relevance to our way of life and our nation's ideals, even if we haven't perfectly followed them in history? Why shouldn't we continue to reference them when we decide what to do going forward?
We're talking about morality in the US here. >62% of Americans say they're Christian. Citing the bible in discussions about morality in the US seems pretty relevant to me. Can you tell me how its not?
I also gave additional arguments and points unrelated to ancient texts, but you're not bothering to respond to those. What a joke.
> And yes, lots of other countries have similar policies in place.
Which developed countries? Canada? Any other examples?
I shared a link with a list already. You should bother reading it.
> lots of other countries have similar policies in place
"Lots" of countries that nobody is clamoring to obtain citizenship in. Exactly one of them has a higher HDI score than the US, all of the rest are 20+ positions lower.
How many pregnant American tourists are specifically traveling to Brazil to birth their children as citizens there?
>Invariably someone will shoot back with "citizen children of illegal immigrants."
Do the children of immigrants have fewer rights than other citizens?
I'm the child of an immigrant. Do I not deserve the same rights as any other citizen or resident of the US? If not, why not?
If you are a citizen child and your parents are arrested and subsequently incarcerated for breaking the law, you will be placed in foster care absent a suitable alternative guardian.
In this case, the children are being kept with their families. Who else should take them? Foster care?
Parents don't just magically get a free pass to break the law because they birthed a child.
>Do the children of immigrants have fewer rights than other citizens?
Your response doesn't even approach answering it.
Why is that? Are you unwilling to answer such a question? Did you misunderstand?
Your comment was completely unrelated to the question I asked. Especially since my parents are long dead (51 years and 28 years) and I haven't relied on parental support in 35+ years.
As I mentioned, I'm the child of a non-citizen immigrant. Do you claim that I have fewer rights than other citizens? If so, which rights, and what justification do you use to make such a claim?
That's not a rhetorical question.
I am not talking about your rights: this is a strawman argument. Nobody is talking about you, an adult citizen - was the context difficult to follow?
Maybe English isn't your first language: when people are talking about "children" - they don't mean typically "adult child."
The children (see: not adults) of illegal immigrants who are deported don't have "less rights" in this case than a citizen child.
Let's follow the thread:
> US citizens were extradited? Who? To where?
>> Invariably someone will shoot back with "citizen children of illegal immigrants."
>>> Do the children of immigrants have fewer rights than other citizens?
How exactly does your "my rights!!!" diatribe make sense in context here? Why would "adult children" be the implication in this sentence?
In case you weren't aware: there has been much recent controversy about families being deported together despite their children being citizens - this is what I was referring to. As an adult citizen, you would not be subject to deportation as you do not need a guardian. Find something else to be outraged about.
>I am not talking about your rights: this is a strawman argument.
Whose rights should I be talking/concerned about? Are my rights unimportant? Shall we just go ahead and strip me of my citizenship because I'm not talking about what you want me to talk about?
It's literally the question I asked and your position on that specific question I wanted to understand. I did not misrepresent your belief/argument, rather I asked you to elucidate your thoughts on a specific question.[1]
That's not a strawman argument, that's being curious about your beliefs and understanding of the laws of the United States.
In fact, your initial reply to my comment was, in fact, a straw man as you argued against a claim that I never made -- that somehow asking about the rights of the children, their age is irrelevant, as everyone is someone's child, of immigrants only related to the minor children of undocumented immigrants -- I made no such claim, except in the straw man you set up.
If you didn't want to answer that question, you were under no obligation to reply to me at all. Yet you chose to do so and argue against a claim I never made.
So it was you, not me who engaged in "refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction."[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
[1] I suppose that my question could (as you apparently did) be considered a non-sequitur. Definitely not a straw man, as I didn't argue for or against anything. Rather,I asked for your beliefs/understanding of US law and the US Constitution.
Edit: Clarified the difference between a straw man and a non-sequitur -- in case GP's first language isn't English.
People who natively speak English do not assume "children" means "adult children." Obviously everyone is "someone's child."
Citizen children have rights, illegal immigrants have rights. Nobody's rights are being violated when parents who chose to illegally immigrate are deported.
Be angry somewhere else. Nobody was talking about your rights or rights at all.
>Citizen children have rights, illegal immigrants have rights.
Finally, progress! Thank you. Just to clarify, does that mean you believe that all citizens, regardless of whether they're born in the US, the children of US citizen(s), as well as those who are naturalized all have the same rights?
What about non-citizens present (leaving aside diplomats here) in the US? Do you believe that they are under the authority of the US Constitution, US code and the laws of the state/local area where they are?
If so, do the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments, as well as 8USC12[1] apply to those folks?
>Be angry somewhere else.
Who's angry? Not me. I wasn't angry before and I'm not angry now. What would give you that idea?
Or is that just more projection (straw man indeed!) from you?
>Nobody was talking about your rights or rights at all.
That's not really true. I was talking about my rights, as well as the rights of others.
If you don't wish to have this conversation, you're under no obligation to engage with me. I won't be insulted or "angry" either way. I'm sorry that my thought processes seem to get your hackles up. That certainly wasn't my intent.
Enjoy your day!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Sta...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12
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The point of the Executive branch is to decide how to execute the law using limited resources. The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here. In the past, AGs used their discretion to target dangerous immigrants and low-hanging fruit.
The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
> The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here.
Sadly true. Traditionally most removals happen at the border where illegal aliens are easier to detect and where they can simply deny entry. Biden neglected to do that quite deliberately. He made speeches about it.
Trump did increase ICE’s budget though.
Anyway, https://www.dhs.gov/wow has twenty thousand examples of dangerous criminals who were insufficiently targeted by previous administrations if you’re interested.
> The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
This is the stated motive, sure, but the observed motive is different. Any time a “protester” sees what they think is an ICE operation their first actions are to try to save the people ICE is there to arrest. Yelling and blowing whistles to warn illegal aliens that ICE are present is just the start. Those Signal groups were training their members on how to surround officers and wrestle the arrestees away from them. They have no actual care at all for warrants; that’s merely an excuse for lawless behavior.
Speaking of motives, The Economist asks a simple question
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_DWKIugWvY
Why are ICE agents targeting Minneapolis? - the current estimate is 3,000 ICE agents that outnumber the Minneapolis-St. Paul police, sworn officers, 3-to-1 in a state with damn near the lowest actual numbers of actual undocumented immigrants.
Clearly this MN deployment is not about efficiency in rounding up criminal immigrants, it's a political power move designed to intimidate that has already been (unsuccessfully) used to leverage access to vote rolls, etc.
* https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-trump-immigration-i...
As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
On a related note, are you aware of the initial moves by both Stalin and Hitler before they each became infamous?
To quote a US historian:
* https://snyder.substack.com/p/lies-and-lawlessness> As I'm not an American can you refresh my memory as to what the US founders had to say and felt about Federal over reach into state territories?
Since you’re not an American, I’ll forgive you for forgetting that all matters of immigration are given to Congress, (that is, the Federal government) to regulate. This is not a matter of Federal overreach.
As for Hitler and Stalin, your comparisons are inapt. They were motivated by antisemitism, ie racism. While racism and antisemitism are, sadly, on the rise in the United States, that blight is concentrated in the universities and colleges where the faculty and students feel free to hold rallies where they chant about the destruction of all Jews in the world.
Say whatever else you want about Trump, but he is clearly motivated in opposition to this rise in racism. To imply otherwise is to admit your ignorance or political bias.
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again, what the law says and what the ICE does is 2 very different things. Otherwise, explain how that law provides for random picking off the street dark skinned people, including citizens, that ICE has been doing.
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which part of the immigration code lets ice agents kill citizens?
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You can't invoke self-defence against someone filming with an iPhone.
Don't be ridiculous. This whole line of argumentation is embarrassing.
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Does murdering someone who is driving away from you prevent immediate harm to you? Uncontrolled moving vehicles with bricks on the accelerator are very dangerous.
Self–defence is extremely limited in scope. Basically, if someone is about to stab you, you can do anything necessary to prevent that stabbing. Self–defence doesn't include that after someone fails to stab you and runs away, you can shoot them while they are running away. It doesn't include revenge. If you shoot someone who fails to stab you and runs away, it is murder like any other shooting. Self–defence doesn't include shooting someone who invades your house and isn't currently trying to hurt you, that is castle doctrine.
You assume the consequent with your language; a dead person is not necessarily a "brick on the accelerator"; and human reaction time is a thing. Officers are expected to make decisions in the moment that are reasonable given the totality of circumstances up to that point, without the benefit of hindsight. The decision to shoot was clearly made before the SUV could at all be said to be "getting away"; if you're a trained LEO (or even just someone with a firearm and specific self-defense training) you are going to fire multiple shots.
Regardless of Good's intent (which is irrelevant to the self-defense case), at the moment the vehicle was put into drive, it was clearly pointed straight at the officer (after straightening out from the first point of the two-point turn) and only began turning later. And she was being counseled to "drive, baby, drive", which does not exactly suggest being careful. The fact that this posed a serious threat meeting the standard for self-defense is pretty easy to argue, especially given that he actually was struck by the vehicle.
The left front wheel of the SUV can be seen (in the video from behind) to spin in place for a moment on an icy road; it's unclear exactly what the officer perceived in that moment, but it could very easily be argued that the officer reasonably believed he could prevent the car from moving forward by shooting, and by the time it was moving forward it was too late. Again, human reaction time is a thing.
Cars move forward and backward. They do not move sideways. A car is not about to move sideways and crush you. If you kill a driver of a car to the side to prevent her from driving sideways into you, the technical legal term for you is an idiot, and you are guilty of murder.
Cars turn. No part of my argument relies on cars being able to move sideways. Ross was clearly in front of the vehicle as it began to move forward. Ross was demonstrably struck by the vehicle, with multiple pieces of corroborating evidence.
If he was in front, how did he shoot perpendicularly through the side window, genius?
By virtue of the car continuing to turn during continuous burst fire. Human reaction time is a thing; officers (as well as responsible gun owners with self-defense training) are taught to fire multiple shots when shooting in self defense (and it actually weakens their legal argument if they don't).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlmMMmrO2oo explains in detail.
> 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?
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She was fully within her legal rights, as has been pointed out many times by US civil rights lawyers including those that have successfully defended MAGA people deplatformed during the past administration.
Your "assumption" is simply incorrect.
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> any opposition is a crime of impeding and obstruction
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.
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.
> blocking half the low traffic road and intending for people to pass freely on the other half.
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.
Does parking on a road justify a death penalty without trial?
That is not the argument being made, and that framing is intellectually dishonest.
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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.
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> The behaviour being impeded and obstructed is not criminal. It is, in fact, law enforcement.
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.
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If you believe that, then the right process is for the legal system to deal with it. If you feel aggrieved by the legal system you should vote to change it. Nowhere in the social contract is it even remotely acceptable to act as a vigilante and respond with violence.
Following the social contract in the face of gross violation of the social contract is a foolish and immoral enablement of even larger violations.
When the other party to a contract violates the contract, you don't keep following your side of the contract. That is literally not how contracts work.
> Nowhere in the social contract is it even remotely acceptable to act as a vigilante and respond with violence.
That's not a truism, as evidenced by the word "revolution". If a law is unjust, one is perfectly justified to openly flaunt it and even be proud while doing so.
Would you say the same thing about slavery?
This is one of the reasons it's crucial that the next set of secure messaging systems does away with tying real phone numbers to accounts.
One phone gets compromised and the whole network is identified with their phone numbers.
I haven't tried it, but Signal supports not sharing your phone number/just communicating with usernames: https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
You still need to use your phone number to sign up, though.
> 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?
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
It would be absolutely trivial for the FBI to hash every single assigned phone number and check which one matches. Hashing only provides any anonymity if the source domain is too large to be enumerable.
Brief research says that Signal does store phone numbers.
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.
You don't even need to think about how the hashing scheme and salt is set up. If Signal can check if a phone number matches the hash in any reasonable amount of time (which is the whole point of keeping a hash in the first place) then the FBI can just do that for all phone numbers with very realistic compute resources once they get Signal to cough up the details of the algorithm and magic numbers used.
Well, Signal would have to disclose the salt of course.
If the Signal Messaging LLC is compromised, then "updates", e.g., spyware, can be remotely installed on every Signal user's computer, assuming every Signal user allows "automatic updates". I don't think Signal has a setting to turn off updates
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
Signal Messaging LLC is US-based and needs to follow CALEA[1] by law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
But does it? In what way?
They aren't allowed to tell you by law, and courts work with prosecution to keep implementation details away from the public, and investigators will engage in parallel construction to obfuscate the sources of evidence. That's just on the normal law enforcement side.
Once you get into the national security side, the secrecy is even higher.
"Carrying this speculation a step further, it is possible that the available tools have been compromised either in individual instances or en masse. Even where security products are open-source, adequate security evaluations are difficult to conduct initially and difficult to maintain as the products evolve. Typical users upgrade their software when upgrades or packages are offered, without even thinking of the possibility that they may have been targeted for a Trojan horse."
Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press: Cambridge, 2007), 372
Italics are mine
Using any mobile phone connected to mobile network is breach of OPSEC, period. Even more in countries, where you cannot get anonymous SIM card.
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
Agreed, but people are going to people and will use phones, anyway. Might as well not include identifying information during registration.
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.
Hiding your phone number is a setting now. Has been for well over a year.
You can't sign up without one, and it being an option means people who are in danger won't do it.
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.
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:
If you are extra concerned, turn on disappearing messages. This is highly suggested for any group chats like the ones being discussed. You should also disable read receipts and typing indicators.Some of these settings are already set btw
I would imagine that the issue that people have here isn't so much that you can hide from other users, but whether or not you can hide your information from the company behind Signal. I'd assume that if you can't hide from the company, then you can't hide from the US government. We know that you can extract messages from a compromised phone because they aren't encrypted at rest. Which I guess would mean that even if you have disappearing messages and similar, your messages could proably still be extracted from a group chat with a comprimised user in it.
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).
Signal's messages are encrypted at rest though? Because Android and iOS are both full disk encrypted.
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.
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.
Nitpick: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.
What does keyboard have to do with getting access to Signal messages? When the phone is taken from you, you'll not be typing them in anyway.
Thank you for the nitpick, AI, but this is hn so don't write as if this was fb. :)
This is HN, so don't write as if this was Twitter. We don't need to be shallow. I'm not AI, so I mean this with all due respect and not just because an AI won't say this: you can fuck off.
Your phone can be compromised without it being taken from you. You're smart enough to be able to figure that out :)I do enjoy the human being back :).
Can you easily sign up without a phone number though?
No. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454478
Gee, like any of competing systems like Session.
Session is a low-privacy fork of Signal.
source:
https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/
hn discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42707409
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.
Ricochet (chat via Tor .onion circuits): https://www.ricochetrefresh.net/
Tox (if you're addicted to phones): https://tox.chat/
>What better alternatives do we have?
Set up your own XMPP or Matrix server and only expose it via Tor.
Physical keys are the real path. Sign every message with your Yubikey.
Same with internet trolls: make it possible to authenticate privately to social media platforms and the bots would disappear!
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.
Bots can have private keys that are only issued to humans?
You will need to implement some very invasive issuing mechanism to ensure that only those with a pulse can procure new keys. Even then, keys will still be bought or stolen - as was the case with pre-Elon Twitter checkmarks.
In Europe some countries have ID cards which have a private key on it. If you report it stolen it goes into the revocation list and they issue a new ID card to you.
Zangi does this. No idea on their overall security posture compared to Signal, however.
If only we knew this would happen when these products were launched...
Oh wait, we did.
> it's crucial that the next set of secure messaging systems does away with tying real phone numbers to accounts.
https://olvid.io/
Keep in mind that with secure messaging, if the other side gets compromised, your chats with them are compromised. This seems obvious, but with signal groups of a large size, they're effectively public groups. Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.
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.
> Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.
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.
It doesn't mean much if it isn't the default, even then people who got it prior to that use phone numbers, you can protect yourself maybe, but not other people in the group. But it's good they're doing this now.
No cryptography will protect a group that allows a traitor to join. The fundamental problem is vetting, and you really just can't do that remotely.
Not traitor, but compromised user. Given enough targets, one of them will have their device compromised. Of course the FBI has access to things more powerful than pegasus I'm sure (Just guessing).
It can protect the identity of the members, though.
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.
Sure, I was not talking about Signal. Something like Bitmessage[1] can.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage
Bitmessage is/was awesome, but it fundamentally doesn't scale.
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.
Maybe they should investigate why the idiots in ICE tried to get into the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis and then threatened staff when they were denied access.
source:
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.
> 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.
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.
I don't think that it's reasonable to see this behavior as anything but threatening given the location and the ample context provided by ICE's behavior up to this point.
> 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.”
> 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.
If it were said by a masked agent who is part of a group of rampaging thugs murdering bystanders in the street, I would see it as a threat.
Reading the comments on this is the first time I've hoped that most HN comments are made by bots.
I think it's important to assess the quality of the comments - they aren't bringing facts, just stating opinions; doing so quickly and agreeing with each other. You can test this out - pick a few names on the comments that disagree, ctrl+f, and you'll quickly find one individual with 29 comments at the time of writing all over the thread; with a handful of others with 1-4 responses.
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.
In my comments, I add opinions after the facts. Nor have I been donwvoted to oblivion. IMO, the people who I reply to aren't really acquainted with the facts.
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..
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.
I don't live in the US and do agree that Trump is hectic at times. I don't really argue for ICE because of some emotional reason.
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.
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
definitely seems to imply that 'doing something wrong' justifies any reaction up to and including being shot in the head or magdumped in the back?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.
While I do agree that this was tragic sequence of events, then the whistle protesters, carrying a gun and then getting between an officer and the woman is what brought it to the current conclusion.
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..)
Protesting ICE while they work is constitutionally protected free speech.
You are saying that people should give up their most important rights simply to avoid inconveniencing the government. It is the grossest form of bootlicking I've ever seen.
It may just be that soon the protesters discover that you can simply go and hug a criminal as "protest" and then blame it on law enforcement should anything negative happen to them. I guess your interpretation would still be that it's "constitutionally protected free speech"? I beg to differ and also think the legalities of these situations will likely be hashed out soon enough.
Imagine if this thing I made up was true and you support it because I said so
You are losing me with this argument..
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Bots are more intelligent than MAGAs.
With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible.
This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)
I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised.
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.
Because Snowden, agree with him or not, showed us that reality blew away our imagination.
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.
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
> Until that moment, the general sentiment about the government and the internet is that they are too incompetent to do anything about it
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 question the wisdom of that path though. Like yes the government can probably read a lot of your stuff easily, and all of it if they really want to. But why does that mean you have to live like a medieval hermit in a hut in the mountains?
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
Maybe he wanted that regardless (remote hut life), and this was just a final push for change. I can see myself, under different circumstances (no family) to enjoy such life and hardships (and simplicity) it brings, at least for some time.
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.
> Maybe he wanted that regardless (remote hut life), and this was just a final push for change
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”.
I can’t speak to his reasoning and he made no explanation as to why he chose that living choice path to me, but I just view it as another choice he made to disconnect. Circumstantially with the rest, it would not surprise me if it was related to his time with the government, but it could be unrelated in motive, but related in result.
Sounds like a guy who doesn’t enjoy the internet or cellphones. Shit, my grandparents never owned a computer, paid for internet, had cable tv, etc.
Are they suspicious of the government? No, just poor and uninterested.
That was not the sentiment, at least not in my experience. There was a far more pervasive and effective argument - if somebody believed that the government is spying on you in everything and everywhere then they're simply crazy, a weirdo, a conspiracy theorist. Think about something like the X-Files and the portrayal of the Lone Gunmen [1] hacking group. Three borderline nutso, socially incompetent, and weird unemployed guys living together and driving around in a scooby-doo van. That was more in line with the typical sentiment.
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.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen
The sentiment you're speaking of was definitely there, my response is more about how people felt about the government and, say, cybercrime.
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.
dont worry lifelog was cancelled in 2004 according to that wiki. Phew!
The very same day Mark Zuckerberg's "The Facebook" launched. A total coincidence, with zero evidence that the two are related in any way whatsoever ;)
> 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".
Why are you asking here, versus going to Google and reading the original article from The Guardian? Or the numerous Wikipedia links that are on this page?
Because saying "experts said things were impossible and then Snowden" could mean literally anything. Which experts, what 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.
You can read about PRISM, Upstream, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, NSA Section 215 (PATRIOT Act) in a lot of places. But essentially they collected all call records and tapped the Internet backbone and stored as much traffic as they could. It’s not all automatic but it’s overly streamlined given the promises of court orders. Which were rubber stamped.
Again: which experts were saying what was impossible, which was then revealed to be possible by the Snowden documents?
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).
I mostly focused on the cryptographic parts of the files. Here's what I wrote after the first details of cryptographic attacks were released: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/06/on-nsa/
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.
that takes effort :)
You know how it's considered a kind of low-effort disrespect to answer someone's question by pasting back a response from an LLM? I think equivalently if you ask a question where the best response is what you'd get from an LLM, then you're the one showing a disrespectful lack of effort. It's kind of the 2026 version of LMGTFY.
If you still want a copy-paste response to your question, just let me know – I'm happy to help!
Incompetence could also be incredibly dangerous given enough destructive willpower.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nsa-palantir-israel-...
They're not trying to use the data to act efficiently (or in the public good for that matter), and they sure as fuck don't want you to see it. They're trying to make sure that they have dirt on anyone who becomes their enemy in the future.
I've often said we're recreating Brazil [1] instead of 1984. It's an excellent film if you haven't seen it btw, and in many ways rather more prophetic and insightful than 1984. But the ending emphasizes that incompetence just leads to a comedy of absurdity, but absurdity is no less dangerous.
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...
>I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
As a former intelligence officer with combat time I promise you there are A LOT of actions happening based on that data.
> I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
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.
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.
Secrecy enables several things, including:
- 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).
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.
Would be nice if we had some form of statistics in a way that wouldnt endanger any of the intel that just tells the general public "we dont just sit here collecting PB of data daily"
Any statistics that didn't endanger the intel would also be unverifiable and easily falsified, and therefore not particularly trustworthy for the proposed purpose.
I see palntir as a techno whitewashing Mckinsey consultant. But the tech is there to make a much bigger problem than prior art, halucinations et al.
They are still dangerous even if theyre over promising because even placebos are dangerous when the displace real medical interventions.
doing Bad Things poorly is still doing Bad Things.
Because palantirs selling proposition is: you can’t find the answers in your own data, but we can.
You've never seen it because when it's efficient you won't see it.
If they throw out things like due process and reasonable doubt they can do a whole lot with the data they've collected.
That may sound hyperbolic but I hope it's obvious to most people by now that it's not.
They can do parallel construction or use "undercover" informants etc.
Fuzzy Dunlop (it's from The Wire). Their CI was a tennis ball (with an unauthorized camera inside).
I honestly tempt fate for fun to see how good police surveillance tech is the last few years.
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.
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.
> ... I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.
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.
One of the problems is the fundamentals of their tech works "just enough".
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.
No, incompetence is terrifying. No one wants to get caught in a machine driven by imbeciles who don't care about truth or honoring the Constitution.
Competence is also terrifying, but for different reasons.
It sure would be convenient if they were always ineffective. Sadly there have been periods in history where governments have set themselves to brutality with incredible effectiveness.
Except you don't need to solve any remotely hard technical problems for the capabilities to be terrifying here.
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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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The nazi transformation didn't happen over the course of half an hour. Or one election cycle, even. The history is rhyming pretty hard right now.
Hitlers security group that transformed a small section of the SS into brutal killing machines happened rather fast and that is what people are talking about when they are digging up the Totenkopf wearing brown shirts. These never existed in the United States of America and never will. Not even the modern day skin-head neo-nazi's or the neo-nazi militias could be compared. They would have been extinguished by the SS nearly instantly for daring to wear the insignia.
The brownshirts were actually the SA, a police force Hitler originally used for years to brutalize people before the formation of the SS. The SA are very similar to modern day ICE being made up of militant supporters (like proud boys, J6’ers pardoned) who are willing to commit violence without provocation or any fear of being prosecuted for their violence.
The SA was eventually hung out to dry, because Hitler feared Ernst Röhm had too much power (among other reasons)— by executing SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives (die Nacht der langen Messer)…
To say the violence of the SS was quick to be extreme really forgets the ten plus year road they took to get there. I’d really suggest, as disheartening and sad as it is, to read about all this yourself. The parallels between Nazi Germany and the US right now are astonishing. It’s almost as if someone in the White House is using history as a playbook.
Which sort of goes full circle since Hitler took a lot from how brutal and racist the US towards slaves and non-whites.
Yeah if deportation is now Nazism, then the Allies after WW2 were Nazis too for the millions of mass displaced persons to match new borders.
lol. came here to say pretty much the same thing.
I've generally held this position, but assume a sufficient combination of models could do a lot more than was possible before.
It's noteworthy at this point in time that there is a contradiction. The government is currently ramping up Palantir and they are using "precise targeting" of illegal aliens using "advanced data/algorithms". And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
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.)
I 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).
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.
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.
No, it's pretty clear they don't care and will never care.
They are two points and they are both true.
> we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
Generally speaking, that is a tactic of oppression, creating a general sense of fear for everyone. Anyone can be arrested or shot.
Yes obviously, but as my central point was, it is the complete opposite of their narrative of targeted operations backed by data.
ICE/DHS are not NSA, they probably don't share efficiently. All the intelligence services are rivals and duplicate capabilities to some degree.
> And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.
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.
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.
Maybe the wrong people are, in reality, precisely the people they intended to target.
> we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people
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 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.]
How does Palantir defeat Signal's crypto? I suppose it could be done by pwning everybody's phones, but Palantir mostly does surveillance AFAIK, I haven't heard of them getting into the phone hacking business. I think Israeli corps have that market covered.
My guess is that Signal has been compromised by the state for a very long time. The dead canary is their steadfast refusal to update their privacy policy which opens with "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." even though they started keeping user's name, phone number, photo, and a list of their contacts permanently in the cloud years ago. Even more recently they started keeping message content itself in the cloud in some cases and have still refused to update their policy.
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...
It doesn't, they're infiltrating the groups and/or gaining access to peoples' phones in other ways.
Which is not much different than how the January 6th people were caught.
As ever xkcd holds true - https://xkcd.com/538/
I can easily think of reasons why an intelligence agency might not want to act immediately against members of a group they're interested in, simply because they've managed to identify those members.
I'm sure that people who actually work in intelligence agencies could think of more reasons.
I admire your optimism. They already started killing civilians openly on the street in bright daylight.
I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest or do anything terribly interesting, but at this point I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid publicly criticizing this administration. Palantir is weird and creepy and has infinite resources to aggregate anything that the government wants, and they could be building a registry of people who they're going to deem as "terrorist-leaning" or some such nonsense.
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.
> I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest
Then you are part of the problem. Get off your ass and do something, before it's too late. FFS!
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.
I'm sorry, that sucks, it's a bad situation to be in :(
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 don’t really disagree in principle, as I said I do try and donate to organizations that help with these things (e.g. ACLU, EFF).
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.
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While we’re getting rid of the first amendment maybe we should also get rid of the fourth and fifth amendment too since they make law enforcement harder? I’m sure cops in North Korea have a much easier and safer job.
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.
Government employee names are public information. What it sounds like is you want to keep that information secret, and maintain a literal secret police.
It is not surprising that people don't agree with you.
Honestly answer: What are the intentions of people tracking these officers?
Government accountability in the face of a violent secret police being imposed upon communities and murdering innocent people.
Honestly answer: what is the purpose of literally every government publishing lists of their employees' names, where they work and how much they make, which includes police and teachers of small children?
Government accountability.
And your answer is quite disengenuous and intellectually dishonest. They want to obstruct the law and dox ICE officers to bully them and their families. That much is very obvious. There is nothing secret about ICE lol, and nothing innocent about impeding law enforcement (not that they deserved to be shot).
Don't ask questions if you don't like the answers lol
> There is nothing secret about ICE lol
Then who are they? I can give you a list of every cop in my municipality, county and state, their names, where they work, where they live, exactly how much money they make, their benefits and so on.
Anyway, honestly answer:
> > Honestly answer: what is the purpose of literally every government publishing lists of their employees' names, where they work and how much they make, which includes police and teachers of small children?
> for the purposes of endangering those government employees, and to cause harm to their families?
Isn't this also subjective and depends on the information leaked.
Not sure what you are talking about. License plate information that is plainly visible is not “personal employee info”.
Can't argue with their 110% conviction rate, North Korean tactics work.
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And protesting is not vigilante justice.
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The protesters aren't the ones doing that. Have you not seen the news?
There are protesters that are obstructing law enforcement. It is undeniable that such protestor exist and this HN thread is about going after those people.
The thread is about going after people on Signal who are tracking officer locations. There are entirely legitimate reasons to want that information including exercising your first amendment rights at that location.
And there are illegitimate reasons too like going there to obstruct law enforcement operations. Since there are people obstructing law enforcement, the mechanisms that which such groups of people operate need to be investigated.
That’s not the standard. It doesn’t matter whether there could be illegitimate reasons. There could also be illegitimate reasons for using Google Maps. It’s still allowed.
What matters is the intent of the people publishing the information, which the government will need to prove was illegal.
As part of an investigation Google Maps could be subpoenaed. It's allowed but there may be a need to investigate.
Oh no, not civil disobedience. The horror.
Yes, it is horrible for people to break the law. Glorifying it for protesting purposes is destructive to a civilized society and downgrades us to a third world country.
The protests are because the trump regime is breaking the law.
If you believe someone is breaking the law that doesn't mean it is permissible to also break the law. That is asking for society to spiral into chaos.
> That is asking for society to spiral into chaos.
You're so very close to getting it.
I see the problem here. So, actually, the ones in masks who are randomly assaulting (sometimes murdering) nonviolent bystanders are ICE, not the protestors. Hope that helps.
I am talking about protestors who obstruct law enforcement and their operations. Protestors who threaten regular people and law enforcement. Protestors who damage other people's property. Protestors who violate noiseordnance. Protestors who are trespassing.
I am not referring to actual bystanders. Implying that I am is purposefully being ignorant of what I am talking about.
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.
I’m reminded of (I think) people in Shanghai complaining that their posts about covid lockdowns were censored, saying “we have free speech”. And if you believe in universal rights, they’re right. They do.
The question is whether the government will respect and protect those rights or not.
I love that THIS is the post that gets me down-voted.
Thanks.
Seems like citizens are the ones who need protection from law and immigration enforcement, considering the public executions we've all witnessed in the past week or so.
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Woof
If ICE agents were actually in danger or subject to "vigilante justice", the administration would be CROWING about it SO LOUDLY we'd never hear the end of it. They're spending their entire working days searching for evidence of it. They can't hardly wait!
That's not what is happening here.
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.
“Citizens of law enforcement”
What a phrase
you're aware that LEO are citizens right? with rights as well?
The comment was trying to replicate the same feelings as “people of color” but in regards to a lifestyle choice instead of an immutable characteristic, hence my flabbergasted statement at the audacity
If they completed their I-9
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.
The whole premise of the second amendment is about citizens being armed in order to resist/overthrow a government
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.
I'm pretty sure that if people are taking up arms to resist their government, things have already gone far enough down that path that they feel their lives are in jeopardy.
Just this week there were [~~Catholic~~] PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist [~~ICE in Minneapolis~~] the government https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5678579/ice-clashes-new...
How can you think it's a "game'?
Edit - removed incorrect quantifiers
> Just this week there were Catholic PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist ICE in Minneapolis
Episcopal (the US branch of the Anglican Communion), not Catholic, and it wasn't conditioned on going to Minneapolis, it was a statement about the broad situation of the country and the times we are in and what was necessary for them, with events in Minneapolis as a signifier, but not a geographically isolated, contained condition.
Thanks for the feedback, you're right and I've (tried) to mark the incorrect stuff with what markdown would show as strikethroughs)
> How can you think it's a "game'?
Everything seems fueled by social media radicalisation, and the social media side of things is very much 'gameified', all about scoring likes/upvotes/followers (and earning real revenue) for pushing escalating outrage.
Which is VERY different to the discussion at hand.
Is it?
Good’s wife after yelling DRIVE BABY, DRIVE DRIVE and the fallout screamed at agents “Why are you using real bullets!”
These people seem to have thought it was a game.
She was unarmed when she was killed.
A vehicle can be just as deadly as a firearm. And vehicles had previously been used aggressively by the protestors.
There were claims (no idea if true) that the agent who fired the fatal shots had been dragged down the road and injured in a previous vehicle-based altercation.
If him being previously injured affected his mental state such that he needed to kill someone who was not presenting an immediate threat to life, he should not have been on duty.
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None of those things are an immediate threat to life.
Spread your hate with someone else.
Hitting someone with your car is an immediate threat to life.
Stomp feet all you like, but she made all the bad decisions she could and seemed to think it was a game.
If anyone is wondering - yes I am stopping interacting with this individual who refuses to reply in good faith.
> Spread your hate with someone else.
> I am stopping interacting with this individual who refuses to reply in good faith.
Wild. I noticed that you didn’t dispute any of the facts about the incident, but will not relent on your incorrect claims of MURDER.
Every police agency and training in the world will clearly explain that a vehicle is absolutely considered a weapon.
A single rental truck in Nice France killed more people than any mass shooting in the USA, ever.
Show me where the car was being used as a dangerous weapon.
Well… she accelerated in drive with a federal agent in front of the vehicle, while ignoring other federal agents to stop and get out of the vehicle, he THEN drew his gun from the holster, she the hit him with that car.
Her mental state was clearly not peaceful or rational - while armed. If she had made better decisions she would be alive.
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.
>nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun.
The Chechens in the first Chechen war more or less did so by starting with guns and working up the chain via captured weapons. Eventually gaining complete independence for a number of years, against a nuclear power.
I think that it's fair to say that the military power Russia had in the 90s was very different from what the US has today. Even back then, as you say, the war still wasn't won with rifles and handguns. That isn't to say that what the Chechens accomplished wasn't impressive though.
Which is why Chechnya today is an independ... Oh wait.
Wow, in two comments we moved the goalposts from impossible to independence didn't last as many years as I'd have liked.
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 please?
Here's one: https://monthlyreview.org/articles/settler-colonialism-and-t...
Can I get one with a little, uh, less spicy, of an "about us" page?
I'm not asking for a primary source, just something without a political axe to grind.
The source is from one of the preeminent scholars of the indigenous history of North America. Get the book if you don't like the website it was published at.
[citation needed]
It's not exactly an unusual claim, and it was very much the loudly espoused position of the Republican Party until, well, last week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...
> In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms"...
This was posited as the nice sounding reason for the second amendment, when the more accurate reason was to ensure citizens had guns to drive out the indigenous peoples and steal their lands.
We rather quickly saw the federal government rolling over the people even with weapons in the Whiskey Rebellion.
Don't forget the very profound usefulness of a "well-armed militia" in putting down slave rebellions and catching escaped slaves.
I don't disagree.
But it's still very funny seeing the Right wrestle with "wait, the other team has guns?!" and "wait, Trump sounds like he wants gun control?!" right now when this claim has been the basis of their argument for decades.
To be fair, the right struggle with the argument every time it's put to the test.
I recall the 2016 shootings of Dallas Police Officers and the right were apoplectic about the individual
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micah_Xavier_Johnson
Yeah, it is quite funny.
They wrestled with it for about 5 minutes, then got the memo, shrugged and resumed to deep-throat the boot.
In 46, Madison was discussing foreign danger in response to Hamilton in 29. but... thx for providing a citation. That's a much better response to downvoting.
That… doesn't seem to be accurate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._46
> This essay examines the relative strength of the state and federal governments under the proposed United States Constitution. It is titled "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared"… he describes at length in this paper a series of hypothetical conflicts between state and federal government. Madison does not expect or hope the constitution to lead to the kind of conflict between state and federal authority described here. Rather, he seeks to rebut the arguments that he anticipates from opponents of the constitution by asserting that their "chimerical" predictions of the federal government crushing state governments are unfounded
Meh. Palintir is optimized to sell data to the government. Said governments usually don't care about the quality of data about any one individual. Wear sunglasses when you go out and stay off facebook and it's amazing how little palintir signal you send up. Bonus points if you created an LLC to pay your utility bills. But... Palintir is not as good as you seem to be implying.
Oh, you don't need to have Facebook account to have a very comprehensive and accurate profile: https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...
cell phone cameras work both ways.
>With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced
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
You don't need sophisticated tech to cause damage, you just need access to data. Palantir is dangerous not because it has some amazing technology that no one else has, it's that they aggregate many data sources of what would be considered private data and expose it with malicious intent (c.f. any interview with the Palantir CEO). Reading my email doesn't require amazing programming, it just requires access.
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.
Like I said, their tech is meaningless. It's the deals they cut to gain access to data and the deals they cut to expose that data.
Why would they be the ones cutting deals to gain access to data? The Party is cutting those deals and has been for ages. Deals like these:
> 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.
Palantir is not the only threat, Paragon is equally nasty. Any company with a mission to enable fascism or supremacism is a problem. Palantir is very open about what they strive to do. I have no doubt their tech is mediocre, but their motive is as malicious as it gets.
Of course they're threats. In the exact same way that companies such as AWS/Amazon and Meta, their motive isn't any different. If you think Bezos and Zuckerberg are even a sliver more ethical than Palantir execs I've got some bad news for you.
I agree, but there’s a difference between overt and covert. Overt can normalize this stuff, so it’s good to push back.
It's not illegal to track law enforcement, but if any of their still visible chats show intent it will hurt them. They'll also want to find out how many people in the group chat are outside of the US, if any money was being exchanged, etc.
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
> because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against.
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
If you're talking about the Trump administration, they're surrounded by lawyers and constantly battling things up to supreme court decisions, which is not what lawless looks like. ICE is also enforcing existing laws that simply haven't been enforced in recent years. Whatever you think about those laws, they are the laws. Many people agree those laws need to be reformed, but elect people who are willing to change the laws. Unfortunately congress has trouble passing laws around some of these more controversial issues, so it'll probably stay this way for many more decades.
It's not just the what, it's the how.
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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?
The people voted for mass deportation of the tens of millions of illegals that were let into the country and lawlessly given "sanctuary." The federal government is attempting to enforce the laws on the books, laws that were voted into statute by the democratically elected representatives of the people. No one is going to be murdered in cold blood on the street simply for leaving the house, but they could be if they brandish a weapon while seeking out officers and attempting to prevent them from enforcing the law.
So 2nd amendment yeah? I have a license to concealed carry in PA. You are saying I should be murdered in cold blood on the street? Again, this is PRECISELY what the bill of rights and our constitution is all about. Have you read Common Sense? Please try to get through it. It explains many things but chief among them is that the government exists only to ensure the maximum freedom of the people from fear. "Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid". That is what America is all about. If someone comes into my city to evict violent illegals, yes, I voted for that, and would again. If someone comes in to my city to a) Evict legal immigrants of color, b) Take children away from parents c) Murder good citizens in cold blood, e) Punish political enemies, or f) attack, beat, and tear gas nonviolent protesters? Well as an actual American who believes in and understands the US Constitution, I will be right there, next to those protesters, and looking to abolish and defund whatever godless and ethic-free agency is purporting to carry out the will of the People.
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.
An American VA Hospital ICU Nurse was disarmed and executed. Which crime is it OK to be chemically and physically assaulted before being disarmed and shot dead?
As far as I understand it, he laid hands on the officer, then struggled against arrest. He had a gun on him, which is not in itself a problem, but he had already broken the law 3 times by this point and the fact he had a gun on him instantly escalates the potential threat. They don't know if he has multiple guns on him or just the one. Supposedly one of the videos shows him reaching for some black object. I don't know.
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.
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?
Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.
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.
> Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.
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's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that. Saying it doesn't make it true. Even if your honest perspective is that this is the case from the camera angles you've seen, that isn't necessarily what the officers see. What the officers see matters in cases like this. They can only make decisions based on the information they have.
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.
> It's not clear from any of the videos that he did not pose any immediate threat, even though people keep saying that.
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?
> So where do you see the potential threatening behavior?
If you are laying hands on officers, leaning your weight against them, not obeying their commands, asking them to assault you (verbally, potentially), resisting arrest and struggling on the ground, that string of behavior should concern anyone. Imagine you AREN'T a police officer and someone is behaving that way to you. Of course you'll be on guard more than if it was just someone walking down the sidewalk with their bag of groceries.
Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat. As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for. When someone is that uncooperative, it is very reasonable to throw away assumptions that they aren't a threat to you.
Whether what the officers experienced justifies escalating to lethal force I don't know, but that is what they'll have to find out.
> 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.
So, if an officer hasn't been shot in the head first, they shouldn't react? Guns can come out quick and kill a person almost instantly. There's very little time to react. That is why officers request people to listen to what they say and respond reasonably so you don't put them in a situation where they miscalculate your threat level. This is true even if you're not dealing with an officer. Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them. You don't have to like that, but if you ever do need to defend yourself, you would be glad the laws are like that. Otherwise people who defend themselves end up becoming a victim twice where they survive an attack and then end up in prison just for legitimately defending themselves.
> So you have no issues with the initial statements by Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino and Stephen Miller?
I don't really know what any of those people were saying, but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims. If you want to be better, then don't try to be better by becoming the very people you disagree with.
> Being on the ground does not mean you can't be a threat.
If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.
> As far as an officer might know, he could have a second gun holstered under his jacket that he could reach for.
He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!
> Someone doesn't have to be a threat and they don't even have to have a weapon, but if you have sufficiently justifiable reason to believe based on their behavior and actions that they are posing an imminent threat to you or others, you can often justify shooting them.
How can you be a posing an imminent threat if you're not behaving in a threating way? At no point did Alex actually try to attack an agent or make any verbal threats against their life.
> I don't really know what any of those people were saying
Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.
> but whether they are right or wrong doesn't justify everyone else being wrong by making false claims.
If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.
> If someone is fixated on the ground, they are not a threat. Alex was fixated by three agents, with four more agents watching from close distance.
It's not clear from the videos that they have full control of all of his limbs and it seems more like he's keeping his arms tightly tucked in to resist which leaves some range of motion. The moment that he first gets shot, he's not laying flat against the ground under full control of the agents.
You have way more confidence about the amount of control they have of him than the officers seemed to. There are videos of him being highly uncooperative and violent. In the video of the killing, he's also clearly being uncooperative. It would logically follow based on his past behavior and also the way the officers feel they need to react that he's continuing to be uncooperative on the ground.
> He wouldn't even have been able to reach for a gun as his hands were fixated at this point. That's the very point of fixating someone!
You're assuming 2 things here which an officer should know they cannot assume.
1. That he's fixated. You have high confidence of this, but even watching the video frame by frame this is not fully clear. You are leaping to a conclusion that it does not seem like the video evidence can guarantee.
2. That's the only gun or weapon he has on him. He could have a gun holstered under his jacket too, which would be within reach. After all, supposedly he reached for his phone, so that is a non-fixated range of motion and they could have believed it to be a gun, reasonably.
> Sorry, I don't believe you. There's no way you could have followed this case without knowing about their statements. You are acting in very bad faith here.
I mean, I don't follow this case. I don't even know who Stephen Miller is. What I do know is there are videos and I have seen the videos along with the things people are claiming are obvious based on the videos alone. I also know that even if public statements are made, those are not law and are generally not guaranteed facts of any sort. That's what court cases try to sort out. If public officials are saying things which turn out to be false, why would that surprise anyone? It doesn't mean they lied, but they are suffering from the same kinds of nonsense that a lot of people in these comments are, where they make assumptions that are not always supported by the evidence. When society gets stupid, courts are even more essential.
> If several high officials of an agency are spreading obvious lies, it very much hurts the credibility of that agency.
This is true. You are correct. I do not support spreading lies or disinformation or just jumping to statements which have a decent chance of being inaccurate or misinterpreted. They might have said something which has some support, but which is more political language than accurate legal language just like people are invoking the word murder oblivious to its meaning.
So yes if you become a public official, ideally you don't lie unless it's for some kind of essential national strategy, because public trust has value. Not sure what else you want to know about it.
At the very same time, just because you are not a public official does not mean you should say anything you want and make any claims you want about videos. It doesn't matter what everyone else is saying. A lot of people are talking with their hearts, which is nice and we need heart, but hearts are dumb. That's not controversial.
Most of us are contributing to public trust or deteriorating public trust by some measure in daily life and in every comment we write. Do you think your statements within the past week would make people have trust in their society, or would you say in reflection that your statements erode trust in society?
There are forces at work both from outside our country and within our country that are absolutely encouraging the reduction in trust. They will amplify any opportunity they can find to do so. There's a non-zero chance that Alex was an unwitting participant in that. You don't have to make the mistake by taking the same bait.
Officers aren't perfect and mistakes were probably made. You don't have to be a Harvard professor to know the video looks bad. That's not the point. Even if it looks bad, a lot of the claims people make about what happened and about what the video shows are not supported by what the video shows. Simple.
> The moment that he first gets shot, he's not laying flat against the ground under full control of the agents.
Well, they certainly felt they were under control, otherwise the four other agents wouldn't just stand around and watch.
The problem is that they send badly trained agents with guns to patrol cities where they meet people who are (rightfully) angry at what ICE is doing. That's a recipe for desaster.
It's no secret that ICE has significantly lowered the barrier to entry and shortened the training duration. In fact, there are reports of agents being deployed before they completed their training. Apparently, they don't do proper background checks either since some agents have been found to have a criminal record. Finally, ICE is intentionally recruiting in rightwing circles, using white nationalist language.
> I don't even know who Stephen Miller is.
I have a hard time believing this. How is this even possible for anyone with even a passing interest in US politics? If that is really true, that's quite an embarrassing admission.
> that's what court cases try to sort out.
Who says the case will go to court? What if they just close the investigation?
> They might have said something which has some support, but which is more political language than accurate legal language
Why speak in the subjunctive? Why don't you look up what they said? How can you assess the credibility of an agency when you don't seem to know much about it?
> or would you say in reflection that your statements erode trust in society?
I see no reason for saying that. But if there's someone who is eroding trust then it's the Trump administration with their egregrious lies, their contempt for the rule of law and their staggering corruption.
> The problem is that they send badly trained agents with guns to patrol cities where they meet people who are (rightfully) angry at what ICE is doing. That's a recipe for desaster.
I think ICE is trained to do the job that they're trained to do, but I don't expect riot control and protest management is part of that standard job training. That is part of why it is so dangerous and stupid for local government to prevent the local law enforcement that does have that training from helping keep these environments safe.
The local policies are getting people killed. The local posture of hostility and delegitimization of ICE creates a dangerous environment and it is divorced from reality.
As far as I can tell by this tracker map, Minneapolis is the only place in the entire country where protesters have been shot and killed. Filter it to fatal shootings: https://www.thetrace.org/2025/12/immigration-ice-shootings-g...
> I have a hard time believing this. How is this even possible for anyone with even a passing interest in US politics? If that is really true, that's quite an embarrassing admission.
I don't know that I'd say it's embarrassing. Don't really know who he is and I expect most people don't know who he is, because I consume far more information than most people. It's also not as critical, because people are making claims about what the videos show that are not supported by the videos themselves. As far as I know, Stephen Miller was not present during any of these events. He wasn't shot. He wasn't shooting. He wasn't protesting. He wasn't in these videos. Forcing some kind of arbitrary need to know other people to delegitimize thoughts seems very much like an emotional argument especially since no strong reasoning has been provided for why knowing him is critically relevant for making an observation within the videos.
> Who says the case will go to court? What if they just close the investigation?
It's complicated, because there has been evidence of Minneapolis court corruption. In the Renee Good case I think the FBI and the state of Minnesota were going to work together in that situation and that's how it would have worked, but the local corruption was too hard to swallow and they backed out. You cannot have an impartial investigation in the place that handled the disastrously corrupt case around George Floyd.
It looks like they're going to do something similar here even though I think people said this was CBP rather than ICE. Here again the FBI was already involved, but they're now taking the lead on it in cooperation with the DOJ: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-pretti-shooting-fbi-invest...
> Why speak in the subjunctive? Why don't you look up what they said? How can you assess the credibility of an agency when you don't seem to know much about it?
I have no idea what a subjunctive is. It doesn't help when you try to misdirecting attention to some random guy who wasn't there and various public statements. None of it matters. If people make a claim about a video that isn't supported by the video, they have to provide other evidence that does support their claim. People here were just making absolute statements about what the video definitely shows as if the video by itself is the entire proof of their claim. All I'm saying is that they're incorrect. It will be true 100 years from now, because information has limits.
> I see no reason for saying that. But if there's someone who is eroding trust then it's the Trump administration with their egregrious lies, their contempt for the rule of law and their staggering corruption.
You could make a fair argument that he is employing a strategy that makes it easy for activists and politicians to attack him which stokes anger. A lot of what he does is rhetorical devices and monument building to achieve deals. It wouldn't be so messy if he limited dealmaking to regular deals, but he makes everything a deal. Even Trump himself is a deal, so he builds himself up as a monument the same way he does every other thing.
He believes monumental deals are easier to get people to pay attention to and get investment in, so they are in many ways easier to do than small deals. He inflates everything to get things done, whether that's walls or greenland deals. The problem is, it actually works. He's not always right and his strategy doesn't always pay off, but it pays off often enough that there's no reason for him to stop.
Some people go into a maniacal moral panic over it and emotion oriented news and comedy media abuses it, which ends up actually looking way more dishonest than they even paint Trump. These terrible late night shows and opinion news networks are so lost in their bubbles that they are far worse for the country than Trump could ever be. You could argue that it's Trump's fault that these shows got so bad, but in a way I've always gotten used to politicians being wrong or flexible with their words, but I still had the expectation that the news would be straight with me about what events were occurring on a day. That illusion was destroyed.
I don't have to like Trump or align with his morals to appreciate that many of the things this administration is getting done are basic fundamental national interests that a lot of the normal establishment politicians have been trying to achieve for decades without luck. He's unconventional, but the threats we face have gotten so large that we no longer have the luxury of doing things slowly.
> I think ICE is trained to do the job that they're trained to do
The number of ICE agents has more than doubled in one year (from 10,000 to 22,000). These new agents have not received proper training and many have been recruited from problematic backgrounds.
> but I don't expect riot control and protest management is part of that standard job training.
Well, because they are not meant to be patrolling US cities in the first place. Currently, there are 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis alone. That is 5 times more people than Minneapolis own police roce! 13% of all ICE agents are currently deployed in a city that makes up 0.15% of the US population. The purpose is very clearly to terrorize a democratic city that resists ICE unlawful and inhumane practices.
> In the Renee Good case I think the FBI and the state of Minnesota were going to work together in that situation and that's how it would have worked, but the local corruption was too hard to swallow and they backed out.
That's certainly not what happened. Stop kidding yourself.
> Don't really know who he is and I expect most people don't know who he is, because I consume far more information than most people.
If that is true, you're willfully uninformed. How can you even make any qualified statements about the Trump administration without knowing one of its most influential people? How can you assess the credibility of the DHS without knowing the (very prominent) people who are in charge?
> which ends up actually looking way more dishonest than they even paint Trump.
Don't worry, the Trump administration is doing all the heavy lifting here. We've reached a point where reality has surpassed the wildest satire. We can listen to Trumps speeches over here in Europe. We see what the administration is doing. There are no excuses!
Your seemingly levelheaded words are just thinly veiled complicity with the MAGA movement. In your last paragraph you really let the mask slip.
> The number of ICE agents has more than doubled in one year (from 10,000 to 22,000). These new agents have not received proper training and many have been recruited from problematic backgrounds.
I don't know if their training is sufficient or not for the job they're actually tasked with, but it seems to not be resulting in dead people in every other city.
> Currently, there are 3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis alone. That is 5 times more people than Minneapolis own police roce! 13% of all ICE agents are currently deployed in a city that makes up 0.15% of the US population. The purpose is very clearly to terrorize a democratic city that resists ICE unlawful and inhumane practices.
Well, if the local police don't assist, you're going to end up with more ICE than other cities since some of them have to try to do the job of the police too. Sanctuary cities may also have a higher proportion of the people ICE is going after, so it would logically follow that more ICE resources may be needed there which could inflate the numbers twice.
> That's certainly not what happened. Stop kidding yourself.
Well, I did look into the George Floyd case. It was not a fair trial. If you care about fair trials, and you do like the word embarrassment, that trial was an embarrassment to all US courts. These Minneapolis protester deaths are the closest things we've seen since then as far as I know in terms of them being promoted in the public for manufacturing outrage for political gain. It's like activist organizations know Minneapolis is a particularly good place to farm this so they push harder there. It was so easy for them to incite riots and city burning, that's the kind of imagery you like to get pushed national if you're a resistance movement.
> If that is true, you're willfully uninformed. How can you even make any qualified statements about the Trump administration without knowing one of its most influential people?
I probably know of them, but not by name then if they're that influential. You're still missing the point that they aren't relevant here. Whoever they are and whatever DHS does, there are laws that exist that apply. There are officers and protesters in a video. An event took place. You don't need to know the current temperature on Mars in order to estimate whether a claim about the event is supported solely by the video evidence. You know this, because you're pushing back against people making claims about what's in the videos too. You're getting lost in the weeds here.
It's like saying, "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you know the video is proof it was murder!" or "look at Stephen Miller, that's how you can tell the officers had him fully and confidently restrained!". It is not logically supportable.
> How can you assess the credibility of the DHS without knowing the (very prominent) people who are in charge?
The George Floyd case was so bad, that what I'm saying is no matter what you think of DHS, they can surely do a better job than that. It's one of the worst cases of the execution of justice I can recall in my lifetime. Courts do sometimes get things wrong, but that was another level.
At the same time, I can understand the concern that if these protesters are fervently and emotionally anti-Trump then get killed by DHS, serious activists may feel uncomfortable that DHS is part of the executive branch which Trump has legal authority over. There have also been lies spread about complete legal immunity of Trump and him being a king which aren't reality, but if it contributes to distrust in the executive branch handling the case that's probably a legitimate issue of public trust. That element existed somewhat in the George Floyd case, because the local police department was part of the executive branch and people didn't trust the police, so the judicial branch took it. That is fine, except for how the courts handled it.
Either way, DOJ is involved with the case now.
> Don't worry, the Trump administration is doing all the heavy lifting here. We've reached a point where reality has surpassed the wildest satire. We can listen to Trumps speeches over here in Europe. We see what the administration is doing. There are no excuses!
Being European doesn't mean you can't have an opinion and it's not unique to you alone that you don't understand Trump, because most people don't understand Trump. I highly doubt you see what the administration is doing, because it's very rare.
There's the law, there's what they say, there's the action, there's the goal, there's what was achieved and then there's what achieving that actually produces as an effect. Most of what is occurring aligns with vanilla strategic national interests of the US that goes back many administrations. Maybe the surface level optics and culture are different, but make no mistake that this is just the US being the US.
In short, if you think it's not about China, its probably about China. If you think it's about Greenland, it's about China. If you think it's about ending NATO, it's about China. If you think it's about immigration, it's about China.
If you don't know what China has been doing and why they've been doing it. If you don't know the things Xi Jinping has been saying. If you don't know what China has been doing in the South China Sea, or in propping up dictatorships, etc. I highly recommend, whatever your political feelings are, you dig deep and spend a couple thousand hours just consuming information about China and the history of communism.
Almost everything we're doing in the US and around the world right now can be explained from that concern as an organizing principle. Trump is just an instrument of that.
You're one of the rare people who understands Trump? (Yet you don't know who Stephen Miller his?) Give me a break! Your whitewashing of the Trump administration is mindboggling.
Stop pretending ICE and the whole administration is acting lawfully. Their disregard and contempt for the law is all too obvious. ICE is patrolling cities, breaking into homes without warrants, kidnapping people without due process and throwing them into internment camps with horrible inhumane conditions. People are rightfully angry for being terrorized.
I did not mention Stephen Miller because he is relevant for the shooting, but for the assessment of the DHS as a whole. If you have actual confidence in the DHS to lead an independent investigation of its own agents, considering the people in charge, you must be very naive.
Your country has taken a sudden and deep authoritarian turn and is right on its way into fascism. We've seen this in our own countries 90-100 years ago, it looks and sounds all too familiar. The past few months have already shown that the democratic system is in fact very fragile and can fall apart faster than people would have thought. Better wake up until it's too late!
Set a reminder for yourself in 20 years to think back on these times. Not all of your thoughts about these times will be correct, because almost nobody is 100% correct about all of the things all of the time. Recall how sure the media was about this and that, but it never panned out. It will be illuminating.
Thanks, but luckily I can recognize authoritarianism and facism when they're happening. No need to wait 20 years. We're seeing similar tendencies all over Europe and your fucking government is supporting them.
Fascism isn't possible here without stealing control of education and other institutions in a bunch of states, but what Trump has been doing is increasing education freedom. A similar argument is made with socialism and communism. "Socialism is not communism!", but you can get to communism through socialism. It's just that, in the US to do that you have to control education and other institutions in numerous states simultaneously. Marxists did try that and it's why we've had the culture war here, but we've been pushing back.
Fascists and communists also like to control language. It was Marxist movements trying to control language here and cancelling people, with widespread pressure campaigns to divide communities. Trump's unfiltered rhetoric drove them crazy and created space in the public sphere for people to speak their mind even if it wasn't politically correct. So Trump has also helped freedom of speech.
There are several other issues like that which are being addressed. It's not that everyone thinks Trump is a beacon of morality and sanity, it's just that he's getting things done that are legitimately helping address the country's challenges at the moment in time we're in.
Putting pressure on Venezuela and Iran with CIA, Mossad and the military has probably significantly delayed China's move on Taiwan. It may have even contributed to Xi Jinping's timing in arresting the last of his military high command which is unprecedented.
We'll be ok here in the US and our behavior today is in line with some pretty traditional national strategy. We were in luxury mode for too long, so part of what is happening is we're playing catch-up, which tends to involve some rudeness and chaos.
The Sig P320 that an agent took off of him went off while it was in a federal cop's hand. This is the same Sig P320 that the US Army rejected and was mass recalled for going off on its own.
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.
Please do not spread misinformation! There is no indication that Alex' weapon went off.
There is audio and video footage that shows exactly this. The Sig P320 was REJECTED by the US Army and RECALLED by Sig for doing exactly this.
"There is no indication", yeah so about misinformation...
BS! You can clearly see/hear on the videos that the agent fires the first shot. You've claimed that Alex' weapon went off as if this was a fact. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Otherwise the DHS would have included it in their report.
> 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
The very start of the incident is an officer chasing a woman, she slips and falls, the officer chasing her catches up and then Pretti pushes the officer away.
That's almost certainly not the start. It's very common to not show what you did to agitate the officers and to only record after they come after you. If there are longer videos I haven't seen them, but its a very common tactic to cut out critical context to maximize emotional reaction on social media.
So I checked it out, but it's not really relevant. These activists appear to have followed the federal law enforcement. That highly suggests they knew exactly who they were. The officers didn't show up unannounced to the front door of someone who happened to be an activist. No reasonable court is likely to determine that they were unaware who they were dealing with.
> it's not really relevant
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?
You probably linked the wrong video, because the video you linked is not relevant.
> 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.
> You probably linked the wrong video
I double checked, and you are right.
The one I meant to link is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN73-gn90Q
Thanks for grabbing the correct link. So I checked it and here are my thoughts.
- 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.
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.
They don't necessarily know that's the only gun he had and the officers aren't Neo, seeing every camera angle at once. What you see from your outside perspective is not what they see. They have to act based on the information they have, which is why it's important you listen to law enforcement for your own safety. All the whistles make that harder, which might be part of the point.
Again: he was on the ground, with his eyes sprayed with mace, and he was, at least until seconds before he was shot, physically restrained. It doesn't matter if he could potentially have had another gun. They aren't Neo but there were six of them surrounding him, and the one who shot him only took eyes off to mace another protestor.
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?
In the case of George Floyd, that was local police. In this scenario, these are federal law enforcement officers so it probably is correct for this case to be handled federally as far as I know.
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.
Good lord. There's no helping you if you cannot see with your eyes, my friend. I'd have to be blind to not see this poor man trying to defend a woman, then tackled, beaten, disarmed, shot dead in the back and head with 10 bullets.
I've seen enough of these kinds of situations to know it's easy to trick people into seeing what you guide them to see. It's like lying with statistical charts, but more insidious.
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.
> to rely so heavily on video evidence alone is simply flawed.
Don't trust your eyes. That is the final and most essential command.
Your eyes matter. Videos matter. It's just, they aren't the only things you should factor in. Why have ears, if sight alone is enough? Why have touch, if sight alone is enough?
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.
Dude. My dude. Seven different angles. There's no mistaking what happened. You would trust the judgment of someone else when there's that much contrary evidence to what they are claiming? Do you not make your own judgments in your life?
7 different video angles or 7000 different video angles doesn't really change this. What will matter is the testimony of the people combined with the evidence that exists. They'll have to go over the full timeline of events with radio chatter, officer testimony, testimony of activists, make assessments of who are being the most credible and objective observers, look into these claims about a gun misfiring and so on.
There is no version of this where nobody made mistakes and mistakes don't mean someone should have to die, but laws exist for a reason and you don't know what each person was experiencing simply after watching a video.
Video evidence does not generally have infinite credibility in court, because it is often a limited perspective on the reality of what happened. The cameras can only catch sound waves and photons, but almost the majority of everything important that occurred is invisible. If the audio had much value, all the whistles ruined some of that. It may even turn out that the whistles contributed to this death, because it weakened officer communication. Maybe there could be a justification for involuntary manslaughter by people blowing whistles if they were blowing them precisely with intentions like that. I don't know.
We just don't know and claiming these videos show everything you will ever need to know is simply logically false.
Your response strains credulity and suggests complicity. If you tell me an investigation is necessary to prove he is a criminal, perhaps that makes sense. But here you are saying an investigation is needed to prove he should not have been murdered in cold blood. That's bloody nuts. Investigations matter, but there's a point where the burden of proof switches sides. In this case, there would need to be incontrovertible evidence that this man was secretly building a bomb, and even that does not justify execution on the street. Do you understand how this country works, or are you a foreigner? Perhaps where you live, one is not innocent until proven guilty. That might explain your inability to come to judgments, you believe the man murdered must prove he was not a terrorist.
I think you're confused. Someone died. They contributed to their own death with their actions as did many other factors. It was an unnecessary death that could have been avoided. The officers might have made mistakes as well.
You weren't in Alex's head. You weren't in the officer's head. All you know is what you think you know, but aren't even sure you can know it. That is what investigation is for.
You keep using words like murder despite there not being sufficient evidence for that.
Alex broke many federal laws, spit at officers, laid hands on them, attacked their vehicles and broke their tail lights while they were in the vehicles and so on.
I do not know what kind of person Alex was when he was being civil in his own life, but in his most public representation he has shown himself to be an unhinged criminal. Maybe he thought his criminal behavior was justified, but that is a separate matter. It also doesn't mean he deserved to die.
Acting that way though, makes it a lot easier to make the case that officers believed he was a credible threat to their lives in a court case. It doesn't even only have to be valid in court, it could have legitimately been true in that recorded moment that in all of the chaos and with this guy's crazy behavior, they really believed he might have had another weapon and would have used it.
Don't get manipulated into using words like complicit to try to divide the country.
Ahh, now it's clear. He was a boy scout and a choir boy and an ER nurse. A truly good person. But somehow he was an "unhinged criminal" trying to protect a woman. According to who? ICE? Kristi Noem? Liars and fascists, my friend. Take a look in the mirror and then read "Common Sense" to educate yourself about why this country was founded, and what it means to be an American, because you seem lost.
He was killed for carrying a gun. How do I know that? Thats what they've been saying over and over again. Absolutely gross.
Civil disobedience exists and does not deserve a death sentence.
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.
From a sort of naive perspective it doesn't matter whether it's police or not. If you kill someone illegally, you should be held accountable for it. In many cases, whether it's illegal depends on how reasonable it was to do so. This is where it being law enforcement starts to matter even more.
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.
Yeah, the victim is investigated. Kill anyone evading arrest. Bring in the tanks.
That's not how the law works. In a case like this, all the events that led up to the moment he was killed are relevant as per the supreme court. They'll have to investigate both the officer and the activist and see how the law applies to it.
Yeah, sure, they'll "investigate" it. For some definition of investigate.
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.
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who is "they"? some moral shadow government?
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This wasn't civil disobedience. It was stalking law enforcement and then aggressively interfering. Not a capital crime, but still a recipe fir suicide by cop.
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This is what collaboration looks like
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> 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.
What you are basically saying is that justice is unjust and vigilantes are the solution, because the legal system operates under the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty.
You don't want to live in a world where you are guilty until proven innocent, because you might like it when you're the one wagging the finger, but you'll be crying for the old ways once it's turned on you.
You're not arguing in good faith, which is clear from your other replies, but I'm not saying vigilantes are the solution, just that compassion is not a weapon.
But also, just within your moral framework, I think it's really important to understand that the systems of justice have been compromised and we are, right now, seeing people treated as guilty until proven innocent. It's just not happening to you. It *is* happening to people like me.
Let me say that again: I'm not saying that vigilante justice is better, only that the legal system has become vigilante justice. People who share my moral values are being gunned down right now. And people like you are spreading excuses about how its shades of grey.
Well, if he's innocent until proven guilty and you agree with that, why do you need someone to prejudge their guilt and tell them they are on the wrong side of history by not prejudging? That really does come across as promoting vigilantism.
You've clarified that you don't support vigilantism...so, what benefit do you get from someone deciding guilt beforehand?
Why is it your position that people should not wait until investigations are done and it has been combed through in court? What purpose does that serve if not for vigilantism?
It sounds like you are aiming primarily for a political benefit or a sort of emotional moral validation through cultural acceptance of your view. This is why we have courts, because people can become very emotional and invested in an outcome. It can become a critical part of your identity and world view that someone be guilty. Those are generally presented as cautionary tales in history books, not the example to live by.
He is being protected from consequences at a Federal level.
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.
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> Congress has been in a state of relative gridlock for many years, across multiple administrations whether republican or democrat.
Let me stop you right there. It's not a both sides issue, is it? It's one side forcing gridlock? A party of obstruction, even.
> People thinking that Trump is a king or dictator are delusional, because the US doesn't work that way. If Trump rounded up thousands of US citizens and simply burned them alive, he would be arrested by the military and impeached by congress, because there are red lines that basically everyone agrees on.
No, and it's very important to you that you think that's true, because then people who disagree aren't just wrong, they're mentally ill. The only Trump Derangement Syndrome is the people thinking he's fit to be in any kind of leadership position.
The problem is that we're seeing people treat Trump like a king to a worrying degree, and he has gotten several of the traditional rights of kings that made people depose kings, like immunity to prosecution. And we're seeing things that were formerly thought to be absolute red lines like rounding up citizens and deporting them to Venezuelan prisons will absolutely be tolerated by his base. People like you constantly assure us that there are red lines he won't be allowed to cross, and then defend him when he does cross them and deny ever saying that thing would be wrong.
> Let me stop you right there. It's not a both sides issue, is it? It's one side forcing gridlock? A party of obstruction, even.
There are still things they agree on and pass legislation for, but on many other issues they both obstruct each other. The actual details of that aren't as relevant as the fact that they have trouble passing legislation and can't be relied on for many important issues at present.
> No, and it's very important to you that you think that's true, because then people who disagree aren't just wrong, they're mentally ill.
If he was an authoritarian dictator king tyrant master emperor, I would care, but he's not, so I don't care. The evidence does not support that position. There's a lot of rhetoric, propaganda, sound bites, teases and more, but those do not produce reality. They produce perspective.
> The problem is that we're seeing people treat Trump like a king to a worrying degree, and he has gotten several of the traditional rights of kings that made people depose kings, like immunity to prosecution.
This is false. The supreme court decision did not fundamentally say that he was immune to prosecution. That is what was spread about it to foment anger, but I read the actual language of the decision and it's just a lie.
> And we're seeing things that were formerly thought to be absolute red lines like rounding up citizens and deporting them to Venezuelan prisons will absolutely be tolerated by his base.
Unless you're talking about something I haven't heard about yet, they were not legal US citizens and they were not sent to Venezuelan prisons. There was someone who had some kind of temporary legal status and so there were complexities around it, but they weren't a US citizen.
> People like you constantly assure us that there are red lines he won't be allowed to cross, and then defend him when he does cross them and deny ever saying that thing would be wrong.
I don't know anyone like me. It's common for people to be unable to navigate the gray area. It's either black or white. You are either "with us or against us". That's just purely juvenile. Does Trump have some moral failings? Sure. Is he some kind of arrogant character? Sure. I think on one side, some people will get so stirred up into such a moral panic that they'll believe any false thing about him. On the other, some people get so caught up in his reality distortion field that they'll believe anything he says. If you fully give up and end up settling into one of those grooves, you lose all sense.
"Congress has been in a state of relative gridlock for many years, across multiple administrations whether republican or democrat. As a result, presidents have increasingly been leading by executive order rather than legislation. That is not Trump's fault, that is just the state of the country."
"People thinking that Trump is a king or dictator are delusional, because the US doesn't work that way. If Trump rounded up thousands of US citizens and simply burned them alive, he would be arrested by the military and impeached by congress, because there are red lines that basically everyone agrees on."
So presidents are acting more like kings, but Trump... isn't?
Does pardoning people who commit acts of violence in your name not sound like a king?
Or what about pardoning people who donate do your campaigns?
"Talk about taking over Canada or Greenland is just rhetoric to get better deals and improve ally strength, because this is what Donald Trump has been doing since the 1980s. Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."
You think Donald Trump has been _strengthening_ our relationships with allies? In what manner has he done that in your mind? Is it the tariffs, the denigration, or the threats that are helping? And how does Canada talking about moving away from the US at Davos, then confirming it again later play into that? Is our allies cutting off signal intelligence actually a sign that our bonds with them is getting stronger?
Just trying to understand.
"Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."
Which part of US national strategy is that exactly? Sure Maduro is pretty universally condemned by anyone paying attention, but so are plenty of other authoritarian regimes? Is part of the national strategy leaving the ruling class exactly the same as the one the apparently corrupt dictator we deposed had and then extorting it for millions of barrels of oil? Does the richest country in the world, which also is the largest oil producer and has plenty of access to a very stable world oil market need to resort to extorting barrels of oil from foreign dictators as part of national strategy?
If it's just part of our national strategy, why'd the rational change so frequently and why does no one seem to have heard that before Trump decided to start focusing on it and amassing weapons off their coast?
"This doesn't mean you have to like a current president personally or morally, or even agree with everything they are doing, but at least you can gain more perspective around what is real and what is not."
Primo ending though.
> So presidents are acting more like kings, but Trump... isn't?
No US president is a king, because the US doesn't have kings. The country isn't structured that way. Most countries legitimately do not understand this, because almost no countries are structured the way the US is.
> Does pardoning people who commit acts of violence in your name not sound like a king? Or what about pardoning people who donate do your campaigns?
A king is a very specific thing and you don't need to be a king to have a power which has been delegated to you.
> You think Donald Trump has been _strengthening_ our relationships with allies? In what manner has he done that in your mind? Is it the tariffs, the denigration, or the threats that are helping? And how does Canada talking about moving away from the US at Davos, then confirming it again later play into that? Is our allies cutting off signal intelligence actually a sign that our bonds with them is getting stronger?
When people watch news or listen to world leaders talk, it comes with a sense of authority. Many people are predisposed to automatically think that is the end of it, that they've found the truth. Like clockwork, Trump says some big bold thing that gets people talking and he does this to produce the kinds of results he's after that other people have trouble getting. It gets him a lot of criticism and hate, but he's been doing this since the 80s or even earlier.
He creates a "monument", because he says that nobody cares about deals that aren't monumental. The small uninteresting deals don't get much attention. People don't invest in it. As a result, he thinks small deals are actually harder to do than big deals. So he makes everything a big deal. He's a big deal. Ukraine is a big deal. Gaza is a big deal. Canada is a big deal. Greenland is a big deal.
Now, in order to be credible, he has to be known as a person who does get some big things done. So what you do is you see what can you actually do, and you do the biggest thing you can get done. Now you have credibility. You use that credibility as leverage to make larger claims and people will take your larger claims seriously, even if people who are anchored in reality may have the sense to know that larger claim is a bluff. He bluffs so much. If you remember that old youtube video of trading up from a paperclip to trade all the way until you get a car, it's like that.
So much talk about threatening to leave NATO, or destroying NATO by invading Greenland or any of that nonsense only makes NATO stronger. It makes them say, "hey, we need to be more independent. maybe we can't fully rely on the US if they're talking like this. let's invest more." When they invest more in their military, now the whole alliance is a little stronger. This is important, because World War 3 may be coming and we either need our allies to join us in some way in South East Asia, or we'll need them to be able to hold their own in Europe.
It amazes me the stuff he gets away with, but he's not any kind of threat to democracy.
> Which part of US national strategy is that exactly? Sure Maduro is pretty universally condemned by anyone paying attention, but so are plenty of other authoritarian regimes? Is part of the national strategy leaving the ruling class exactly the same as the one the apparently corrupt dictator we deposed had and then extorting it for millions of barrels of oil? Does the richest country in the world, which also is the largest oil producer and has plenty of access to a very stable world oil market need to resort to extorting barrels of oil from foreign dictators as part of national strategy?
We were already in Venezuela in the 1900s. It is estimated to have upwards of 300 billion to over a trillion barrels of oil. That dwarfs basically every other country. Oil is important for global stability and we still haven't discovered any energy solutions that fully erase dependence on oil. So long as it is needed, it has to come from somewhere. If Russia and China control it, that risks oil being traded primarily in some currency other than USD, even propping up some reserve currency. Venezuela also had Russian and Chinese military hardware, with Russia recently agreeing to send them missiles. That allows for comparisons with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were also a stopping point for the shadow fleets which were breaking international law and helping fund Russia's war in Ukraine. Iranian terrorist groups were also operating in Venezuela. It was also at risk of becoming the next North Korea, but with both nukes and oil. It would've been a nightmare for freedom, democracy and global security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
When the government wants to oppress people, they surveil the activists trying to fight oppression.
Was true then, is true today with Project Esther.
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Nope, but executing law abiding citizens in the streets is
Neither of them were abiding by the law. Nor were either of them executed. Such hyperbole.
Abiding the law?
What law did they break to constitute being shot dead on the spot?
Or do you now support vague charges like "obstruction of justice"?
One person showed up with a gun, the other tried to flee (or run over) an officer.
Wold you as a police officer always behave perfectly in any urgent situation?
Trying to flee is famously not a justification for murder, if anything it's the opposite. You're literally kicking someone while they're down. Or, uh, shooting them. Obviously a fleeing person is not a threat to your life, which is the ONLY justification for a shooting.
Why would you flee from law enforcement, or why would you try to run them over?
It's not relevant because neither are justications for a shooting.
Why did George Floyd counterfeit a 20 or whatever? I don't know, but I do know he deserved due process, not a public execution. Regardless of your political affiliation.
Also, nobody tried to run anyone over. That's just straight up not true and I won't humor it, so don't bother.
There is a video of the woman either doing a getaway or a runover. I don't quite get why would you do that while you are being stopped by law enforcement. And it's also apparently dangerous.
You're missing the point. None of this matters. You're purposefully not addressing the underlying problem - extrajudicial executions - because the conclusion must make you uncomfortable.
Today, the punishment for fleeing is not execution. The conversation ends there. Everything else is just noise, and you know that, so stop.
This video very well sums up my opinion and relates it to law https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_
I think you and I both don't know much about the law, but my opinion apparently represents it closer.
So anytime an officer kills a person with a gun, that is now justified?
Despite the fact that the man in question that was killed had a legal permit for said gun AND 1 of the ICE agent even took his gun away and despite this was shot to death while lying on the ground?
So where is the urgency? Not enough KDA ratio to score high enough on the scoreboard?
Your version seems to be that they randomly opened fire. Another version is that a gun went off, not all of the officers knew where the victims gun was, they had also heard someone yell "gun", so after the first shot they opened fire.
It's not that you can be shot at by law enforcement when you are carrying a gun, but that you can be shot at when there is an apparent reason that you are firing at them with it. I'm sure ICE isn't happy about how the events turned out either. But for the protesters: just don't bring a gun!
if the pigs are so scared of guns they should quit.
i was a trained military security officer and i never just drew my gun and shot a guy because i heard a word shouted that was scary.
also: we have a 2nd amendment right to carry guns
melt ice.
Perhaps you are an exception but almost all people are afraid of death. If a person opposing you has a gun then most people get scared.
I'm not debating 2nd amendment. But if you bring a gun to an event already filled with law enforcement, what is your intention?
To have your constitutional rights to bear arms even at a protest or where does it say doubt shall not carry rifle when in assembly?
On top of this are you willing to condemn the anti government protests done by tea party, anti covid lock down and j6 rioters?
At least you'll be consistent.
Sure you have, but carrying a gun also comes with both responsibility, and also may be interpreted that you would use the weapon. To be clear, I'm not arguing the point that it's illegal to carry a gun to a protest, but that it's just not wise.
Then why even make the statement?
Your point about that it's not wise to have a gun on you or flee is completely irrelevant to fact that official officers killed people for it.
Why also not state that it's unwise to go outside because you might be killed by a police officer?
And again was it unwise for tea party, anti government lock down and j6 rioters to have guns on them?
Ah, there appears to be video material indicating Pretti's gun going off: https://youtu.be/JFSBPEQYSFE?si=hWz6bthbUtOmprhh
This video also mentions a likely accidental go-off of the weapon https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_
I mention it because it it isopined to be likely. We'll hopefully eventually know what whent off and why.
Like I said, if the pigs are scared of doing their jobs properly then they should quit.
Pretty sure cops in general get scared similar to how normal people do.
In the military we were trained day after day to respond to threats logically rather than emotionally. Cops should be held to similar standards.
All your post is showing is that you haven't watched the video.
So at least stop lying and spreading an alternative fantasy world.
On top of this you didn't answer the question: is now any person killed by an officer justified if they got a legal gun on them?
There is no gun shot before the ice office opens fire in any of the 5 different angles of footage we got.
And not only that you change the story midway, first it was heard a gun shit now it's being shot at.
And the guy shooting clearly saw the gun as it was right next to him.
The mental gymnastics you display is worthy of Olympic gold I'll give you that.
If you have the right to bear arms, but law enforcement officers can shoot you if they spot that gun, then you don't actually have the right to bear arms.
You do have the right to bear arms but bearing arms conveys a meaning, that you'd see a reason to use it, so if you have a gun at an event where there are ample amounts of law enforcement present, against who would you be protecting yourself?
It is famously against the law to own a gun, and carry it with a permit in the United States.
It's famously peaceful if you carry a gun to a protest and it famously drives no officer around you even more to their edge.
If these cowardly goons are afraid of American citizens exercising their second amendment rights they should find another job.
As should you refrain from making assesments on human psychology if you are not able to do so.
My man loves that boot.
If only take sides and don't make any actual arguments, then unfortunately you won't convince anyone either.
Cops can kill at will isn't something that needs to be argued against.
Cops can kill if they have reason to believe that the other will kill. Look it up.
"at will". They aren't going to give you a medal for how far you can bend over.
You should elaborate, because if this is the sentence you want, it's no different: Cops can kill at will if they have reason to believe that the other will kill.
They can kill when they have a reasonable basis for assuming they are facing an imminent threat to their lives or addressing a threat to public safety (but NOT to prevent criminal activity that isn't life threatening). That isn't the same thing as a license to kill, and they are accountable for charges like murder when they don't meet a "reasonable officer on the scene" standard. I don't consider that to be "at will" (likened to "at will employment") so much as "at their discretion."
Dude, watch this: https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_
didnt realize the punishment for that was death
Interesting. When people who stormed the Capitol openly carried assault rifles, MAGA had no problem with it. They called them patriots and peaceful protesters.
It's not about people carrying a gun at all, it's that should you carry a gun to a protest and should you engage in resisting to law enforcement while doing that. Had this person been perfectly still, he'd be still alive. (And also, had he not had that gun, but still resisted, he'd likely would have also been alive.)
> Had this person been perfectly still, he'd be still alive.
Again, I'd like to see you stay perfectly still after getting peppersprayed in the face without any reason. At no point was he threatening and attacking ICE agents. He was trying to help another woman who had just been assaulted by agents. They created the very situation that led to this tragedy.
There was a reason if you watched the video, it was the "help" of putting his hands on one of the officers. And bringing a gun into a situation like this.
There was a lot of whistlers, but I think the woman being helped was one of them, so this was what started the chain of events.
What started the whole thing is that an ICE agent violently pushed the women from behind.
Yes, because the woman was following the agent around, whistling.
This is no reason for violently pushing someone to the ground, at least by my Central European standards.
And at no point did Alex attack an agent. See my other comment.
If someone were to follow me around while blowing a whistle then that would be quite irritating. What would you do in this situation?
Alex seemed to put hands on an officer. Whether this was well meaning in his head, it might have not seemed so to the officer. (Keep in mind that he had a constant whistle in his ear!)
> What would you do in this situation?
Follow the protocol. If you lose your nerves because of people blowing a whistle, you're in the wrong job.
> Alex seemed to put hands on an officer
Where do you see that? All I see is that he raised his left hand in a protective manner, likely to keep the agent at a distance and protect himself from the pepper spray. After that gesture he turns away from the agent to help the woman on the ground. That's when they grapple him from behind and wrestle him to the ground. At no point did Alex behave in a threatening way or physically attack an agent. The DHS report does not mention any threating behavior either.
Clearly you're not on the wrong job. Find me some info materials on how cops need to be resistant to either mental or physical violence.
I'm sure we'll get a longer investigation into this matter. But it just doesn't seem like a pre-planned killing because they could get away with it, but a tragic sequence of events that you so much wish to bend your way.
I'm not claiming that this was a pre-planned killing. But it was more than just a tragic sequence of events because the agents were very much at fault here. They behaved aggressively and obviously did not know how to properly deal with an ordinary protestor (who clearly was no threat to the agents at any point).
This is the ordinary protestor a little over a week before the event https://youtu.be/r0L9JUjcwo0?t=597.
Alex had a gun with him. If he wanted to appear non-threatening he simply shouldn't have brought it to the event.
I do maintain that this was an unfortunate sequence of events, but I think as this is investigated further, the guilt found on the officers will be small to none.
> This is the ordinary protestor a little over a week before the event
Wow, he kicked an ICE agent's car. The agents must have felt extremely threatened as they didn't even bother to arrest him...
How is this relevant to the shooting again?
> If he wanted to appear non-threatening he simply shouldn't have brought it to the event.
Carrying a gun in a state that allows conceiled carrying cannot be considered a thread in itself. Alex did not behave in a threatening way at any point during that whole situation.
Say officers report that Alex was aggressive on the day he died but there is no video material. The events from a week ago support those statements, as clearly Alex is a man that is quite worked up and capable of physical aggression.
How is it 'resisting' when you have been chemically blinded and being beaten with metal objects?
This idea of people "resisting" when they are being assaulted to death is ridiculous.
If I start beating your face in with the grip of my gun, you deserve to get shot if you "resist"?
Well, the larger sequence of events goes back to the group of people interfering with police work, including the woman whistling along with an officer. She got pushed which was where Alex entered. (Alex had already had a brief contact with the officers minutes before the fatal sequence of events.) Alex also had a gun with him. This eventually led him to being shot.
The researched why will surface likely soon. But as of now, carrying a gun to a protest isn't something that helps with looking harmless.
What laws did they break?
This kind of made up bullshit makes you look like a total lunatic.
Acting without due process is oppression.
they way they are going about it very much is. update your understanding.
Killing your own citizens is.
One person showed up with a gun, the other tried to flee (or run over) an officer.
Carrying a gun, or fleeing, is not punishable by death. In any decent country, of course.
These were accidents, not court proceedings where you have weeks or months to think things over.
My prediction is that if you investigate them, then in the case where the woman was trying to drive away, the officer likely has no fault at all, as the drive may have easily be interpreted as driving towards him. On the armed protestor occasion, there might be some fault as the gun seemed to have gone off unexpectedly. But it won't be punished too hard, if at all, as the victim was actively escalating the situation.
These weren't punishments ("death sentences" as someone else called them). These were accidents where the victims themselves were (mostly) at fault.
Obviously there may be people who disagree about the facts of these cases. Trends, however, may bear more weight:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
That article has a 404 link in the first paragraph, which probably used to link to this article: https://archive.is/RXVqn (https://archive.is/https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bord...)
This is Alex Pretti more than a week before the fatal event: https://youtu.be/r0L9JUjcwo0?t=597.
I'd forgive you for thinking they were accidents if you hadn't seen the videos or heard them described to you. They were cold blooded murder.
I did see the videos, that was what made me come to that conclusion.
I don't need any forgiveness from you. You should forgive yourself instead, become part of the grown-ups!
Uh huh. It seems to be a small proportion of American man-children that don't understand what's happening, the rest of the world sees it plain as day. Anyway, you obviously didn't actually watch the videos. Try opening your fucking eyes next time.
Name calling truly is the grown up thing to do!
You literally said:
> You should forgive yourself instead, become part of the grown-ups!
Or maybe you also have amnesia? In case this is hard to understand, you implied (intentionally insultingly) that I'm not a grown-up. So you invited ridicule on yourself. I think people like you are fucking idiots and I love having an excuse to tell you because you decided to stop being civil.
Well, you argue for interference with law enforcement. I don't see how that helps "the cause", it also puts the participants in danger. I.e, the few deaths that have already occurred.
First, it is the duty of law enforcement to recognize a situation that can and should be de-escalated. The public is not an cannot be responsible for that, and it doesn't justify murder if they aren't. "Interference", while in my opinion very warranted here, doesn't constitute an imminent life threat to Law enforcement nor the public, and it is not permissible for them to use lethal force in that situation. Aside from killing wantonly and happily ("fucking bitch"), law enforcement in this case is acting illegally on administrative warrants, violating the Constitution to enter houses they do not have legal warrants for, being masked and unidentifiable (and thus unaccountable for their actions to the public) when they commit attrocities in the public view (why would a legitimate police force need to hide its face) and generally being a public menace. It is your civic duty and a proud American tradition to stand up to lawless police forces.
Is this assesment wrong https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_
They were not accidents. No one accidentally draws, aims a gun and shoots. If that whole sequence is accidental, that person shouldn't be in charge of a weapon.
The shooting part was the accident. Of course you draw and aim a gun if you're detaining someone who also has a gun.
(to the sibling, mmustapic)
What I'm saying is that he did have a gun, this particular gun was taken away, then he was apparently reaching for something else, which may have been mistaken for a gun, hence the shot. Or, the officer fired at him for some other suspicion. Regardless, you don't have perfect information in a situation like this. The guy wasn't behaving peacefully either.
My suggestion would be to obey orders, don't bring weapons to protests, don't resist when you're being detained. And so on.
What order was he disobeying? They pepper sprayed him and dragged him to the flor, he didn't have a gun in his hands, no danger at all, so why shoot him? He wasn't grabbing anything, you see his hands are free in the video.
And not behaving peacefully (who would when you are pepper sprayed and are hitting you in the head) shouldn't (in a decent country) be a reason to be shot.
Or better, so that you can think about. Pretti was standing there filming. What should have he done to "obey"? What was his mistake before they pushed him? Before they sprayed him? Before they dragged him to the ground, back to the street? Before they hit him in the head? What should have he done to prevent being shot?
He was apparently grabbing something, which was said to be a phone.
I personally would have just been entirely still right from the moment the detainment process started.
I'd like to see you stay calm when you suddenly get peppersprayed directly in the face and wrestled to the ground.
Well, exactly. My recommendation would be not to carry a gun where there is law enforcement already there. Or if you do, don't resist capture.
I.e, I maintain that this was an accident. The police didn't want to shoot this person, nor did the person want to use his gun. But it appeared like that to both sides which then caused the event that followed.
I'm not claiming that the ICE agent wanted to shoot Alex. I think the shooting itself was a case of gross incompetence. However, they intentionally attacked and assaulted Alex without any immediate reason. How are supposed to stay calm when you get peppersprayed in the face out of the blue?
The confiscated gun went off and the officers thought it came from the person being detained so they shot him. Waiting out to be shot would have been incompetent had he really been shooting.
Alex put hands on the officers first so there was an apparent reason.
> The confiscated gun went off
Do you have any source for this? If that was the case, the DHS would have reported it as it would support their narrative.
> Alex put hands on the officers first so there was an apparent reason.
This not true! Alex moved in front of the ICE officer who just violently pushed the woman to the ground. He had this cell phone in his right hand and he raised his left hand in a protective manner. He does not even appear to touch the agent at any moment. This is when he got peppersprayed in the face. Then he tried to help the woman up. This is when an agent grapples him from behind and Alex gets wrestled to the ground. At no point did he behave in a threatening manner! You can clearly see this in the videos.
For example: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/minute-minute-timeline-fatal...
I think he did have his hand(s) on the officer right after he raised it. To me this "protective raise of the hand" looked like taking his hands off of the officer. Also, while Alex may have had protectiveness as a thought in his head this may have not seemed so to the officers.
Regarding shooting, what seems clear that shooting started after the gun was taken from Alex. At the discovery of it an officer also shouted "gun", after this guns were drawn and then shots were fired. Which gun went off first doesn't appear from the videos, but after the first one did, I assume that the rest of the shooting was due to the first shot being interpreted as the victim starting shooting, as not all of the officers saw that the gun had already removed.
Still, don't bring a gun to a protest, don't engage in any physical activities with law enforcement, don't stop them from doing their work, don't walk and whistle along..
So why did you claim Alex' gun went off? You have been spreading gross misinformation. Maybe take a step back and reflect before you come up with new theories.
I'm sure it will be known soon-ish where the first shot came from. It's just that the first one likely caused the rest of it as the surrounding officers didn't know who was shooting.
Say it turned out that the first shot was fired due to an officer misinterpreting something for a gun, because "gun" was yelled, would that turn this into anything else than an accident?
The best way to appear not to have a gun, nor appear dangerous at all, is not bring a gun to a protest.
Again, why did you claim that Alex' gun went off as if that was a fact?
> It's just that the first one likely caused the rest of it as the surrounding officers didn't know who was shooting.
No need to speculate. If you watch https://youtu.be/i8kFcK-X-vQ?t=108 you will see that the first agent shoots Alex in the back one time and another three times while they all move away. Note that Alex has been restrained the whole time. One second later, you hear 6 more shots. This is where the second agent got involved. At this point, Alex has already been lying on the ground.
> because "gun" was yelled, would that turn this into anything else than an accident?
At best this was an accident, but even then it was the agents fault for misinterpreting the situation or the DHS's fault for deploying badly trained agents. (Hearing the words "Gun!" does not give officers the permit to shoot, unless they perceive an imminent threat to their or someone else's life!) However, if you watch the video above, you can see that an agent removes Alex' gun right in front of the agent who fires the first shots. There are lots of open questions.
> The best way to appear not to have a gun, nor appear dangerous at all, is not bring a gun to a protest.
The act of conceiled carrying alone does not make you a threat. Alex never behaved in a threatening way.
Instead of putting the blame solely on Alex, maybe ask yourself what the agents could have done to deescalate the situation, what kind of people the DHS recruits as ICE agents and if their training is appropriate for urban policing.
> Again, why did you claim that Alex' gun went off as if that was a fact?
This seems to be what people suspect. It's less likely that an officers own gun goes off as they are familiar with it.
I don't put blame on Alex, solely (read!). But the ill meaning callouts of ICE being this and that, occupation, isn't correct either. I don't think you people in the US have actually lived under an occupation, so these words are easy to use.
Regarding being threatening: well, if you carry a gun to a protest and engage physically with an officer (subjectively and to me) is threatening. It also seemed threatening to the shooting officers.
> This seems to be what people suspect.
Who? Not even the DHS people claim this! And why did you initially present it as a fact?
> It's less likely that an officers own gun goes off as they are familiar with it.
Again, you can clearly see/hear on the video that the agent fires the first shot. No gun went off. Why do you make stuff up?
> It also seemed threatening to the shooting officers.
I very much doubt it. At the best the agents were just badly trained and did not know how to handle someone who carries a gun (in a state that allows conceiled carrying).
I presented it initially because this has been what people think: https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_ There are many more people opining this, both as these more produced videos to simple social media postings. I still do present you the opinion that likely the confiscated gun went off which started the rest of the shooting.
The first shot is not "clearly seen" as far as I can tell.
If Pretti, and the first fired shot, didn't seem threatening then the shooting wouldn't have happened..
I'm happy that you know how law enforcement works, how to behave in critical situations and that it actually is possible to have perfect awareness of any situation. If you are this good, I'd suggest to join the force yourself, as you have a clear advantage in doing that kind of work.
This video ties my non-professional opinion well into the US legal fabric https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_.
> I presented it initially because this has been what people think:
Maybe in some MAGA podcast circles. This has never been more than pure speculation. Again, why did you present it as a fact?
Let's assume the gun went off. I'm sure the person holding that gun would have noticed that. Why wasn't this reported, especially as it would support their case? This just doesn't make any sense at all.
> The first shot is not "clearly seen" as far as I can tell.
It very much is. Did you even watch the video I've linked? It shows the very moment the first shot is being fired. Are you seriously claiming it is not the agent who is firing that shot? Again, not even the DHS is disputing that the agent fired the first shot.
Stop making a fool of yourself.
Here is at least some video infication that Pretti's gun did go off: https://youtu.be/JFSBPEQYSFE?si=hWz6bthbUtOmprhh
There'll likely be a deeper investigation and a report to say whether that's true or not.
That video does not show anything. Stop being ridiculous! Again, don't you think the agent who took the gun would have noticed that it went off?
That's not a serious theory that needs investigating. I have no idea where you're getting all your "information" from, but I can tell you that you need to reflect on your media consumption. You're in a bubble.
Oh man, so the police can just jump on you and get scared because you are grabbing a phone, and shoot you? Good luck with your life, you'll need it.
The police is just as human as you and me. This person was carrying one gun - he might have more weapons on him. He was also resisting the takedown while the gun was found.
You make it seem as this was just a random guy walking with a phone, and was shot.
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He didn't have a gun when he was shot, what are you talking about? He didn't even have a gun in his hand. Or you mean that you can accidentally shoot somebody who had a gun, at some point in the past?
I think you can shoot someone if you have reason to believe that somebody has a gun. In this particular occasion the guy did not have another gun.
(Hence I'm calling it an accident, where the police officer may be at fault. Though, other commentators saying it was cold blooded, a death sentence, deliberate, etc. is not true. Nor is generalizing this particular situation to changes in government type. These people really want to portray their political opponent as bad as they possibly can.)
> I think you can shoot someone if you have reason to believe that somebody has a gun
I need you to read this and really think about the words.
Should one wait to be get shot first until you are allowed to shoot back?
So, if you carry a gun and the police approaches you, better to shoot them?
You should not carry a gun to a protest, not engage physically with an officer nor resist when they start arresting you after that.
You should watch the video. While seem to be an accident, a way to avoid it would have just been not bring a gun in the first place nor engage physically with law enforcement.
These actions in general to restrict law enforcement to do their job isn't helping either. Protest in front of government buildings, not follow police around.
You should watch the video, the police are the ones who engaged physically: pushed Pretti, pepper sprayed him, dragged him on to the street, hit him on the head repeatedly, and then got scared and shot. You can protest wherever you like that's legal. If police cannot handle that (start fights and then get scared and shoot) they shouldn't be police. Also, it is absolutely legal to follow police around. It doesn't make sense to make something legal while justifying getting shot for it (unless you want to make it illegal eventually).
Yes of course the police engaged physically too! But Pretti did too. What's wrong with being still, the woman can't get up without Pretti?
No, they started the engagement. What's wrong with trying to help somebody pushed to the street? Or are you recommending just letting police push people with cell phones to the ground and pepper spray them, unless you want to be shot dead?
What do you think about this assesment https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_ ?
Neither of which is justified in being killed.
Unless you live in China or North Korea perhaps, maybe then the officers are allowed to blast you to pieces for any of these situations.
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A wise man told me, you know signal works because its banned in Russia. I also find it incredibly ironic that they have a problem with this, when the DoD is flagrantly using signal for classified communications.
I have full confidence in Signal and their encryption but this argument doesn't make sense to me. It could be the opposite, that Russia knows it's compromised by the US government and don't want people using it. I don't believe that's the case but the point is you can't put too much weight on it.
Wouldn't the Russian government just say that then?
They aren't taking issue with Signal, per se... they are upset that people are sharing the whereabouts and movements of ICE officers. Signal just seems to be the medium-of-choice. And this just happens to give them a chance to declare Signal as "bad", since they can't spy on Signal en masse.
My personal connections who are in the military use it for texting from undisclosed locations.
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.
> 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...
It doesn't mean much. Roblox is banned in Russia.
They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.
You know it works because they banned it in Russia? Works for whom?
Yes, at best it implies Russia cannot easily get confidential information from them. Everyone else, the jury is still out for.
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.
Sure, but using Signal for classified info is a violation of policy.
The DOD is not using "flagrantly using Signal." The Secretary of Defense, whatever his preferred pronouns are, is breaking the law.
CISA recommended Signal for encrypted end-to-end communications for "highly targeted individuals."
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
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.
Military personnel are currently only allowed to use Signal for mobile communications within their unit. Classified information is a different story, though.
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.
What do you disagree with?
> 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.
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.
I have seen anti-Signal FUD all over the place since it was discovered that protesters have been coordinating on Signal.
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.
The downside of opsec is that it breeds paranoia and fear about legal, civic participation. In a way, bullshit investigations like this are an intimidation tactic. What are they going to find - a bunch of Minnesotans that were mad about state-backed killings?
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The only reason you think this is because all of your opinions are predetermined by MAGA elites.
Also the current US government think it’s secure enough for their war planning!
They actually used a hackish third party client (interesting since Signal forbids those) which stores message logs centrally, assuming it’s for required USG record keeping. Turns out that it’s possible to invite unwanted guests into your chat whether you’re a protestor or a government official. (It also appears that government contractors still write shitty software.)
> If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.
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.
Thanks. This really should be the top comment.
Feds and ICE are using Palantir ELITE.
That’s only for targeting. From what I understand ELITE does not include device compromise or eavesdropping. If feds want to compromise a device that has Signal, they would use something like Pegasus that uses exploits to deliver a spyware package, likely through SMS, Whatsapp, or spear phishing URL. (I don’t actually know which software is currently in use but it would be similar to Pegasus.)
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...
True, physical interception is probably the easiest method, at least for short term access. Once the captured user is identified and removed from the group they will lose access though.
Tracking the murderers who executed citizens in the street and then fled the scene of the crime and any sort of trial or investigation? That ICE and Immigration and Border Patrol? I wonder why. And since when is tracking public officials operating in public in the capacity of their government jobs illegal?
These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.
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Are you holding up some random unverified substack, featuring an obvious AI-generated photo, as a reliable source of information?
> You should probably read the original source before taking the opinion of your favorite pundit.
This is not an "original source" of the article in question.
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Great add
And you need to watch the videos but I imagine the cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.
When Trump saw the video of Renee Good's execution, he faltered. He hadn't seen that before.
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No, the ones on broadcast television news where they go scene by scene breaking down any claims of Alex being at fault being bogus lies that you are now repeating.
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I don't know signal very well but when I have spoken to others about it they mention that the phone number is the only metadata they will have access to.
This seems like a good example of that being enough metadata to be a big problem.
The steps to trouble:
- 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
Unless they compel people at gunpoint (which prevents the government from bringing a case), they will probably not have much luck with this. As soon as a user sets up a passcode or other lock on their phone, it is beyond the ability of even most parts of the US government to look inside.
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.
> 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.
Yes, but I’m not going to unlock my phone with a passcode, and unlike biometric unlock they have no way to force me to unlock my phone.
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
They are capable of putting you in prison until you unlock your phone, or simply executing you.
Feels like the latter would be counter-productive unless there's an app for that.
They are, but again, district courts have been pretty good, and I would be out of jail in <30 days, unless my case goes up on appeal.
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.
Looks that way from the inside as well.
Yes and all of the credulous rubes still whinging about how they "can't imagine" how it's gotten this bad or how much worse it can get, or how "this is not who we are" at some point should no longer be taken as suckers in good faith, and at some point must rightly be viewed as either willfully complicit bad faith interlocuters, or useful idiots.
Learning about WWII in high school, I often wondered how the people allowed the Axis leaders gain power. Now I know. However, I feel we're worse for allowing it to happen because we were supposed to "never again".
Agreed. To see "Never Again" morphed into "Never Again for me, Now Again for thee" has been one of the most heartwrenching, sleep depriving things I've witnessed since some deaths in my family.
Watching it in real time, I still don't understand it. I could see how Trump won the first time around; Hillary Clinton was unpopular with most people outside of her party's leadership, but the second just seems insane. The kinds of things that would happen were obvious to me, and I am no expert.
Two party system. As many people didn't like Hillary, clearly there were a lot of people unhappy with Biden->Harris. When you don't like the current admin's direction and/or their party, there's only one other party to select. I think there were plenty of voters that truly did not believe this would be the result of that protest vote.
Protest votes are probably overstated, I think most of it comes down to people staying home. Everybody in America already knows what side they're on, and they either vote for that side or not at all. Virtually all political messaging is either trying to moralize your side or demoralize the other, to manipulate the relative ratios of who stays home on election day.
> I think most of it comes down to people staying home
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.
> Obama was able to get people motivated. Neither Biden nor Harris had anywhere near that
How do you explain Biden getting so many more votes than Obama even while Trump improved with black and Hispanics over past Republican candidates?
> How do you explain Biden getting so many more votes than Obama
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.
Interesting theory, explain 2024 when the total went down.
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.
2024 was a massive outlier. First black woman ever, and the first time a candidate got swapped out mid-campaign. You can't extrapolate much from that one.
I think people were highly motivated in 2020 because of Trump, not Biden. The turnout would have been similar for any credible candidate running against Trump.
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.
And then in 2024 they were 100% opposite motivated for Trump to win popular vote, increase with every demo except for white women, and move almost every single county in the country to the right?
Why would Trump be so unpopular to boost Biden in 2020, then do so much better 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.
Newsom is an extremely strong candidate. Vance has several critical vulnerabilities that can demoralize right wing voters if the election is handled properly, and the Republicans really don't have anybody else. Rubio maybe, but Rubio won't be able to get ahead of Vance.
> Newsom is an extremely strong candidate.
For what office? President? Do you live in California?
Trump had more than several critical vulns as well which did not dissuade voters. The electorate isn't as predictable as many try to make it sound
Trump was able to moralize his voters, despite his weaknesses, by using a kind of charisma that Vance utterly lacks.
I think Vance isn't planning on using charisma, but violence.
Prior to 2020, I usually voted for third parties so I do understand that kind of thinking. The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office; it seemed early on like congress and institutional norms would restrain him. To swing the popular vote in the 2024 election, almost all of the third party votes would have needed to go to Harris, so I don't think that's sufficient to explain it.
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.
> The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office
I don't get it, was there anything surprising about him after his inauguration? He sure sounded dangerous on the campaign trail.
The norm in 2016 was that candidates didn't make a serious attempt to do the more outlandish things they talked about in their campaign. When they did, advisers would usually talk them into a saner version of it, or congress wouldn't allow it.
Trump 45 had "adults in the room". Trump 47 has nothing but sycophants. The end of Trump 45 started eliminating the adults in the room, but there wasn't enough time left for him to do much drastic. Trump 45 felt like even Trump was shocked he won and there was no real game plan. The transition team was woefully unprepared. Trump 47 had 4 years of prepping with the aide of things like Project 2025. Trump 47 hit the ground running.
> The danger Trump represented was not obvious until well after he took office;
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.
Project 2025 did not exist in 2016. We are in agreement about 2024.
Not the second time, the third time. Remember that Biden whooped Trump's ass once and could have whooped his ass a second time, but the donor class (career retards) got cold feet when they were forced to confront his senility, and instead of letting the election be one senile old man against another senile old man, they replaced Biden with the archetype of an HR bitch. I hope nobody thinks it a coincidence that the two times Trump won were the two times he was up against a woman. Americans don't want to vote for their mother-in-law, nor for the head of HR. And yes, that certainly is sexist, but it is what it is.
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.
Worse, I often wondered how some people collaborated. Now I know that many people would rather have a chunk of the population rounded up and killed than lose their job.
"Whoever can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." and "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
etc, etc. So it goes
You have to remember that "the government" is not a monolith. Evidence goes before a judge who is (supposed to be) independent, and cases are tried in front of a jury of citizens. In the future that system may fall but for now it's working properly. Except for the Supreme Court... which is a giant wrench in the idea the system still works, but that doesn't mean a lower court judge won't jettison evidence obtained by gunpoint.
The courts may (still) be independent, but it feels like they are pointless because the government just wholesale ignores them anyway. If the executive branch doesn't enforce, or selectively enforces court judgements, you may as well shutter the courts.
I would say if you ever want to prosecute these people, then you're going to need a mountain of evidence. Having all these court decisions they flagrantly violate for 4 years is going to great evidence at their trials. It may not give us much solace now, but all of their defenses are going to rest on intent, and it's going to be helpful in proving their state of mind that they willfully defied federal court orders, lied to judges, etc. Because they control all the evidence of their own criminality within the Executive branch, we should expect a lot of it will be destroyed when they are gone. Establishing independent records now through court proceedings will preserve those records past the administration end date.
Evidence goes before a judge
What evidence went before a judge prior to the two latest executions in Minneapolis?
There's a pretty big difference between getting killed in an altercation with ICE, and executing someone just because they refuse to give up their password.
Not really. ICE breaks into your home — remember they don't need a warrant for this. Demands to see your phone. It's locked. Holds a gun to your head and demands you unlock it. You refuse. Pulls the trigger.
Does it really seem that far–fetched when compared to the other ICE murders?
>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".
> 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.
The old 'shoot em in the leg' defense.
> there is a reasonable interpretation that they feared for their lives
... Did you watch the videos from multiple people filming?
> ... 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.
> 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.
You're not really disagreeing with the parent.
>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).
> You're not really disagreeing with the parent.
Was there anything else you would like to add as an observation?
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They haven't for a long time, just that most of the time they were doing things we thought was for good (EPA, civil rights act, controlled substance act, etc) and we thereby entered a post-constitutional world to let that stuff slide by despite the 10th amendment limiting the federal powers to enumerated powers.
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.
If civil rights are unconstitutional, you don't have a country.
The civil rights acts had firm constitutional grounding in the 14th and 15th amendments.
14th and 15th amendments were binding on government. The civil rights act was binding on private businesses, even those engaging in intrastate trade.
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.
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.
social engineering for the win.
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.
Cellebrite can break into every phone except GrapheneOS.
Cellebrite still requires the device to be confiscated. So if they are trying for mass surveillance, they'll have to rely on phishing or zero day exploits to get their spyware on the device to intercept messages. These tend to get patched shortly after being seen in the wild (like the recent WhatsApp one), so they need to decide if its worth it to burn that zero day or not.
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/
This is accurate, but the important point is that threatening people with wrenches isn’t scalable in the way mass surveillance is.
The problem with mass surveillance is the “mass” part: warrantless fishing expeditions.
hunh. we haven't even started talking about stingray, tracking radios and so forth.
it is difficult to wrench someone when you do not know who they are
Someone knows who they are and they can bash different skulls until one of them gives them what they're looking for.
Who is someone?
I mean they have a lot of tools to figure out who you are if they catch you at a rally or something like that. Cameras and facial identification, cell phone location tracking and more. What they also want is the list of people you're coordinating with that aren't there.
It's even easier than that. They're simply asking on neighborhood Facebook (and other services too, I assume) groups to be added to mutual aid Signal groups and hoping that somebody will add them without bothering to vet them first.
I think disappearing messages only works if you activate it on your local device. And if the man compromises someone without everyone else knowing, they get all messages after that.
But yes... it does limit what can be read. My point is it's not perfect.
Is the message on storage zero'd out or just deleted?
compel that person to give unlocked phone
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.
Presumably this is data taken from interdicted phones of people in the groups, not, like, a traffic-analytic attack on Signal itself.
I wonder whether the protesters could opt for offshore alternatives that don't require exposing their phone number to a company that could be compelled to reveal it by US law. For example, there is Threema[1], a Swiss option priced at 5 euros one-time. It is interesting on Android as you can pay anonymously[2], therefore it doesn't depend on Google Play and its services (they offer Threema Push services of their own.) If your threat model includes traffic analysis, likely none of it would make much difference as far as US state-side sigint product line is concerned, but with Threema a determined party might as well get a chance! Arguably, the US protest organisers must be prepared for the situation to escalate, and adjust their security model accordingly: GrapheneOS, Mullvad subscription with DAITA countermeasures, Threema for Android, pay for everything with Monero?
[1] https://threema.com/
[2] https://shop.threema.ch/en
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).
Perhaps you're right that they couldn't be compelled by law to reveal it, then! However, I can still find people on Signal using their phone number, by design. If they can do that, surely there is sufficient information, and appropriate means, for US state-side signals intelligence to do so, too. I don't think Signal self-hosts their infrastructure, so it wouldn't be much of a challenge considering it's a priority target.
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.
Yeah it should be technically feasible to do "eventually" but it's non trivial. I linked a bunch of their blogs on how they harden contact discovery, etc. And of course you can turn contact discovery off entirely in the settings.
Settings > Privacy > Phone Number > Who can find me by number > Nobody
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46786794
> And of course you can turn contact discovery off entirely in the settings.
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.
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
Just being owned by an offshore company doesn't mean that they still can't be infiltrated. But as you pointed out, just because Company A creates an app does not mean that Company B can't come in later to take control.
The alarming extent of US-affiliated signals intelligence collection is well-documented, but in the case of Threema it's largely inconsequential; you can still purchase the license for it anonymously, optionally build from source, and actively resist traffic analysis when using it.
That is to say: it allows a determined party to largely remain anonymous even in the face of upstream provider's compromise.
It appears to be primarily getting agents into the chats. To me the questionable conduct is their NPSM-7-adjacent redefining of legal political categories and activities as "terrorists/-ism" for the purpose of legal harassment or worse. Whether that is technically legal or not it should be outrageous to the public.
I don't think it's much of a problem at all. Many of the protesters and observers are not hiding their identities, so finding their phone number isn't a problem. Even with content, coordinating legal activities isn't a problem either.
I would never agree with you. protestors behaving legally or practicing civil disobedience can still have their lives ruined by people in power.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-supreme-court-s...
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...
That's not the point of civil disobedience, it's an unfortunate side effect. You praise a martyr for their sacrifice, you deplore that the sacrifice was necessary.
It's not that the point of breaking a law is that you go to jail, it's that breaking the law without any intention of going to jail isn't a sacrifice. 'Martyrs' who don't give anything up, who act without punishment aren't celebrated, they're just right.
Yeah, that doesn't make it "not a problem."
It makes it a problem that's inherently present for any act of civil disobedience, unless you truly believe that you can hide from the US government. I'm pretty sure that all of the technical workarounds in the world, all of the tradecraft, won't save you from the weakest link in your social network.
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.
Sure? Can't tell what the point of this comment is.
No one is arguing that people who practice civil disobedience can expect to be immune from government response.
This works when protesting an unjust law with known penalties. King knew he would be arrested and had an approximate idea on the range of time he could be incarcerated for. I don't know if it's the same bargain when you are subjecting yourself to an actor that does not believe it is bound by the law.
What? No, he didn't. The police went after peaceful civil rights protesters with clubs and dogs. They knew they could be badly hurt or killed and did it anyway.
Oh, apologies, I'm not saying that King didn't risk considerable injury or death. I'm saying that I don't think he is talking about that in this particular passage. The passage gp quoted is about how accepting lawful penalties from an unjust law venerates and respects the rule of law.
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.
If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
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.
>If you let the government stomp on your constitutional rights and willingly go to jail on unconstitutional grounds, then that's not respect for the law. That's respect for injustice.
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.
Using your 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendment rights is considered civil disobedience at this point; keep up.
If your point is to ignore the history and political philosophy of civil disobedience because "times are different now," then just grab your gun and start your civil war already... because that's where you've concluded we're at.
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.
Materially impeding law enforcement operations, interfering with arrests, harassing or assault officers, and so forth is not 1A protected and is illegal. There’s lots of this going on and some of it is orchestrated in these chats. They may nevertheless be civil disobedience, maybe even for a just cause, but I have no problem with people still being arrested for this. You obviously cannot have a civil society where that is legally tolerated.
It isn’t just people walking around holding signs or filming ICE. Can we please distinguish these cases?
Importantly this definition references an individual’s conscience. Seditious conspiracy is another matter. Here is the statute:
> 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.
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> 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.
Some of the signal messages I've seen screenshotted (granted screenshots can be altered) make it seem like the participants have access to some sort of ALPR data to track vehicles that they think are ICE. That would probably be an illegal use of that data if true.
> 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.
The government falling victim to ALPR for once might actually be the push we need to get some reform. That said, they'll probably try to ban it for everybody but themselves. Never before have they had such comprehensive surveillance and I don't expect them to give it up easily.
It’s probably illegal for a state law enforcement official (presumably) to share it with randos on the internet though.
I remember having to explain to you that the CFAA doesn't apply to German citizens in Germany committing acts against a German website, so I'll take that legal advice with a few Dead Seas worth of salt.
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...
Government intimidation of the practice of constitutional rights... what ever could go wrong.
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.
You are going to need to clarify more. I have no idea what you are for.
Why does a person have to be "for" something?
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The statement was made to point out that this is an example where a phone number is enough metadata to to problematic for privacy. It stands on its own. It doesn't need more context or purpose.
"sleaze"?
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.
How do you connect a strangers face to a phone number? Or does it require the ELITE app?
Palantir steps in indeed
conspiracy charges are a thing, and they'll only need a few examples of manifestly illegal interference.
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.
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.
Remember that most of the participants in J6 walked away and were later rounded up and arrested across the country once the FBI had collected voluminous digital and surveillance evidence to support prosecution.
The J6 insurrectionists committed real crimes, and it's very good that they were rounded up, but afaiu most of the evidence had to do with them provably assaulting officers, damaging property, and breaking into a government building. Not that they messaged other people when they were legally demonstrating before the Capital invasion.
The real protection for the legal protesters and observers in MN is numbers. They can't arrest and control and entire populace.
People were also charged for coordinating and supporting J6 without being there, e.g. Enrique Tarrio of the "Proud Boys" was charged with seditious conspiracy based on activity in messaging apps. If people in these Signal chats were aware that people were using force to inhibit federal law enforcement, which some of the leaked training materials suggest is most likely true and easy to prove, and there are messages showing their support or coordination of those actions, I assume they could face the same charges.
They had a lot more than metadata on Enrique Tarrio.
Right, usually law enforcement gets chat logs from a participant (search warrant for a phone, informants, undercover FBI agents, etc) and uses the metadata to connect messages to a real person's identity.
Fortunately for us (or really unfortunately for us) most of the competent FBI agents have been fired or quit, with the new bar simply being loyalty to the president.
The FBI is weak now compared to what it was even two years ago.
Most are probably just keeping their heads down, trying to wait out this administration. When you're in that kind of cushy career track, you'd have to be very dumb or very selfless to give it up.
That was a different, Biden's, FBI
Yeah, and I wouldn't bet money on this happening for that reason. But it is possible.
one person walking away from a police encounter doesn't mean police think that person did not break the law.
prosecutors may take their time and file charges at their leisure.
That may be true in the abstract (although it doesn't matter if the cops think you're breaking the law. What matters is whether or not a judge does).
However, neither Border patrol nor ICE have been exhibiting thoughtfulness or patience, so I doubt they're playing any such long game.
Conspiracy requires an agreement to commit an illegal act, and entering into that agreement must be intentional.
I highly recommend this book. It goes into who funds these things.
https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...
Was starting to think about setting up a neighborhood Signal group, but now thinking that maybe something like Briar might be safer... only problem is that Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.
Why wouldn't you just use random abandoned forums or web article message threads? Iirc this is what teenagers used to do when schools banned various social media but not devices. Just put the URL in a discrete qr code that only a person in the neighborhood could see.
I spent a dozen years in SF, where my friend circles routinely used Signal. It's my primary messaging app, including to family and childhood friends.
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.
> 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
What about BitChat?
but this is not a technical attack that returns the metadata.
much more closer to the $5 wrench attack
https://xkcd.com/538/
I've been hearing for years people say "Signal requires phone number therefore I don't use it", and I've been hearing them mocked for years.
Turns out they were right.
They weren't though? Signal requires a phone number to sign up and it is linked to your account but your phone number is not used in the under the hood account or device identification, it is not shared by default, your number can be entirely removed from contact disovery if you wish, and even if they got a warrant or were tapping signal infra directly, it'd be extremely non trivial to extract user phone numbers.
https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/
https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
https://signal.org/blog/building-faster-oram/
https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/
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.
Yep however that only exposes a value of "last time the user registered/verified their account via phone number activation" and "last day the app connected to the signal servers".
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.
I would think being able to subpoena records for all active signal users would be a cause for concern.
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.
I think that's a fair assessment on their part however it's worth noting that your phone number does not serve as your account ID. It can be used to look up an account but there are caveats to that.
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.
This was before Signal switched to a username system.
Others mention you must still register with a phone, although you can remove it from your account after you go through the username stuff? Usually HN is pretty good about identifying that the default path is the path and that opt-out like behavior of this means very little for mass usage.
It's not that you can remove it from your account entirely. Your account is still linked to that number. It's that you can remove the number from contact discovery.
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).
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".
Absolutely nothing in this article is related to feds using conversation metadata to map participants, so, no they weren’t.
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.
Yeah. It's notable they didn't crack the crypto. In the 90s when I was a young cypherpunk, I had this idea that when strong crypto was ubiquitous, certainly people would be smart enough to understand its role was only to force bad guys to attack the "higher levels" like attacking human expectations of privacy on a public channel. It was probably unrealistic to assume everyone would automatically understand subtle details of technology.
As a reminder... if you don't know all the people in your encrypted group chat, you could be talking to the man.
That’s really interesting extra context, thanks!
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My Session and Briar chats don't give out the phone numbers of other users.
Yes, but they have their own weaknesses. For instance, Briar exposes your Bluetooth MAC, and there's a bunch of nasty Bluetooth vulns waiting to be exploited. You can't ever perfectly solve for both security and usability, you can only make tradeoffs.
Briar has multiple modes of operation. The Bluetooth mode is not the default mode of operation and is there for circumstances where Internet has been shut down entirely.
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.
Neither does Signal.
Both Session and Briar are decentralized technologies where you would never be able to approach a company to get any information. They operate over DHT-like networks and with Tor.
Signal does give out phone numbers when the law man comes, because they have to, and because they designed their system around this identifier.
This changed about two years ago, when they added usernames. ( https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/ )
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.
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We don't do the "duct-tape an insult to the end to drive your point harder" gimmick here. It will lead to loss of your account.
whoa, losing access to a throwaway account created for specifically posting trolling comments? i'm sure they're shaking in their boots at the prospect
This throwaway account wasn't created specifically for posting trolling comments, this is just my personality :-(
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Signal's use of phone numbers is the least of your issues if you've reached this level of inspection. Signal could be the most pristine perfect thing in the world, and the traffic from the rest of your phone is exactly as exposing as your phone number is when your enemy is the US government who can force cooperation from the infrastructure providers.
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.
I talked to Moxie about this 20 years ago at DefCon and he shrugged his shoulders and said "well... it's better than the alternative." He has a point. Signal is probably better than Facebook Messenger or SMS. Maybe there's a market for something better.
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.
email is notoriously insecure and goes through servers that allow it to be archived. also, email UIs tend not to be optimized for instantaneous delivery of messages.
I wasn't assuming the actual messages would go through email. I assumed they just needed that for a onetime setup. Isn't that the only reason for using a phone number currently?
Briar and Session are the better encrypted messengers.
Session lacks forward secrecy, which isn't ideal.
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.
> He knows as well as I do anything on a phone can never be secure
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.
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.
I don't think the FCC requires DMA channels. That's done out of convenience because it's how PCIe works.
The FCC doesn't require DMA channels, but the baseband processor may have access to it among anything else.
That's done for convenience because that's how PCIe works.
Any citation on this? I’ve never heard that.
47 CFR Part 2 and Part 15
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.
There are hobbyist groups that tinker with these things. They are just as lazy as me and do not publish much. One has to find and participate in their semi-private .onion forums. Not my cup of tea. Most of it goes over my head and requires special hardware I am not interested in tinkering with.
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.
Tor has the problem that you frequently don't know who's running all the nodes in the network. For a while the FBI was running Tor exit nodes in an attempt to see who messages were being sent to. maybe they still are.
OTR has been on XMPP for so long now
Is that good? According to the wikipedia page it seems last stable release was 9 years ago. Is anyone using that? Last time I had a look at XMPP everybody was using OMEMO.
OMEMO has its own flaws too
https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/
Sorry, I don't pay attention to anyone who disses PGP. I don't care if it's easy to misuse. I focus on using it well instead of bitching about misusing 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.
Before my arrest (CFAA) I operated on Tor and PGP for years. I had property seized and I had a long look at my discovery material, as I was curious which elements they had obtained.
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!
Would be curious to know (if you're willing to share) how you were found if you were working to obscure / encrypt your communications. What _was_ it that ultimately gave you away or allowed them to ID you?
I'd be curious as well, though I completely understand if they don't want to talk. Someone should write a book just listing the usual mistakes.
if you sign PGP messages with a key you associated with your identity, the have high confidence you sent emails signed with that key. i.e. - PGP does not offer group deniable signatures as a default option.
So what? Whether this matters depends on your threat model, but you present this as a universal concern. Yes, we know, and we use it appropriately.
wow. that's a phenomenally bad policy. There are many legit critiques which can be leveled at PGP, depending on your use case. [Open]PGP is not a silver bullet. You have to use it correctly.
"You have to use it correctly" is true for everything. Stop parroting garbage you read and exercise some critical thinking.
says the 8 day old sock puppet.
It's not a sock puppet in the usual sense. Every time I log in I create a new account, and it lasts until I get logged out for whatever reason. But I'm not having conversations between multiple accounts that I control, if that's what you mean.
my mom can use signal no problem. she doesnt know what half the words in your comment mean, though.
I could have sworn Signal adopted usernames sometime back, but in my eyes its a little too late.
Suppose they didn't require that. Wouldn't that open themselves up to DDoS? An angry nation or ransom-seeker could direct bots to create accounts and stuff them with noise.
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
What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.
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.
People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement.
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.
The US has less than 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's incarcerated. So we're already exceptional in terms of numbness to incarceration.
> in one of our concentration camps
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.
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...
This doesn't even touch our, ahem, overseas facilities, which certainly do not have the same standards.
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...
> Here's one of these camps, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana
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.
Thank you for the clarification!
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).
>even having detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much.
How do you suggest enforcing immigration law when millions have entered your country illegally? (If you believe in enforcing it all.)
Legally. With due regard to the rights of those involved, and when detention is necessary, with humane treatment. In particular honoring due process, where people have the right to to at least be seen by a judge. The right to communicate with their families, and when deportation is necessary, send them to their country of origin instead of another continent entirely or paying some prison somewhere to detain them indefinitely. That when people are detained at all it on the orders of the a judge, expressed in a warrant. That while under detention they should have access to legal services, and have an avenue to complain about their treatment if necessary.
This was all very well understood and hashed out through law and precedent over many decades.
I basically agree, but even Obama built detention centers, no? I don't think anything you advocate is incompatible with detention centers or detainment camps.
That’s not the way things are being run now. People are being detained and sent to camps without warrants. There are complaints about conditions and no observers are allowed. People from South America are being dumped in Africa, detained in foreign prisons without trial, deported without a hearing. Killed with no investigation.
and for the record I dont care what Obama did. some fairly dubious things. does that justify any of this?
I don't support the "way things are being run now" or even what Obama did, necessarily. Just objecting to the narrow point that "detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much".
Well, you could build centers that are not prisons. Not resorts or holiday camps, but start with not crushing the balls of the people in there.
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).
>centers that are not prisons
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.
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> Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities.
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.
I understand the sentiment, but it’s the correct term for such facilities. You don’t need gas chambers to qualify. As far as I know, the terms is also used for historic ethnical imprisonment facilities for Japanese people in the USA, which seems very comparable.
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.
The thing is, while I agree we are closer to the 1933 definition of what a concentration camp is, it's not 1933 anymore as 1945 happened since. The meaning of words change and are tarnished by history, as is the meaning of symbols. The swatiska was a peace symbol before the 3rd reich, and pepe was just a frog 10 years ago.
> 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!
> 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).
In case you missed the rhetoric, illegal immigrants as a whole are being blamed for economic ruin.
The meaning of "concentration camp" did not changed. European historians and writers use them exactly like I did. So does wikipedia. In particular, European historians writing about WWII can not possibly limit the meaning of that word to extermination camp only, because concentration camps as such played pretty important role the whole time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
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.
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Are those not people? Right into the 'subhuman' rhetoric?
Criminals have less rights than non-criminals. Especially illegal aliens. Let’s not pretend countries don’t have reasons to protect their borders.
Are those not people?
People that broke the law entering the country whom have no right to be there yes, with reduced rights as they are non-citizens. This is internationally universal. What is your point?
Citizen =!= Human.
Even if they might not be citizens, they are humans, people. With human rights. Categorizing one group of humans as being less deserving of basic human decency than others, is, for a lack of a better word, nazi rhetoric.
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Then you need better reading glasses, unless you killing of two innocent people is actually people guilty or illegals.
While one of these seems like an accident where the officer may have some blame, then both of them can be avoided if you don't behave aggressively or don't show up with a gun at a protest. I.e, bad things sometimes happen, but they are not the situation you wish it to be.
And this is a clear give away you haven't seen either footage of the actual killing.
I don't know of any nice, calm, non-roided ICE agent who would say "fucking bitch" to a person that was shot and killed because they drove away from them.
Nor do I know of any officer in general who would be considered an upstanding on-duty officer doing so, especially one where they push you to the ground for filming, pepper spray you, put you to the ground and then shot you 10 times.
I’m no fan of guns but showing up with a gun is not illegal or criminal in itself that deserves instant death sentence. So you might want to introspect what you’re saying here.
I have introspected this thoroughly. What I'm saying is if you're confiscated a gun in some highly urgent situation, then the people doing the seizing get even more tense in their mental state, so accidents are easy to make.
While it may be worth it to investigate the situation and there may some blame on the officer, then the allusions people are making (perhaps not you) are completely out of whack.
I'm sure it's inconvenient if your party or candidate lost the presidential election, but you shouldn't turn to lying for retribution.
Calling this an "accident" is a pretty huge stretch I must say. They dumped rounds in the guy while he was collapsed face down on the pavement and unarmed.
All of the officers didn't know he was unarmed nor whether it was his last firearm.
If they didn't know they shouldn't have been firing at him. Soldiers in active warzones wouldn't be given such considerations and allowed to just blast people that they don't even know are armed. There is no excuse.
I would like to see any situation where an average citizen could kill somebody in a similar manner and be given the benefit of the doubt. Because "He may or may not have been armed, I don't really know because I couldn't see" would not fly in any US court for any other random civilian.
Police (and people in general) react to what appears. They can't stop time, strip-search Pretti, find nothing, then continue.
I could also say "there is no excuse for you to not understand why ICE did what they did". No point in these judgements, they don't help your argument.
The entire protest isn't a plain protest. They could do their whistling and marching on a public square, yet they walk and whistle along with law enforcement. (I guess the new way to rob a bank would just be to walk in there with the guards, but say that you're protesting and talk about the letters of constitution?)
It's not illegal to whistle near law enforcement.
Also they're not law enforcement.
They are, and I do think it's illegal to interfere with police work.
How is filming in public an "obstruction"? Do cameras or filmers have telekinetic powers? If you then tell me what is the safe radius where this telekinetic power is neutralized. Would an 800mm lens from 500 yards away be safe?
It is if you are doing it during a police operation.
There is also no fixed radius. E.g, if there is a police op in one apartment, you are filming in another, but there is a wall in between, then the distance is miniscule. If you're walking along with the officer and filming the op as it happens, then you are in the radius. Even worse if you're also whistling.
It's been established many times that it is perfectly legal in US law to film US police on US soil .. there's been state by state settings of acceptable distances, etc.
ICE / DHS / Border patrol aren't US police, of course - they are immigration enforcement agents with more limited powers despite assertions by the current US federal administration to the contrary.
It doesn't seem to be legal to interfere with police work https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_, e.g, film or whistle during an operation. The constitution doesn't apply as naively as you think.
The video gives vague platitudes about filming limits just saying "do not obstruct" well duh, now define what not obstructing means, show case laws about the right radius or whatever else to film. No where does the video show he was "legally obstructing" the policework, just cites that a filmer must not obstruct.
I'm sure that the investigation into the Alex Pretti event will give you more exact platitudes to rely on. Unlikely will its determination concur with yours, unfortunately. (But the future will tell, right!)
If they even let the investigation happen properly. This is trumpian "investigation" after all.
For Alex Pretti, there is already a video found where he kicks a police car's tail light loose during an earlier protest (while also carrying a gun to that event, too), so circumstances are stacking against him, unfortunately.
I'd say, simply don't bring a gun to a protest! As then police won't need to do split second decisions about whether you are using lethal force against them or not.
To me saying "simply don't bring a gun to a protest" is according to constitutional law the same as saying "just don't say politically inflammatory things around officers who might accidentally interpret it as a personal threat and beat you".
If cops are too pussy for their job they can quit anytime, nobody's stopping them. The public should not have to give up firearms just because cops piddle their pants ehile being armed armoured ten times as much.
That's a different case, how does it have anything to do with this.
The Alex Pretti shooting is what started this thread (way up).
Though back to filming, while it's legal to just film a cop, then it may not be while an operation is ongoing. If you film the operation in quiet then I guess it's up to debate whether that is interfering with police work. But the protesters were also whistling along with the officers, i.e, giving away that they're there, etc.
Neither is showing up to a bank with a gun. Yet a robbery is likely to have much more severe consequences if you are armed.
A banks not public property and the people being shot weren't engaging in any crime. A bank can decide what they allow in or not. Its extremely astounding you seem unaware of this. Your "analogy" is completely confused and meaningless.
The parent is just exemplifying how in specific situations having a gun with you drastically changes how you are perceived.
No, it's a completely absurd analogy that doesn't even begin to make sense.
It does: in context of an active war having a gun won't surprise anyone. In context of arresting someone and seeing a gun on that person makes that person appear lethally dangerous.
Why? If you are arrested for a parking ticket do you expect to be shot if you also happened to be carrying? It's understandable if one feels scared of someone wielding a firearm while confronting them. Therefore we should shoot any cops who attempt to come near us since they are armed and getting into an interaction with us and they appear lethally dangerous.
It's funny how people use the lawfulness argument for carrying a gun to protest, but don't use the same argument against deporting illegals.
Nobody is stopping illegals from being deported. They just hace to prove illegality first. If you believe otherwise, I am more than happy to recommend you for imprisonment and deportation first before asking questions.
It's already proven as they are following through a court order.
As far as I know, they are also first and foremost deporting illegals who are criminals to begin with.
Are you sure? Give me the numbers of how many are actual real court orders and how many are internal "warrants".
Warrants are legally not meant to be followed?
Not all warrants are same. Some warrants ICE use don't have legal powers of court issued warrants for example. So yes, its just a piece of nosy Karen paper and you can prevent them entry to your house for example for certain types of warrants.
Was this particular warrant like that?
What warrant it was has no bearing in whether he, not an individual related to any immigration case being investigated has the right to film it.
Most of the warrants being used in the minnesota botch job are the Karen warrants from what can be found anyways.
I'm sure an investigation into this particular case will surface what kind of warrant (or other legal document) they were carrying out and whether whistling along with police carrying out their work was interference or not.
If you know who was going to be captured and how this was only a "Karen" warrant , which doesn't constitute non-interferable police work, post to any source!
You seem to have difficulty with English, maybe its not your main language. What part of the warrant type being immaterial for third parties having a right to film the cops was difficult to understand?
Why do you say "not all warrants are the same" while them being different is immaterial?
Also, why even "protest" at these events when the people targeted by ICE haven't determined to be illegal immigrants? They can just present their basis for legal immigration and be done with it.
Ask ICE why they are acting like violent terrorists. Why are you asking protestors who have a legal right to free speech, to carry firearms, to protest in a public space and to film in a public space?
You are probably from one of the lesser countries in the world which is why your confusion. In sane countries people don't need "permission" from the government to engage in speech.
I spoke about warrants because you are the one who brought up "court orders" out of thin air and you clearly showed you had completely made it up since you neither knew about the fake Karen warrants and nor about the proportion of real court orders and fake warrants. I can print a paper saying "Ultra Real Serious Warrant for Arrest of kreetx" too. Would you listen to me and get arrested by me?
> or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps
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.
For example reported on The Majority Report: https://youtu.be/rapv7V78SZo
I believe this[0] article shows the other side of that door. To clarify, I believe the seeming lack of justice system involvement is what chafes for most.
[0] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/like-handmaids-tale-footage-shows-...
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...
This may come as a shock to someone stuck in a radical far left bubble but people who are not either a citizen of one of the several states or not a citizen of the federal government (nor both) are not parties to the agreement that is the constitution.
"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)"
There’s always an excuse. “They” are always unlawful invaders. “They” are always a danger to our children and our posterity. “They” are always not deserving of the same rights as “us”. The excuse is always “justified” in the eyes of fascists and people fooled by their rhetoric.
Hemingway was right when he said “There are many Americans who are fascists without knowing it.”
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> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?
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.
Also consider that there are 340 million people in the US. With that sort of population size, you can construct whatever narrative you want out of daily video clips of 1-in-a-million events.
>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
> 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.
Which guideline? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
dang has mentioned several times that witchhunting is against the rules, and I'm not going to compile a list of witches for you, mostly because it is both toxic to communities and not conducive of interesting conversation, especially when you can just use the HN Algolia yourself.
Trump supporters aren't stupid, they understand they lose credibility if they just say they have blind faith in Trump.
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.
Or perhaps people can support deportation of illegal immigrants without being a "Trump supporter".
Yeah, but what he's doing to the country is so much worse than illegal immigration that it would be silly to bring it up.
Theres a scale involved.
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.
The scale is a temporary correction measure due lack of enforcement in previous years.
Determining that someone is in the country without citizenship, visa or other valid permission and what country they can be deported to is all the due process that is warranted. This is hardly US-specific, most non-western countries are much much harder on illegal immigration. You don't have an inherent right to be in other countries. Trying to frame this as an decision that needs court proceedings for every single deportee is an attempt to make deportations effectively impossible.
>The scale is a temporary correction measure due lack of enforcement in previous years.
This at minimum shows trust in Trump that the implementation is temporary.
>This is hardly US-specific, most non-western countries are much much harder on illegal immigration.
Bit of an odd duck. I would say that what the US lacks, is what Australia introduced in the 2000's, Temporary Protection Visas. The issue was that we had a bunch of asylum seekers without status filling up camps and generally being hunted down by feds. But the solution wasnt like, judge dredd ultra violence, we just created a class of visa to cover the situation. People left camps and joined society in an orderly fashion until the Visa expired or their eligibility for another class of Visa was determined. Then we cracked down on people who could not obtain those visas. Almost every crackdown that came after the introduction of TPVs needs to be viewed in that light. Like yes, we have offshore camps for asylum seekers, but the courts keep forcing a number of those people to be admitted on various grounds often netting TPVs. NZ has a similar system without the offshore camps.
The recurring story I get out of the ICE raids is always some person permitted to legally enter the country, but without status. Their lawyers will claim they are permitted to stay while their status is determined. The story is always one of attempted compliance with the law. But maga cries illegal and demands immediate deportation. That's the kind of legal grey area that can be easily solved with legislation. There's no need for cops to be the determining factor. People are generally accepting of enforcement action once due process has been seen to be done, and theres nothing about the current situation that even smells a bit like due process.
Honestly they have issues, and have become a massive political football, but we also dont have cops shucking masses of people out of their homes mid visa application.
>You don't have an inherent right to be in other countries.
Countries don't have inherent rights that exceed human and negative rights. Countries are for humans or they aren't worth having.
Well said.
The US has been covertly but actively exploiting a deliberate grey area in immigration since before Mexico requested they start paying more than lip service toward border enforcement and actually return Mexican labourers rather than keeping them in limbo.
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.
I don't think HN is representative of techies, especially not when discussing politics.
Techies even more moderate if they aren’t on HN, si I don’t get your point.
>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.
I am pointing out that HN is not very representative of the US political spectrum, and opinions about what's going on in the US will be filtered based on that. You're largely just hearing from one set of partisans here.
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 are (or were) considered "right wing" on some stuff and really "left wing" on other stuff. It's really futile trying to compare the political parties with different incentives internationally and putting a single left/right wing label on them.
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.
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, $$$, generally pro-system. the Orange is disliked heavily, but after all it's not the system which is the problem, it's the Orange!
> The userbase here is considerably further left
can't agree, from my own experiences of discussing political topics on here. again, socially open, free minds, sure. but positive towards Silicon Valley, VC-funding, investments and a general lean towards Imperialism(for freedom, of course, not the bad kind). yes, overtly racist comments get downvoted until they're dead.
"further left than very left-wing" could be the description of an anarcho-communist, self-hosted mastodon instance, not a US state.
to end on a funny note, https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQAfP-2...
sorry for being pedantic, and maybe wrong. please show me y'alls POV, i'm not saying that i'm right, it's just kind of my opinion, man.
That's the problem with trying to put political opinion on a one dimensional scale. California is definitely very far left wing on the matters that concern the discussion at hand, that is illegal immigration and law enforcement actions related to it.
Thats not left/right, thats lib/auth. But I guess you cant scare people with "ooooh the government likes elements of civil freedom" it just isnt spooky enough, you gotta try and tangle it up with leftism somehow to really push the point home.
>seeing any US state being described as "very left-wing" is interesting to me, think it just shows how different these views are between US and Euro. i'd describe California as Centrist. sure, socially open, no issue with sexuality or heritage. but also, free markets, corpo power, $$$, generally pro-system. the Orange is disliked heavily, but after all it's not the system which is the problem, it's the Orange!
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.
> 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?
>well, you chose the one "good" example, where weapons are actually used for defense against a different Imperialist.
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
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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.
I would like to point out the humor in that the above comment has been downvoted at least 3 times. Lol
You were supposed to say silent and let them pretend to be persecuted on an internet forum
Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.
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?
> 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 plenty of examples of asymmetric warfare where the stronger party crushed the weaker one. WW2 was full of such examples. People point to Afghanistan and Vietnam as if they apply in every situation, for some bizarre reason (I assume motivated reasoning).
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The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.” The military simply isn’t the right tool to lift a nation out of poverty and eventually the voters got bored.
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.
Lol thats so untrue, are we already at the phase of rewriting this recent history?
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.
>The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.”
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.
> over the course of the occupation
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.'
Think of a rebellion as national "unbuilding" and you get some idea of how things might go.
If things get that hot, there will be substantial defectors and various state and federal security services fighting each other.
I don’t think it’d be easy to get a Chinese ABM to Minneapolis without anyone noticing.
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.
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The rebels (against the American regime) were all rural, ballistic missiles weren’t very effective when your enemy is wandering around the desert coming in out of rural Pakistan.
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.
If Trump bombed a US city there are enough people that would head to DC for his head he wouldn't last long. This is not Iran.
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.
I hope you are right.
Before such missiles even get launched, there's a serious risk of the US military saying "you are no longer 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.
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.
> 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?
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.
> 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.
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.
As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.
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.
Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely.
Yeah realistically if there was actual mass repression of citizens (i.e. things like "courts" have essentially ceased to be a factor in much of anything), simply going on strike would be a pretty good start. You demonstrate peacefully, and carry arms as a deterrent so they can't crush the demonstrations the way they did in Iran.
Is armed with knives enough?
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.
> Is armed with knives enough?
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.
> Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably.
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.
> Heck no, they can't.
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?
Look, I don't want to be mean because if you're in the US right now you're in a situation which sucks. But that situation of 10000 people with guns seizing a military base to bootstrap an effective civil war, is just so absurd I don't even know how to begin.
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.
> that situation of 10000 people with guns seizing a military base to bootstrap an effective civil war, is just so absurd I don't even know how to begin.
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.
Knives are basically obsolete technology in military terms. Firearms are not obsolete; that's why almost every soldier (or "paramilitary") carries one. Your technological parity point is technically correct, but it doesn't really apply here.
There are more privately owned guns than people in the US. We are already profusely armed.
I'm not contesting that you're armed. I'm not contesting that guns can still be "useful". But not in resisting a government with anti-"insurgence" drones battle tested against various levels of resistance from Palestine to Ukraine to Afghanistan.
>Afghanistan
We're going in circles. The Afghans won. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791876
The Afghans won - not without foreign support, by the way - against a foreign occupying force, in the end by promising a lot of amnesties to people who had been working with the occupying government, and convincing them to turn en masse. Promises which they from what I understand, mostly kept. They fought for years and died in droves, then they suddenly won "without firing a single shot", figuratively speaking, with diplomacy directed at their own countrymen. I'm sure there are some lessons to be learned there for resisting your own government too there, but I really only mentioned them as a place where anti armed insurgence technology has been extensively battle tested by the government you're considering picking a fight with.
If you don’t care about how many you kill, these kinds of insurgencies can be ended. I don’t think the US Armed Forces could be convinced to attack their fellow Americans but if they did it would be worth remembering that the Warsaw Uprising ended poorly for the uprisers.
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.
> 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
I don’t think it’s that obvious. The US was delayed in building shells for Ukraine because they couldn’t scale up production at a factory on account of it being historically listed. It’s been 10 years since Ukraine was first attacked in Crimea and we’ve been involved on again off again.
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.
People in Iraq and Afghanistan were willing to eat grass and blow themselves up to resist the foreign invaders. How long do you think Meal Team Six will keep going if they can't get to a Burger King?
That however is a political issue, not a military one.
Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.
If the US military wasn't willing to simply flatten cities all over Iraq and Afghanistan, why would you expect them to do that in their own country to their own homes and family members?
Are you sure the military wasn’t willing, as opposed to the politics not willing to issue this command?
Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd.
I would say Iran is a much better illustration of what happens when your citizenry is disarmed. The crowd isn't very scary. They don't pose a real threat. There's little risk in crushing them. They can't fight back meaningfully.
the insurgencies in Afghanistan at least were difficult to suppress because they based of out pakistan, a supposed american ally and notable nuclear power.
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
>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.
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
I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances:
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"...
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.
PBS: "Republican calls are growing for a deeper investigation into fatal Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-gro...
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.
I don't see inconsistency between the two NRA statements. Your interpretation seems imaginative/unsupported.
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...
Always being able to come up with some exception [0] doesn't mean that you're not being hypocritical, it just means that you've tricked yourself into being unable to see it. For another incident that resulted in a widespread display of hypocrisy, look at the public reactions to what happened when Kenneth Walker exercised his right to night time home defense - one of the basic scenarios the NRA is always rallying around. But I'm sure you've settled on some coping excuse for that one as well.
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"
I have no opinion on Kenneth Walker. I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy without any supporting evidence. The flip side of your "exception" point is that you have to actually understand what the person said, and what they believe, before you claim hypocrisy... something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing.
> I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy
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")
All I want people to do is link to evidence of hypocrisy when they claim it. Argue with an actual person instead of your hallucination of them. Was that too much to ask?
You say hallucination, I say reasonable prediction based on past behavior.
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 say hallucination, I say reasonable prediction based on past behavior.
You're also welcome to make a prediction, but label it as a prediction rather than a statement of fact.
Apparently you only address non-substantive points that you can nitpick. So I guess we're done, unless you'd like to go back and do your homework.
To me, this is the substantive point. It's about intellectual honesty. That's the key thing for me.
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).
The point about the NRA's reaction to Kenneth Walker was made in my first comment, and highlighted two comments ago.
Intellectual honesty requires engaging with points in good faith, not just nitpicking and throwing out high handed dismissals like a high school debate club.
Well I don't have much to add to that point. I wasn't taking the position that the NRA is generally good. I'm glad you provided a concrete example, but I was more interested in concrete examples surrounding this incident in particular. I want accusations of hypocrisy to be paired with such concrete examples, if your accusation implies they should be readily available. It's a procedural point--if you accuse someone of hypocrisy it's always good to have some evidence to back it up.
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
And are these really 2nd amendment advocates to begin with? They don't strike me as principled people in general.
That's MAGA, which is the overwhelming majority of the right in the United States.
If you mean to say that officials in Trump's administration are hypocritical, then say that. But many are accusing thousands of rank-and-file gun rights supporters of hypocrisy on a thin to nonexistent evidence base.
Here's how one gun rights group responded to some of the statements you quoted:
https://xcancel.com/gunrights/status/2016268309180907778#m
https://xcancel.com/gunrights/status/2015572391217467562#m
You didn't say "rank-and-file gun rights supporters", you said "right-wingers". These are all MAGA, which today, whether you like it or not, is the majority of "right-wingers". MAGA lives on a lack of principles, and that's why it's popular. Things are getting real now, huh?
[dead]
> 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 ;)
It's confusing and messy, like most of American history.
Most cosplayers exit when they meet a real villain
It’s the same as in the EU or Britain or the US ten years ago, where unauthorised migration is handled by law enforcement, except in some states the organised vigilante groups form this article exist and endanger everybody. The government hasn’t run amok: the laws are the same.
I'm wondering pretty much the same thing ...
> 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.
Americans, yes - not illegal immigrant invaders. As it would turn out, American citizens aren't ready to die for these people just yet.
The man killed was not an illegal or immigrant
Nobody said he was? Are you in the right thread?
The best way I can put it... All the people I know are at work when most of this protest news is happening.
The news media is not saying a lot of what is happening. So if anything you are missing some of the insanity.
Depends which side you’re on and how far. If you’re far-left, you’re thinking the administration is the Fourth Reich, you’re watching movies with Leonardo DiCaprio doing terrorist attacks on border patrol, and fighting the Gestapo. If you’re far right, you’re thinking the administration isn’t going far enough, Trump “is a cuck”, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if they had just protested in front of a government building.
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but most places for most people are fine. Good even. Great, by historical standards. But that just goes to show how much room the US has to decline, and how well off the average American really is by global standards, even if they don't subjectively feel that way. Donald Trump and the politics of the last few decades have definitely been pushing things the wrong direction, but most people in most places live relatively well, by global standards. As it is, all we would need is a decade of politics and policies gently tugging the right direction and we'd be good to go.
Kind of both at the same time. America is a huge place. So if you live in Minneapolis, or in one of the cities where ICE is heavily targeting immigrants and are non-white, it's as bad as the media makes it sound.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.
Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population.
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.
What you describe seems to fit the term 'Dual State', and you live your day to day life in the normative state. I hope foe your sake you don't get much contact with the prerogative one.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...
Interesting, that was a work I wasn't familiar with.
It doesn't feel like you keep calm 'because he won the elections'. It's either that citizens can't do much in the US, fear of getting killed is real especially when disobeying police orders, or, you aren't too affected by Trump's actions to act.
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.
They should have had an open convention. I said this on reddit before the elections and was heavily downvoted for whatever reason. People don't want to face reality. Trump's election this time around was much easier to explain and both parties have now lost the trust of the people.
> 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?
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.
Tremendous post. Is there anything people in other parts of the country can do to help in Minnesota?
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.
> The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.
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.
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This is simply not true.
Some people are investigated because they spread lies, insults and threats. Things that would be investigated (and punished) as well, if done "off line".
The freedom of speech does not mean "freedom to harass, threat or insult people".
The oppression of free speech seems to be happening much more in the USA, where you are not allowed to criticize the politics of the ruling party any more.
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
Deportation of illegal immigrants happened in the previous administrations and nothing like the current chaos unfolded.
I grant that some people protesting against the raids are likely doing that because they don't want illegals to be deported,
but I suspect most of the pushback is against the way this whole thing has been set up and the way agents handled the encounters with protesters so far, leading towards a spiral of distrust and a polarization of the issue.
There seems to be an indication that many of the ICE agents have been insufficiently trained to perform police work in a proper and safe way. and instead behave very aggressively. The abuse of racial profiling is making non-white citizens (including native Americans!) feel unsafe too. To make things worse, there is a loud group of people who are cheering the though guys from the sidelines/armchairs.
People who share those concerns are not necessarily pro-illegal immigration. I know things can be done differently because they have been done differently.
But in this case, one political movement is leveraging the deportation rhetoric to rile up their base, providing another political movement the ammonito to call them tyrannical and riling up their base, which in turn causes the first movement to justify their aggressiveness as counterinsurgence.
This doesn't lead to a good place and it has nothing to do with the fact that the country deserves a sane immigration policy.
The current immigration situation is utterly broken, but it has become such over time (and has many complicated facets) but the idea that this can be fixed in a haste by applying lunt force is the product of a new low point in politics.
This misses the point of how "deportation", snatching of those from communities and decision-making for whom is illegal is actually occurring, and how people are being snatched with disregard to their actual state as a citizen, resident or otherwise of the United States of America.
When facial recognition is said to outrank any other proof, such as a birth certificate, one cannot claim to be operating in good faith when one allows for fallible systems to decide the lives of American citizenry, encourages false imprisonment and allows for violence to be recklessly committed against people who were guilty of no crime at all.
(also, the United States and Canada are alike in their statuses as countries formed of immigrants; we close the door now simply because we feel those coming today are ineducated or don't fit our racial preferences? No different than was done to Chinese people say a hundred years prior.)
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.
There's a difference between honest mistakes and gleeful assholery.
These things are not being separated though. Your agents are executing citizens in the street. This is not about illegal immigration at all. It's just straight up oppression.
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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.
From another European perspective I think it says more how absurdly left leaning European politics have become. The US is much more in line with historical norms as well as with non-western societies today.
In what way have we become left leaning?
From my perspective right-leaning economic views have won. We have new public management, we have privatisation, we have death of unions, and we have reduction in wealth and inheritance tax over the board (with some exceptions), and increased inequality.
He means "being nice to people" rightoids are unable to conceive of politics in economic terms anymore.
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".)
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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.
>What is it like in the US these days?
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.
It's bad, we are living under Hitler 2.0 in every single sense of the word. He admires Hitler and says he keeps Hitler's books by his nightstand.
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.
To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)
While being the focus, Minnesota is not the only place it's happening. For example, ICE took at least 15 people in the Los Angeles area today[1].
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...
[2] - https://www.instagram.com/p/DUBjokvEnWh/
Twin cities are 16th largest metro, between Tampa/St. Petersburg and Seattle/Tacoma.
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.
Population
> What is it like in the US these days?
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.
People aren't shooting yet because they know it will turn into a blood bath and should only be used as a last resort. Also as bad as it is in some areas, vast swaths of the US are still only really seeing this in the news. I think the outcome of whats going on in Minnesota will be a sign of whats to come so we won't be waiting long. If citizens start shooting at government employees though, it will be chaos, the US population has had a VERY negative attitude about the government for a long time now.
For anyone downvoting this, I don't see you fighting to the death over this, why do you expect others to do it for you and then complain when they don't? I guarantee many of you would be screaming about terrorism if people were shooting back right now. You can't have it both ways.
> Patel said he got the idea for the investigation from Higby.
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.
> 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?
Why is it so obvious to you to investigate something that is perfectly legal?
> something that is perfectly legal
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.
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.
> Observers do not take physical actions to block ICE/CBP.
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?
> 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.
The current bias is so large for the administration that most people haven't even clocked that what they are doing is legal
i suppose what he means is that the phones of protestors which have signal chat will be investigated.
Assuming they dont have disappearing messages activated, and assuming any protestors willingly unlock their phones.
> 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.
https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/new-leaks-on-police-phone...
I don't think locked[1] GrapheneOS is considered vulnerable for AFU attack anymore: https://www.androidauthority.com/cellebrite-leak-google-pixe...
Notice even unlocked doesn't allow FFS.
[1] assuming standard security settings of course.
Where has there been any allegations iPhone before first unlock has been bypassed?
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.
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
Thanks. That's not really bypassing iPhone before first unlock. It says only 'partial' metadata, so it's likely just looking at encrypted blobs and making guesses just like file recovery tool would on an encrypted drive. So it's a bit of a marketing gimmick to "leak" that document
> 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.
Isn't latest iPhones also have similar security profile on BFU. The latest support table I saw from one of the vendors was also confirming this.
>is the only defense.
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.
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...
I really hope he implements this, because we are gonna see mental gymnastics on the Olympic level from the right wing commentators.
They already continue to support him after proposing (twice!) taking people's guns without due process.
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.
Sure there is the usual hypocrisy but IMO what's more interesting is that, based on some posts that pop up on my FB feed, there has been a real backlash among gun nuts and people like Rittenhouse himself.
You would think that this makes a difference in the long run of who people vote for, but it won't unfortunately.
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.
Fed
Ah yes, there is the uncomfortable feeling deep in your gut that you suppress, but a part of you knows it can happen.
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.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fedpost#English
i know what fedposting means.
Im just saying your reaction to it is predictable
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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?
Strange take? Are you kidding me?
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.
I wish we would stop using that word 'agitator', while I understand the subjective idea that someone is just trying to stir up trouble, it kind of undermines the idea that we should be able to express opinions no matter how distasteful.
and apparently it now a perfectly valid reason for the state to execute someone without being charged or a trial.
anyone promoting for people to start showing up and shooting at law enforcement, even if it is ICE, is what if not an agitator?
Nobody said start showing up and shooting ICE. I simply said, "met" in the sense of standing your ground. ICE would not be a problem if they did things legally, like they did under Obama.
I consider the term to be a label of a bad-faith actor vs. someone who holds genuine conviction that the "agitating action" is a good thing.
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.
> 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
where is the line? I was fine with the word until it started being used to justify killing innocents
Then be upset with them for misappropriating the word. I'm using it just fine, thank you very much!
There are already people on X who have infiltrated chats and posted screen captures. Getting the full content of the chats isn't going to be difficult. They have way to many people in them.
Or has biometric login turned on and didn't lock their phone behind a passcode before being arrested.
Unlocking isn't necessary, We've already seen that Apple and Google will turn data over on government requests.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-complies-percent-us-go...
Non-paywalled link?
https://archive.ph/copyn
It wasn’t paywalled for me, BTW.
Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links.
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.
> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis
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.)
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?
One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
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.
> Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
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.
I don't think the idea is that the speech in the chat is inherently illegal; it's that it could be used as evidence of illegal activity. Using that example - if someone in the chat asks about plate XYZ at 10AM, and if a phone linked to "Bob" posts to the group chat at 10:04 AM that license plate XYZ is used by ICE, and the internal logs show that Bob queried the ICE database about plate XYZ at 10:02 AM, and no one else queried that license plate in the past month, that is pretty good evidence that Bob violated the CFAA.
> Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
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.
"ICE are at (address)" apparently
> Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted,
Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.
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- Don't join giant group chats unless you're Whiskey Pete inviting journalists into a "clean" opsec group.
- 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.
Ah yes, the typical language of peaceful protestors
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Yeah Cam Higby & friends have "infiltrated" the Signal groups. It's not that hard frankly, and most of the chats emphasize that 1) they're unvetted, 2) don't do anything illegal, anywhere, including taking a right on red if the sign is there saying not to 3) don't write anything you don't want read back to you in a court of law. Higby and friends do have "How do you do, Fellow Kids?" energy in those chats.
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?
Schrödinger's HN story: Is it a tech story (in which case it's uninteresting) or is it a political story (in which case it's against the rules)? It's both.
I’d be curious to know what they plan to charge people with.
Jaywalking, misappropriating funds during a renovation? Whatever the police state wants...
I heard a totally unsubstantiated rumor that the participants were sending (ICE agent) plate numbers to people with NCIC access to run the plates. If that's the case it would be a pretty easy felony charge for all involved.
I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.
If you have no reason to believe it's true, and understand the rumor to be unsubstantiated, why bother to spread it?
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.
No, I don't expect the Trump administration to operate in good faith.
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.
Several undercover reporters have reported this. They are obviously lying. If the administration confirms the same, they are obviously lying. Who shall we believe then? The NYTimes?
These "undercover" reporters have screenshots, surely they could show one of actual crimes instead of something that you keep willfully misinterpreting as such. We've already given you the mundane explanation, but it seemingly relies too much on people being able to work together as social creatures and not enough on a technological system.
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.
> surely they could show one of actual crimes
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.
You keep saying this, but there actually is a legal standard for this, and following people around, yelling at them, none of that is interference with public acts.
> following people around, yelling at them, none of that is interference with public acts.
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".
domestic terrorism, of course
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18 U.S.C. § 372 — Conspiracy to impede or injure officer
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
> by force, intimidation, or threat
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).
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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I've seen pictures of someone with a damaged finger. Given the wild differences between video evidence and what the top levels of the administration claim happen, I think a healthy degree of scepticism is warrented.
Could easily have been hurt by their own flashbang devices or caught it in a car door.
> I've seen pictures of someone with a damaged finger.
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 haven't seen the supposed Signal logs, but I'm confident that there wasn't a conspiracy to bite someone's finger.
The point is to establish that the protest has not been entirely peaceful, which raises the possibility of conspiracy covering non-protected actions. The subthread is about what they plan to charge people with, not about exactly what actually happened and whether it meets legal standards. That's what investigations and trials are for.
Coming soon, treason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e_BbsDgLmI gives a pretty good summary of the possibilities.
The article subhead implies obstruction of justice.
Or, at the very least, what they want to try to convince a grand jury to indict people on.
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.
Presumably Seditious Conspiracy, like many people involved in J6. Conspiracy to use force to prevent or delay enforcement of laws.
Terrorism seems to be their default claim if you're against the Trump admin.
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Not voting for them.
They don’t need to if they just shoot them on the street.
I hope they're just looking for foreign influence I'm not sure what you could charge peaceful protestors with that would survive in court.
Just a reminder that we're dealing with propagandists here.
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.
Don't want to spoil the fun here. But easy:
Don't write anything that you don't want LEO to read.
The FBI should investigate the murders done by ICE and until done with that, remain silent.
And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:
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.
> 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.
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Currently they are attempting to strip our second amendment rights. They murdered a man in the street, from hands up to shit in the back in under 20 seconds, merely for lawful possession and in direct violation of the 2nd amendment. The President is bumbling around today mumbling "you can't bring a gun to a protest" when yes the 2nd amendment directly allows that.
A lot of people that care a lot about the 2nd amendment saw the photo of Pretti's gun on the ICE rental car seat, and they saw a well-used, well-cared-for weapon that was clean and seen a lot time at the range. They saw that it can happen to somebody just like them.
> you can't bring a gun to a protest" when yes the 2nd amendment directly allows that.
They conveniently forgot their excuses for Rittenhouse. Guess they all changed their mind and think he should be arrested.
The core belief of the Trump administration is that there are two groups: an in-group which the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group which the law binds but does not protect. --Someone far more insightful than me
As often happens these days, I’m confused at the hysteria here.
Police messed up and someone got killed. I feel like outrage is warranted if nothing is done about it, but after seeing the videos I’m fairly confident this won’t get swept under the rug. Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
Because the people doing the investigating are on the side of the people who committed the crimes. And the people who voted for them seem predisposed to vote for them again, even if this gets swept under the rug.
News cycles go fast. Outrage is quickly forgotten. Now more than ever, as there are new outrages coming on the heels of the last.
As often happens these days, I’m confused at the hysteria here.
No you're not. You're choosing words like 'hysteria' to delegitimize others' opinions while striking a posture of disinterested neutrality.
> Police messed up and someone got killed.
ICE, a federal agency and not a state or municipal police force, had a man face down and unarmed. There were what, half a dozen of them? He was completely subdued. They then shot him in the back.
This was not a “mistake.” This was murder.
The reason I think it was a mistake is that the shooting happened right after one of the agents yelled “gun gun gun”. I am not involved in law enforcement, but as far as I know that is typically yelled when a person is threatening with a gun, not when they’ve been disarmed. Then when the agent(s) hear “gun gun gun” they panic and start shooting.
The way ICE was engaging initially did appear unreasonably hostile from the context that I saw, though the videos I saw did not appear to contain the entire engagement. Also police should be trained well enough to not panic in that situation, ideally. But it really doesn’t seem as simple as “random street execution” based on what I’ve seen.
He was face down on the ground and they already pulled his gun off him. They clearly do this regardless of which angle you’ve seen. He was not a threat.
I am actually pretty understanding of the pressures that LEO’s face and how unless I actually experience it I can’t fully get it, despite my political leanings. But that video was truly something to behold and I regret seeing it frankly.
This wasn’t a warzone. This was a bunch of “trained” federal agents subduing one person and then deciding to kill him. Blame poor training, blame poor judgment, it doesn’t matter. If this is what we are to expect in a situation like that, then ICE needs to withdraw and be held accountable.
All of this in the name of enforcing borders with our southern neighbors…in Minnesota? Which definitely bears mentioning, because clearly ICE was sent there to retaliate against Walz and not actually as some sort of legitimate effort to deal with illegal border crossings. The insult to injury of all this is this man died ultimately because Trump wanted to sent Walz a message.
> and then deciding to kill him
This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.
For me, when I assess situations like this, I try to find an explanation that doesn’t require anyone to be cartoonishly evil, since very few people are actually cartoonishly evil in practice. In this case, similar to aviation incidents, there are two cascading failures, neither of which in isolation would have resulted in death, but both of which together did.
Speaking of aviation, it would probably help if there was an NTSB style agency for police killings. If there was an analysis of that type presented publicly I think it could make people feel better.
> This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.
They shot an unarmed, subdued civilian in the back multiple times while he was facedown. What mind reading is necessary here?
Mind reading intent, of course.
People do foolish things when they panic. And the question is panicked mistake vs intentional murder.
My mind does anchor on things that feel too low probability to be a coincidence. The very odd “gun gun gun” shout immediately before the shooting, which very clearly could induce panic, is just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the shooting? And instead they just maniacally decided to kill him, coincidentally immediately after hearing “gun gun gun”.
Like it seems like this structure does not cause your brain to prioritize “gun gun gun” as a likely explanation. Do we just have different mental heuristics? Like I wouldn’t say that this is proof, just that it is my default explanation and that I need reasonably strong evidence to end up with a different default. I wonder what causes you to end up with the other default?
I'm an outsider, I can well understand the ever growing outrage.
In a nutshell, to date, US ICE & DHS interactions have resulted in 10 people shot **, 3 people killed, and established a pattern of high level officials immediately blatently lying and contradicting video evidence.
That pattern includes obvious attempts to avoid investigation, to excuse people involved, to not investigate the bigger picture of how interactions are staged such that civilian deaths are inevitable.
It's good to see the citizens of the US dig in and demand that federal forces and federal heads of agencies be held accountable for clearly screwed up deployments and behaviours.
** My apologies, I just saw a Wash Post headliine that indicates it is now 16 shootings that are being actively swept under a rug.
Is your ignorance intentional? The FBI raided the ICE agents home to remove incriminating paraphernalia and blocked normal investigative processes. Heads of various agencies staffed by Trump loyalists called the victim a domestic terrorist while a video showed him being shit kicked and not meaningfully resisting before being executed by an agent who I would be doing a service to by calling undisciplined.
The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state with heavier illegal immigration on patrols performing illegal 4th-amendment violating door to door raids is already a complete abomination in the face of American’s rights and their constitution.
And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed in the face of all of this?
Let me know how the boot tasted so at least I can learn something from this
> The FBI raided the ICE agents home to remove incriminating paraphernalia and blocked normal investigative processes
Can you share what source you’re using for this? I don’t really know how we could definitively know this happened, and I’m extremely skeptical of most media outlets at this point because I have observed them lying nonstop for years.
> The entire fact that ICE is in Minnesota instead of a border state
I believe the official reply to this is that border states such as Texas are cooperating with ICE so there hasn’t been much drama there. That sounds plausible to me. As far as I know they are actively removing people from border states also, and I’m not aware of the people being removed from Minnesota being greater than those removed from Texas relative to state population or number of illegals. Have you seen that actually quantified somewhere?
> And you disapprove of outrage over an innocent man being extrajudicially executed
The police make mistakes sometimes. They always have. As long as the process to hold the individuals accountable is followed, I don’t really see what the big deal is, relative to any other time in history. Of course it is a big deal for the people involved and their families and friends, I’m just speaking from the perspective of third parties such as myself and the people I’ve observed in hysterics over this and various other events in the past years.
> Let me know how the boot tasted
I’m not in any proximity to whatever boots are or aren’t coming down, unless we buy into the “every mean-feeling action is a slippery slope to fascism” angle, which personally I do not. We are very far in the direction of permissiveness on immigration and rule of law generally. If we just rolled back to the laws and culture of 1900 for example, this would be tremendously further than anything Trump has hinted at doing. Like for much of American history most people being deported wouldn’t have been allowed to be citizens, at all, no matter how long they were here. It was only about 100 years ago that there was a Supreme Court case testing whether Indians were white for the purposes of citizenship. They weren’t, and they were deported. It’s like people’s view of American history starts in the 1960s. If we reverted to 1850 laws it wouldn’t be some kind of insane totalitarianism, even though that would be going miles and miles and miles further than we are today. It’s like everyone has been led to believe that our own history is evil.
One hint that things are weird is that if you think about the views of the average American man from 1940, the people in hysterics now would regard him as a fascist, which is obviously ahistorical, particularly since everyone’s fascism benchmarks come specifically from that era. The culture has shifted in ways that really don’t make any sense.
A lot of people would disagree with your use of the word “police.”
They wear masks, don’t get warrants before entering houses, regularly arrest American citizens, and are operating far from anything a reasonable person would call an immigration or customs checkpoint.
Also, they’ve been ordered in public (by Trump) and private (by superiors) to violate the law, and have been promised “absolute immunity” for their crimes (by Trump).
One other thing: Trump and his administration have made it clear (in writing) that ICE’s mission in Minnesota is to terrorize the public until Governor Walz makes a bunch of policy changes that the courts have declined to force. So, there’s no reasonable argument to be made that they’re acting as law enforcement.
There is no investigation. They haven't even released the officers' names.
> Will we retract our outrage when a conviction is delivered? Is there a reason we expect nothing to come of this?
I doubt the Trump DOJ will want to prosecute this. Now, if Democrats win in 2028, maybe the Newsom (or whoever) DOJ will-but Trump might just give everyone involved a pardon on the way out the door. And I doubt a state prosecution would survive the current SCOTUS majority.
So yes, there are decent reasons to suspect “nothing to come of this” in the purely legal domain. Obviously it is making an impact in the political domain.
This is what I don't understand about American authoritarians. Historically speaking, if you try to take away the liberty of Americans, they respond with lethal violence.
Britain tried to tax Americans without government representation, and they started sending the tax man home naked and covered in tar, feathers, and third-degree burns. These stories are then taught to schoolchildren as examples of how Americans demand freedom above all else.
If the powers that be keep doing whatever they want without consequence, eventually there will be consequences, and those consequences very well could be the act of being physically removed from their ivory towers and vivisected in the streets.
according to urban dictionary, wolfenstein as a verb means
To kill or utterly destroy a large group of enemies with an extreme overabundance of weapons and items, including throwing knives to the head, poison, stabs to the neck or back, kicks to the chest, shoves off of high ledges, multiple headshots, artillery, panzer rockets, flames, dynamite, mines, construction pliers, airstrikes, or even slamming a door into someone's chest. Wolfensteining a group of enemies requires that every kill be performed using a different method
you are calling for extreme violence?
According to Urban Dictionary, cat as a noun means:
> an epic creature that will shoot fire at you if you get near it. you can usually find one outside or near/in a house. its main abilities are to chomp and scratch but they can also pounce, shoot lasers out of their eyes, be cute, jump as high as they want, and fly. do not fight one unless you are equipped with extreme power armor and heavy assault cannons. […]
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cat
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I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
I was informing the community what the word means after putting in the effort to look it up.
If you are not curious, if you can't handle differences of opinion, you don't belong here.
I don’t object to you defining something.
> I think that is what he is doing, I think it's an accurate expression of his thinking.
It isn’t. It is like saying “you can do that but you will eventually get beat up.” That is not saying “people should beat you up.” There is a world of difference in those 2 statements. Your accusation hinges on the worst possible - debatably possible at best tbh - interpretation of their statement. It is bait, it is dishonest, and you’re being intentional about it.
This is not a difference of opinion, this is not curiosity, you are just being difficult.
That's straight up corrupt third world country stuff.
"Sh*thole countries" was projection
Everything is a projection with these people. Including the pedophilia.
How is it corrupt? The DA chose to resign, they weren't forced out.
They were prevented from following just policy, and were being forced to perform actions that go against professional ethics, politically driven prosecutions unconnected from fact or law.
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.
"Just policy"?
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".
I as someone with power over you will repeatedly force you to do an illegal and or immoral act. I have doubt you have the balls to resign rather than follow along, but if you do resign I hope you don't say you were forced out. Be honest.
> I have doubt you have the balls t
Reported for personal attack.
How's that a personal attack? And if it is, remove that. The rest of the argument still stands.
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."
We went from the "War On Drugs" to the "War On Ourselves".
You spend too much time on the internet.
Right. Meanwhile the military is preparing to deploy... not to the middle east, but to Minnesota.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/us/politics/military-poli...
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I see you all over these comments. People were denying it would get as bad as it has already gotten.
I'm here indeed. How bad is it, objectively?
Ask the people who are dying on the streets.
These people wouldn't be dying if they weren't out there picking a fight with the officers.
Right, it is far better to let them roll us over with no protests.
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They are demanding "show me your papers" to citizens, often chasing, arresting and jailing them for being brown, and turning the US into a police state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6UWUXkzQVA
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Because they are Americans? Under the Fourth Amendment, police cannot demand ID from a pedestrian for no reason. Other constitution violations include 1st amendment (Rümeysa Öztürk), ICE memo allowing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant (violation of 4th), denying due process (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments), etc.
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Doesn't matter. You can't suspend constitutional protections when they are inconvenient. And it isn't just violations of the constitution, it is also destroying our relationships with European allies, destroying the planet by ignoring climate change, destroying the environment, destroying our health, destroying American competitiveness by defunding research, destroying consumer protections, etc. And what you were asking, did you ask how bad it is, objectively?
Not sure constitution works like that, that a suspicious person can simply run and you can't check ID.
The opinion to allow visa holders as the Turkish person to exercise political activism is funny, too. Don't you think it's the citizens who the country should look after?
Europe is confused, but is finally coming around to understanding that they need to be able to protect themselves. Let's hope we make it on time :).
You can't really turn around climate without China and India. You may try to cripple yourself to attempt it though, but you'll lose even harder then.
I can also tell you that I've seen public funding on various science projects in EU. While it's convenient for the scientists to live off of these projects, then rarely if ever does much or any value come out of it. No companies nor products. Most of the "digital product" is provided to us by US companies, we don't come even close to having anything like it. EU leaders also somehow think that economic development is a matter of their "decision", but as career public servants they have little to no private experience, and just run public funds in "social circuits" that don't produce much.
Objectively.
The right for the Turkish person to engage in free speech either exists or not. If VISA holders don't have free speech then it must be advertised very clearly so people can avoid taking on a US Visa.
That's your interpretation of the constitution. There are other/more laws and circumstances that nuance the situation (you'll find these if you look into that case).
It's similar to the protesters interfering with law enforcement doing their work: you can't protest anywhere at any time. If you take this strict view of the constitution, you could do many currently illegal things, e.g get out of prison by simply hugging a prison guard and following him out, saying that you are protesting in this particular way; say that you are protesting 24/7 and whistle or make other noises throughout the night, which otherwise would be violate noise ordinance. And so on and so on.
Edit: This video explains it well further: https://youtu.be/QePoawDA_48?si=0mr-lMR_lIRoBDA_
You are commenting to the wrong post. The Turkish person wasn't in any rally, she didn't leak any state secrets, she simply wrote an essay criticizing Israel. Either visa holders have a right to free speech in which case this is illegal,or they don't have a right to free speech in which case it must be advertised far and wide so people can avoid visiting the USA.
No, the video gives nuances into how law and constitution works. I.e, regarding whether visa holders have the right to free speech or not, she was deemed not to. If you look into that case, you'll find the specific reasons.
Good to know. Then we establish visa holders do not have a right to free speech. We should make this point known far and wide.
If those shooters don't get presidential pardons, they're going to get prosecuted sooner or later. No statute of limitations for murder, right?
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.)
Yes, but In re Neagle (1890) is SCOTUS precedent granting federal agents immunity from state criminal prosecution for acts committed while carrying out their official duties (and the act at question in that case was homicide). Now, its precise boundaries are contested - in Idaho v. Horiuchi (2001), the 9th Circuit held that In re Neagle didn’t apply if the federal agent used unreasonable force - but that case was rendered moot when the state charges were dropped, and hence the issue never made it to SCOTUS. Considering the current SCOTUS majority’s prior form on related topics (see Trump v. United States), I think odds are high they’ll read In re Neagle narrowly, and invalidate any state criminal prosecution attempts.
In re Neagle (while, unfortunately, it does not state as clear of a rule as Horiuchi on the standard that should be applied) conducts an expansive facts-based analysis on the question of whether, in fact, the acts performed were done in in the performance of his lawful federal duties (if anything, the implicit standard seems less generous to the federal officer than Horiuchi’s explicit rule, which would allow Supremacy Clause immunity if the agent had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that he acted within his lawful duties, even if, in fact, he did not.)
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.
I just realised another angle: 28 U.S.C. § 1442 enables state prosecutions of federal agents to be removed to federal court. Now, if Trump pardons the agent, does the federal pardon preclude that trial in federal court? To my knowledge, there is no direct case law on this question; there is an arguable case that the answer is “no”, but ultimately the answer is whatever SCOTUS wants it to be.
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.
> Therefore there is considerable leverage for allied servants to form an alliance that more or less offers their allegiance in exchange for non-prosecution.
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.
> the civil service has a lot of leverage because most of them cannot easily be fired
Unless, as Doge showed us, you ignore the law, fire them anyway, and the SCOTUS says, "Yeah, whatever."
But pardons only apply to federal crimes… murder is a state offense.
Correct, state charges are mostly pardon proof and there is no statute of limitations on murder.
So ... you're saying that this militia as every incentive to overthrow democratie so that they never get prosecuted, right ?
See where this is going ?
They don't need to overthrow democracy, they just need to use jurisdiction removal to have the state charges placed in federal court, and then appeal it up to SCOTUS who will overturn the decision.
The US couldn't win a war in the middle east with trillions of dollars, thousands of soldiers dead, and tens of thousands substantially wounded. Hasn't won a war since WW2. Is everything going swimmingly? Certainly not. There are 340M Americans, ~20k-30k ICE folks, and ~1M soldiers on US soil. These odds don't keep me up at night. 77% of US 18-24 cohort don't qualify for military service without some form of waiver (due to obesity, drug use, or mental health issues).
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.
There are 340 million Americans, but 80 million of them voted for this administration, and another 80 million were not interested either way. Only about 20% of the population voted to oppose it.
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.)
I have no confidence in the gravy seals of this country, broadly speaking. What’s the average health and age of someone who voted for this? Not great, based on the evidence, especially considering the quality of ICE folks (bottom of the barrel).
https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/trump-voters-on-medicai...
https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/voters-in-trump-c...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294501/
Well, they are entirely Presidential pardon proof, but each state usually has its own pardon provisions. Unlikely to benefit ICE agents as a broad class in any of the places where conflicts over their role are currently prominent, though.
They should charge it as a criminal conspiracy and use the state felony murder statute to go after leadership.
They're wearing masks. Have they been identified?
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> cleared the Sig said "Muffled word Gun"
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".
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.
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.
Thanks for your response, I think we disagree on a few things but I appreciate your arguments.
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'
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?
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.
> 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
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.
> why people in some cities are defending violent illegal immigrants
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...
I guess I'll bite.
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.
I just find this so fascinating!
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.
Circling back to this, the Minnesota state police moved in and gave the violent rioters a few minutes to disperse. Those that did not have been rounded up, arrested and jailed. I have no doubt they will be released in a matter of hours but it should be peaceful for a few hours at least and the origin of these people will be documented and possibly how much some of them were paid.
congress isn't going to do anything. All it would take is about 20 republican sentors to bring this shit to a halt. They are not doing anything, they all have blood on their hands.
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.
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80 million Americans thought it.
imagine reporting comments on HN because you're butthurt your political idol raped children
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law” ― Oscar R. Benavides
The police (FBI and ICE included) are never your friends. They work to protect the rich and powerful and not us.
They work to protect the government. Now, for peasants there isn't much of a distinction, but the rich and powerful would do well to remember it.
Cynical responses like this are meant to make the speaker sound smart, but actually what you're doing is making further tyranny more likely, because you're deliberately overlooking that-- whatever the existing problems with the FBI-- there is a significant difference between their behavior now and their behavior before.
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 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).
I don't agree law enforcement is not the problem. Its the people in the system that are making these problems worse. You start blaming systems and then its a catch all that does nothing.
I won't disagree that the people inside the system are making it worse but the system is currently setup to incentivize bad behavior.
- 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.
agreed. I dont think bringing down our institutions is the result we are looking for though, that's only going to create more corruption.
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.
They've always treated white nationalists and other weirdos like this. I mean, the whole "any infraction is a grounds for execution" ROE is very reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, for example.
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.
ICE just hired 12000 Ruby Ridge types as their untrained SA brownshirts. It is inevitable that they have no understanding of basic civics and rage against lawful protestors they see as the enemy.
The irony is that Ruby Ridge and Waco were big rallying points for the “patriot” right when it was precisely this mentality that led to those events.
Now a lot of those same patriot right types are cheering this on if not enlisting.
Considerable amount of cops are white nationalists themselves.
Back in the 1980s we had jokes about the KKK being a barbecue club for law enforcement. The punchline of the joke invariably hinges on the ambiguity as to whether they're there on the job as informants or "organically".
I guess nothing matters and there's no point to expecting any sort of justice from the system. And at least now I can laugh at those other people being hurt. (</s>)
By before, what do you mean? COINTELPRO?
This is exactly my point. Yes, COINTELPRO was really bad. But it was intelligence and disruption, they weren't executing people on the street and then bragging about how they'd get away with it. Do you not see the difference?
COINTELPRO included assassinations. They kind of didn't stop there either.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170201130225/http://www.nytime...
They drugged and executed Fred Hampton and no one suffered any consequences for that as far as I know.
cmon man seriously?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter?wprov=...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/newb...
Software engineers are definitely among the class of people protected by the police
Depends on the race of the engineer. If you're gay or live in a blue city/state then you also lose your protection
911 informs the cops of your sexual preferences when they dispatch them?
Sorta, if you live in a blue city—so really just a city at this point-then it wraps around a small amount and your local police are, at least when it comes to this crap, largely on your side. ICE is making huge messes and leaving it to the local PD to clean it up which is not exactly endearing. Nobody likes when a bunch of people come in and start pissing in your Cheerios. Especially when those Cheerios are "rebuilding trust with your local community."
Have any of you tried talking to a police officer in real life? If you're just polite to them they treat you like they're your private protection force.
Moreso in blue cities, I have no idea what point you're making there other than crime you've seen on TV is scary.
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
They will, one day. No statute of limitations on murder.
Biology is definitely a limit.
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.
And which opposition to the ruling class do you see appearing in the next 2 or 4 years that would purse anyone but the lowliest of perpetrators?
When the crime is murdering people in cold blood, I will take nailing the “lowliest of perpetrators” (e.g. cold blooded murderers) to the fucking wall.
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
Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly take any small victory. But thinking of it in terms of 2026 or 2028 just means you've kicked the can down to 2030 or 2032.
I mean, these will likely be state cases no matter what.
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.
>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?
They'd have to fight the feds for jurisdiction and will unfortunately likely lose that fight.
> 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.
That's simply not how the system works.
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.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_jurisdiction
You’re confusing “jurisdictions”. That’s the court’s jurisdiction not the prosecution’s jurisdiction.
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.
No, you didn't understand. Poster claimed they would have to fight the feds for jurisdiction. You argued they didn't. Then I set you straight that they would have to fight for court jurisdiction.
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.
They were hot blooded murders
You’re right
pfffffff no they wont.
No. They should investigate both.
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In case anyone thinks you're kidding, Kash Patel's embarssing sychophancy includes publishing a election denial children's "book" portraying Trump as a king and himself as a hero.
51 senators voted to confirm this unqualified moron to lead the top law enforcement agency.
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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Stop acting like we're talking about two kids who did an oopsie
Small town cops in third world countries are more professional than any of these ICE clowns, these mistakes happened because they keep hiring the lowest if the low, both in term of intelect and morality
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Sounds like something for an investigation to figure out - wonder why they are fighting that so hard. Also sure sounds like a lot of victim blaming considering he died without ever doing anything warranting his death.
Are we still doing the "he was carrying" thing. Like for real?
Yet, he was. Are there any points in the list that aren't correct. ("Like for real?")
I think you know what my point was, but I can elaborate if you need me to.
I don't. But if your point was that carrying a gun doesn't matter, then why carry one at all?
You can add other "real" statements like "the sky is blue" and "water is wet" it still doesn't make it right lol. You can't say "both sides" when one side is a federal agency showing 0 accountability/responsibility/restraint/professionalism and the other is just a dude with a phone who gets between these thugs and a bystander
They fucked it up from A to Z, stop licking the boot.
The "bystander" was walking along with the officers blowing a whistle, and the guy that got between that bystander ("bystander") carried a gun. I don't think it's wise to interfere with police work by walking with them and doing that whistle thing and it's neither wise to bring a gun into this situation.
I'm sure the officers to whom this happened aren't happy either as this turned out, but I don't think they are the the only ones to blame.
Similar with the woman who was shot: should you be doing any police getaways or even driving towards any police officer?
> carried a gun.
legally. Also the gun he visibly did not reach for. And the very same gun that was carried out of the scene seconds before the first shot was fired.
> I don't think it's wise to interfere with police work
So what? If they were trained for anything other than escalation nothing would have happened, they're ""professional"" ""law enforcement officers"" from a federal agency, not a biker gang
> I'm sure the officers to whom this happened aren't happy either as this turned out
One of them literally claps his hands, it's on video, lmao, you can't make that shit up
> Similar with the woman who was shot: should you be doing any police getaways or even driving towards any police officer?
The one who got killed by a shot to the temple which basically proves the officer was completely out of the way at that time. The one where the officer then illegally fled the scene, packed up his house and then later pretended to be heavily injured and have "internal bleeding" despite being seen totally unharmed multiple times earlier.
What do you think of these sub 80iq ICE retards who just tried to break in the Ecuadorian consulate? Just doing their job I assume? Come on, keep on gargling these balls, idk if you expect to get a medal or something...
How it went down was while the gun was taken away, somebody yelled "gun", then guns were drawn, then the victims gun went off which triggered police starting shooting. If this were the events, the first shot was what unfortunately triggered the tragedy that followed, as the law enforcement officers probably thought that the person being arrested was shooting.
To me this looks like an unfortunate sequence of events rather than your judgement from the high horse of perfect information.
If you go to a protest, best leave your (legal) weapons at home, don't interfere nor resist law enforcement.
Also, if you want a better government, you should vote one in the office and not fuel these events after the fact.
Where is it confirmed that Pretti's gun went off? The only place I see this theory is /r/conservative...
You're arguing that an acceptable, albeit unfortunate, punishment for civil disobedience is state murder.
There appears to be video material indicating Pretti's gun going off referenced here https://youtu.be/JFSBPEQYSFE?si=hWz6bthbUtOmprhh
> then the victims gun went off which triggered police starting shooting.
None of the videos show that at all, the victim's gun is safely brought away, clearly visible from multiple point of view
What's also clearly visible is that a masked gentleman from ICE get his gun out, instantly put his finger on the trigger and aim for the victim's back/head
> rather than your judgement from the high horse of perfect information.
Again, they're not a biker gang, they should be well trained and not shoot when someone yells "gun". Some seem to have been scared by their shots coming from their fellow brain dead colleagues.
> don't interfere nor resist law enforcement.
Yes, lick the boot and let the popo do whatever they want regardless of legality
Of course when all you do is gargle the popo's balls, follow orders, believe state propaganda and turn a blind eye when provided with video evidences the whole thing is a simple "unfortunate sequence of events", meanwhile in any other advanced societies it would be an instant scandal with severe repercussions on everyone involved
The people involved can't recreate the past, now with better information. But I can tell you that showing up in a protest with a gun, and also putting your hands on a law enforcement officer aren't good ideas.
Overall, restricting police work but calling these protests, aren't a good strategy either. The presidential vote is over, the majority wants this. It's you who's subject to the losing side's propaganda.
> Overall, restricting police work but calling these protests, aren't a good strategy either.
Happens all the time in dozens of civilised countries without anyone getting magdumped.
> The presidential vote is over, the majority wants this.
Majority... of voters. He's at less than 40% approval right now. And even if, that's not how democracy works, elections aren't a 1 time card to do whatever the fuck you want for the next X years
> It's you who's subject to the losing side's propaganda.
I don't even live in that shit hole, I have no horses in the race, simply eyes to see. Only a rotten americanoid brain could see this and be like "oh well it's really unfortunate BUT ... he kinda deserved it you know, guns and shit"
If you approve of interfering with police work then we won't be finding middle ground here. Perhaps the special ingredient in the US is the popularity of carrying weapons, it's know to cause other shootings as well.
As for approval ratings, I'm sure you know elections work: they happen periodically and the approval ratings don't have a direct effect on current events. Also, deporting illegals (what these protests are against) was on the campaign platform, so it's nowhere near "whatever the f. you want".
As you, I also have "eyes to see" which still makes the basis I'm coming from. And I'm also not American.
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It's a good thing FBI has capacity to do more than one thing at a time. Also Trump agreed to allow MNPD to handle the wrongful death investigation.
Two things can be true: the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East, and ICE agents wrongfully killed a man.
> the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East
This is a horrifying and very unpariortic thing to say about people who are trying to prevent their daycares from being tear bombed, prevent masked thugs from beating detained law-abiding citizens before releasing them without charges, from masked thugs killing law-abiding people for exercising basic rights.
King George would have used that language. We sent him the Declaration of Independence, and the list of wrongs in that document is mostly relevant again today.
If you are framing this as insurgency, I place my bet on the strong people fighting bullets with mere whistles and cameras, as they are already coming out on top. If they ever resort to a fraction of the violence that the masked thugs are already using, they will not lose.
Their daycares, or their "daycares"? Not clear which one you mean.
I was not aware of that fake daycare propaganda until someone else exposed its meaning later in the thread.
As a parent, you should know that believing this obviously false propaganda requires both 1) a weird and overly specific interest in daycares, and 2) not enough normal healthy exposure to kids to understand what daycares don't let weird freaks come inspect the children. Namely, repeating this obvious lie gives off pedo vibes, and I would never let you near my children after hearing you gobble up that propaganda uncritically and then even going so far as to spread it. Ick
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https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2026/01/heres...
From the MinnPost article:
Most child care centers are locked and have obscured doors or windows for children’s safety. Children are also kept in classrooms and would not likely be visible from a reception area. One of the day cares in the video told several news outlets that it did not grant Shirley entrance because he showed up with a handful of masked men, which raised suspicions that the men were agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least one of the centers was closed at the time Shirley arrived because it opens later in the day to serve the children of second-shift workers.
Is there a history of child care fraud in the state?
Yes, but it’s not as widespread as Shirley claims.
Not a MN resident, but both the daycare my child attended before starting school and every daycare in my area have a combination of tinted/obscured windows and strict access control, even for parents (eg: a parent isn't allowed to make a "surprise inspection" without a court order).
If anything, I'd be suspicious of (and not send my child to) any daycare that _didn't_ have those security features.
Please don't spread propaganda lies here pretending it to be a majority of cases to such an extreme. You saw some clips of people investigating doorway entrances and lobby areas and were shocked the lobbies aren't full of children hovering at the exit's threshold because you were told to expect them there. In fact what you saw was someone unable to find any of the evidence that has existed.
Ah yes, Tim isn't running again because there is no truth to it. My god. Some of you are so obsessed with the "narrative" that you'll look at the sun and say it's night.
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oh good, people on Hacker News Dot Com are taking Nick Shirley at face value.
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They're using IEDs and suicide bombings???
I don't what you are talking about but it's nonsense and offensive, a bald faced lie so outrageous that people are supposed to be shocked into silence?
The tactics being used are:
* whistles * recording with phones * free speech * communication with neighbors * sharing with neighbors, ala potlucks * training each other on legal means of resistance * caring for people kicked out of detention centers in the dead of winter without their coats or phones * bringing meals to families that are afraid to leave the house, since the political persecution is largely a function of skin color, as numerous police chiefs have attested when recounting what ICE/CBP does to their officers when off duty.
Calling this "insurgent tactics" instead of neighbors being neighbors is most definitely a perverse and disgusting values assessment. When the hell have insurgents used the whistle and the phone camera as their "tactics"?!
Saying that this lawful activity, all 100% lawful, somehow "impedes federal enforcement of laws" is actually a statement that the supposed enforcement is being conducted in a completely lawless, unconstitutional, and dangerous manner.
Keep on talking like you are, because people right now are sniffing out who is their neighbor and who will betray them when ICE moves on to the next city. Your neighbors probably already know, but being able to share specific sentences like "insurgent tactics" and how cameras are somehow "impeding" masked men abducting people, when days later we don't even know the identity of officers that shot and killed a man on film, who was in no way impeding law enforcement. And the only people who talk about "impeding law enforcement" also lie profusely when there is direct evidence on film contradicting their lies.
There is terrorism going on, there is lawlessness, there is a great deal of elevated crime in Minnesota, but it all the doing of masked ICE/CBP agents that face zero accountability for breaking our laws and violating our most sacred rights.
>I don't what you are talking about but it's nonsense and offensive
This just reads as "I don't know whether you're on Other Team.. but, I'll assume you are, here goes:"
Trump is morally obligated to deport felon illegals to protect americans. 70 million plus americans voted for it. Trump can't give up because a few thousand people are playing "im not touching you" with ICE.
No, felon illegals are supposed to go to prison and serve their sentence before deportation. You know, because they committed felonies.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor and overstaying your visa is a civil violation and not even a crime. Yet somehow those are the only ones he's targeting. Those, and actual lawful immigrants that say things that he doesn't like.
They are deporting people after release from prison who weren’t deported like they were supposed to be. How do you not know this?
wow.dhs.gov
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Yes because the US was famously the good guy in its forays into the middle east.
I love this example because it demonstrates like 5 different levels of ignorance about American politics and foreign relations, plus a good helping of propaganda.
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.
You have an occupation force killing bystanders in your streets. Resistance is exactly what is needed.
"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".
MPD _is_ sharing and coordinating with ICE _when they're supposed to be_. MPD has already transferred ~70 people to ICE for deportation this year alone, after they completed prison sentences (which ICE claimed as their own arrests).
I'm guessing they would be 70 actual undocumented immigrants with actual criminal records then?
Not "brown looking" native americans or "foreign looking" US citizens that have been incorrectly identified and dragged without warrents from their homes and families barely dressed into the snow?
I'm not sure of the immigration status, just an article that called out ~70 transfers from MPD DOC to ICE following incarceration. I'd imagine it's a mix of documented and undocumented immigrants, as being convicted of a crime is a valid reason for the state to revoke a visa.
Good to see a subset of the system working as intended.
It's well past time whatever is left of DOGE got to working culling the over reach of the rest of the current ICE / DHS system.
That would not be a problem if they deported these people, instead of what they are doing.
The people you don't like are always guilty, right? Two people are accidentally killed, somewhat due to their own actions, but do you this can mean nothing else than "oppression".
They were not "accidentally killed". They were shot. Someone decided it was a good idea and pulled the trigger. You don’t end up lodging 10 bullets into someone’s back accidentally.
The current version appears to be that the victims gun went off (in the hands of the police officer), by which the rest of them thought that it was the victim who was shooting, so they shot back.
It's the opposition to the current presidency who is trying to spin it their own way. They want it to get out of hand, that there are masses on the streets, whistling to police doing their work, to create more of such situations, so they could blame the government even more.
Equating civil resistance, even in heated forms like disrupting raids or blocking roads, with decades‑long insurgencies that involved organized armed groups, territorial control, foreign combatants, and protracted guerrilla campaigns is like comparing a neighborhood disagreement over lawn care to Napoleon invading Russia.
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.
So what's the supposed goal of this "targeting" of ICE agents? Because that's a key to the insurgency vs protest thing.
We have chats, organized territory and labor specialization in a company I work for, too. It doesn't say anything by itself. It's just describing a means of human cooperation. Goal is to write software. You can have organized protest movement too. Unless the goal is to overthrow governing authority, or whatnot, it's not insurgency.
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> agreed to allow
pardon my ignorance, but why would that be up to your President?
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.
Both can be true, but only one is.
They might not have the capacity to do more considering they still need to redact the rest of the epstein files that show their president is a child trafficking pedophile
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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
So i wonder why he people of the city would act the same way as a group being invaded by a hostile force? Just like the Middle east its the people being invaded, they are the problem, not the invaders.
It's more like Minneapolis has been "chosen" as the battle point by people opposed to Trump in every step. It's the same person leading deportations as under Obama, they deport less than Obama did, yet they have been demonized almost immediately after the Trump administration took over. Why?
During the Obama administration, state and local LEO worked with ICE to deport. Now they are directed not to. Without that protection and cooperation from local officers, it becomes significantly harder and more dangerous to execute these operations. So they put masks on because the local agitators are doxxing them, threatening their families, and making life unsafe for the agents.
So now we have this lack of cooperation from local government that creates unsafe and dangerous operating conditions for ICE. What are they supposed to do? Not enforce the law because the local government says no? We already fought a war about Federal power versus state power. Heck, Obama (whom i voted for 2x) sued Arizona (Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387) over supremacy of the Federal Government with respect to immigration.
There would be no problems if Minneapolis and Minnesota leadership reacted the way other cities like Memphis did. Instead they've explicitly, or tacitly, endorsed this escalating resistance movement. I can't imagine ever putting my hands on a LEO and expecting it to go well, yet they do it freely. Officers are only human, and day-in day-out of this, combined with very real actionable threats against your life, and family life are only going to create more tensions and more mistakes.
This is no invasion hostile force, this is a chosen focal point to challenge the will and ability of this administration to enforce the democratically made laws.
You left out a pretty important detail. Your "insurgents" in America aren't shooting people or planting IEDs. Communicating and protesting, on the other hand, are sacrosanct rights in the US.
You're missing the forest for the trees here. The network and techniques used here are the same, but even more refined and tech enabled, of those insurgency groups. The power is the network of people in their specialized roles that can quickly target the enemy (ICE) and deliver a payload (obstruction).
The FBI has a long history of attempting to infiltrate and destabilize these groups. In the early 2010s there was a push to infiltrate right leaning groups. They especially called out in their published documents disgruntled veterans returning from the wars and unhappy with leadership noting a worry they would use the skills picked up at war at home.
It's absolutely no surprise that the FBI would investigate this behavior.
Interesting, this may result in showing how secure signal really is.
https://www.phreeli.com/ lets people use phones without revealing identity.
Not sure what the point of the service is. Given that it's more expensive than other MVNOs, and isn't even more private. You can still buy prepaid SIMs in store with cash, so it's harder to get more private than that. Not to mention this company asks for your zip+4 code (which identifies down to a specific street), and information for E-911. It's basically like Trump Mobile but for people who care about "privacy".
I was unaware that you could buy a SIM with cash and no private data collected. I thought they had KYC laws like prepaid cash cards.
>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.
Clearly there is no point in it for you. The stores would ID you. As for the nine digit zip, I don't think they validate it. Your anti-privacy agenda is crystal clear.
>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.
The answer to that question is so obvious that anyone raising it must necessarily be doing it in extremely bad faith. It's because the government mandates 911 service, and that the 911 service must be given the user's primary "location" when required. Your "criticism" is hereby redirected at yourself.
Can prepaid eSIMs be used anonymously?
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.
They're going to give this more scrutiny than they did to Hegseth leaking sensitive government information.
Why? That's unequivocally constitutionally protected speech. Why is our tax money being wasted on this?
To intimidate. They're probably quite aware they'll lose in court. But in the mean time they might discourage some folks from turning out on the street.
Are you under the impression that the current administration cares about what the law says?
"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"
They're "investigating", presumably with data gleaned from arrests and CIs; you have a right to speech, and a right not to be prosecuted for speech, but a much, much narrower right not to be "investigated", collapsing to ~epsilon when the investigation involves data the FBI already has.
Yeah whenever people say “the first amendment is not a freedom from consequences” it is only a freedom from certain consequences (and that freedom only goes as far as the government is willing to protect it). It is a freedom from being convicted. They can still arrest you, you can still spend time in jail, prosecutors can even file charges. A court is supposed to throw those charges out. And in extreme cases you can be convicted and sent to prison for years before SCOTUS rules.
Nobody has been charged.
I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.
No. According to the latest reports, while searching for ICE vehicles, the protesters are unlawfully scanning license plates, which strongly suggests they are receiving insider help.
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?!
I think the idea was that they were getting people associated with Minnesota DPS to do lookups on the plates.
Why would that even be necessary? They are almost certainly just contributing confirmed ICE plate numbers to an Excel file and then checking against it. Low tech and simple. This “criminal insider” angle is just building a bogeyman.
I don't think it's a real thing, I'm just saying that's what the claim is.
"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.
You're confusing 'seeing a license plate' with 'querying restricted databases'.
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.
Journalists doing ride alongs have already identified the system and it doesn't really on "restricted databases", they rely on observation and multiple attestation. In any case, there are indeed commercial services for looking up license plate data, and they rely on watching the notices that are published when you register your vehicle. It's the same reason why you receive all sorts of scammy warranty "notices" when you buy a car.
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.
Do federal agents rent their vehicles?
The crowd sourced lists don't identify the owners of the vehicles, because that does not matter. They identify vehicles that ICE is using, and "likely a rental" is one good signal.
If that was what you meant, you should have said that. Do you have any actual evidence this is happening, or are you just confusing possibility with probability?
I don't buy the claim that it's happening, but they were pretty clearly talking about the lookups, not the photos. They started off by mentioning "insiders".
> If that was what you meant, you should have said that.
I think the choice of the verb "scanning" indicated it clearly enough.
Perhaps for you. This word is equally applicable to visual observation.
> through law-enforcement/ALPR systems
Were they doing that? I haven't read the article, that's why I'm asking.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/minnesota-signal-gate-di...
I don’t see anything there about querying license plate databases. There is a spreadsheet of donors to some kind of organization.
https://x.com/camhigby/status/2015093635096658172
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.
It literally say it is a crowdsourced list... a completely legal activity. If you can't figure out what the outrage is about after Alex Pretti and Renée Good then you're being intentionally obtuse.
1. The outrage had been there prior to their death.
2. Their death is the outcome of the outrage.
Their deaths are an outcome of the heavy handed immigration enforcement that has caused the outrage. The raw number of deportations is not the only metric. The enforcement tactics of the Obama admin are not the same as Trump's, this is obvious and incontrovertible.
You don't have to agree with the criticisms but to not even be able to understand why people are upset stretches believability.
Duh... You're still collapsing cause and context. The protests preceded the deaths; the deaths occurred during confrontations created by the protests. That makes them an outcome of escalation, not the original trigger.
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.
It doesn't have to be the original trigger, you asked "what is the outrage about?" and those deaths are part of it.
> 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?
I don't know what they think they're doing there. If the most interesting thing they found was the public website leading to a fundraising platform for mutual aid a) there is literally nothing illegal there, and b) you can find that website linked to publicly by conservatively 25% of the twin cities population. It's literally the most prominent fundraising website anyone has been posting.
Wrong. The "protesters" were conducting counterintelligence to locate where ICE was operating. The plan was to disrupt the operation. Like it or not, this is against the law. Period.
I know you want to frame it a different way, but the articles you are posting don't describe anything that's illegal.
I'm not framing anything. There are screenshots of the chats where people literally say "ICE vehicle has been identified, everybody, go there!". This is called interfering.
The "interfering" this are describing is your framing. You want it to be interference in a legally actionable way, but it simply isn't.
18 U.S.C. § 111 - Assaulting, resisting, impeding officers (including federal agents)
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
18 USC 111 does not apply here. Forcible action is an element. The action doesn’t have to be itself the use of force; it’s sufficient that a threat being some action that causes an officer to reasonably fear bodily harm. But obviously the actions we’re talking about on this subthread fall well short of that definition. If they didn't the law would be unconstitutional.
Those other two laws seem like an even weirder fit for the fact pattern in this subthread.
But that's not the end of the analysis. The legal line isn't 'force or nothing'; it's intent + conduct. Speech and observation are protected, but coordinated action intended to impede enforcement is not.
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.
Is that your theory, or is there case law that backs it up? From what I saw the bounds on 18 USC 111 are quite narrow indeed: I found a case where the defendant _fired at federal agents with his shotgun_, and the appeals court threw it out because the jury was incorrectly instructed that they could use the fact that he shot at them when considering he misled them afterwards. But actually, the jury was not allowed to do that. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/199...
Quote: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."
See Brandenburg v. Ohio (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492)
Brandenburg v. Ohio was decided in favor of the appellant. As I suspected, there are no cases of a US court interpreting your theory of the law on 18 USC 111.
There is no evidence of this at all.
There is enough smoke to at least perform an investigation. As I said, this administration has deported 10x less people than the previous administrations.
You seem quite narrowly focused on the number of deportations rather than the methods being implemented. The primary criticisms of the current ICE surge in Minnesota focus on the general aggressiveness and lack of professionalism of these agents, not the deportations numbers.
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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.
No, I cannot. One of the undercover journalists was in their group for days.
> 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.
What the law is, is a question for lawyers. What the law should be is a question for the people.
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.
That law enforcement is permitted to hide their faces, drive unmarked vehicles, not display name tags, badges, or uniforms is concerning. Anyone can buy a gun, a vest, and a velcro “police” patch. There is very little that marks these agents as official law enforcement. I’m somewhat surprised that none of these agents have been shot entering a home under the mistaken perception by the homeowner that it’s a criminal home invasion.
Or alternatively, that criminals haven’t simply claimed to be ICE as an excuse to break into someone’s house.
Where was the outrage when Obama deported 3.1 million people? Why was there no media coverage? Trump has deported 300k and the MSM is turning upside down. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
No one is upset about the number of deportations. No one is complaining about the number of deportations. If you don't listen to what the complaints are about to start with, you can't argue that they are hypocritical.
Ok. What are people upset about, and why are they only upset in one city?
> What are people upset about,
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...
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> And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?
There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.
There were contemporary criticism of Obama's deportation policy on both the right and the left. I have no idea why you think that is some sort of gotcha that somehow makes the equivalency between Obama and Trump's immigration enforcement valid.
No. The outrage now versus back then is day and night. There were pretty much no protests during Obama’s term, even though the scale of deportations was much larger. That contrast is highly suspicious.
Dragonwriter has already laid out some of the differences for you to research further beyond the single data point of number of deportations. You've asked the same question multiple times but seem to not want to actually engage with the answers so I'll leave it there.
People keep telling you that it has nothing to do with the number of deportations, and you keep insisting that it does. Why do you believe the number of deportations is the most important factor?
Copying my other response here:
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
I don't believe this.
Ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wish I had screenshots or anything, but I don’t.
When talking to someone at-risk of deportation earlier in the year, they asked me, "Why should I do anything differently? Obama and Biden did the same exact shit."
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.
And I agree with you, but that's not what I'm questioning. Given the 10x larger scale of deportations during the Obama's term, why were there no protests?
During Obama's term the practice of warrentless entry into actual citizens homes wasn't widespread.
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.
Give me a break - https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/border-patrol-wa...
Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?
From your linked article:
There's your difference. Thank you for playing.The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
As many others have pointed out, the deeper issue is the size of the boot, the disregard for citizens rights, the extremes of the offshore gulags, the fevor with which the upper levels embrace the brutality.
I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
Not to add fuel to the fire, but a lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously when Obama himself's been known to brag about how good at killing he is.
You're right that things are significantly worse now, but it's important to recognize that what came before was still bad and in many ways is the foundation for where we are.
https://slate.com/business/2013/11/double-down-obama-said-he...
Thanks for the response, I'm happy to engage, although I almost missed this as you're well over the fold in my comment history and I have no mechanism for alerting me to replies (nor, I might add, am I looking for one).
With the preamble that I'm not a US citizen, have never thought to apply to be one, have been in and out of the US and many other countries a number of times, and don't play favourites with POTUS(n) on the basis of their asserted party ticket; ...
The upstream question and context here concerns differences between administrations wrt home soil immigration policy, to which I've been focused.
As points of note:
* Allegations of POTUS(X) boasting behind doors are a difference of behaviour from that of POTUS(Y) coming right out and stating they can freely kill in Times Square and get away with while glorifying the deaths of citizens in public and promising perpertrators they'll get away with it and have immunity.
* I'm no fan of remote double tap kills. Full stop. That said;
* POTUS(X) authorising kills in an "inherited" known and ongoing "war zone" known to all is distinct from POTUS(Y) authorising double tap kills from unmarked airframes of civilians in international waters prior to any declaration of war (via Congress or not).
* Regardless, the offshore behaviour of any POTUS is distinct from their behaviour toward their own citizens within their country.
In the arc of all the shitty behaviour by post WW POTUS(n) candidates, the current incumbent has significantly levelled up to achieve Kissinger level disregard for human life on home soil for purely political gain .. and played that hand badly.
That aside, I'm not a Communist - but I do admire Ash Sarkar's shut down of idiotic Obama / Trump faux dichotomy posings by a pompous right wing media pundit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k
I equally admire our PM's "off the cuff" (approximately 15 mins rough note prep time) strip down of an opposition one time PM attempting to pin a third parties bad behaviour on the sitting government on the basis of them making no comment until after a Court case had completed (as per the law here) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNuPcf8L00
It's not relevant to immigration policy, but it is a good example of off the cuff professional level political debate in sitting government.
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When has the constitution mattered to this administration?
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No, they haven’t. This kind of advocacy crosses from lazy nihilism to negligence.
> > > 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.
They are not able to enforce their will unchecked. The legislature is more than willing to turn on Trump when he crosses the line, hence the whole idea of "TACO."
The fascists haven't won because if they did, they would be killing a lot more dissidents in the street. They killed two and the public outcry is so angry that Kristi Noem might be impeached. Democrats are willing to shut down the government to starve ICE if they have to. Even GOP legislators are criticizing Trump, which is a dangerous activity for any Republican looking to keep their seat.
Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot. No one is being prosecuted for the murders, and in fact at least one investigator has quit their career position in the FBI for being asked to bury it.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of meaningful checks.
> Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot
Bovino (Border Patrol “at large” Commander who may or may not have lost that title and been returned to his sector command), not Bongino (the podcaster-turned-FBI Deputy Director who resigned to go back to podcasting), and Homan didn't get Bovino’s job, only his spotlight (he was already the head of border policy for the White House.)
They inarguably won the last election and control 2 branches of government.
> They inarguably won the last election and control 2 branches of government
Elected branches. Subject to further contests in months. That’s now how fascists endgame.
It’s stupid and wrong to claim fascists have won in America. The only people peddling this lie are fascists who can read polls.
I'm not arguing they've won forever, but having the executive branch and a majority (albiet not a an opposition-proof supermajority) in the legislative branch is significant. I would say MAGA is well represented at the state level also.
I hope the midterms go smoothly and the GOP loses heavily at the polls and legislative power changes hands in January, but I'm not 100% confident of that any more.
I should’ve clarified. They won the 2024 election. And the democrats are controlled opposition who take money from fascists. For all intents and purposes they have won. That may not be a permanent state of affairs.
I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
> I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
I don't think it makes sense to reject an explanation of current events grounded in a battle that is clearly over having been won and the victor using the ground they’ve gained to produce the events being discussed merelt because the broader war isn’t over and that victor may potentially lose some subsequent battle.
Yes, won that battle but not the war.
I think the dissent is about the latter. It's not over yet, so people should not give up.
The root comment clearly has ambiguity that people take both ways.
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Given that Newsom was on a podcast just last week caving to even the slightest pushback, I wouldn't count on him to be bombastic to anyone. He's 100% optics-driven-cowardice.
Well see. Anything can happen. Maybe Im wrong and people this time around do want sanity. Or Trump drone strikes him if he sees him getting too much steam.
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Why even bother replying
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i think it sets the framing that beating them back is from a losing position rather than equal.
if you want the fascists to un-win, you need to treat the world as it is: the fascists are ascendent.
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Because too many people dismissed the claims that electing Trump would lead to a fascist administration as alarmist. Turns out he meant every word he said during his campaign.
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Yes - very, very dumb people did vote for him.
Conspiracy to commit a crime is typically not included in protected speech. Whether you think that's happening here will depend mostly on what side you take, I suspect.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
Are you pro or against this?
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.
“ 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”
Interesting. Donald Trump would be a criminal under this rule because Jan6.
Trump’s speech does not meet that standard. It lacked coordination, targeting, or intent to physically interfere. The Minnesota case is different because it includes coordinated dispatch, targeting of ICE activity, and sharing de-arrest material with the stated intent to impede operations. That coordination and intent is the legal difference.
You keep commenting to cite this statute when you clearly have not actually read what it says. Peaceful protest is explicitly protected by the first amendment.
The statute defines a crime that is distinguishable from peaceful protest/1A. You are free to interpret that however you like in relation to what is occurring.
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We are referring to peaceful protest and assembly, which are protected rights, not crimes. You can have a huge group chat or take out a huge billboard and announce your protest. There's no crime to discuss here.
You can refer to what you like, but we have seen the actions of protesters thus far on video.
Interesting that there would be people on a "side" that think there was a conspiracy to commit a crime. What crime?
Interference with a law enforcement investigation?
It's a crime.
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
This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech. If all info could be interpreted as impediments to federal officers then phones, the internet, the human voice, etc would be illegal
> This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech.
Yes, but physical impediments are physical impediments. The protesters have been repeatedly seen to impede, or attempt to impede, ICE physically.
No, they are organizing legally, of course there will be bad actors, but blocking an agent out of bad faith is certainly less of a crime than a bad faith ICE agent killing someone for their assumptions
In this case conspiracy is using communication to coordinate illegal impediment.
Communicating to protest in a legal way is a civil right
In the fascist's mind, anything that isn't supporting Dear Leader's vision of "greatness" is a crime.
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We already know that "doxxing" on its own is not a crime, and moreover that [non-undercover] federal agents are not entitled to keep their identities secret.
We also know that legal observation and making noise does not constitute interference.
So those may be their stated reasons, but they will not hold up in court.
Federal felony, not free speech.
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
There's been lots of legal writing pointing out these statutes basically refer to impeding an officer by threat or physical force, which that statute you cite states. It doesn't refer to anything about providing food to someone who is fearing for their lives and won't leave the home, or communicating about the publicly observed whereabouts of law enforcement.
"molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties"
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.
Are these federal officers? They’re men in masks with camo and body armor kidnapping people off the streets and refusing to show identification beyond a patch that says “ICE”.
That is who is alleged to be impeded.
Yes, they are federal officers. There is no pattern of mass kidnappings by impersonators occurring here.
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.
The fuck it is.
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.
Insurrection is a choice with consequences
Sure, but you should read what "impede" and "interfere" mean both in the regs and court precedent. Following ICE agents around is neither impeding or interfering by current federal court definitions. But yeah... that can change quickly.
“Free speech” is a concept not a law. The first amendment protects certain types of speech. Whether something is free speech or not does not depend on the US government’s opinion or the Chinese government or your mother in law.
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.
Which is probably the easiest thing ever to prove, since people are openly trying to impede them
Coordinating roadblocks, "dearrests", warning the subjects of law enforcement operations, and intentionally causing the maximum amount of noise in neighborhoods neighborhood are not things you will be able to get a federal judge to characterize as "constitutionally protected speech".
The “arrests” are being done in a deeply unconstitutional way. Acting to uphold the constitution is beyond speech, it’s a duty of all americans.
Actually... making noise in a neighborhood is constitutionally protected speech (as I have learned when my neighbors crank the sub-par disco up to 11.)
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.72
this is to say that ICE is breaking MN law no?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/supremacy_clause
Also, it turns out the law is interpreted by judges who often (but not always) have careers as attorneys. It is not, thankfully, interpreted by people dropping into the internet comments section.
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.
> “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way”
Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?
For real, if you're legitimately worried about your officers being legally entrapped, you've got some really untrustworthy officers.
This sounds like IMAX level projection
I remember a time when people were better at lying, at least.
The FBI should investigate the first item in the Bill of Rights.
How many rights can Trump trample in one year? This is a big deal. I realize most of the problems started with the patriot act (most members of congress are culpable for that). We should all have zero tolerance for the erosion of our rights, zero tolerance for fake emergencies!
Osama bin Laden won.
Couple of minor nits:
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.
Anyone organizing your neighborhood and events keep inner circle chats to only people you have personally vetted and use a new group chat for every event/topic and delete the groups for past events.
Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone
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I’ve never seen a set of voluntary fall guys like Noem, Patel and Miller. (And Hegseth for when a military operation fails.)
Every one is a potential fall guy except the King. First sign you're a liability and under the bus you go. And unless you're on Truth Social you're usually the last to know.
Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him. He's the most hard-core fascist in the bunch.
I don't know if I'd classify Noem as a patsy or fall gal, either.
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.
Noem strikes me as a loyalist and a team player through and through, so probably a fall gal.
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.
Trump has loyalty only to himself and in his first term was constantly throwing people under the bus after he decided they were a liability to the Main Character.
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.
From the outside it seems like he is so far gone that his inner circle is actually making all the decisions now.
Honestly Miller strikes me different. It’s not coincidence he’s survived so long.
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.
She's complaining (via 'sources') that she's 'being hung to try' for parroting Stephen Miller's approved line, so I have a hunch she'll bite their ankles on the way out.
She's an opportunist. For someone like her to be nationally relevant they have to latch onto MAGA and embrace the crazy. See MTG, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz.
To me, those people you list are absolutely opportunists, but there's just something different about Noem. Like they're hedonists who are engaging in a grift and know that they have to sling arrows that will own the libs in order to keep the gravy train rolling. MTG seems to have, at least for a while a few months ago, found her limit on what she'll put up with. Gaetz had at least enough shame/self-awareness to realize that his continued career was untenable at the time he was being considered for AG. Boebert's the girl who told your science teacher to go fuck himself when he caught her smoking behind the high school gym with her age-inappropriate boyfriend.
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...
That's because miller is the only "smart" one to never defy trump. Of course, that means being his lap dog, but that's the position he chose.
> Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him
He’s going to jail in a way Trump isn’t. That’s ultimately a fall guy.
I no longer have any reason to think that justice will prevail.
A lot of comments that don't go along the liberal hivemind are being downvoted and flagged, even though they don't break hacker news rules. If this community can not hear opposing opinions, then let's just ban political and politically charged news from being shared and discussed here.
Can I suggest that using the term "liberal hivemind" is really never going to help your case no matter what your "opposing opinion" is?
Ah, yes, that liberal hivemind saying that first amendment rights are a thing and that mild resistance is not grounds for summary execution. Classic liberal hivemind.
> “As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it,”
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.
Perspective from Central Europe (Austria): I can tell you that essentially nobody here has any doubt that bad faith is at play.
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.
Look, there’s little I can do about my government. Maybe I can help you fight yours? They can’t harm me and you can bet I’m not visiting.
Can we help somehow?
I'm convinced all this talk around Signal, including Hegseths fuckup, is to discourage "normies" (for lack of a better term) from using it. Even in this very HN thread, where you'd expect technical nuance, there are people spreading FUD around the phone number requirement as if that'd be your downfall... a timestamp and a phone number? How would that get someone convicted in court?
They don't have to get a conviction if they know your address and have a gun.
I can't believe there are so many boot licking fascist-lovers on hacker news. ICE are executing Americans on the streets and a bunch of people here are defending that. The US is cooked.
Maybe your understanding of things is wrong? Maybe the information you are getting on the situation is misleading?
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.
Are you capable of accurately describing the other sides argument?
your comment will surely help!
So more nonsense. How about tracking down the murderer first.
an old lady and a fucking nurse shot by goons in masks and tactical gear... and they are labelling who as terrorists??? ffs america
Url changed from https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kash-patel-..., which points to this.
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Yeah! Signal has nothing to do with technology. The government trying to snoop on a private E2EE service is not worth discussion.
> trying to snoop on a private E2EE service
They are not trying to break encryption. They got a tip-off from a private citizen who got past vetting and infiltrated the group.
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Many people on hacker news have a reason to care about the united states government's position on signal and their evolving efforts relating to civil rights.
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Sounds good, until you realize that they've now murdered two peaceful protesters, who they post facto smear as terrorists to justify their murder.
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How is a history of constitutional violations not on topic?
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That's not what happened. Watch the video. What you'll see is an undertrained bully with no accountability who was looking for an excuse to use violence. That's why the victim was shot from the side, and why the administration refuses to allow a serious investigation.
putting them at risk by trying to dodge them? What?
"fucking bitch" right?
He just misspoke slightly. What he meant to say:
"What we will defend: using chaos, riots, and volatility as cover to escalate violence against peaceful protesters."
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Why is it so hard for someone like Trump to admit that a mistake was made by one of his agents, put him in jail and leave Minnesota alone at least for a while? It was predictable that things would get worse if he didn't back off and tell the truth.
I suspect they're going to find it challenging to turn protected speech into something prosecutable like obstruction - assuming activists exercise even a modicum of care in their wording. Seems like just another intimidation tactic but in doing that, they've also given a heads-up to their targets.
For all the complaints about the previous DOJ, one thing nobody ever argued was that they weren't intending to get convictions. They only brought cases they thought they could win.
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.
Considering ICE is executing people in the streets and were already breaking laws before this something little like free speech won’t help
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Your causality is reversed.
The dude was literally just standing there on a public sidewalk with his hands up. He never initiated the altercation or otherwise impeded any lawful investigation.
The agent chose to initiate the altercation during which the victim was pepper sprayed, pinned to the ground by six people, disarmed, and then shot ten times.
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Not what happened.
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Because I was baselessly accused of lying, here's one video taken from the sidewalk (there are probably more copies of this with more views, but it's what came up in my search):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKsWCDbnMW4
The man coming into frame at :09 is Pretti. As can clearly be seen a few frames later, he is already on the road at this point and walking towards the middle of the road. By :14, as the camera backs up, we can see that the crack in the road he straddled right after coming into frame was in fact in the main traffic lane, not the lane with the stopped white car. (I do not say "parked" because there appears to be a woman sitting behind the wheel who might have the intent to leave, but for the altercation in front of her.) At :22 the camera turns back to Pretti (whose location could be inferred in the interim from his shadow) and he is standing over the median.
From :26 he can be seen making hand gestures, either to direct traffic or otherwise communicate with drivers, such as the one coming into frame and honking a horn. The fact that the horn is honked implies that the driver perceives Pretti as being in the way, and at :28 we can see that car swerve slightly to accommodate him. At :35, as the officer pushes a woman while they are both in front of the stopped car, Pretti is still also in the road. He can then be seen approaching the officer and physically interposing himself between the officer and the woman, and raising an arm to block the officer. He is at this point on the road shoulder, not the sidewalk. As he helps the woman up, both of them get sprayed; at :42 he again physically interposes, as if to shield the woman. He is then pulled up (and presumably already under arrest) and eventually separated from the woman, which he clearly physically resists; then he resists the officers who attempt to wrestle him to the ground. This "ground" is squarely in front of the stopped car. There is an extended scuffle; it takes until :59 for him to be disarmed (although it doesn't appear that any other officer would be able to see that this has happened), and the first gunshot is audible at 1:02.
Regardless of any mitigating factors in Pretti's conduct, or reasons why the shoot would be unlawful (and I have now seen analyses by many lawyers that appear very well reasoned, and there is much less consensus among them than there was in the Good case), the video inarguably shows all the things I claimed:
* He was in the street the entire time.
* He was physically attempting (and mostly successful) to get in between the officer and the woman.
* Because the woman is still in the street, and her interaction with the officer didn't start there (as seen in other video) it is entirely plausible that the officer intends to arrest her for obstruction.
I mean if you see anything in that video other than an ICE "officer" that needs to be in jail I'm very sad to presumably share a country with you. You can argue with me about how cool it is to mace a guy trying to keep a goon from manhandling a woman (don't give a fuck what you think about an "arrest" you are probably incorrectly assuming will happen, he should be in jail for that alone) all you want, but I'm not licking boots with you.
Unless you are in Canada you do not in fact share a country with me.
I told you what I saw. I posted evidence to prove that someone else's statements were false. Now you are shifting the goalposts.
Comments like yours blatantly violate HN posting guidelines.
Ok. I'm comfortable with calling a convenient narrow interpretation and over-simplification of the actions of the secret police force "not what happened" regardless of your play-by-play. Technically correct is not actually the best kind of correct.
And remember, they are called "guidelines" for a reason. But thanks for doing your best at policing the tone here, very important work you're doing.
Trying to tone it down here, I appreciate you are providing an outside perspective but these events are very stressful, like I'm watching my country fall apart, and so are a bunch of us here. So expect some serious vitriol even if you are presenting what you consider factual or reasonable analysis.
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This character has spent a few thousand words now on this and holds fast in spite of all the contrary evidence, at some point you have to wonder what is going on but I'm happy it's not my problem. He just won't stop, just keeps on digging. Check comment history if you won't believe me it is about as wild as it gets on HN.
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Congrats on being able to recount the official version of events.
I am recounting the events that I personally witnessed on video from multiple angles and which can clearly be seen by any impartial viewer. If you think anything I said is untrue, quote it, and provide actual evidence of it being untrue.
I also did not violate HN guidelines in my comment and it should not have been flagged.
Why is it so important for you to defend government killing citizens? Let’s say they broke the law, neither did anything that would deserve a death penalty much less instant execution by some racist coward wearing a mask.
I agree and didn't flag you
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She was stopped by the ICE pigs and the pig who was “in front” literally walked in front of the car and wouldn’t have been in the way even had she driven off as he was on her front left and she had her wheels turned all the way to right.
Only one having bad faith are you MAGA clowns
Three letter agencies do three letter agency things
Yep
People need to investigate the FBI. They would be shocked at their crimes. The recent Epstein news comes to mind but that is only the smallest tip of it.
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.
Next step: Those citizens will disappear and only turn up again in a mass grave 50 years later.
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"Accidents"
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https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc-news/
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."
What are you getting at? The idea of any of the major news outlets in the US being left-leaning is risible nowadays.
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Recognizing the US federal government is behaving in a way consistent with facism is no longer a left leaning position.
Hmm? These are mostly news reports of one person calling another person a fascist. Notably, one of the people doing the calling is Donald Trump!
>Last week, after being found guilty of falsifying business records, former President Donald Trump said Americans today live in a “fascist state,” building on his unfounded conspiracy theory that somehow President Joe Biden is behind his prosecution in Manhattan.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/fascism-trump-bi...