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FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

465 points7 hoursnbcnews.com
hedayet4 hours ago

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)

crystal_revenge4 hours ago

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.

blurbleblurble3 hours ago

Incompetence could also be incredibly dangerous given enough destructive willpower.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nsa-palantir-israel-...

propaganja3 hours ago

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.

giancarlostoro2 hours ago

> 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.

rtpg41 minutes ago

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.

wil4211 hour ago

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.

+1
giancarlostoro1 hour ago
asdfman1233 hours ago

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.

radicaldreamer1 hour ago

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

GuinansEyebrows3 hours ago

doing Bad Things poorly is still doing Bad Things.

roenxi3 hours ago

> ... 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.

newsclues3 hours ago

Because palantirs selling proposition is: you can’t find the answers in your own data, but we can.

AndrewKemendo2 hours ago

>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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

lol. came here to say pretty much the same thing.

forshaper3 hours ago

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

sixsevenrot3 hours ago

[flagged]

shrubble3 hours ago

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…

Bender3 hours ago

The NAZI rhetoric is beyond old at this point. If that were a thing today there would be exactly zero protestors, rioters, illegal immigrants, people looking at one of the SS, deportation. There would just be one big ditch in each city, many bags of lye and a bulldozer. All of these events would have lasted a few hours and we would instead be trying to figure out who is missing.

+1
filoeleven3 hours ago
gedy3 hours ago

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.

fudged714 hours ago

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.)

larkost3 hours ago

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.

direwolf2044 minutes ago

Maybe the wrong people are, in reality, precisely the people they intended to target.

ryandrake3 hours ago

> 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.

mikkupikku4 hours ago

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.

blurbleblurble3 hours ago

It doesn't, they're infiltrating the groups and/or gaining access to peoples' phones in other ways.

fireflash381 hour ago

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

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

subscribed4 hours ago

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...

q34tlR4y4 hours ago

[dead]

jatora4 hours ago

Is it? Seems like enforcing laws to protect the citizens of law enforcement from vigilante justice isnt something governments should or do mess around with, in general.

janalsncm4 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

janalsncm4 hours ago

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.

jjk1664 hours ago

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

charcircuit4 hours ago

[flagged]

+1
ceejayoz3 hours ago
nielsbot4 hours ago

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.

filoeleven3 hours ago

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.

nyc_data_geek4 hours ago

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.

1potatonagger33 minutes ago

Do you know what words mean? Your hyperbolic use of words does not an argument make. Nobody was executed. Tell me you've never lived in the real world without having that username.

lovich4 hours ago

“Citizens of law enforcement”

What a phrase

1potatonagger35 minutes ago

... that is correct.

awesome_dude4 hours ago

The whole premise of the second amendment is about citizens being armed in order to resist/overthrow a government

bluescrn2 hours ago

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.

+2
awesome_dude2 hours ago
hollandheese3 hours ago

No, it's citizens being armed to steal native land and kill the natives.

cucumber37328422 hours ago

Citation please?

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

[citation needed]

+1
ceejayoz4 hours ago
bs72807 hours ago

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.

bsimpson2 hours ago

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.

joekrill4 hours ago

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.

huhtenberg4 hours ago

It doesn't mean much. Roblox is banned in Russia.

They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.

cyberge996 hours ago

You know it works because they banned it in Russia? Works for whom?

NewsaHackO5 hours ago

Yes, at best it implies Russia cannot easily get confidential information from them. Everyone else, the jury is still out for.

jjk1663 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

Sure, but using Signal for classified info is a violation of policy.

psunavy037 hours ago

The DOD is not using "flagrantly using Signal." The Secretary of Defense, whatever his preferred pronouns are, is breaking the law.

kodyo6 hours ago

CISA recommended Signal for encrypted end-to-end communications for "highly targeted individuals."

https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...

Cornbilly4 hours ago

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.

paulryanrogers5 hours ago

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

sedivy943 hours ago

Military personnel are currently only allowed to use Signal for mobile communications within their unit. Classified information is a different story, though.

thomasrognon4 hours ago

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.

ddtaylor7 hours ago

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.

causalscience5 hours ago

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.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo4 hours ago

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/

ddtaylor4 hours ago

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.

+1
OneDeuxTriSeiGo3 hours ago
+1
smeej3 hours ago
gruez3 hours ago

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.

causalscience56 minutes ago

> it'd be extremely non trivial

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

rainonmoon4 hours ago

Absolutely nothing in this article is related to feds using conversation metadata to map participants, so, no they weren’t.

jvanderbot4 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

+1
rainonmoon4 hours ago
+2
ddtaylor4 hours ago
causalscience4 hours ago

[flagged]

+2
gosub1004 hours ago
BugsJustFindMe4 hours ago

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.

causalscience4 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

causalscience4 hours ago

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.

+1
ddtaylor3 hours ago
zxcvasd3 hours ago

[dead]

ddtaylor4 hours ago

Briar and Session are the better encrypted messengers.

thunderfork3 hours ago

Session lacks forward secrecy, which isn't ideal.

Bender4 hours ago

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.

+3
ddtaylor4 hours ago
gosub1004 hours ago

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.

direwolf2035 minutes ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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."

ddtaylor3 hours ago

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

charliebwrites5 hours ago

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

SR2Z4 hours ago

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.

midasz4 hours ago

> 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.

+1
ncallaway2 hours ago
+1
dylan6044 hours ago
+2
ModernMech4 hours ago
mothballed4 hours ago

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.

mrWiz4 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

social engineering for the win.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo4 hours ago

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.

thewebguyd4 hours ago

> 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.

xmcp1234 hours ago

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.

hedayet4 hours ago

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

ddtaylor3 hours ago

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

neves4 hours ago

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

pixl974 hours ago
+1
janalsncm4 hours ago
+1
fruitworks4 hours ago
mrWiz4 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

Bender3 hours ago

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

Bender3 hours ago

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.

tptacek5 hours ago

Presumably this is data taken from interdicted phones of people in the groups, not, like, a traffic-analytic attack on Signal itself.

plorg2 hours ago

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.

tucnak4 hours ago

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

OneDeuxTriSeiGo4 hours ago

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).

+1
tucnak3 hours ago
chocolatkey4 hours ago

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

+1
dylan6044 hours ago
spankalee7 hours ago

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.

fusslo7 hours ago

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...

scoofy5 hours ago

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...

jjk1663 hours ago

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.

+1
estearum5 hours ago
+2
mothballed4 hours ago
peyton4 hours ago

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.

snarky_dog4 hours ago

[dead]

ajross5 hours ago

> 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.

mrtesthah7 hours ago

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.

ls6124 hours ago

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.

ceejayoz4 hours ago

> 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.

mikkupikku4 hours ago

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.

+1
ls6123 hours ago
cyberge996 hours ago

How do you connect a strangers face to a phone number? Or does it require the ELITE app?

nicce5 hours ago

Palantir steps in indeed

Psillisp7 hours ago

Government intimidation of the practice of constitutional rights... what ever could go wrong.

spankalee7 hours ago

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.

+1
Psillisp7 hours ago
ruined7 hours ago

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.

spankalee7 hours ago

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.

+3
missingcolours5 hours ago
+1
ruined7 hours ago
jjk1663 hours ago

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

UncleOxidant4 hours ago

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.

bsimpson2 hours ago

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.

not_a_bot_4sho1 hour ago

> 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

jaxefayo4 hours ago

What about BitChat?

adolph3 hours ago

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.

suriya-ganesh5 hours ago

but this is not a technical attack that returns the metadata.

much more closer to the $5 wrench attack

https://xkcd.com/538/

chinathrow4 hours ago

The FBI should investigate the murders done by ICE and until done with that, remain silent.

epistasis3 hours ago

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.

lateforwork3 hours ago

> 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.

xeonmc2 hours ago

[flagged]

+2
epistasis2 hours ago
RIMR2 hours ago

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.

+2
fsckboy2 hours ago
donkeybeer3 hours ago

That's straight up corrupt third world country stuff.

xnx2 hours ago

"Sh*thole countries" was projection

e4049 minutes ago

Everything is a projection with these people. Including the pedophilia.

lateforwork3 hours ago

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."

jimt12341 hour ago

We went from the "War On Drugs" to the "War On Ourselves".

mikkupikku3 hours ago

If those shooters don't get presidential pardons, they're going to get prosecuted sooner or later. No statute of limitations for murder, right?

dragonwriter2 hours ago

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.)

skissane42 minutes ago

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.

b00ty4breakfast1 hour ago

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

Bender1 hour ago

Maybe not in the most recent case with the border patrol. Aside from their bad gear and bad communication the agent that cleared the Sig said "Muffled word Gun" and the guys holding the known agitator down clearly misunderstood that as "Gun!" so they repeated it and the agent in cover position fired. I'm sure it did not help that all these guys could hear is blaring loud whistles which is why I would personally hold the protestors partially responsible. I know I will catch flak for those observations but I stand by them as I am neither left nor right and these observations are just obvious. As an insufferable principal armchair commander I would also add that these incidents are primarily occurring in sanctuary cities where antifa community organizers are escalating non stop in hopes that someone dies and they can use it as political fodder later on and in hopes they can radicalize people. Just my opinion but I think it is going to backfire. The normies can see what is going on.

bonsai_spool45 minutes ago

> 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".

wizardforhire3 hours ago

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

lokar56 minutes ago

They should charge it as a criminal conspiracy and use the state felony murder statute to go after leadership.

+2
toomuchtodo3 hours ago
mothballed3 hours ago

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.

dragonwriter2 hours ago

> 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.

DFHippie2 hours ago

> 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."

trinsic22 hours ago

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.

touwer3 hours ago

[flagged]

aa_is_op3 hours ago

[flagged]

jfengel1 hour ago

80 million Americans thought it.

1potatonagger44 minutes ago

They are doing both, and "murder" is the wrong word--but that's obvious. Investigating unfortunate self-defense killings (from the perspective of the officers, not armchair political enemies in hindsight) shouldn't take precedence over obvious activities of insurrection against the federal government. Have you learned nothing from the horrors of January 6th when literal nazi evildoers almost overthrew the federal government at gunpoint??

Regardless, both officers had legitimate legal justification, as will be determined in a court of law. You should try to understand other perspectives fully and empathize with Americans first and until done with that, remain silent.

contrarian123446 minutes ago

I'm pretty ignorant of how the legal system works. Like if ICE punches you in the face, I'm guessing you can take them to court for damages. But if ICE kills you.. who has standing? Does your family sue on your behalf? The DA does it on your behalf? So the government is suing itself? I never really understood how it works.

And is all the criminal stuff committed by ICE ultimately leading to thousands of legal cases and huge cash payouts? (not that ICE cares b/c it's coming from the taxpayer in the end) Is that all already in the pipeline?

throw0101a3 hours ago

“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law” ― Oscar R. Benavides

hollandheese3 hours ago

The police (FBI and ICE included) are never your friends. They work to protect the rich and powerful and not us.

cucumber37328422 hours ago

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.

Analemma_3 hours ago

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.

Cornbilly3 hours ago

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).

+1
trinsic21 hour ago
SauciestGNU3 hours ago

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.

baq3 hours ago

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!

cess113 hours ago

By before, what do you mean? COINTELPRO?

+1
Analemma_2 hours ago
krapp3 hours ago

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.

+4
cucumber37328422 hours ago
asdfman1233 hours ago

Software engineers are definitely among the class of people protected by the police

throwawaygmbno3 hours ago

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

oklahomasports54 minutes ago

911 informs the cops of your sexual preferences when they dispatch them?

Spivak1 hour ago

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."

tehjoker3 hours ago

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

wahnfrieden2 hours ago

Engineers are just workers

smrtinsert3 hours ago

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.

dolphinscorpion3 hours ago

They will, one day. No statute of limitations on murder.

I-M-S3 hours ago

Biology is definitely a limit.

paulryanrogers3 hours ago

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.

+1
I-M-S2 hours ago
jorblumesea3 hours ago

Kash thinks Trump should be king, there will be no introspection or proper investigations. He was put into that position of power for exactly that reason. No comey or Mueller investigations.

dashundchen3 hours ago

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.

jorblumesea3 hours ago

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.

DonHopkins3 hours ago

[flagged]

wyldberry3 hours ago

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.

epistasis3 hours ago

> 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.

spiderice1 hour ago

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

epistasis56 minutes ago

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

wyldberry3 hours ago

They are using the tactics and techniques of the insurgencies we watched. It's visible by anyone with eyes and training. This isn't a values placement on if what they are doing is just or not. It's because the tactics are effective, and they impede federal enforcement of laws. Of course there will be an investigation into it.

It will also likely come with more attempts to have laws for backdoor encryption so yay we have to fight that down the road again.

saubeidl2 hours ago

They're using IEDs and suicide bombings???

+3
epistasis2 hours ago
tokyobreakfast2 hours ago

> This is a horrifying and very unpariortic thing to say about people who are trying to prevent their daycares from being tear bombed

Fortunately for them the "daycares" are completely empty

+1
garciasn2 hours ago
+1
wahnfrieden1 hour ago
GuinansEyebrows1 hour ago

oh good, people on Hacker News Dot Com are taking Nick Shirley at face value.

e5841 hour ago

[dead]

Jugglewhoa3 hours ago

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.

wyldberry37 minutes ago

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.

kergonath3 hours ago

You have an occupation force killing bystanders in your streets. Resistance is exactly what is needed.

wyldberry3 hours ago

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".

+1
ascagnel_42 minutes ago
kergonath2 hours ago

That would not be a problem if they deported these people, instead of what they are doing.

soperj3 hours ago

> agreed to allow

pardon my ignorance, but why would that be up to your President?

wyldberry3 hours ago

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.

bradleyankrom3 hours ago

Both can be true, but only one is.

Eldt49 minutes ago

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

megous3 hours ago

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.

wyldberry33 minutes ago

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.

spiderice1 hour ago

[flagged]

shafyy3 hours ago

[flagged]

wyldberry3 hours ago

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

+1
Jugglewhoa3 hours ago
curt151 hour ago

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.

adamisom1 hour ago

Alex Pretti's death should not have happened, and also

- he was carrying

- despite that, he involved himself in physical altercations with federal officers

- his group of disruption activists was quite successful; if you watch any video, it is very clearly difficult for the federal agents to communicate with one another

- one federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting one time, perhaps erroneously thinking Pretti had his gun out

- another federal agent probably made the mistake of shooting several times, perhaps thinking that the one shot was Pretti

basically, everything that could go wrong, went wrong, Pretti is not blameless, his group is not blameless, the ICE agents are not blameless, and it probably wasn't murder

lm284691 hour ago

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

dimitri-vs1 hour ago

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.

babblingdweeb1 hour ago

[flagged]

hosel1 hour ago

Gross. This type of rhetoric doesn’t belong here. Go back to Reddit

babblingdweeb53 minutes ago

That’s why I said “respectfully”, to keep it professional while commenting on their logic issue.

Next time I’ll add /s

bsimpson2 hours ago

> “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way”

Remember when words, at least usually, meant things?

oceansky2 hours ago

This sounds like IMAX level projection

RIMR1 hour ago

For real, if you're legitimately worried about your officers being legally entrapped, you've got some really untrustworthy officers.

bigyabai2 hours ago

I remember a time when people were better at lying, at least.

angry_octet2 hours ago

It should be clear at this point that the FBI is not a law enforcement agency, it's a tool of authoritarian suppression. Unfortunately many of the 2A people are on board with this anti-democratic putsch, and have forgotten their 2A principles.

cantalopes2 hours ago

Its really sad to see what kind of bottomless pit has the usa gotten into after that lunatic got into presidency. Years of effort burned by one fsb agent

nimbius7 hours ago

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.

craftkiller7 hours ago

> 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.

dvtkrlbs4 hours ago

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.

subscribed3 hours ago

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.

ActorNightly4 hours ago

>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.

archy_4 hours ago

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...

nextlevelwizard2 hours ago

Fed

dylan6044 hours ago

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?

+1
convolvatron4 hours ago
mrguyorama4 hours ago

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.

325278236344 hours ago

[flagged]

spiderice4 hours ago

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.

servercobra7 hours ago

Or has biometric login turned on and didn't lock their phone behind a passcode before being arrested.

politelemon7 hours ago

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...

lenerdenator4 hours ago

Non-paywalled link?

layer84 hours ago

https://archive.ph/copyn

It wasn’t paywalled for me, BTW.

mrtesthah7 hours ago

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.

JumpCrisscross7 hours ago

> 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.)

tremon5 hours ago

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

mrtesthah7 hours ago

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

+1
docdeek5 hours ago
JumpCrisscross7 hours ago

> 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.

direwolf204 hours ago

"ICE are at (address)" apparently

dylan6044 hours ago

> 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.

PrettiGoodDead7 hours ago

[flagged]

tbrownaw3 hours ago

> 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.

kergonath3 hours ago

> 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?

LastTrain2 hours ago

Why is it so obvious to you to investigate something that is perfectly legal?

mtswish2 hours ago

The current bias is so large for the administration that most people haven't even clocked that what they are doing is legal

iamnothere7 hours ago

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.

biophysboy3 hours ago

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?

hnal9433 hours ago

[flagged]

biophysboy3 hours ago

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

cyberge996 hours ago

Feds and ICE are using Palantir ELITE.

iamnothere5 hours ago

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.)

lugu4 hours ago

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...

iamnothere4 hours ago

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.

mrandish4 hours ago

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.

elicash2 hours ago

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.

nextlevelwizard2 hours ago

Considering ICE is executing people in the streets and were already breaking laws before this something little like free speech won’t help

sschueller4 hours ago

Interesting, this may result in showing how secure signal really is.

Ms-J58 minutes ago

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.

nextlevelwizard2 hours ago

Three letter agencies do three letter agency things

JumpCrisscross6 hours ago

I’ve never seen a set of voluntary fall guys like Noem, Patel and Miller. (And Hegseth for when a military operation fails.)

ourmandave3 hours ago

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.

metalliqaz5 hours ago

Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him. He's the most hard-core fascist in the bunch.

lenerdenator4 hours ago

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.

anigbrowl41 minutes ago

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.

xmcp1233 hours ago

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.

+2
cmrdporcupine3 hours ago
spprashant3 hours ago

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.

lenerdenator3 hours ago

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...

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

nextlevelwizard2 hours ago

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

plagiarist3 hours ago

The FBI should investigate the first item in the Bill of Rights.

RIMR1 hour ago

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.

soupfordummies4 hours ago

Oh wow this article contains “ICE” in the title and isn’t flagged yet!

bediger40007 hours ago

Why? That's unequivocally constitutionally protected speech. Why is our tax money being wasted on this?

JoshTriplett4 hours ago

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"

tptacek5 hours ago

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.

janalsncm4 hours ago

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.

tptacek4 hours ago

Nobody has been charged.

jakelazaroff4 hours ago

I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.

andreygrehov4 hours ago

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.

anigbrowl39 minutes ago

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?!

janalsncm4 hours ago

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.

+1
andreygrehov4 hours ago
derbOac4 hours ago

"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.

+4
andreygrehov4 hours ago
afavour5 hours ago

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.

hackyhacky7 hours ago

When has the constitution mattered to this administration?

Sparkle-san7 hours ago

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.

PrettiGoodDead7 hours ago

[flagged]

spankalee7 hours ago

Yes - very, very dumb people did vote for him.

therobots9277 hours ago

The fascists won. That’s why.

JumpCrisscross7 hours ago

No, they haven’t. This kind of advocacy crosses from lazy nihilism to negligence.

anigbrowl35 minutes ago

[delayed]

dragonwriter5 hours ago

> > > 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.

+1
SR2Z4 hours ago
8note2 hours ago

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.

therobots9276 hours ago

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.

+1
JohnFen5 hours ago
+2
ActorNightly4 hours ago
MiiMe194 hours ago

[flagged]

PrettiGoodDead7 hours ago

[flagged]

randallsquared7 hours ago

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.

neogodless7 hours ago
mycodendral4 hours ago

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.

nkohari4 hours ago

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.

JKCalhoun7 hours ago

Interesting that there would be people on a "side" that think there was a conspiracy to commit a crime. What crime?

direwolf204 hours ago

Interference with a law enforcement investigation?

mycodendral4 hours ago

18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

baerrie4 hours ago

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

mindslight2 hours ago

In the fascist's mind, anything that isn't supporting Dear Leader's vision of "greatness" is a crime.

rexpop4 hours ago

It's a crime.

What do you have against crime?

Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.

PrettiGoodDead7 hours ago

[flagged]

mrtesthah6 hours ago

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.

mycodendral4 hours ago

Federal felony, not free speech.

18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

derbOac4 hours ago

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.

kennywinker3 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh4 hours ago

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.

janalsncm4 hours ago

“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.

spiderice4 hours ago

Which is probably the easiest thing ever to prove, since people are openly trying to impede them

poplarsol5 hours ago

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".

kennywinker3 hours ago

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.

OhMeadhbh3 hours ago

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.)

8note2 hours ago

this is to say that ICE is breaking MN law no?

dyauspitr1 hour ago

So more nonsense. How about tracking down the murderer first.

quickthrowman5 hours ago

I’d be curious to know what they plan to charge people with.

netsharc5 hours ago

Jaywalking, misappropriating funds during a renovation? Whatever the police state wants...

Pwntastic5 hours ago

domestic terrorism, of course

q34tlR4y4 hours ago

[dead]

advisedwang4 hours ago

The article subhead implies obstruction of justice.

mycodendral4 hours ago

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

nkohari4 hours ago

> 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).

sb0571 hour ago

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

jihadjihad4 hours ago

Coming soon, treason.

mothballed4 hours ago

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.

sjsdaiuasgdia4 hours ago

If you have no reason to believe it's true, and understand the rumor to be unsubstantiated, why bother to spread it?

mothballed4 hours ago

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.

sjsdaiuasgdia4 hours ago

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.

hsbauauvhabzb4 hours ago

They don’t need to if they just shoot them on the street.

lenerdenator5 hours ago

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.

adrr4 hours ago

Terrorism seems to be their default claim if you're against the Trump admin.

q34tlR4y4 hours ago

[dead]

missingcolours5 hours ago

Presumably Seditious Conspiracy, like many people involved in J6. Conspiracy to use force to prevent or delay enforcement of laws.

2OEH8eoCRo04 hours ago

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.

cdrnsf4 hours ago

Not voting for them.

cdrnsf4 hours ago

They're going to give this more scrutiny than they did to Hegseth leaking sensitive government information.

OutOfHere6 hours ago

https://www.phreeli.com/ lets people use phones without revealing identity.

gruez3 hours ago

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".

samename37 minutes ago

Can prepaid eSIMs be used anonymously?

unethical_ban2 hours ago

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.

gruez58 minutes ago

>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.

OutOfHere2 hours ago

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.

gruez1 hour ago

>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.

superkuh7 hours ago

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.

stuffn7 hours ago

[flagged]

hackyhacky7 hours ago

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.

stuffn7 hours ago

[flagged]

Psillisp7 hours ago

Great add

superkuh7 hours ago

And you need to watch the videos but I imagine the cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.

direwolf204 hours ago

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

stuffn7 hours ago

[flagged]

hobs7 hours ago

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.

OrvalWintermute6 hours ago

[flagged]

q34tlR4y4 hours ago

[dead]

hypeatei4 hours ago

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?

pjc502 hours ago

They don't have to get a conviction if they know your address and have a gun.

BonoboIO1 hour ago

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.

dang5 hours ago
ath3nd3 hours ago

[dead]

fleroviumna7 hours ago

[dead]

quercus7 hours ago

[flagged]

tencentshill7 hours ago

Yeah! Signal has nothing to do with technology. The government trying to snoop on a private E2EE service is not worth discussion.

quercus7 hours ago

[flagged]

hobs7 hours ago

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.

quercus7 hours ago

[flagged]

dayyan7 hours ago

[flagged]

hackyhacky7 hours ago

Sounds good, until you realize that they've now murdered two peaceful protesters, who they post facto smear as terrorists to justify their murder.

spiderice59 minutes ago

Driving your car at someone, whether or not you are trying to hit them or putting them at risk by trying to dodge them, isn't peaceful. I'm shocked that this needs to be explained to people. Tribalism is one helluva drug.

dayyan7 hours ago

[flagged]

hackyhacky6 hours ago

How is a history of constitutional violations not on topic?

xrd7 hours ago

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."

q34tlR4y4 hours ago

[dead]

CMay2 hours ago

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

8note2 hours ago

> 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

CMay2 hours ago

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.

jimt123458 minutes ago

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

flumpcakes2 hours ago

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?

CMay1 hour ago

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.

ncallaway2 hours ago

This is what collaboration looks like

unethical_ban2 hours ago

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.

CMay1 hour ago

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.