So nice of the WSJ to follow order and use the proper euphemisms. "Improperly searched" is far too neutral and/or lenient. But at this point" what's another FBI scandle? And these are only the things we know about. It's not like behind close doors they're polishing halos and taking harp lessons.
The database consists of communications of foreign targets, and its legality isn't in dispute. What's illegal is to search that database for terms related to Americans in criminal investigations not related to national security without a warrant. https://archive.is/jgWUt
FBI/NSA interpret FAA 702 to acquire "one end foreign" communications, i.e. the communications of Americans with other parties abroad. There are millions of American citizens who reside abroad, and many thousands more at any given time are vacationing abroad. Those citizens' rights are being systematically trampled.
Further, Room 641A and then the Snowden revelations showed that actually FBI/NSA get a mirrored port or just split the beam directly on domestic Internet fiber runs. Submarine fibers are obviously all tapped, too (sorry, Hawaii). Supposedly they apply "minimization" filters on that full-take, but considering their incentives I doubt they try very hard.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by the legality of a database definitely containing fruits of Constitutional violations being "in dispute". Clearly FAA 702 is itself "in dispute" right now, with re-authorization not such a rubber stamp this time. And SCOTUS has punted on lawsuits against NSA surveillance with standing BS, so they've never actually ruled on the merits. Certainly many people, myself included, have long disputed the legality of FAA 702 and of retaining or processing communications acquired under its authority.
Anyway how can you say the legality isn't in dispute when the government has a secret interpretation of the law that they refuse to allow anyone to see? How can we dispute what we don't know about?
"I will continue to urge the DNI to inform the public about how the government and the FISA Court are interpreting the law. There is important, secret information about how the government has interpreted Section 702 that Congress and the American people need to see before the law is renewed." - Sen. Ron Wyden, May 19 2023.
> FBI/NSA interpret FAA 702 to acquire "one end foreign" communications, i.e. the communications of Americans with other parties abroad. There are millions of American citizens who reside abroad, and many thousands more at any given time are vacationing abroad. Those citizens' rights are being systematically trampled.
That's not accurate. They can only request the data of non-Americans living outside the US. If you are a US citizen, they cannot request your data without a court order. If you are not a US citizen but living in the US, they need a court order as well. Also, it's Section 702 of FISA. The Federal Aviation Administration has nothing to do with it.
> Supposedly they apply "minimization" filters on that full-take, but considering their incentives I doubt they try very hard.
More inaccuracies here. It's not full-take. The documents Klein released clearly showed a Narus filtering device here, which Snowden's documents showed is used to collect the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US whose data passes through the US. In this era of https everywhere, it is exceedingly unlikely that this source is still useful.
> Anyway how can you say the legality isn't in dispute when the government has a secret interpretation of the law that they refuse to allow anyone to see?
Snowden leaked the interpretations. These interpretations (aside from phone metadata) have not been challenged.
That's not accurate. They "acquire" it all, then "collect" it later from their databases upon request. So-called "incidental collection" is totally fair game for exploitation, defrauding courts, and perverting the course of justice.
For US citizens abroad, any filtering is obviously insufficient, as they couldn't generally know your foreign phone number or residential IP address belong to a US citizen. That doesn't even get into the government's claimed authorities under EO12333, or exactly what "communication facilities" they have obtained secret bulk collection FISA warrants for (likely VPNs, US Tor exits, etc.), or data received about US persons from collaborating foreign intelligence agencies.
I wasn't referring to the Federal Aviation Administration, and you'd know that if you were seriously engaged with this issue. It's not Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), it's Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA).
It's also important to note the distinction between the seizure of communications, which happens at massive scale without individualized suspicion, and the search of those communications when they "request" it, as you put it. The Constitution prohibits both unreasonable searches and seizures.
Considering Sen. Wyden has long sat on the SSCI, I assume his warning yesterday was about a new, different secret interpretation than the few court documents that were made public by Snowden et al. a decade ago.
> That's not accurate. They "acquire" it all, then "collect" it later from their databases upon request. is fully hackable.
This is conspiracy theory nonsense. If it were happening, Snowden would have leaked documents saying so. Instead, his leaked documents said this is only happening in a handful of war zones where the US controls the telecommunications systems.
> The Constitution prohibits both unreasonable searches and seizures.
It's good that you understand this basic fact. Then why do you think what you claimed is happening, despite not having any evidence to support your claim?
No. This publicly goes back to Clapper telling congress that the NSA doesn't "collect" data on Americans. The lie was excused on the grounds that "collection" isn't them saving the data, but rather querying it later.
> This publicly goes back to Clapper telling congress that the NSA doesn't "collect" data on Americans. The lie was excused on the grounds that "collection" isn't them saving the data, but rather querying it later.
More conspiracy theory nonsense. The lie was that they don't collect any data on Americans, when they did collect phone metadata. The reason he made that mistake was that the previous question was about making dossiers of Americans, which they do not do, not having the content of any Americans' communications.
You're wrong. Go read about it in this article by Bruce Schneier. And don't accuse people of being conspiracy theorists when you haven't checked your facts.
You're wrong. The only person who claimed that the NSA doesn't believe it has collected data until it looks at it is Schneier in this article. No US government agency has ever made this claim because it is obviously false, and none of Snowden's leaked documents claim the NSA has collected American communications. https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73... explains that Clapper was previously being asked about collecting actual communication data of foreigners (Section 702), while this question jumped to "any data" about Americans, which would include the telephone metadata collected by Section 215. This admission that Clapper does consider the defunct phone metadata program to be collection was made 7 months before Schneider wrote that article, so he should have known better.
> Don't accuse people of being conspiracy theorists when you haven't checked your facts.
I will continue to call people conspiracy theorists when they say hundreds of conspirators in the US government are doing something obviously illegal without any evidence, especially when someone who leaked other programs could have leaked that evidence but did not.
This definition does not match any of the leaked documents or the unclassified documents, so you'll have to do better than that. It was a definition made up out of whole cloth to match what Snowden thought the documents he leaked said, which is entirely different from what the documents actually said. At the time the EFF wrote that article, Snowden's claim is what they were working on. Now they know it is untrue.
If laws were broken by a law enforcement agency, the responsible parties need to a) either lose their jobs or, minimally, be reassigned to a department where they can never make that “mistake” again, and b) be prosecuted to the full extent of the law with and be sentenced to a punishment that discourages future “mistakes” by others from occurring. Why are these laws in place if they are not enforced?
In recent cases, all levels of the FBI were complicit. Removing funding may only take away resources from useful areas while guilty parties are free to continue their bad behavior at the risk of only a stern talking to by Congress every few years when they promise this will certainly be the last time this happens. Throw some agents in jail along and see if the behavior continues?
Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo.
Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable, what can be done? Can individuals who were caught up in this file criminal or civil complaints with any hope of relief? For someone not caught up in this, how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?
Unfortunately, none of this is actually surprising. When was the last time such crime was actually prosecuted? It is very hard to have any trust in the legal system when there are many that curtail ot through sheer influence.
It’s unfortunate that it’s not surprising and even more so that administrations feel like this is so accepted that (at best) nothing need be done and (at worst) it can be used to their advantage.
Even when the minimal executive action of firing those involved is taken (for example, firing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith) the media will attack the enforcers and give comfort to the perpetrators. It’s clown world.
Can you remind me again why Comey was fired? What rule did he fall afoul of? I was always under the impression that the FBI is an incredibly conservative institution in every sense of the word, so it's not surprising how the biases play out. What is strange is when they get caught up in intra-conservative-world politics.
"And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”"
Trump told the world that he fired Comey for opening what has now been shown by the IG and SC Durham after a 4 year investigation to be properly predicated, if flawed. Firing Comey was an attempt by Trump to avoid accountability for what he and his campaign did, along with destruction of evidence, lying under oath, and 11 other counts of obstruction of justice by Trump identified by SC Robert Muller.
It turns out Trump's campaign did meet with Russians and lied about it; Trump did had business in Russia he lied about; his campaign manager did meet with a Russian spy to discuss handing over dirt on his opponent; Russians did hack the Democrats and distribute the data; Trump did ask them publicly to hack his opponent in exchange for relaxed sanctions; and his campaign was knowingly sharing data with a Russian intelligence officer. So of course an investigation was opened into his campaign and their ties to Russia.
You'll have to be more specific about what part of my comment you're referring to as "it". Because obviously the investigation wasn't a campaign stunt.
Some people, having invested themselves and their world view so fully in the righteousness of their cause, can’t bring themselves to believe the truth.
But best perhaps to stop parroting the lies when they’ve been so thoroughly debunked.
The Russian collusion hoax was 3 years of tearing the country apart all because the Clinton campaign played a dirty trick and the Deep State lapped it up and fetishized it.
Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.
It was not a hoax that Paul Manafort was caught exchanging campaign data with an Russian intelligence officer by the Senate Intel Committee. It wasn't a hoax that he met with a Russian spy at Trump's home to discuss an exchange of dirt for relaxed sanctions. It wasn't a hoax that Trump's campaign had a hundred+ contacts with Russians but lied saying they didn't have any, including under oath. It wasn't a hoax that Trump and Trump's lawyer lied when they said there were no deals in Russia, when in fact Trump had an in-progress "Trump Tower Moscow" deal with a planned penthouse dedicated to Putin.
These are not "hoaxes", but facts discovered through investigation and detailed extensively in at least 9 reports. In total, they show the Russians hacked the Democrats to help the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign welcomed the help, the campaign publicly asked Russia for the help, and when the help came from Russia, the campaign used the help to their advantage, and they hoped for more. Then when the investigation into said help happened, they obstructed it, tried to shut it down, and called it a "hoax", which you repeat here. Everything I've said is supported by hundreds of pages of reports: The Mueller report, the Senate Intel Committee report on the 2016 election, the IG report, and yes even the Durham report corroborates what I'm saying.
Taken in total, it's impossible to conclude these reports support the theory that Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and the Trump campaign's welcoming and support of that interference was a hoax.
> Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.
So you have no rebuttal to the facts except to deny them? That’s a pretty weak hand. Before the Durham report you could maybe claim this and say “wait for the report, it’ll set things straight.” But now that the Durham report has been released, the contents emphatically do not undo the findings of the Mueller Report, the DOJ IG Report, or 5 volumes of the Senate Intel report on this matter.
Steele didn’t have 4 government investigations to back his dossier, the main point of which was proven by the Mueller report volume 1.
> the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.
This assertion is at odds with the IG report, in which Horowitz finds no political bias on the part of the FBI that would have impacted their investigation.
I’m sorry, but again, I have reports from Mueller, Horowitz, Rubio, and Durham to back my position. I will weight their reports and evidence against the evidence and reports you’ve provided and come to a decision accordingly based on the facts.
Steele had illegal campaign cash from Hillary Clinton laundered as legal fees to back up his “dossier”. No charges for that of course, just a slap on the wrist fine.
They applied the full force and technology of the United States spying apparatus and all the Mueller report proved was that they found nothing.
Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it. They knew it was a Clinton plan and had no evidence to back it up, and lied to Congress, and lied to the American people about it.
Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
> Steele had illegal campaign cash from Hillary Clinton laundered as legal fees to back up his “dossier”.
As far as the the investigation goes, the Steele Dossier doesn't factor into it because it wasn't the predicate of the investigation. IG Horowitz found no problem with the way the investigation began. The Steele Dossier is a distraction, and the IG report is the final word on it. That you disagree is immaterial to the results of the IG investigation.
> Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it.
Again, the IG and Durham looked into the role Obama played, and found nothing worth pursuing. They certainly didn't find what was alleged by Trump, which was that Obama White House spied on the Trump campaign. Your talking points are out of date and out of line with the results of concluded investigations.
> Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
We don't need to listen to Strzok or Page or anyone else, because the IG report says that there was no political bias in the predication of the or in the course of the investigation. Since you seem to be reluctant to read the report I linked, here's the relevant part of the executive summary:
As part of our review, we also sought to determine whether there was evidence that political bias or other improper considerations affected decision making in Crossfire Hurricane, including the decision to open the investigation. We discussed the issue of political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we described text and instant messages between then Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases. We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD Priestap, Strzok's supervisor, was the official who ultimately made the decision to open the investigation, and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap was reached by consensus after multiple days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel. We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.
Case closed. That should be the end of the story for you.
> Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
There's a school of thought that says that Trump needed to be stopped by whatever means were necessary, fair or foul. The events of January 6 did a lot to vindicate that admittedly-troubling school of thought.
My own thinking is that when you exempt yourself from constitutional constraints, as Trump did in lying about the election and inciting a riot, it's game on. I'd be curious to hear a counter-rationale other than the obvious (and equally true) "B...b...but FISA is just as unconstitutional" or the equally-true "But Trump hadn't yet done that at the time the FBI investigated his campaign." His relationship with Paul Manafort alone was arguably sufficient to set an aggressive counterintelligence investigation into motion. If Trump didn't wish to be treated like a captive Russian asset, he might have tried not acting exactly like one.
I'm not necessarily saying that I buy into that position myself, just that I've found myself surprisingly sympathetic to it.
At this point, I agree with those who suggest that America cannot survive a competent Trump. So given the hypothetical future appearance on the campaign trail of a similar character with all of his faculties intact, I may have to revisit the question.
I'd listen to the people who correctly called Trump out as being an authoritarian wannabe. They were completely right, and he proved that beyond any doubt on 1/6. Those who spent spent 4 years apologizing for him, and still are to this day, should be ignored when those predictions are made.
Keeping in mind that we're talking about someone who ran a full-page ad in the New York Times that called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five. Few people listened to Trump himself when he told us who he was.
When confronted with the NYT ad, reactions from over 30% of the electorate fall into one of four categories: "Wait, what? I never heard of that. Must not be a big deal," "Fake news, the ad never actually accused anyone by name," "Meh, he didn't really mean it," and "Hell yeah, fry 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
So it's not clear that anyone else's warnings could have made a difference. It was up to the Deep State to stop him. They failed. Not much of a Deep State, I guess. Only Trump's own incompetence saved us from a horrific outcome... and that won't scale, as people like to say around here.
The people who correctly called out Trump from what he was were:
- people who had spent a lot of time in authoritarian dictatorships and recognized his personality in the dictators of those countries.
- people who are familiar with history, and saw that he mirrored the personalities of historical dictators.
- people who are familiar with cluster B personality disorders, who correctly recognized his narcissistic psychopathy.
- people who were close to him, like his family, who warned us about how he treats people close to him.
- people who went into business with him, who were unilaterally screwed over by his business practices.
- Hillary Clinton.
Listening to any of these people, or even better, all of these people, would have saved us from this whole mess.
Notably, all of these people are saying the same things today, and he's still the front runner of the Republican party. So really, the problem isn't Trump anymore, it's that a lot of people actually want a dictatorship, because they perceive they can use it to their political advantage. That's where we are now. There are no more excuses about who the man is. Trump wants to be a dictator, and Republicans like that idea. There's no more assumed good faith to be had here.
Exactly, that's my point. It has been clear for a long time who Trump is and what he stands for. Long before he ever ran for office. A great many people are either fine with his positions, indifferent to them, or vote without bothering to inform themselves about the candidate they're voting for.
Once that cohort grows to dominate the electorate, there's nothing (legal) that anyone else can do. Hence the "fair means or foul" part of the question. But it may not matter: he can't be stopped by fair means if he actually does represent the values of the electorate, and if he is stopped by foul means, his supporters will pick someone even worse.
Amazing. A collection of "People who don't like his personality", plus his literal political opponent, are your best sources on how to identify the next Hitler.
Let me say that again: If a democrat you like says somebody is Hitler, then all is fair to stop him.
The problem for you is that they were right. He proved that beyond all doubt when he attempted to overturn the election, and continues to lie about it to this day. That level of sociopathy has proven to be a literal national security threat.
And yeah, Hitlers are not hard to identify. They are psychopaths who find their way into positions of leadership. Like Trump. There’s nothing special or unique about Hitler —- he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
But we don’t need Democrats to identify them, because they identify themselves with their actions (like trying to topple democracies when they lose elections). Some just notice it sooner than others, and now that Trump has made himself know as a psychopath beyond all doubt, we can look back and recognize those who called it years before he metastasized, and learn from the heuristics they used.
if you want details, you can read the Senate report about Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure [1], Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities [5], and everything in-between.
you may find such things as "The Russian govemment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." and "The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."
So someone put an exchange server unsecured on the internet against policy and that's reason to abuse fisa courts for the benefit of the cia war machine?
There’s no need to abuse anything, and there’s ways to improve methods of counterintelligence collection. But the reason the Trump campaign was surveilled cannot be tied to Hillary Clinton. She’s completely irrelevant to the fact that the Trump campaign welcomed and sought foreign interference from Russia in the 2016 election. All the complaining in the world about the predicate for the investigation does not change or erase what was uncovered.
You’re coming from a liberal (classical sense) perspective and learning something about power, maybe! But your suggestion that society is fixed by people following the rules harder sounds like idealism. Money and power buy leniency and loopholes. Why not try taking away the power instead?More rules and punishments sounds a little like more power to wield if you can look past the allure of a functioning bureaucractic process for disposing of rule breakers
I’m not sure that I follow, but yes. I think that severely punishing those who abuse special authority will improve that aspect of the government. I don’t think it will fix society, but having a functioning justice system certainly can’t hurt.
And pretty much all of the living ex-presidents including some presidential candidates and other federal officials who lie to congress without any repercussions.
Politicians, pastors, doctors, lawyers, police, parents, judges, adults, etc...all must be held to a higher standard. The word 'responsibility' seems to be discounted when someone is caught.
It's an excellent question. I was meaning a higher standard of behavior. As no one can be perfect in thought and deed, the above list are expected to be held to a higher standard of ethics as pointed out by their training.
Those on the list 'signed up', so it can be expected they knew what they were in for. They also have more power in society then the rest of us and should be held accountable.
Plenty of wealthy people (and not wealthy) commit crimes for no other reason than greed - a lust for money, or power and no concern about hurting others to get it. There is no "structural reason" that drives them to commit crime.
OP lives in an idealist world where humans are intrinsically good and never made choices that hurt other people or society, if they do, it's because they were "forced into it".
That’s not the interesting bit. Countries with less punitive laws have better crime stats although of course you could argue causation goes the other way.
On the lower end, if you know doing common activity X (say possession) will get you a punishment as severe as more impactful crime Y (breaking and entering), what difference does it make?
On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
> On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter
Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
That flows with what I’ve said: rules for thee and not for me. As a private citizen my city, county, state, or federal enforcement agencies would have no issue charging me and putting their best effort toward conviction and sentencing. Meanwhile when those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks abusing the power they’ve been given, nothing happens.
How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
> those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks
Do you think the problem is too much transparency? To use your example of the NYPD in the 90's (though I think you've probably got the wrong part of the decade if you're looking for the high water mark of crime), was it notably less corrupt than it is today, or was it just more opaque?
But how did the NYPD deal with crime in the 90's? Wasn't it by the kinds of privacy abuses called out in this report? By shaking down suspected criminals through stop and frisk?
Violent crime in NYC dropped precipitously with the “Broken Windows” style of law enforcement during Giuliani’s terms as mayor (1994-2002). The advertised theory was to enforce even small crimes like property owners leaving broken windows unrepaired. Hypothetically, the expectation that laws are being enforced makes people more likely to obey laws at all levels. (jokingly: or maybe people were so busy coming into compliance that they ran out of time for murder.)
There’s obviously debate, criticism, etc., regarding the cause but the theory has been applied to programming among other places with some success.
Do you think the widespread inability to enforce mask mandates might have lessened peoples' likelihood to obey laws at all levels? Seems a bit analogous to broken windows, no? And timely.
The example given was property owners complying with covering broken windows, wasn’t it? Does that seem like a useful gesture of compliance? I believe the idea is more that it sets an example of compliance with authority, but I agree that the whole concepts seems a bit questionable to me.
Do you have any serious and confirmed study of such a thing? So far it doesn't seem that there is any consensus whether masks are useful or just completely useless.
The strongest criticism I have seen of a causal link is a claim that violent crime dropped similarly during that period in regions that did not adopt a similar strategy.
Somewhere in the book Freakonomics, a study mentioned that crime dropped precipitously in New York because abortion was legalized about 18 years before.
> How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
Actually, pretty much yes, or at least, that would have been a better strategy than some Giuliani BS.
Crime declined nation wide, and it had nothing to do with any local policies. My favorite theory is that leaded gasoline was causing crime spikes. But there are competing theories, and I think people have concluded that it isn't a single factor.
Yes, but as you know, this discussion isn’t to prove that the US is the worst country in the world. We don’t even consider countries like those that you’re talking about in these conversations because they’re so behind and barbaric. What’s the point of even bringing this up except to distract from the discussion? What are you trying to show or prove with this? Remind everyone of things they already know? Your comment is an attempt to invalidate the legitimacy of the concerns posed above, and nothing more. Most of us though we’d move past the idea that murdering citizens is barbaric, and has no place in the world, yet people like you insist on telling us that we’re OK because we aren’t that, or that it’s not so bad here because it could be so much worse. That’s not useful in any sense.
Can you please not use HN for political or national or ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we're trying to avoid it here.
I'm not sure that the quantity (per capita or whatever) of those things exceeds the quantity of incarceration and things like police violence in the US. But even being middle-of-the-road in terms of barbarism is nothing to write home about.
Few countries though since China does it, it affects a big population of the world.
Here is the list for 2021 from Wikipedia. There are only two "first-world" countries there.
At least 18 countries performed executions in 2021:[13][36][37]
Americas (1 country): United States (11)
Asia-Pacific (5 countries): Bangladesh (5), China (unknown), Japan (3), North Korea (unknown), Vietnam (unknown)
Europe (1 country): Belarus (1+)
Middle East and North Africa (8 countries): Egypt (83+), Iran (314+), Iraq (17+), Oman (unknown), Saudi Arabia (65), Syria (24+), UAE (1+), Yemen (14+)
Sub-Saharan Africa (3 countries): Botswana (3), Somalia (21+), South Sudan (9+)
Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings. People who do crime are to be caught, punished, and punished some more (unless they are high-class, good looking or part of a government agency, etc). Yet at the same time the US seems to almost maliciously engineer society to push people into hopeless situations where crime looks like a good way to get by.
I'm sorry but an upvote is an insufficient reaction to this comment.
In decades of considering State privacy abuses and their roots, I haven't come across an analysis that so succinctly encapsulates the whole of causes+outcomes as this one. It is one of the most Modern America things I have ever read.
> Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings.
A lot of people think the other way around, where it's unfathomable that anyone would commit a crime of their own volition were it not for the weight of an unjust world upon them.
Does it matter? If people are opportunistic then you should remove the systemic issues that make crime seem like a good risk. If people are desperate you should do the same thing. Either way the correct response is to make crime not seem like the best option for someone to do.
> Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime
I'd argue that some people have incentives to ignore the systematic reasons behind crime. Slave labor in the US is partly dependent on prisoners. Crime keeps people fearful and distrustful of each other. Crime is used to justify increased control and monitoring of the public and the abuse of prisoners. Crime enables a huge underclass of Americans who pay taxes but aren't allowed to vote. Sadistic cowards keep politicians elected who are "tough" on criminals and they vote against things we know would actually reduce crime whenever those solutions aren't also needlessly cruel.
The US has the fifth highest per capita prison population in the world.
The four countries with a higher per capita population are: El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and Cuba. (Omitting American Samoa, because that's a US territory).
None of those are major countries, so the statement "The US is the most punitive major country in the world" absolutely holds water.
If you want an idea of how crazy high incarceration rates are in the states, just compare the prison population per 100,000 inhabitants with its neighbors:
Canada - 85
Mexico - 174
USA - 505
On a side note I wonder how many people would rather lose a limb than spend a decade in US prison.
That's because you are buying into western propaganda. These countries operate on some kind of "hype" of law. The odds that you'll go to jail in Singapore for committing a "punishable" offense is really low. I was surprised how lax Singapore is given its reputation. It seems that they are holding the status quo by that reputation rather than the enforcement of it.
This is the same for many other countries but not the case for the US. Also your first two examples applies to really small list of countries (Iran and S.A.) and their current governments are the disgrace of the world and are not really an example to take (like going too extreme and something the US shouldn't "I guess" be compared too).
Punishment is big business and criminals are your "total addressable market". Lawyers, law enforcement, prisons, security companies, etc and anyone providing services to them rely on there being a steady supply of crime and criminals to stay in business. Reducing crime isn't actually in the establishment's best interest.
That seems to be the issue, doesn’t it? If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far. If someone is seen as a threat to influential people, from the top down agencies will do what they can to impede and undermine that administration.
While on the one hand, it’s amazing to see RFK speak so boldly, on the other hand, should he be elected, I would fully expect some significant event to derail his administration. While getting shot seems too brazen, it definitely sends a message to any future hopefuls that such behavior is still not tolerated.
> If you give the Durham report weight, it doesn’t even need to go back that far.
Ima stop you right there. The only thing you need to give weight here are the indictments that were brought as a result of the investigation, because that's what was promised. I've read the report from front to back, and it's filled with BS, omissions, and it even attempts to relitigate cases Durham lost in court on the merits. It's a pathetic way for a prosecutor to capstone his career.
Read the Mueller report and the Durham report side by side. They are night and day in terms of quality of evidence, completeness, and clarity of reasoning. In fact, doing so reveals just how the Durham "investigation" was really an exercise in motivated reasoning, whereas the Mueller investigation was a serious, sober investigation of where the facts pointed.
The problem is that at the start Brennan admits that he briefed the president, VP, and others, that the Clinton campaign was about to do, what ultimately happened. So one report starts by omitting that fact, and the other does not. What follows is a variation of fruit of the poisonous tree.
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162] and "Mueller did not charge or suggest charges for [...] whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to influence the election".[163]
The investigation led to other crimes, like being pulled over for a broken taillight and then getting busted for possession.
> So one report starts by omitting that fact, and the other does not. What follows is a variation of fruit of the poisonous tree.
It's really not, because the investigation was still properly predicated. Durham finds this and the IG finds this. It doesn't matter what the Clinton campaign did or didn't do, because the investigation wasn't based on their actions. That it was is the lie of the predication of the Durham investigation, and that he didn't find it and prosecute it is his "failure" in the eyes of right wing media. Why was Durham needed when we have an IG?
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162]
Note that "conspiracy" was never seriously alleged by detractors (collusion was the accusation), and to the extend it was, it was never allowed to be investigated (by Rosenstein and then Barr, both appointed by Trump). They very carefully boxed Mueller into investigating a conspiracy without being able to prove it (by investigating finances, which were considered a "red line" and off limits for investigation).
Second, you omit the fact that the Mueller report notes that it faced lies to investigators, witness tampering, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice at the hands of POTUS. Their main catch, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, was in the process of being flipped when Trump dangled and ultimately granted a pardon, in a blatant act of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
It was later found by the Republican-chaired Senate Intel Committee that Paul Manafort was literally exchanging internal campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign, as the Russians were in the process of targeting Americans through Facebook psyops (which the Mueller report proved). So there's your collusion.
There's also the matter of how the report was released, causing a federal judge to call into question the truthfulness of the AG Barr (calling his handling of the report and redactions issued "misleading"). Barr notably shut down the investigation as soon as he was confirmed by the Senate. Many people's opinion of the investigation was set due to those lies and omissions, maybe your own.
SC Mueller was appointed due to the fact that the AG Sessions was compromised (having lied to the Senate about his Russia contacts as part of the Trump campaign), and Trump was obstructing justice into the already ongoing investigation (by firing the head of the FBI, and citing the fact he was under investigation as the reason for doing so). So really, the biggest problem with the Mueller investigation was that it was investigating a person who ultimately had control over the investigation, who was also the only person who the investigation couldn't hold accountable (due to DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting POTUS).
This is just a limited selection (not even covering all the false claims of Kennedy, through the anti-vax organization he runs, identified in the cited source articles), because there have been so many lies, about so many vaccines (including using lies about one vaccine to discourage use of a completely different vaccine.)
His organization misrepresented the findings of a Lancet study to claim that vaccine-derived COVID-19 immunity “becomes negative”. [0]
His organization has circulated false claims about tetanus vaccines being part of a conspiracy to render women infertile. [1]
His organization spread debunked claims about MMR vaccines and autism in the black community as part of an effort to discourage COVID-19 vaccine use in the black community. [2]
His organization misrepresented a government study to spread the false claims that the flu vaccine made COVID-19 infection more likely, as propaganda against the flu vaccine. [3]
It hasn't been disproven, there's a lot of strong evidence linking them, the pharmaceutical industry just spends vast sums of money to attack and discredit anyone who questions vaccine effectiveness. Similar to how it attacked anyone who suggested the covid vaccines didn't prevent transmission or death, even though the evidence was clear that they didn't.
The way things were handled created -many- new vaccine sceptics and that will have a lasting impact for many years to come.
When you tell people their concerns of a specific vaccine are invalid and then claim they are anti-vaccine, you are lying. Why would anyone paying attention then trust you?
Also, some high ranking politicians are on record stating they wouldn't take a vaccine if it was created while Trump was president. Nobody ia dismissing their entire campaign based on these statements.
Thanks for picking one point of my long post and ignoring the other points btw.
My understanding is that he's been anti-MMR since long before COVID and that's a big part of what most people mean when they're concerned that someone is "antivax" - at least those with a memory that goes back more than 5 minutes.
Against specific vaccines opposition to which has been leading to measles outbreaks. I think counting that against him is important, and again it's usually what people have meant when they've said "antivax" before COVID.
And that belief is a concern if he is wrong. AFAIK, he is wrong, so I am concerned. AFAICT his "data" is the same fabricated "MMR causes autism" data as the other anti-vaxers. If you know of something he's been pushing that's not downstream of Wakefield (or even evidence of his meaningfully revising his opinion around the Lancet's retraction) I'll give it consideration, but there's a limit to how many times I'm interested in relitigating the same questions without meaningful new data.
If someone is claiming "concerns" about vaccines for >15 years and is regularly found lying, what else should you call them? Because he hasn't just had "a problem with a specific vaccine".
Pretty much everything he’s ever said about any vaccine, but in another branch of this thread I’ve done a short list of some of his recent lies about COVID-19 vaccines, MMR vaccines, tetanus vaccines, and flu vaccines. (Perhaps the star of that list being the lie about MMR vaccines used to discourage black people from taking COVID-19 vaccines.)
Which all also underlines that the claim that he is against “a specific vaccine” is…not accurate.
I completely agree, at the risk of being too simplistic, the FBI is a 'type' of necessary evil that our nation needs. However, we must learn from the missteps.
Is the FBI a necessary evil or merely a force for corruption?
I haven’t seen a good argument they’re necessary — and they’ve been involved in illicit political corruption since their founding, less than a century ago.
They do that a lot, but they seem to have no power to actually do anything, because this is hardly the first time they've criticized the FBI with no visible consequences.
"Prosecutorial Discretion" or "Selective Prosecution" is how corruption becomes rampant. In other words, "laws for you fools, but not for us", say FBI and DOJ. That's why the first thing they can get you convicted for "lying to federal officials".
I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence."
I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.
Probably should have lawyered up. Illegally gathered evidence is supposed to be inadmissible in court. At least in the US.
People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.
Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible.
But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years.
Sorry to hear how this played out. If you have the time and are okay discussing it, consider publishing a write up of the incident. Shining a light on abuse/raise awareness of problems is the first step to getting them fixed.
Throwing agents in jail can't and won't solve the problem. What happens is that the agents who avoid jail grow bitter... they were the "good guys" after all, and only doing "what needed to be done".
So to see friends and coworkers punished for it makes them bitter. They double down in their resolve. Instead of changing behavior, they double down and promise themselves to be more careful to avoid punishment.
Additionally, at some point in this cycle, they decide that those in charge, the ones punishing them, are more akin to impostors who have infiltrated government and are twisting it into something it shouldn't be. They begin their own loosely-organized "resistance", and seek to undermine the very checks and balances that miraculously allowed a few FBI agents to be punished for transgressions.
In their own heads, you see, they're the heroes.
Reform is impossible, once the organization has grown large enough to develop its own anti-reform "immune system". Which, I suspect, is almost a 100 years old at this point.
> how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?
Don't pay your taxes. If your landlord were using your rent money to murder undocumented immigrant children, would you ask "but how can I make sure he just buys his groceries with that rent money"?
Hell no. You just stop giving him the money. Or maybe you just keep handing it over and whining "there's nothing I can do". I dunno.
What cases? The ones they tried to take to trial and lost twice? What’s the winning percentage on jury based trial for US prosecutors? 90%+ percentage and this guy has 0%. That’s what it needs to be investigated how two innocent people were prosecuted.
> Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo.
Police lie to everyone. It's legal and there are no real consequences for it due to all the immunity they enjoy.
People should realize the FBI are not the version you see in Hollywood. They are just police with more power, less oversight, and their image and stature mean lies they tell are much more likely to be believed and that much more difficult to counter.
When we hear these stories, we never hear about the end result. We only hear about the act. It's like hearing a gun was fired. It was fired, but what did it hit?
The data that is in these databases have a high probability to be abused. Blackmail and intimidation are easy to hide. What number of the people that had their location data exposed through this database were shot soon after? What number of people had their identity stolen? What number of people lost their jobs? What number of people had their families or friendships destroyed by secrets being spilled?
The dots are never connected beyond the admission of violations.
Noteworthy that $2.6bln was allocated to US attorneys this year; not sure how much more was allocated to specifically support January 6th prosecutions, but the prosecution of every single one of them will hopefully serve as a deterrent.
You can’t imprison people for constitutionally protected speech. The citizenry has to reject these people and reject the anti-intellectualism ethos they and their supporters inhabit.
As you point out, it's not most efficient path to resolving differences in America, but I can't say that forcefully pushing through police lines, breaking windows, and illegally entering the Capitol should be allowed to happen without penalty.
People make their choices, and they pay the consequences -- they're not puppets completely devoid of individual agency.
But yes, it's endemic in current American culture that incitement goes unpunished while action takes the charge. In politics, in business, and in religion.
If we want to solve underlying problems, there need to be more disincentives to whipping your supporters/employees/believers into a frenzy.
> What about the prosecution of the law enforcement who literally unlocked doors, shepherded people inside, and then led them into chambers?
Several law enforcement and active military participants and collaborators—acting before, during, and after the highly visible events of Jan 6—have already been arrested and charged, most recently the MPD intelligence chief, but your description is a false characterization of what actually occurred.
> If you think Jan 6 was anything more than a meandering of useful idiots by a conspiring state, you are the other useful idiot.
If you genuinely believe this, you are just an idiot (maybe a useful one for the people who organized, executed, and then attempted to minimize the attack, but definitely an idiot.) Yes, most of the participants may have been radicalized sheep inspired and directed by a narrower group, but they clearly weren’t “meandering”.
>Several law enforcement and active military participants
Stop conflating protestors who happened to have unrelated government jobs with the suspicious and supportive actions of the capitol police who were supposed to be keeping congress safe and instead escorted crazy looking protestors around the capitol for photoshoots
Yup. If all these useful idiot protestors are guilty of treason how the hell has their leader who told them to do it not been charged? The federal justice system is fake and political.
Not to mention all the bullshit social media platforms that promoted the stupid conspiracies that led to the insurrection and even profited off all the "engagement" around it.
GP might be alluding to the recent murder of a Mexican journalist, Fredid Román Román, who was shot shortly after (allegedly) being targeted by a Swiss surveillance-for-hire operator with Israeli connections[1]. As in, this is very much a thing that can happen to victims of (targeted) surveillance, and it was in the news recently.
Just imagine the power someone would have if they were to tamper with stolen data _before_ leaking it. Nobody EVER questions the accuracy of leaked data.
authoritarianism is not a political system but a technique of government control over the people, and the excuse is always some kind of unspecified 'national security'
That's a mockery of real authoritarian countries, where you most definitely wouldn't have the checks and balances of a court that finds a law enforcement agency misused data and with a free press to publicize that fact.
> The Biden administration also declined to declassify details about a new “sensitive technique” of surveillance performed under Section 702 that required the court to weigh its legality, keeping Americans in the dark about a method of spying even as it lobbies lawmakers to renew the expiring portions of the law.
Sometimes there are hints or past reporting. Eg before Snowden there had been other reporting around Telco complicity at switching stations.
Maybe something with satellite connectivity surveillance? (Lol, it would be rich if they said it was covered by FISA because it went from USA to "space" and back in to US)
(Edit for typos)
My uninformed speculation purely based on the principles of evolution of cell phone technologies over time is satellite based IMSI triangulation with centimeter accuracy to track everyone on earth with a powered on cell phone in their pocket.
The Durham report restated everything we already knew for years as a result of his multiple failed convictions. How come Durham wasn't able to reach any convictions due to his "bombshell" report?
I agree. It was obvious to anyone paying attention. But most people still believe there was some truth to it because the media lied for years. The report was important to get those people back to reality.
The article itself says things are already being done about it.
> Senior national security officials said Friday that all of the incidents described took place before the FBI had completed a series of internal reforms—including written justifications for searches, more oversight and requiring analysts to actively opt into searching the foreign intelligence database. Those steps, adopted within the past few years, are intended to reduce incidents of noncompliance.
> “We’re not trying to hide from this stuff,” a senior FBI official said. “This type of noncompliance is unacceptable, and that’s why we put these reforms in place to stop that from happening.”
Our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."
From what we've since discovered about logical complexity and system design, such an attitude today would be appropriately described as cavalier malpractice. Yet the Founders have been practically deified, while it's continually implied the problem is merely that we're not following their simplistic prescriptions well enough.
> it's continually implied the problem is merely that we're not following their simplistic prescriptions well enough
Is this wrong? America was founded to be a federal republic composed of sovereign states sharing their power with a small central government with clearly delineated powers; now we have a massive central government that takes in two-thirds of all taxation[0] and spends 38.5% of GDP as of last count[1], and somehow decided that it had the authority to regulate a farmer growing feed for his own animals[2].
Yes - analysis of "just follow the rules harder" is generally wrong, which is why we've moved on to blameless postmortems. I agree with your criticism of the current state of the system. The problem is the lack of mechanisms that encourage convergence towards the desired state. Without them, divergence continually adds up, creating the well known ratchet effect. If Filburn itself had been decided differently, the Supreme Court would have eventually justified the federal government power grab at a later time. Slower progression would mean we'd be in a better state today, but we'd still be headed towards the same place.
It seems like the weak central government model ceased to function around the 20th Century doesn't it? It was (and to some extent continues to be) a time of cold and hot conflict between superpowers, and a small government seems antithetical to superpower.
That’s not what the third continental congress that cobbled together our constitution said or thought.
Your small confederacy was what the Articles of Confederation had wrought and it lasted all of a decade. States rapidly enacted laws against their fellow states, it was a mess. We had religious laws, not a good scene.
Basically you should read
A) the US Constitution
B) historical accounts of the third continental congress
There is a huge difference between the federal government stepping in to regulate/mediate between states that cannot agree amongst themselves, and the federal government asserting authority to regulate activities within a single state or within multiple states that can agree amongst themselves.
The Founders actually did a really good job. The extreme level of separation of powers in the US (2 coequal legislative branches, presidency, Supreme Court and lower courts, all the state governments with their own divisions, local governments, etc) makes it really, really hard for one faction to fully dominate government, even today. This feature of the US is pretty much unique in the world, even among even democracies. But no system of government can be perfect, or protect against all eventualities without regular maintenance and upgrades. We've had three major overhauls so far: Civil War reconstruction, the New Deal, and the 60s civil rights movement. Arguably, we are due for a fourth.
The article says the current administration is trying to fix it and might have been successful already. None of the incidents occurred after the fixes.
> Senior national security officials said Friday that all of the incidents described took place before the FBI had completed a series of internal reforms—including written justifications for searches, more oversight and requiring analysts to actively opt into searching the foreign intelligence database. Those steps, adopted within the past few years, are intended to reduce incidents of noncompliance
> “We’re not trying to hide from this stuff,” a senior FBI official said. “This type of noncompliance is unacceptable, and that’s why we put these reforms in place to stop that from happening.”
It’s amazing how normalized this practice has become. And how far down the slope we’ve slid.
> Civil liberties advocates say the FBI uses Section 702 as a backdoor for warrantless searches to get around the courts.
I don’t think they argued this originally. Originally we argued that THE SEARCH HAPPENS BEFORE THE QUERY. That moving data into the database constitutes a search.
To oversimplify a bit, it’s similar to the government coming into your home every day, taking photos of everything, and inventorying every item. Creating a huge manifest of everything in your home, filing it away with every other manifest they’ve collected on your neighbors, and then claiming they haven’t searched your home because they will only look at the manifest if they think it’s relevant to a qualifying investigation.
Every entry in this database _should_ constitute a search.
> “Say I want to collect information on Vladimir Putin,” explained Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, “and I see on his Gmail, it turns out he’s been talking to an American. So I’m collecting on Putin, but it might capture communications with a U.S. person, and so now in that database, I have every email he’s ever sent, and I can go in and query for that U.S. person.”
This isn’t exactly accurate either. Last I heard, it was based on “hops.” Not just 1 degree of separation of Vladimir Putin, but N degrees of separation from anyone considered to be a potential “national security threat.”
So if your landscaper is sending money back home to their family who is in contact with someone who is involved in a cartel, maybe your entire digital footprint (metadata? more?) is fair game for this database.
If you text the owner of your gym and their babysitter’s brother is suspected of being associated with a foreign group, maybe your entire digital life is fair game for this database.
The scope of this data dragnet is staggering.
> (Though the evidence suggests the FBI was searching for Black Lives Matter protesters as much as Jan. 6 suspects.) The federal court that reviewed how the FBI uses the database threatened to put major limitations on the agency’s ability to use it if the FBI did not change its procedures.
I don’t understand how these searches that were illegally conducted aren’t required to be handed over to the defense team for every trial this was used in, along with the records that were returned for their client. Everything downstream of these searches is tainted evidence, no?
> This isn’t exactly accurate either. Last I heard, it was based on “hops.” Not just 1 degree of separation of Vladimir Putin, but N degrees of separation from anyone considered to be a potential “national security threat.”
The quote was completely accurate. What you heard is inaccurate. The US isn't allowed to get data for people living in the US (or US citizens living anywhere) at all without a court order. They can collect Putin's data and that of his non-American associates. They can then search that data for Americans suspected to be involved in schemes against national security. They cannot search that data for Americans who aren't, which is what is being reported here.
Partisan agenda like using a special prosecutor role to write a report about policies and procedures? I don’t think that was mentioned in the order that creates that role. Also he how many cases did he lose with malicious partisan prosecution?
Good. I can't read the paywalled article but it appears that the FISA court is providing a counter to FBI power. Sounds like a healthy Democratic system of checks and balances to me and I'm not being sarcastic.
I've posted this link before and I really wish more people were familiar with it. "Democracy Versus The National Security State" (1976) by the late Marcus Raskin is only 32 pages long but it's an excellent overview of the history of the rise of arbitrary and unaccountable power in the US after WWII. It's also quite the prophetic work.
"We shall see that the national security state and the rule of law are mortal
enemies. In the first place, by its nature and the mission which it has set for
itself, the national security state apparatus needs arbitrary power. Such power
has its own code, which is meant to govern or justify the behavior of the
initiated—after the fact. It operates to protect the state apparatus from the
citizenry." [0]
Marcus Goodman Raskin (April 30, 1934 – December 24, 2017) was an American progressive social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher. He was the co-founder, with Richard Barnet, of the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He was also a professor of public policy at The George Washington University’s School of Public Policy and Public Administration....
Notably: In 1971, Raskin received from Daniel Ellsberg, documents that became known as the Pentagon Papers. Raskin put Ellsberg in touch with New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.
257 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937866
CloudFlare is in the right. This is for privacy. Just put the IPs on your hosts file, it's easy. https://dns.google/query?name=archive.is
23.137.249.79 archive.today
23.137.249.79 archive.is
23.137.249.79 archive.ph
While there try a hosts blocklist http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024952
FBI/NSA interpret FAA 702 to acquire "one end foreign" communications, i.e. the communications of Americans with other parties abroad. There are millions of American citizens who reside abroad, and many thousands more at any given time are vacationing abroad. Those citizens' rights are being systematically trampled.
Further, Room 641A and then the Snowden revelations showed that actually FBI/NSA get a mirrored port or just split the beam directly on domestic Internet fiber runs. Submarine fibers are obviously all tapped, too (sorry, Hawaii). Supposedly they apply "minimization" filters on that full-take, but considering their incentives I doubt they try very hard.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by the legality of a database definitely containing fruits of Constitutional violations being "in dispute". Clearly FAA 702 is itself "in dispute" right now, with re-authorization not such a rubber stamp this time. And SCOTUS has punted on lawsuits against NSA surveillance with standing BS, so they've never actually ruled on the merits. Certainly many people, myself included, have long disputed the legality of FAA 702 and of retaining or processing communications acquired under its authority.
Anyway how can you say the legality isn't in dispute when the government has a secret interpretation of the law that they refuse to allow anyone to see? How can we dispute what we don't know about?
"I will continue to urge the DNI to inform the public about how the government and the FISA Court are interpreting the law. There is important, secret information about how the government has interpreted Section 702 that Congress and the American people need to see before the law is renewed." - Sen. Ron Wyden, May 19 2023.
That's not accurate. They can only request the data of non-Americans living outside the US. If you are a US citizen, they cannot request your data without a court order. If you are not a US citizen but living in the US, they need a court order as well. Also, it's Section 702 of FISA. The Federal Aviation Administration has nothing to do with it.
> Supposedly they apply "minimization" filters on that full-take, but considering their incentives I doubt they try very hard.
More inaccuracies here. It's not full-take. The documents Klein released clearly showed a Narus filtering device here, which Snowden's documents showed is used to collect the communications of targeted foreigners outside the US whose data passes through the US. In this era of https everywhere, it is exceedingly unlikely that this source is still useful.
> Anyway how can you say the legality isn't in dispute when the government has a secret interpretation of the law that they refuse to allow anyone to see?
Snowden leaked the interpretations. These interpretations (aside from phone metadata) have not been challenged.
For US citizens abroad, any filtering is obviously insufficient, as they couldn't generally know your foreign phone number or residential IP address belong to a US citizen. That doesn't even get into the government's claimed authorities under EO12333, or exactly what "communication facilities" they have obtained secret bulk collection FISA warrants for (likely VPNs, US Tor exits, etc.), or data received about US persons from collaborating foreign intelligence agencies.
I wasn't referring to the Federal Aviation Administration, and you'd know that if you were seriously engaged with this issue. It's not Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), it's Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA).
It's also important to note the distinction between the seizure of communications, which happens at massive scale without individualized suspicion, and the search of those communications when they "request" it, as you put it. The Constitution prohibits both unreasonable searches and seizures.
Considering Sen. Wyden has long sat on the SSCI, I assume his warning yesterday was about a new, different secret interpretation than the few court documents that were made public by Snowden et al. a decade ago.
This is conspiracy theory nonsense. If it were happening, Snowden would have leaked documents saying so. Instead, his leaked documents said this is only happening in a handful of war zones where the US controls the telecommunications systems.
> The Constitution prohibits both unreasonable searches and seizures.
It's good that you understand this basic fact. Then why do you think what you claimed is happening, despite not having any evidence to support your claim?
No. This publicly goes back to Clapper telling congress that the NSA doesn't "collect" data on Americans. The lie was excused on the grounds that "collection" isn't them saving the data, but rather querying it later.
More conspiracy theory nonsense. The lie was that they don't collect any data on Americans, when they did collect phone metadata. The reason he made that mistake was that the previous question was about making dossiers of Americans, which they do not do, not having the content of any Americans' communications.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/why-the...
> Don't accuse people of being conspiracy theorists when you haven't checked your facts.
I will continue to call people conspiracy theorists when they say hundreds of conspirators in the US government are doing something obviously illegal without any evidence, especially when someone who leaked other programs could have leaked that evidence but did not.
Him, and the EFF, and I'm sure others.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/director-national-inte...
> JAMES CLAPPER: when someone says "collection" to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.
In recent cases, all levels of the FBI were complicit. Removing funding may only take away resources from useful areas while guilty parties are free to continue their bad behavior at the risk of only a stern talking to by Congress every few years when they promise this will certainly be the last time this happens. Throw some agents in jail along and see if the behavior continues?
Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo.
Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable, what can be done? Can individuals who were caught up in this file criminal or civil complaints with any hope of relief? For someone not caught up in this, how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?
Even when the minimal executive action of firing those involved is taken (for example, firing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith) the media will attack the enforcers and give comfort to the perpetrators. It’s clown world.
It turns out Trump's campaign did meet with Russians and lied about it; Trump did had business in Russia he lied about; his campaign manager did meet with a Russian spy to discuss handing over dirt on his opponent; Russians did hack the Democrats and distribute the data; Trump did ask them publicly to hack his opponent in exchange for relaxed sanctions; and his campaign was knowingly sharing data with a Russian intelligence officer. So of course an investigation was opened into his campaign and their ties to Russia.
And if you want to read about how the investigation was properly predicated, here's the IG report: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf
The existence and thoroughness of this report begs the question as to why the Durham investigation was ever needed in the first place.
But best perhaps to stop parroting the lies when they’ve been so thoroughly debunked.
The Russian collusion hoax was 3 years of tearing the country apart all because the Clinton campaign played a dirty trick and the Deep State lapped it up and fetishized it.
Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.
These are not "hoaxes", but facts discovered through investigation and detailed extensively in at least 9 reports. In total, they show the Russians hacked the Democrats to help the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign welcomed the help, the campaign publicly asked Russia for the help, and when the help came from Russia, the campaign used the help to their advantage, and they hoped for more. Then when the investigation into said help happened, they obstructed it, tried to shut it down, and called it a "hoax", which you repeat here. Everything I've said is supported by hundreds of pages of reports: The Mueller report, the Senate Intel Committee report on the 2016 election, the IG report, and yes even the Durham report corroborates what I'm saying.
Taken in total, it's impossible to conclude these reports support the theory that Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and the Trump campaign's welcoming and support of that interference was a hoax.
> Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.
No argument there.
Steele didn’t have 4 government investigations to back his dossier, the main point of which was proven by the Mueller report volume 1.
> the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.
This assertion is at odds with the IG report, in which Horowitz finds no political bias on the part of the FBI that would have impacted their investigation.
I’m sorry, but again, I have reports from Mueller, Horowitz, Rubio, and Durham to back my position. I will weight their reports and evidence against the evidence and reports you’ve provided and come to a decision accordingly based on the facts.
They applied the full force and technology of the United States spying apparatus and all the Mueller report proved was that they found nothing.
Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it. They knew it was a Clinton plan and had no evidence to back it up, and lied to Congress, and lied to the American people about it.
Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
As far as the the investigation goes, the Steele Dossier doesn't factor into it because it wasn't the predicate of the investigation. IG Horowitz found no problem with the way the investigation began. The Steele Dossier is a distraction, and the IG report is the final word on it. That you disagree is immaterial to the results of the IG investigation.
> Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it.
Again, the IG and Durham looked into the role Obama played, and found nothing worth pursuing. They certainly didn't find what was alleged by Trump, which was that Obama White House spied on the Trump campaign. Your talking points are out of date and out of line with the results of concluded investigations.
> Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
We don't need to listen to Strzok or Page or anyone else, because the IG report says that there was no political bias in the predication of the or in the course of the investigation. Since you seem to be reluctant to read the report I linked, here's the relevant part of the executive summary:
Case closed. That should be the end of the story for you.> Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a deflection. Pleas...
My own thinking is that when you exempt yourself from constitutional constraints, as Trump did in lying about the election and inciting a riot, it's game on. I'd be curious to hear a counter-rationale other than the obvious (and equally true) "B...b...but FISA is just as unconstitutional" or the equally-true "But Trump hadn't yet done that at the time the FBI investigated his campaign." His relationship with Paul Manafort alone was arguably sufficient to set an aggressive counterintelligence investigation into motion. If Trump didn't wish to be treated like a captive Russian asset, he might have tried not acting exactly like one.
At this point, I agree with those who suggest that America cannot survive a competent Trump. So given the hypothetical future appearance on the campaign trail of a similar character with all of his faculties intact, I may have to revisit the question.
When confronted with the NYT ad, reactions from over 30% of the electorate fall into one of four categories: "Wait, what? I never heard of that. Must not be a big deal," "Fake news, the ad never actually accused anyone by name," "Meh, he didn't really mean it," and "Hell yeah, fry 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
So it's not clear that anyone else's warnings could have made a difference. It was up to the Deep State to stop him. They failed. Not much of a Deep State, I guess. Only Trump's own incompetence saved us from a horrific outcome... and that won't scale, as people like to say around here.
- people who had spent a lot of time in authoritarian dictatorships and recognized his personality in the dictators of those countries.
- people who are familiar with history, and saw that he mirrored the personalities of historical dictators.
- people who are familiar with cluster B personality disorders, who correctly recognized his narcissistic psychopathy.
- people who were close to him, like his family, who warned us about how he treats people close to him.
- people who went into business with him, who were unilaterally screwed over by his business practices.
- Hillary Clinton.
Listening to any of these people, or even better, all of these people, would have saved us from this whole mess.
Notably, all of these people are saying the same things today, and he's still the front runner of the Republican party. So really, the problem isn't Trump anymore, it's that a lot of people actually want a dictatorship, because they perceive they can use it to their political advantage. That's where we are now. There are no more excuses about who the man is. Trump wants to be a dictator, and Republicans like that idea. There's no more assumed good faith to be had here.
Exactly, that's my point. It has been clear for a long time who Trump is and what he stands for. Long before he ever ran for office. A great many people are either fine with his positions, indifferent to them, or vote without bothering to inform themselves about the candidate they're voting for.
Once that cohort grows to dominate the electorate, there's nothing (legal) that anyone else can do. Hence the "fair means or foul" part of the question. But it may not matter: he can't be stopped by fair means if he actually does represent the values of the electorate, and if he is stopped by foul means, his supporters will pick someone even worse.
Let me say that again: If a democrat you like says somebody is Hitler, then all is fair to stop him.
Brilliant! I hope you're getting paid for this.
And yeah, Hitlers are not hard to identify. They are psychopaths who find their way into positions of leadership. Like Trump. There’s nothing special or unique about Hitler —- he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
But we don’t need Democrats to identify them, because they identify themselves with their actions (like trying to topple democracies when they lose elections). Some just notice it sooner than others, and now that Trump has made himself know as a psychopath beyond all doubt, we can look back and recognize those who called it years before he metastasized, and learn from the heuristics they used.
you may find such things as "The Russian govemment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." and "The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."
[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[5] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Those on the list 'signed up', so it can be expected they knew what they were in for. They also have more power in society then the rest of us and should be held accountable.
Plenty of wealthy people (and not wealthy) commit crimes for no other reason than greed - a lust for money, or power and no concern about hurting others to get it. There is no "structural reason" that drives them to commit crime.
OP lives in an idealist world where humans are intrinsically good and never made choices that hurt other people or society, if they do, it's because they were "forced into it".
Clearly that's not based on reality.
On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
Do you think the problem is too much transparency? To use your example of the NYPD in the 90's (though I think you've probably got the wrong part of the decade if you're looking for the high water mark of crime), was it notably less corrupt than it is today, or was it just more opaque?
But how did the NYPD deal with crime in the 90's? Wasn't it by the kinds of privacy abuses called out in this report? By shaking down suspected criminals through stop and frisk?
Violent crime in NYC dropped precipitously with the “Broken Windows” style of law enforcement during Giuliani’s terms as mayor (1994-2002). The advertised theory was to enforce even small crimes like property owners leaving broken windows unrepaired. Hypothetically, the expectation that laws are being enforced makes people more likely to obey laws at all levels. (jokingly: or maybe people were so busy coming into compliance that they ran out of time for murder.)
There’s obviously debate, criticism, etc., regarding the cause but the theory has been applied to programming among other places with some success.
Actually, pretty much yes, or at least, that would have been a better strategy than some Giuliani BS.
Crime declined nation wide, and it had nothing to do with any local policies. My favorite theory is that leaded gasoline was causing crime spikes. But there are competing theories, and I think people have concluded that it isn't a single factor.
One coworker was mugged and beaten. Walked up to cops. They told him if he wasn’t gone in 30 seconds they’d take him in on a PI.
Crime doesn’t exist if it’s unreportable.
Incarcerations isn't the only form of punishment.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Here is the list for 2021 from Wikipedia. There are only two "first-world" countries there.
At least 18 countries performed executions in 2021:[13][36][37]
In decades of considering State privacy abuses and their roots, I haven't come across an analysis that so succinctly encapsulates the whole of causes+outcomes as this one. It is one of the most Modern America things I have ever read.
A lot of people think the other way around, where it's unfathomable that anyone would commit a crime of their own volition were it not for the weight of an unjust world upon them.
One way to do that is to make it clear that committing a crime is very likely going to result in punishment, which is what the US does.
I'd argue that some people have incentives to ignore the systematic reasons behind crime. Slave labor in the US is partly dependent on prisoners. Crime keeps people fearful and distrustful of each other. Crime is used to justify increased control and monitoring of the public and the abuse of prisoners. Crime enables a huge underclass of Americans who pay taxes but aren't allowed to vote. Sadistic cowards keep politicians elected who are "tough" on criminals and they vote against things we know would actually reduce crime whenever those solutions aren't also needlessly cruel.
The law equally applies to everyone, no matter the reason for it.
For this statement to hold, it requires the most absurd definition of "punitive" imaginable.
There are countries where talking negatively about the wrong people is grounds for execution.
There are countries where theft is punished by amputation of a limb.
There are countries where not flushing a public toilet that you used, is a punishable offense.
All of these countries are much more punitive, and almost all of them have much less crime than the United States.
The four countries with a higher per capita population are: El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and Cuba. (Omitting American Samoa, because that's a US territory).
None of those are major countries, so the statement "The US is the most punitive major country in the world" absolutely holds water.
If you want an idea of how crazy high incarceration rates are in the states, just compare the prison population per 100,000 inhabitants with its neighbors:
On a side note I wonder how many people would rather lose a limb than spend a decade in US prison.China's prison population is lower, but they have "administrative detention" which isn't included.
How to lie with statistics.
This is the same for many other countries but not the case for the US. Also your first two examples applies to really small list of countries (Iran and S.A.) and their current governments are the disgrace of the world and are not really an example to take (like going too extreme and something the US shouldn't "I guess" be compared too).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/world/asia/singapore-mari...
While on the one hand, it’s amazing to see RFK speak so boldly, on the other hand, should he be elected, I would fully expect some significant event to derail his administration. While getting shot seems too brazen, it definitely sends a message to any future hopefuls that such behavior is still not tolerated.
Ima stop you right there. The only thing you need to give weight here are the indictments that were brought as a result of the investigation, because that's what was promised. I've read the report from front to back, and it's filled with BS, omissions, and it even attempts to relitigate cases Durham lost in court on the merits. It's a pathetic way for a prosecutor to capstone his career.
Read the Mueller report and the Durham report side by side. They are night and day in terms of quality of evidence, completeness, and clarity of reasoning. In fact, doing so reveals just how the Durham "investigation" was really an exercise in motivated reasoning, whereas the Mueller investigation was a serious, sober investigation of where the facts pointed.
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162] and "Mueller did not charge or suggest charges for [...] whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to influence the election".[163]
The investigation led to other crimes, like being pulled over for a broken taillight and then getting busted for possession.
It's really not, because the investigation was still properly predicated. Durham finds this and the IG finds this. It doesn't matter what the Clinton campaign did or didn't do, because the investigation wasn't based on their actions. That it was is the lie of the predication of the Durham investigation, and that he didn't find it and prosecute it is his "failure" in the eyes of right wing media. Why was Durham needed when we have an IG?
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162]
Note that "conspiracy" was never seriously alleged by detractors (collusion was the accusation), and to the extend it was, it was never allowed to be investigated (by Rosenstein and then Barr, both appointed by Trump). They very carefully boxed Mueller into investigating a conspiracy without being able to prove it (by investigating finances, which were considered a "red line" and off limits for investigation).
Second, you omit the fact that the Mueller report notes that it faced lies to investigators, witness tampering, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice at the hands of POTUS. Their main catch, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, was in the process of being flipped when Trump dangled and ultimately granted a pardon, in a blatant act of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
It was later found by the Republican-chaired Senate Intel Committee that Paul Manafort was literally exchanging internal campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign, as the Russians were in the process of targeting Americans through Facebook psyops (which the Mueller report proved). So there's your collusion.
There's also the matter of how the report was released, causing a federal judge to call into question the truthfulness of the AG Barr (calling his handling of the report and redactions issued "misleading"). Barr notably shut down the investigation as soon as he was confirmed by the Senate. Many people's opinion of the investigation was set due to those lies and omissions, maybe your own.
SC Mueller was appointed due to the fact that the AG Sessions was compromised (having lied to the Senate about his Russia contacts as part of the Trump campaign), and Trump was obstructing justice into the already ongoing investigation (by firing the head of the FBI, and citing the fact he was under investigation as the reason for doing so). So really, the biggest problem with the Mueller investigation was that it was investigating a person who ultimately had control over the investigation, who was also the only person who the investigation couldn't hold accountable (due to DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting POTUS).
His organization misrepresented the findings of a Lancet study to claim that vaccine-derived COVID-19 immunity “becomes negative”. [0]
His organization has circulated false claims about tetanus vaccines being part of a conspiracy to render women infertile. [1]
His organization spread debunked claims about MMR vaccines and autism in the black community as part of an effort to discourage COVID-19 vaccine use in the black community. [2]
His organization misrepresented a government study to spread the false claims that the flu vaccine made COVID-19 infection more likely, as propaganda against the flu vaccine. [3]
[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-posts-make-false-...
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/07/video-revives-old-debunked...
[2] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/scicheck-rfk-jr-video-push...
[3] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/no-evidence-that-flu-shot-...
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/robert-kennedy-jr-presidential-ca...
Which one specific vaccine would that be?
The way things were handled created -many- new vaccine sceptics and that will have a lasting impact for many years to come.
When you tell people their concerns of a specific vaccine are invalid and then claim they are anti-vaccine, you are lying. Why would anyone paying attention then trust you?
Also, some high ranking politicians are on record stating they wouldn't take a vaccine if it was created while Trump was president. Nobody ia dismissing their entire campaign based on these statements.
Thanks for picking one point of my long post and ignoring the other points btw.
Because its not true.
Pretty much everything he’s ever said about any vaccine, but in another branch of this thread I’ve done a short list of some of his recent lies about COVID-19 vaccines, MMR vaccines, tetanus vaccines, and flu vaccines. (Perhaps the star of that list being the lie about MMR vaccines used to discourage black people from taking COVID-19 vaccines.)
Which all also underlines that the claim that he is against “a specific vaccine” is…not accurate.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36017401
You can't change it, but you can learn about it.
Is the FBI a necessary evil or merely a force for corruption?
I haven’t seen a good argument they’re necessary — and they’ve been involved in illicit political corruption since their founding, less than a century ago.
FISA court investigated the FBI...
I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence."
I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.
People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.
Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible.
But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years.
source: I play a lawyer on TV. (not really)
The prosecutor works for the government. No business involved. They will be just fine if there are no cases.
No crime, no need to pay for a prosecutors office (or a lot of cops).
A variant of ‘use it or lose it’, which is the standard in gov’t and large Corp budgeting.
https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633
Another fun one is that if you join their conspiracy, they can charge you for crimes they committed as part of that conspiracy.
Here's a single page post format copy:
https://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-w...
So to see friends and coworkers punished for it makes them bitter. They double down in their resolve. Instead of changing behavior, they double down and promise themselves to be more careful to avoid punishment.
Additionally, at some point in this cycle, they decide that those in charge, the ones punishing them, are more akin to impostors who have infiltrated government and are twisting it into something it shouldn't be. They begin their own loosely-organized "resistance", and seek to undermine the very checks and balances that miraculously allowed a few FBI agents to be punished for transgressions.
In their own heads, you see, they're the heroes.
Reform is impossible, once the organization has grown large enough to develop its own anti-reform "immune system". Which, I suspect, is almost a 100 years old at this point.
> how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?
Don't pay your taxes. If your landlord were using your rent money to murder undocumented immigrant children, would you ask "but how can I make sure he just buys his groceries with that rent money"?
Hell no. You just stop giving him the money. Or maybe you just keep handing it over and whining "there's nothing I can do". I dunno.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-da...
Because the agencies that enforce them... Don't enforce them.
The government ran an investigation into government corruption and found itself free of corruption.
Police lie to everyone. It's legal and there are no real consequences for it due to all the immunity they enjoy. People should realize the FBI are not the version you see in Hollywood. They are just police with more power, less oversight, and their image and stature mean lies they tell are much more likely to be believed and that much more difficult to counter.
The data that is in these databases have a high probability to be abused. Blackmail and intimidation are easy to hide. What number of the people that had their location data exposed through this database were shot soon after? What number of people had their identity stolen? What number of people lost their jobs? What number of people had their families or friendships destroyed by secrets being spilled?
The dots are never connected beyond the admission of violations.
Cases being pursued by the DoJ: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases?combine...
Noteworthy that $2.6bln was allocated to US attorneys this year; not sure how much more was allocated to specifically support January 6th prosecutions, but the prosecution of every single one of them will hopefully serve as a deterrent.
As you point out, it's not most efficient path to resolving differences in America, but I can't say that forcefully pushing through police lines, breaking windows, and illegally entering the Capitol should be allowed to happen without penalty.
People make their choices, and they pay the consequences -- they're not puppets completely devoid of individual agency.
But yes, it's endemic in current American culture that incitement goes unpunished while action takes the charge. In politics, in business, and in religion.
If we want to solve underlying problems, there need to be more disincentives to whipping your supporters/employees/believers into a frenzy.
Shared culpability seems a good start.
If you think Jan 6 was anything more than a meandering of useful idiots by a conspiring state, you are the other useful idiot.
Several law enforcement and active military participants and collaborators—acting before, during, and after the highly visible events of Jan 6—have already been arrested and charged, most recently the MPD intelligence chief, but your description is a false characterization of what actually occurred.
> If you think Jan 6 was anything more than a meandering of useful idiots by a conspiring state, you are the other useful idiot.
If you genuinely believe this, you are just an idiot (maybe a useful one for the people who organized, executed, and then attempted to minimize the attack, but definitely an idiot.) Yes, most of the participants may have been radicalized sheep inspired and directed by a narrower group, but they clearly weren’t “meandering”.
Stop conflating protestors who happened to have unrelated government jobs with the suspicious and supportive actions of the capitol police who were supposed to be keeping congress safe and instead escorted crazy looking protestors around the capitol for photoshoots
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-0... (https://archive.is/A2qmD)
> The Biden administration also declined to declassify details about a new “sensitive technique” of surveillance performed under Section 702 that required the court to weigh its legality, keeping Americans in the dark about a method of spying even as it lobbies lawmakers to renew the expiring portions of the law.
Sometimes there are hints or past reporting. Eg before Snowden there had been other reporting around Telco complicity at switching stations.
Maybe something with satellite connectivity surveillance? (Lol, it would be rich if they said it was covered by FISA because it went from USA to "space" and back in to US) (Edit for typos)
That pretty much was German BNDs excuse a few years ago. "Law only restricts what we do on state territory, space isn't even foreign ground"
> Senior national security officials said Friday that all of the incidents described took place before the FBI had completed a series of internal reforms—including written justifications for searches, more oversight and requiring analysts to actively opt into searching the foreign intelligence database. Those steps, adopted within the past few years, are intended to reduce incidents of noncompliance.
> “We’re not trying to hide from this stuff,” a senior FBI official said. “This type of noncompliance is unacceptable, and that’s why we put these reforms in place to stop that from happening.”
Is this wrong? America was founded to be a federal republic composed of sovereign states sharing their power with a small central government with clearly delineated powers; now we have a massive central government that takes in two-thirds of all taxation[0] and spends 38.5% of GDP as of last count[1], and somehow decided that it had the authority to regulate a farmer growing feed for his own animals[2].
[0]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-breakdown...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...
[2]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111
Your small confederacy was what the Articles of Confederation had wrought and it lasted all of a decade. States rapidly enacted laws against their fellow states, it was a mess. We had religious laws, not a good scene.
Basically you should read A) the US Constitution B) historical accounts of the third continental congress
> Senior national security officials said Friday that all of the incidents described took place before the FBI had completed a series of internal reforms—including written justifications for searches, more oversight and requiring analysts to actively opt into searching the foreign intelligence database. Those steps, adopted within the past few years, are intended to reduce incidents of noncompliance
> “We’re not trying to hide from this stuff,” a senior FBI official said. “This type of noncompliance is unacceptable, and that’s why we put these reforms in place to stop that from happening.”
Why they omit CIA from the equation?
Law only apply to the FBI? or we pretend laws exist to prevent agents from abusing it?
Either way, this is another evidence of the massive global spying capabilities of the US and how easily accessible they are for their agents
> Civil liberties advocates say the FBI uses Section 702 as a backdoor for warrantless searches to get around the courts.
I don’t think they argued this originally. Originally we argued that THE SEARCH HAPPENS BEFORE THE QUERY. That moving data into the database constitutes a search.
To oversimplify a bit, it’s similar to the government coming into your home every day, taking photos of everything, and inventorying every item. Creating a huge manifest of everything in your home, filing it away with every other manifest they’ve collected on your neighbors, and then claiming they haven’t searched your home because they will only look at the manifest if they think it’s relevant to a qualifying investigation.
Every entry in this database _should_ constitute a search.
> “Say I want to collect information on Vladimir Putin,” explained Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, “and I see on his Gmail, it turns out he’s been talking to an American. So I’m collecting on Putin, but it might capture communications with a U.S. person, and so now in that database, I have every email he’s ever sent, and I can go in and query for that U.S. person.”
This isn’t exactly accurate either. Last I heard, it was based on “hops.” Not just 1 degree of separation of Vladimir Putin, but N degrees of separation from anyone considered to be a potential “national security threat.”
So if your landscaper is sending money back home to their family who is in contact with someone who is involved in a cartel, maybe your entire digital footprint (metadata? more?) is fair game for this database.
If you text the owner of your gym and their babysitter’s brother is suspected of being associated with a foreign group, maybe your entire digital life is fair game for this database.
The scope of this data dragnet is staggering.
> (Though the evidence suggests the FBI was searching for Black Lives Matter protesters as much as Jan. 6 suspects.) The federal court that reviewed how the FBI uses the database threatened to put major limitations on the agency’s ability to use it if the FBI did not change its procedures.
I don’t understand how these searches that were illegally conducted aren’t required to be handed over to the defense team for every trial this was used in, along with the records that were returned for their client. Everything downstream of these searches is tainted evidence, no?
https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/en/
Really? After COINTELPRO, the FBI was legislated into domestic-only knowledge, in an attempt to pen in their abuses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
This, well worse, actually, was only to be expected from the Patriot Act.
The quote was completely accurate. What you heard is inaccurate. The US isn't allowed to get data for people living in the US (or US citizens living anywhere) at all without a court order. They can collect Putin's data and that of his non-American associates. They can then search that data for Americans suspected to be involved in schemes against national security. They cannot search that data for Americans who aren't, which is what is being reported here.
https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
"We shall see that the national security state and the rule of law are mortal enemies. In the first place, by its nature and the mission which it has set for itself, the national security state apparatus needs arbitrary power. Such power has its own code, which is meant to govern or justify the behavior of the initiated—after the fact. It operates to protect the state apparatus from the citizenry." [0]
[0] https://archive.org/details/democracy-versus-the-national-se...
Marcus Goodman Raskin (April 30, 1934 – December 24, 2017) was an American progressive social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher. He was the co-founder, with Richard Barnet, of the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He was also a professor of public policy at The George Washington University’s School of Public Policy and Public Administration....
Notably: In 1971, Raskin received from Daniel Ellsberg, documents that became known as the Pentagon Papers. Raskin put Ellsberg in touch with New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Raskin>
And father of Rep. Jamie Raskin, as noted at Archive.org.
Apparently in The Politics of National Security (1979), see the back-cover blurb.
Internet Archive appear to have garbled metadata for that book with another, unfortunately:
<https://archive.org/details/politicsofnation0000rask>