archive.is is now inaccessible behind a google wall. Ironic. They could save others from content blocking, but not themselves. My attempts to read the story on the original link also fail.
That said, based on the information in the comments here it sounds like the mother of the owner who lived at home with the owner at the time of the raid has died. This is incredibly sad. The use of police force always has consequences even if they're not physical.
Oof. I do indeed have my router configured to use 8.8.8.8 with 1.1.1.1 as a backup.
Whenever I plugged in 1.1.1.1 I had a sneaking feeling of "maybe this is a bad idea" based on random comments claiming problems on HN, but this is the first I've been bitten by it.
After that, this browser's fingerprint got tagged, and I haven't been able to get past it since. But using another browser from the same computer (and connection) worked fine.
When you click on an article they reload the homepage with the article text. I didn't notice it at the time or I would have copied the link instead of just cut and pasting from the URL bar.
"Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the Marion County Record newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.
She had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand. Neither was she able to sleep Friday night.
She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and a router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them. Electronic cords were left in a jumbled pile on her floor.
Joan Meyer’s ability to stream TV shows at her home and to get help through her Alexa smart speakers were taken away with the electronics. "
Illegal raids contribute to death of newspaper co-owner
Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the Marion County Record newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.
She had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand. Neither was she able to sleep Friday night.
She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and a router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them. Electronic cords were left in a jumbled pile on her floor.
Joan Meyer’s ability to stream TV shows at her home and to get help through her Alexa smart speakers were taken away with the electronics.
As her home was raided, other officers descended upon the Record office, forcing staff members to stay outside the office for hours during a heat advisory. They were not allowed them to answer the phone or make any calls.
Marion police chief Gideon Cody forcibly grabbed reporter Deb Gruver’s personal cell phone out of her hand, reinjuring one of her fingers, which previously had been dislocated.
Officers seized personal cell phones and computers, including the newspaper’s file server, along with other equipment unrelated to the scope of their search.
They refused to say when the items, necessary for publishing next week’s issue of the Record, might be returned. The newspaper has obtained equipment to ensure publication and is working to re-create material for the paper.
Legal experts contacted by the Record termed the raid unheard of in America and reminiscent of what occurs in totalitarian regimes and the Third World.
The Record is expected to file a federal suit against the City of Marion and those involved in the search, which legal experts contacted were unanimous in saying violated multiple state and federal laws, including the U.S. Constitution, and multiple court rulings.
“Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” publisher Eric Meyer said, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.”
A two-page warrant signed by Magistrate Laura Viar was given to the Record at the time of the search.
Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel’s home also was raided at the same time.
The warrants alleged there was probable cause to believe that identity theft and unlawful computer acts had been committed involving Marion business owner Kari Newell.
A Record reporter later requested a copy of the probable cause affidavit necessary for issuance of the search warrant
District court, where such items are supposed to be filed, issued a signed statement saying no affidavit was on file.
County attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell operates her restaurant, was asked for it but said he would not release it because it was “not a public document.”
Police read Record staff members their rights. Cody asked officer Zach Hudlin to read Gruver her rights because he couldn’t read a business-sized card listing them as he wasn’t wearing glasses.
Denying staff access to the office and taking four computers meant that the reporters and the newspaper’s office manager could not do their jobs Friday.
Officers disconnected a computer router at the Record but did not seize it.
Law enforcement also seized a computer and a cell phone from Herbel’s home Friday morning. Herbel, 80, who does not have a land-line phone, later drove to McPherson to purchase a replacement phone so she could remain in contact in case of problems with her 88-year-old husband, who is disabled and suffers from dementia.
Newell accused the Record at a city...
While truly awful that she died the real story is the police chief with sexual harassment allegations raiding the paper that was going to publish these allegations.
not being a lawyer, i'm not familiar with all of the various levels of charges, but is this something that could be charged with something along the lines of negligent homicide? playing the what if game, but what if the actions of the police are deemed improper? what are the possible repercussions of the collateral damage?
And it's a small town affair in a country without national law enforcement system at this level and statute that any negligence by police is unassailable.
> And it's a small town affair in a country without national law enforcement system
The US has federal law enforcement, and local law enforcement conspiracies against Constitutionally protected activity are within their jurisdiction, so this description is wrong, both in general and as specifically relevant to the situation at hand.
> and statute that any negligence by police is unassailable.
No such statute exist, I think you are misremembering, badly, the judge made (not statutory) qualified immunity doctrine, which applies to civil liability only for offenses without clear precedent establishing them as violations of rights.
assuming the newspaper's allegations are correct, in the best plausible case, her family sues the city government for wrongful death, qualified immunity shields the thugs, the family wins the case and gets awarded a large amount of money that the government has to pay, which raises taxes on the people living in the area in order to pay it
there is essentially no chance that the district attorney's office will prosecute crooked cops; those crooked cops are their closest collaborators when they are doing what they do 99% of the time, which is prosecuting poor people who don't work for the government. the prosecution of derek chauvin was no more a matter of business as usual than the prosecution of julian assange
The best plausible case involves a federal criminal investigation and charges for conspiracy against rights and/or deprivation of rights under color of law under 18 USC § 241 and/or 18 USC § 242.
how many people have been convicted under these sections in the last decade
i'm guessing less than 5
it's true that federal prosecutors have the freedom to prosecute local cops without themselves becoming unemployable, in a way that non-federal prosecutors do not
> how many people have been convicted under these sections in the last decade
There was enough criminal activity under those provisions and coordinated DOJ civil litigation (which often is a product of investigations that start as criminal investigation of a specific incident, but end up discovering systemic problems in the investigated department) against local police departments under the civil provisions of civil rights law that cutting back on both was a major and public priority of the Trump Administration when it came into office in 2017.
While I can’t think of many recent notable convictions (off the top of my head, the four MPD officers convicted related to George Floyd's murder are the only ones that jump to mind), officers involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting will be going on trial under it this year (current trial date is the end of October, IIRC; the one who reached a plea deal for helping prepare the falsified warrant application pled under a more general conspiracy statute.)
But, while its not a lot of prosecutions, its enough to show that it is more than a theoretical possibility where multiple police officers deliberately act together against a Constitutional rights and leave someone dead as a consequence.
Nope. I'd convict immediately for the INTENTIONAL infliction of emotional distress and the death such action caused. Misdemeanors that cause death become felonies - see DUIs.
> Nope. I'd convict immediately for the INTENTIONAL infliction of emotional distress and the death such action caused. Misdemeanors that cause death become felonies - see DUIs.
Two problems: IIED is a civil tort, not a crime, misdemeanor or otherwise. Second, the rule you state usually doesn't exist; many states have abolished the misdemeanor manslaughter rule or limited iy to a narrow class of misdemeanors, so that death in the course of a misdemeanor isn’t automatically manslaughter, and in states that retain it the class of manslaughter it becomes is a often a wobbler (can itself be a misdemeanor, or a felony, not always a felony.)
It’s almost certain there’s no criminal case related to the death of the co-owner, even if the warrant should not have been issued. The fact is it was issued by a judge, and it doesn’t sound like the police did anything specifically outside the scope of the warrant.
If the warrant was issued illegally and there was some provable animus on behalf of the police, and/or it was done as clear harassment, a civil case is the most likely to succeed. By establishing certain facts such as these and proving the degree of distress caused, they can likely bring about a significant judgement against the city and possibly go as far as a sanction on the judge depending on how she was involved.
If it turns out it was a conspiracy between the restaurant owner and the police where they conspired to manipulate the judge into issuing an illegal warrant, the restaurant owner is the most likely to face a criminal charge.
I suspect they will also pursue a criminal or civil case on the basis of harassment of journalists doing protected work based on a false identity theft assertion to justify avoiding the legal requirement to issue a subpoena rather than a warrant. The co-owners death won’t be a material fact in that sort of case but I’m sure would be mentioned to sharpen the case.
Regardless I expect popcorn is warming all over the country among folks with an interest in law.
> I suspect they will also pursue a criminal or civil case on the basis of harassment of journalists doing protected work based on a false identity theft assertion to justify avoiding the legal requirement to issue a subpoena rather than a warrant. The co-owners death won’t be a material fact in that sort of case but I’m sure would be mentioned to sharpen the case.
The death would absolutely be relevant in a criminal case (e.g., under the applicable federal statute matching the described conspiracy against protected conduct, it changes the maximum penalty from ten years to death or life in prison), in a civil case, it may also be relevant, as it would likely be among the harms forming the basis for damages. (It may even be the basis of the tort, e.g., if pursued as wrongful death, where the part you describe is the “wrongful” part.)
Fair enough - I wasn’t thinking about in a sentencing context but in a materiality in the establishment of a crime, as the crime would have to somehow encompass the death which seems hard to establish without some direct action.
Seems like even the servers are going offline - opened this on my phone - then after 30 minutes I was going to read this on my desktop but the website is now down.
They were raided and apparently had the bulk of their in office IT hardware confiscated - handhelds, desktops, servers, drives, etc.
However they're publishing now it's likely in a very ad hoc rickety manner with limited access to primary resource keys, passwords, et al.
Timely reminder for some here to look at their own work flow setups and ask themselves "what would I do tomorrow if everything I see now was burned up, flooded out, confiscated, etc."
She seems to have made a name for herself exposing the corruption of a few Liberal Party politicians. The Liberal Party of Australia is right-wing, contrary to what Americans might expect.
* On 4 June 2019, the Australian Federal Police raided Smethurst's home over a story she published in 2018.
Goaded on by then Australian PM Scott Morrison who was regarded (in Australian terms) as a bit of a mini Trump crossed with a holy roller evangelical meglomaniac.
* On 15 April 2020, the High Court of Australia ruled that the search warrant used in the raid was invalid.
As was apparent at the time, the over reach was deliberate, a strategy of heavy stick now, get the infomation we need, kick the consequences down the road.
* On 27 May 2020 the AFP announced that Smethurst would not be charged over her stories that "...relied on classified intelligence documents".
I'm not sure if you're trying to show me why I'm wrong or showing why I'm right. As near as I can figure, she was illegally raided by the police for crossing Scott Morrison, who is the leader of the main right-wing political party in Australia. I don't see any reason here to believe Smethurst is far-right. If anything, I suspect she's Labor because she seems pretty good at shining a light on Liberal Party malfeasance. Maybe the downvoters can deign to explain what I'm missing.
> If I had to bet, it's probably because raids against people expressing wrongthink are absolutely A-OK around these parts
Even if that's the angle, I don't get it. She exposed right-wing politicians and suffered retaliation by those right-wing politicians. How can this be evidence of a far-right affiliation?
By "grounds for flagging" do you mean comments being reported and removed by moderation or do you mean being heavily downvoted?
If the latter, then, again, a lot of people disagreeing with you isn't generally good evidence of being correct. You might be correct, but the downvotes aren't the thing that proves it. Personally, I'd have a think about why.
If it's the former, from what I've seen here comments get removed for tone or being off-topic, not for disagreement.
Okay, I was just clarifying. Tone is really hard to convey and interpret but that read like you were jumping on me for clarifying.
I think that's what the problem is. The post in the screenshot is unnecessarily combative. It's not conducive to good discussion. It doesn't have anything to do with beliefs, it's just picking a fight. Change 'right' to 'left' or whatever group and it would've been flagged just the same.
I've only ever encountered "Do you have a problem with that/x?" as a challenge. Can it be used otherwise? Probably, but a native speaker would know how it's going to be received especially in a contentious topic like politics.
I didn't downvote and I simply wanted to dot point a few things about that raid.
Murdoch press tends toward the right .. but that's far too simplistic, Murdoch's media empire seeks eyeballs, stokes controversy and works towards Murdoch's goals, more power with less control by others.
In this instance they were happy to expose secret Government conversations about spying on citizens as it ticked a bunch of boxes.
As for Smethurst she is relatively neutral, but can be counted on to do good reporting as directed by her masthead and editors.
I suspect you got downvotes by non Australians who lumped this story in with Veritas depite there being a world of difference between the stories and the reporting work put into them.
Asked myself the same thing. These examples are also federal agencies that did the raiding, which typically have a higher standard as there are way more optics. Not the same as local politics like this story.
Project Veritas is a fringe extremist propaganda outfit which has directly participated in multiple criminal conspiracies, and has never produced anything even vaguely resembling journalism. Totally different kind of situation.
Heavy handed but no pity in this case, these people are vile and discredit the honor of real journalists.
It's one thing to be passionate about one's beliefs and act on them, but lying and actively distorting the truth to for the sole intention of character assassination to win over the voters is slimy.
If it's bad for their party, it's the right of the public to know. If it's bad for our party, it's vile smear. If our people discover bad things about their people, it's heroic fight for truth which would die in darkness. If their people discover bad things about our people, it's vile and discredits the honor of journalists, and had to be suppressed, laws be damned. If one lies for the good cause (to let good people win), it's heroic. If one lies for he deplorable cause (to let bad people win) it's slimy.
What truth is at stake in the case being discussed? That there's skeeziness within a family? What noble cause is being served?
And at least within my social circle, there's zero loyalty to party over country. As this is about the Biden family, it's generally agreed that if crimes occurred they should be investigated and tried.
The key problem is that the detractors don't care about any crimes, they only seem to care that their political enemies are destroyed. tl,dr: the fomented outrage is purely political theater.
Project Veritas is not a journalist endeavor -- it's a political black-ops organization that operates in bad faith.
People on the right care a lot about Biden's crimes (either of them). They also care a lot about things that aren't crimes but show them in negative light. Just as exactly the same is true about people on the left with regard to right wing politicians. And of course journalists are an active part of that. All that "our heroic intelligence professionals against their filthy traitorous spies" is good for movies, but doesn't hold up to any serious scrutiny. Veritas does on the right the same thing many do on the left - and you can call it "journalism" or you can call "journalism" only reprinting press releases and leaks from political operators, but finding and publishing negative information about politicians is how democracy works. And it can't work any other way - if there is nobody who does that, because all the press is more concerned about partisan cohesion, and is willing to lie and hide information for the benefit of the party, then informed democracy is impossible. And democracy where the information is controlled by the politicians is not a democracy at all - it's just a simulacrum.
> People on the right care a lot about Biden's crimes (either of them).
Really? Do they care about the crime itself or just who committed it? Do they think that crimes don't matter when their side does it?
I'm fine with prosecuting Biden(s) for any legitimate crimes. I'm also more than fine with doing the same for his predecessor and every one else in office. Can you say the same?
Wait, so you are saying "I'll support prosecuting Biden, but only if he's already been successfully prosecuted in court"? That's one brave commitment right here. Or you envision a situation where Biden's accusations are shown true by the court, but he's still not prosecuted - and in that case, your brave voice would be necessary to support correcting the situation? I hope our legal system, with all its flaws, is not as far gone as to just refuse to prosecute a person that has already been proven guilty, just because. Though to be honest, seeing the details of Hunter's deal, I can see where you may be coming from.
> Do you only care if it's Joe Biden as the accused or do you care about the corruption implied by it?
I care about both, naturally. So should everybody. I care that a person committed crimes of corruption, and I care that the same person has been occupying the post of VP of the United States, and now occupies the post of the President of the United States (of course, for persons that did not occupy such posts, I still care for the former, the latter just makes it so much worse). Of course, the detail that his name begins with "Bi" and ends with "den" is purely coincidental, neither me nor anybody else (including maybe his personal enemies?) cares about this. To the measure that anybody cares, his personality is completely irrelevant, his position and his crimes are both relevant. And the combination of the position and the crimes enhances this relevancy - it's one thing when a night guard on a used tire recycling plant is corrupt, another thing when it's the President.
The willful mis-stating/misunderstanding is impressive.
My point is that I'm for the laws to be applied evenly. It's clear that Hunter was trading on the appearance of access to his father (which is slimy but not necessarily illegal if the elder Biden did not engage at that level.
All those words and no acknowledgement of who else might be worthy of investigation, because that's the whole point of this affair -- whataboutism and misdirection.
Continuing this dialog with you is no different than trying to reason with an anti-vaxxer or a religious zealot, so we'll leave it at this and you can walk away "winning" the discussion because I forfeit this game. Congratulations!
What Veritas does consistently is to alter material to misrepresent its subjects. That's called lying and fraud.
If the idea of democracy is to have a "marketplace of ideas" let's definitely do that. Let's examine policy and the data supporting or refuting it. But counterfeit data should not be part of it.
> And democracy where the information is controlled by the politicians is not a democracy at all - it's just a simulacrum.
I'm not sure where this comes into play. We are awash in information and now suffering from disinformation campaigns (straight out of KGB, comrade). The government doesn't seem to be stopping you from consuming Fox, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, etc.
> What Veritas does consistently is to alter material to misrepresent its subjects. That's called lying and fraud.
Only if you call editing the videos - which literally every other news outlet does, nobody publishes full unedited raw footage in the reports, it's just not how it is done - "altering material". Otherwise, Veritas publishes exactly what their subjects said or wrote or otherwise did.
> But counterfeit data should not be part of it.
Except Veritas didn't counterfeit anything. On the contrary, as we now know, the diary that FBI attacked them over was entirely genuine - and they still didn't use it, btw. On the other hand, only in the recent years we have witnessed a number of cases where false (and as we now know, with the advance knowledge of their falsity) statements were published about the veracity of certain data, and various accusations of foreign interference and such were thrown around, including by very prominent mass media, and so far I did not hear anybody even apologizing for that, let alone excluded from the "marketplace of ideas", despite those acts of counterfeiting. I wonder why is that. Maybe because the exclusion power is wielded by their friends, and their counterfeits help those friends stay in power?
> We are awash in information and now suffering from disinformation campaigns (straight out of KGB, comrade)
And the same people who are managing these disinformation campaigns are claiming people who trying to get information past them are illegitimate, not real journalists and thus deserve suppression at the hands of law enforcement (because the First Amendment has the little known "y'all folks realize this all is only for real journalists, right?" clause). They are the ones who purport to "fight disinformation" and claim extraordinary powers of speech control to do that. A regime where such powers exist are not democracy - at least not any that is worth of the name.
> The government doesn't seem to be stopping you from consuming Fox, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, etc.
They are trying (so far by pressuring social networks and other distribution channels to suppress them) but so far they are failing. The First Amendment is pretty strong still, thanks Founding Fathers. But nothing is impossible in politics, and with enough effort it can be - and is being - eroded and ultimately destroyed. In countries where there's no such strong protections, it is plausible that we will witness this within a decade or sooner.
Thoughts on the discredited media smear that was Russia-gate and it's underlying "intel" that included accusations of pee tapes etc. I assume your include the news outlet peroginator Buzzfeed was a political black-ops organization that operated in bad faith.
It’s socially conservative. Why the hyperbolic language? It’s only “extreme” when juxtaposed with the political expressions of “polite society”, not America at large, which skews conservative on social issues.
> propaganda
Everything is propaganda, as everything is political. We just call things propaganda when it’s the kind we disagree with.
> directly participated in multiple criminal conspiracies
I’m sure the police in this town would say the same of the newspaper in question.
> never produced anything even vaguely resembling journalism
Well that’s not true on its face. I find a lot of it cringy, but even when I find that they don’t merit the conclusions that PV comes to (which is quite often), they are quite transparent.
It's OK if people we dislike are victims of law enforcement overreach, because they are bad people and deserve it. It'd never happen to good people, like us and people we like, so no reason to worry.
This is a joke of a comment, expose journalism isn't extremist propaganda just because you disagree with their findings. You show signs of radicalist totalitarian thinking for wanting to ban journalist outlets. Thankfully the authors of the Constitution saw it fit to safe guard against tyrants like yourself with the 1st amendment.
> German prosecutors raid far-right AfD's headquarters
AfD is a far, far right political party, not journalists. They've been raided for various things apparently, one being the overthrow of the government.
> After the council meeting, Newell acknowledged the accuracy of the information and said she understood that coming forward with allegations about it might expose the information rather than preserve its confidentiality.
> The state suspended her license because of a drunken-driving conviction in 2008 and a series of other driving convictions. [...]
All this because someone leaked the paper a report about a local restaurateur getting a dui while driving without a license? A report that the paper went to the police about after deciding not to publish it.
None of these police should ever be allowed power over another human being ever again. They can muck stables for the rest of their days.
No, the newspaper was investigating Chief of Police Gideon Cody's sexual misconduct, and the identities of the accusers were on one of the seized computers.
I think humans have lived with it every day ever since the first human picked up a rock and told someone else what to do or else. The point is an orderly use of power according to the law. These events do seem fairly far outside the norm in America, otherwise it wouldn’t be a top story on HN or anywhere else. It would be common life.
There are many place on earth where writing such a story is itself a crime because it’s illegal to criticize the government in any way.
While the American law enforcement system is broken in a systemic and fundamental way, and there are better places, and there are worse places, there is at least a system of laws that often provides relief and redress - but most importantly there exists avenues to fix the system over time and the open ability to advocate loudly for a restructuring of the government and its powers. This is a blessing in every society that has it, including in America.
I assume the cops will just seize the stuff as "civil forfeiture" and sell it off (without wiping it). Sounds like a perfect way to doxx and victimize people you don't like.
I would argue this is why all journalists should have their work processes in a major cloud provider with key management and audit services enabled.
Once upon a time I built one of the major providers sensitive data services, and a typical artifact of a warrant for a cloud provider is a stipulation the warrant discovery be done without alerting the customer to the search. By encrypting your data with a key management service and enabling the providers audit services (aka cloudtrail) it is impossible by design to execute the warrant without the customer receiving audit trail information about the providers access of the keys and the data service. In theory the provider could make back doors, but the law actually is on their side in that they are not required to take extraordinary measures that materially impacts their business to circumvent controls.
Further there is no physical seizure possible.
I know most small newspapers this is beyond their technical ability or understanding. I challenge this community, maybe there should be an OSS cloud deployable journalism platform with strong security, information resiliency, and defense in depth and breadth against the state.
Or just make some freely available terraform scripts to spin the whole thing up in a cloud, with the right info requested in the modules. They could even choose a location outside their current legal jurisdiction, if that helps.
Yes that’s my challenge to the community more or less. It’s a problem that can be solved. But you shouldn’t expect people with a journalism degree to figure it out. They spent their time partying and making friends and stuff while we were studying cryptography and distributed systems wishing we could be invited to a party or have a friend.
Friend, there are many of us who studied and worked with cryptography and distributed systems while also spending times with friends and attending social events. Consider speaking to someone about this.
Why would an organization deliberately put their core business outside the jurisdiction where they are incorporated, have offices, or do their primary business? They would not, just for some sort of tinfoil hat avoidance of legal repercussions, while in fact they could compound their legal troubles, and invite extra scrutiny, if they are crossing state lines, and/or setting up in "interesting" regions.
I think it depends. I don’t think putting their data outside their local jurisdiction would help much because as a cloud provider they would service a lawful warrant across regions unless the accounts are owned by a foreign entity then it would have to be complaint with the region both of the data and the entity owning the account. Some jurisdictions are “safer” than others and some are less willing to honor a warrant from a us court against a local entity.
I think this is fairly complex though to avoid a potential issue that likely won’t exist. By simply instrumenting audit and using service provider encryption services like aws KMS with CMK with audit trails turned on you generally insulate yourself from most warrants. You can still be compelled to turn over data, but it would have to be done with you being aware of it and often with your direct involvement. More importantly you would retain a copy of everything and all your infrastructure. If they have convincing evidence you’re using your infrastructure to commit crimes the cloud provider may freeze your account, though, but it would have to be more than “we think you have evidence of a crime in your data” and more like “you are using ec2 instances to commit crimes actively”
I cannot find the story at the moment, but the county sheriff and other government officials made threats against a local reporter and newspaper in Idaho because they were doing their job. The reporter finally quit and moved.
The slow death of local journalism is leaving local government unaccountable, and even where journalists still operate they’re at risk from those in power.
127 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadThat said, based on the information in the comments here it sounds like the mother of the owner who lived at home with the owner at the time of the raid has died. This is incredibly sad. The use of police force always has consequences even if they're not physical.
Whenever I plugged in 1.1.1.1 I had a sneaking feeling of "maybe this is a bad idea" based on random comments claiming problems on HN, but this is the first I've been bitten by it.
Thanks!
I think I set it off initially by trying to complete the captcha using keyboard input, which I actually captured on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmbXyP46W9I
After that, this browser's fingerprint got tagged, and I haven't been able to get past it since. But using another browser from the same computer (and connection) worked fine.
"Stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal police raids on her home and the Marion County Record newspaper office Friday, 98-year-old newspaper co-owner Joan Meyer, otherwise in good health for her age, collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.
She had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand. Neither was she able to sleep Friday night.
She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and a router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them. Electronic cords were left in a jumbled pile on her floor.
Joan Meyer’s ability to stream TV shows at her home and to get help through her Alexa smart speakers were taken away with the electronics. "
Interestingly they appear to use javascript to disable copy-paste. I was going to copy it into a gist.
Read about Eric Garner for "repercussions" of literal caught-on-camera homicide.
It took an entire country rioting to get justice for George Floyd.. there won't even be an investigation into this.
The US has federal law enforcement, and local law enforcement conspiracies against Constitutionally protected activity are within their jurisdiction, so this description is wrong, both in general and as specifically relevant to the situation at hand.
> and statute that any negligence by police is unassailable.
No such statute exist, I think you are misremembering, badly, the judge made (not statutory) qualified immunity doctrine, which applies to civil liability only for offenses without clear precedent establishing them as violations of rights.
That happens all the time when the police do something stupid to families with access to good attorneys.
This thread is talking about criminal charges, which are probably about 0% certain.
assuming the newspaper's allegations are correct, in the best plausible case, her family sues the city government for wrongful death, qualified immunity shields the thugs, the family wins the case and gets awarded a large amount of money that the government has to pay, which raises taxes on the people living in the area in order to pay it
there is essentially no chance that the district attorney's office will prosecute crooked cops; those crooked cops are their closest collaborators when they are doing what they do 99% of the time, which is prosecuting poor people who don't work for the government. the prosecution of derek chauvin was no more a matter of business as usual than the prosecution of julian assange
(First two entries on this page) https://www.justice.gov/crt/statutes-enforced-criminal-secti...
i'm guessing less than 5
it's true that federal prosecutors have the freedom to prosecute local cops without themselves becoming unemployable, in a way that non-federal prosecutors do not
There was enough criminal activity under those provisions and coordinated DOJ civil litigation (which often is a product of investigations that start as criminal investigation of a specific incident, but end up discovering systemic problems in the investigated department) against local police departments under the civil provisions of civil rights law that cutting back on both was a major and public priority of the Trump Administration when it came into office in 2017.
While I can’t think of many recent notable convictions (off the top of my head, the four MPD officers convicted related to George Floyd's murder are the only ones that jump to mind), officers involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting will be going on trial under it this year (current trial date is the end of October, IIRC; the one who reached a plea deal for helping prepare the falsified warrant application pled under a more general conspiracy statute.)
But, while its not a lot of prosecutions, its enough to show that it is more than a theoretical possibility where multiple police officers deliberately act together against a Constitutional rights and leave someone dead as a consequence.
This is far more tenuous.
All this is, sadly, is now an emotional bullet point in a future civil rights suit.
Two problems: IIED is a civil tort, not a crime, misdemeanor or otherwise. Second, the rule you state usually doesn't exist; many states have abolished the misdemeanor manslaughter rule or limited iy to a narrow class of misdemeanors, so that death in the course of a misdemeanor isn’t automatically manslaughter, and in states that retain it the class of manslaughter it becomes is a often a wobbler (can itself be a misdemeanor, or a felony, not always a felony.)
It’s almost certain there’s no criminal case related to the death of the co-owner, even if the warrant should not have been issued. The fact is it was issued by a judge, and it doesn’t sound like the police did anything specifically outside the scope of the warrant.
If the warrant was issued illegally and there was some provable animus on behalf of the police, and/or it was done as clear harassment, a civil case is the most likely to succeed. By establishing certain facts such as these and proving the degree of distress caused, they can likely bring about a significant judgement against the city and possibly go as far as a sanction on the judge depending on how she was involved.
If it turns out it was a conspiracy between the restaurant owner and the police where they conspired to manipulate the judge into issuing an illegal warrant, the restaurant owner is the most likely to face a criminal charge.
I suspect they will also pursue a criminal or civil case on the basis of harassment of journalists doing protected work based on a false identity theft assertion to justify avoiding the legal requirement to issue a subpoena rather than a warrant. The co-owners death won’t be a material fact in that sort of case but I’m sure would be mentioned to sharpen the case.
Regardless I expect popcorn is warming all over the country among folks with an interest in law.
The death would absolutely be relevant in a criminal case (e.g., under the applicable federal statute matching the described conspiracy against protected conduct, it changes the maximum penalty from ten years to death or life in prison), in a civil case, it may also be relevant, as it would likely be among the harms forming the basis for damages. (It may even be the basis of the tort, e.g., if pursued as wrongful death, where the part you describe is the “wrongful” part.)
Wayback Machine is broken. Spooky.
However they're publishing now it's likely in a very ad hoc rickety manner with limited access to primary resource keys, passwords, et al.
Timely reminder for some here to look at their own work flow setups and ask themselves "what would I do tomorrow if everything I see now was burned up, flooded out, confiscated, etc."
Better for them to start with the very simple exercise of "how much of my life will 2FA make inaccessible if I lose only my phone?"
I don't see anything particularly telling here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annika_Smethurst
She seems to have made a name for herself exposing the corruption of a few Liberal Party politicians. The Liberal Party of Australia is right-wing, contrary to what Americans might expect.
Goaded on by then Australian PM Scott Morrison who was regarded (in Australian terms) as a bit of a mini Trump crossed with a holy roller evangelical meglomaniac.
* On 15 April 2020, the High Court of Australia ruled that the search warrant used in the raid was invalid.
As was apparent at the time, the over reach was deliberate, a strategy of heavy stick now, get the infomation we need, kick the consequences down the road.
* On 27 May 2020 the AFP announced that Smethurst would not be charged over her stories that "...relied on classified intelligence documents".
Even if that's the angle, I don't get it. She exposed right-wing politicians and suffered retaliation by those right-wing politicians. How can this be evidence of a far-right affiliation?
You're entitled to vote how you want, of course, but taking disagreement as evidence of being correct generally isn't sound logic.
> (I also fully expect this comment to also get flagged.)
I think we can do better, claims of persecution are just as tiresome as groupthink.
If the latter, then, again, a lot of people disagreeing with you isn't generally good evidence of being correct. You might be correct, but the downvotes aren't the thing that proves it. Personally, I'd have a think about why.
If it's the former, from what I've seen here comments get removed for tone or being off-topic, not for disagreement.
I don't count mere downvotes as "flagging", not the least because I want to think words still have meaning.
[1]: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/747297210613498216/11...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37106062
I think that's what the problem is. The post in the screenshot is unnecessarily combative. It's not conducive to good discussion. It doesn't have anything to do with beliefs, it's just picking a fight. Change 'right' to 'left' or whatever group and it would've been flagged just the same.
If I thought the other person just wanted a fight, I'd ignore them. If I thought a good discussion might be had I'd go something like
"I think X and Y is good evidence of A. Why do you think that isn't the case?"
Murdoch press tends toward the right .. but that's far too simplistic, Murdoch's media empire seeks eyeballs, stokes controversy and works towards Murdoch's goals, more power with less control by others.
In this instance they were happy to expose secret Government conversations about spying on citizens as it ticked a bunch of boxes.
As for Smethurst she is relatively neutral, but can be counted on to do good reporting as directed by her masthead and editors.
I suspect you got downvotes by non Australians who lumped this story in with Veritas depite there being a world of difference between the stories and the reporting work put into them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/ashley-biden-...
Heavy handed but no pity in this case, these people are vile and discredit the honor of real journalists.
It's one thing to be passionate about one's beliefs and act on them, but lying and actively distorting the truth to for the sole intention of character assassination to win over the voters is slimy.
And at least within my social circle, there's zero loyalty to party over country. As this is about the Biden family, it's generally agreed that if crimes occurred they should be investigated and tried.
The key problem is that the detractors don't care about any crimes, they only seem to care that their political enemies are destroyed. tl,dr: the fomented outrage is purely political theater.
Project Veritas is not a journalist endeavor -- it's a political black-ops organization that operates in bad faith.
Really? Do they care about the crime itself or just who committed it? Do they think that crimes don't matter when their side does it?
I'm fine with prosecuting Biden(s) for any legitimate crimes. I'm also more than fine with doing the same for his predecessor and every one else in office. Can you say the same?
Do you only care if it's Joe Biden as the accused or do you care about the corruption implied by it?
> Do you only care if it's Joe Biden as the accused or do you care about the corruption implied by it?
I care about both, naturally. So should everybody. I care that a person committed crimes of corruption, and I care that the same person has been occupying the post of VP of the United States, and now occupies the post of the President of the United States (of course, for persons that did not occupy such posts, I still care for the former, the latter just makes it so much worse). Of course, the detail that his name begins with "Bi" and ends with "den" is purely coincidental, neither me nor anybody else (including maybe his personal enemies?) cares about this. To the measure that anybody cares, his personality is completely irrelevant, his position and his crimes are both relevant. And the combination of the position and the crimes enhances this relevancy - it's one thing when a night guard on a used tire recycling plant is corrupt, another thing when it's the President.
My point is that I'm for the laws to be applied evenly. It's clear that Hunter was trading on the appearance of access to his father (which is slimy but not necessarily illegal if the elder Biden did not engage at that level.
All those words and no acknowledgement of who else might be worthy of investigation, because that's the whole point of this affair -- whataboutism and misdirection.
Continuing this dialog with you is no different than trying to reason with an anti-vaxxer or a religious zealot, so we'll leave it at this and you can walk away "winning" the discussion because I forfeit this game. Congratulations!
If the idea of democracy is to have a "marketplace of ideas" let's definitely do that. Let's examine policy and the data supporting or refuting it. But counterfeit data should not be part of it.
> And democracy where the information is controlled by the politicians is not a democracy at all - it's just a simulacrum.
I'm not sure where this comes into play. We are awash in information and now suffering from disinformation campaigns (straight out of KGB, comrade). The government doesn't seem to be stopping you from consuming Fox, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, etc.
Only if you call editing the videos - which literally every other news outlet does, nobody publishes full unedited raw footage in the reports, it's just not how it is done - "altering material". Otherwise, Veritas publishes exactly what their subjects said or wrote or otherwise did.
> But counterfeit data should not be part of it.
Except Veritas didn't counterfeit anything. On the contrary, as we now know, the diary that FBI attacked them over was entirely genuine - and they still didn't use it, btw. On the other hand, only in the recent years we have witnessed a number of cases where false (and as we now know, with the advance knowledge of their falsity) statements were published about the veracity of certain data, and various accusations of foreign interference and such were thrown around, including by very prominent mass media, and so far I did not hear anybody even apologizing for that, let alone excluded from the "marketplace of ideas", despite those acts of counterfeiting. I wonder why is that. Maybe because the exclusion power is wielded by their friends, and their counterfeits help those friends stay in power?
> We are awash in information and now suffering from disinformation campaigns (straight out of KGB, comrade)
And the same people who are managing these disinformation campaigns are claiming people who trying to get information past them are illegitimate, not real journalists and thus deserve suppression at the hands of law enforcement (because the First Amendment has the little known "y'all folks realize this all is only for real journalists, right?" clause). They are the ones who purport to "fight disinformation" and claim extraordinary powers of speech control to do that. A regime where such powers exist are not democracy - at least not any that is worth of the name.
> The government doesn't seem to be stopping you from consuming Fox, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, etc.
They are trying (so far by pressuring social networks and other distribution channels to suppress them) but so far they are failing. The First Amendment is pretty strong still, thanks Founding Fathers. But nothing is impossible in politics, and with enough effort it can be - and is being - eroded and ultimately destroyed. In countries where there's no such strong protections, it is plausible that we will witness this within a decade or sooner.
The sad thing is that it very well may be that you believe it is true. That doesn't make it true however.
It’s socially conservative. Why the hyperbolic language? It’s only “extreme” when juxtaposed with the political expressions of “polite society”, not America at large, which skews conservative on social issues.
> propaganda
Everything is propaganda, as everything is political. We just call things propaganda when it’s the kind we disagree with.
> directly participated in multiple criminal conspiracies
I’m sure the police in this town would say the same of the newspaper in question.
> never produced anything even vaguely resembling journalism
Well that’s not true on its face. I find a lot of it cringy, but even when I find that they don’t merit the conclusions that PV comes to (which is quite often), they are quite transparent.
AfD is a far, far right political party, not journalists. They've been raided for various things apparently, one being the overthrow of the government.
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-far-right-afd-and-the-reichsb...
Also,
> After the council meeting, Newell acknowledged the accuracy of the information and said she understood that coming forward with allegations about it might expose the information rather than preserve its confidentiality.
> The state suspended her license because of a drunken-driving conviction in 2008 and a series of other driving convictions. [...]
lol
None of these police should ever be allowed power over another human being ever again. They can muck stables for the rest of their days.
Source: https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-the...
There are many place on earth where writing such a story is itself a crime because it’s illegal to criticize the government in any way.
While the American law enforcement system is broken in a systemic and fundamental way, and there are better places, and there are worse places, there is at least a system of laws that often provides relief and redress - but most importantly there exists avenues to fix the system over time and the open ability to advocate loudly for a restructuring of the government and its powers. This is a blessing in every society that has it, including in America.
Sounds like they'd be motivated to do so now.
Once upon a time I built one of the major providers sensitive data services, and a typical artifact of a warrant for a cloud provider is a stipulation the warrant discovery be done without alerting the customer to the search. By encrypting your data with a key management service and enabling the providers audit services (aka cloudtrail) it is impossible by design to execute the warrant without the customer receiving audit trail information about the providers access of the keys and the data service. In theory the provider could make back doors, but the law actually is on their side in that they are not required to take extraordinary measures that materially impacts their business to circumvent controls.
Further there is no physical seizure possible.
I know most small newspapers this is beyond their technical ability or understanding. I challenge this community, maybe there should be an OSS cloud deployable journalism platform with strong security, information resiliency, and defense in depth and breadth against the state.
In the US, if your business is on the internet, it is crossing state lines, even if all your computers are in the same state.
In fact, pretty much all business in the US is considered across state lines.
I think this is fairly complex though to avoid a potential issue that likely won’t exist. By simply instrumenting audit and using service provider encryption services like aws KMS with CMK with audit trails turned on you generally insulate yourself from most warrants. You can still be compelled to turn over data, but it would have to be done with you being aware of it and often with your direct involvement. More importantly you would retain a copy of everything and all your infrastructure. If they have convincing evidence you’re using your infrastructure to commit crimes the cloud provider may freeze your account, though, but it would have to be more than “we think you have evidence of a crime in your data” and more like “you are using ec2 instances to commit crimes actively”
The slow death of local journalism is leaving local government unaccountable, and even where journalists still operate they’re at risk from those in power.