The rebellion had to raise the temperature faster, more dramatically, in order to wake people up. To make the frogs realize it was hot and jump out.
Lonni Jung: "You realize what you've set in motion? People will suffer."
Luthen Rael: "That's the plan."
Luthen believes that to succeed, they need to anger the Empire and make them come down hard on the citizens, which in turn will fuel the rebellion.
I sat through it going, "how the hell did they manage to make a work of art out of a Star Wars series?", which even makes it better. You don't have to care about Star Wars AT ALL to appreciate Andor, but if you do, watching Andor -> Rogue One -> Originals back to back makes the earlier stuff better.
You'll think I'm over-selling it. Please watch it, then come back and tell me I'm wrong.
This is an amazing feat.
if only every prequel could accomplish this.
C.J. Cregg: Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the U. S. House of Representatives?
Leo McGarry: Well, they'll get around to it sooner or later.
C.J. Cregg: So let's make it sooner - let's make it now.
The Rebels were 'accelerationists', but the Empire was also wanting it to escalate. They played into each others hands.
Both sides wanted escalation, so it is positive feedback loop.
When societies get to the point where everyone is escalating, there isn't much to stop it. The cool heads are drowned out.
Edit: just to clarify, I'm not denying it's appropriate; it just seems remarkable to me that it's being used so often lately.
The frogs have it easy. All they have to do is jump out. One individual action and they're safe. (Until the scientist catches them and uses them in more experiments, anyway.)
The situation for people living under governments becoming gradually more oppressive is much more complicated. You don't know for sure that the water will keep heating up. Escape is extremely difficult and costly. Turning off the heat takes massive collective action. A third of the frogs actively want the water to boil, and another third don't really care.
Probably because a country that was famous for trying to spread their idea of "freedom" all across the world, seemingly can't notice themselves that the country is rapidly declining into full on authoritarian dictatorship, with a very skewed perspective of "freedom", and the people who are opposing it, aren't rioting (yet at least).
The judicial arm of the government aren't even enforcing the laws of the country anymore! Not sure how, but it'll get worse before it gets better. Quite literally a fitting analogy in this case.
To us on the outside, getting filtered news that trickles down, it just seems like there are no candidates. One is 79 and one is 83, where are all the young politicians? Why does the media choose to only emphasize a few of them at the time?
Actually, both major parties (not always at the same time) have a long track record of working very hard to promote voting for third-party candidates, doing things like funneling funds covertly (or simply nudging donors) to fund their efforts, assigning party activists to support third-party efforts, etc.
Of course, they exclusively do this for third parties whose appeal is, or is expected to be, mainly to people whos preference, if choices were limited to the major parties, would be for the other major party.
Because it's not just rhetoric, as long as the electoral system isn't reformed to change this, getting people to vote for a minor party instead of your opponent like demoralizing them and getting them to stay home, or disenfranchising them (two other things the major parties have been known to try to do to populations likely to vote for their opponents otherwise) is a lot easier and exactly half as useful, per voter, as getting them to switch to you from the other major party.
It is also helped because many of the people who are insiders in the major party are secretly voting for the third party when the majority of primary voters (who are rarely well informed) force someone they don't like on the party. They can't do anything this time, but they can send a message to each other where they failed.
It actually works just as well if the third party fails to attract the voters with its message but provides a reason not to vote for the targeted major party candidate that would not work as well if the messenger was the major party using the third party as a stalking horse. Because discouraging voters that would otherwise vote for the other party has the exact same effect on the outcome as moving them to a minor party.
But when one side represents fascism and the other doesn't the choice is still easy.
Down ballot. There are very few elections where nothing on the ballot is of stake.
Biden was no longer a candidate even by the time the last election happened.
Look to Mamdani. Note that the real election there was in the primary. If you squint a bit, the US electoral system looks like the French one. There's two rounds of voting, and in the first one you get to pick who is the crook that will be put up against the fascist in the final round.
It's going to be boring and time consuming, but people have to use the levers they do have available to do internal Democrat party politics if they want to improve the situation.
That 38 year old, along with the rest of the center left candidates, all dropped out to ensure the 70 year old candidate could beat the other 70 year old candidate. "The South" had nothing to do with it.
Only 54% in SC say homosexuality should be accepted by society. 42% in Arkansas. In 2025! https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1lxzznb/acceptance...
How many EC votes do the states with a 70+ rating add to?
The two-party system will always leave you with suboptimal choices when it comes to casting your vote, but the alternative to Trump was two decades younger.
At the risk of sounding sarky, you are going to have to do more than protest at the weekend (!) to stop what is happening to you.
Yes, some protests happen when it's convenient for the protesters. That does not invalidate their protests, nor any others with a similar message. It does not weaken the message nor the movement.
This is still moot. Even if they appear such (even if they are such) it does not diminish the validity nor righteousness of their message.
> A "peaceful protest" is an oxymoron.
This is false by a plain understanding of the words. A "protest" is an expression against something. "Peaceful" means nonviolent. Obviously expressions can be nonviolent.
> adjective Not involving violence or employing force.
>Undisturbed by strife, turmoil, or disagreement
Whenever ICE goes into a new city, they're meeting more and more community resistance. The protestors have mostly been very smart about remaining civil, which continues making ICE look worse and worse as they tear gas and arrest peaceful protestors.
The supreme court has ruled (somewhat surprisingly) that Trump can't deploy the National Guard into cities any longer.
Trump's approval rating has continued steadily declining since he took office, and the midterms are shaping up to be a bloodbath.
I'm mid-40s and this is the best-organized and most successful demonstration movement I've witnessed in my lifetime. Occupy got close, but that felt like something that the more 'extreme' ones were actively participating in, with more passive support from the populace. Now it feels like everyone is getting directly involved in one way or another.
In what countries do undercover police drive marked vehicles and wear insignia of their agency?
Tons of these ICE agents are in unmarked vehicles and wear no official insignia. The guy who shot Renee Good did not, on any part of his body or exposed gear, actually have ICE insignia on him.
[1] In 2020, during the height of the protests and the pandemic, low-income communities of color experienced the sharpest increases in firearm violence and homicides https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/firearm-deaths/index.html [2] Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Black (52%), Latino (66%), and Asian (61%) Americans oppose defunding the police. https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-communities-of-color-want...
A time honored protest chant is "hey hey, ho ho, [target of protest] has got to go." That's just how protests work --- don't like what someone or an agency is doing, march to get rid of them. Getting rid of them may not be achievable or desirable, but it resonates.
Given the number of high profile shootings related to totally unnecessary situations the agency has put its agents into with apparently zero preparation and training, it's not surprising that people want it to go. I don't remember this kind of thing when INS was doing activities with the same kinds of reported goals.
It's not a difficult read, but its authors are leftists and the language may sometimes be difficult for readers with sensitivities related to the goodness of Democrats or Republicans or whatever.
(I think maybe I'll re-read it today as well; it's been a long time.)
I don't think there are many developed countries where their immigration officers are routinely tear gassing students and bystanders, no. I don't think there are many developed countries where their immigration officers are detaining indigenous peoples in private, for-profit detention centers without charging them with any kind of crime.
Feel free to point out other developed countries where this is now just a routine occurrence though.
> I understand protesting ICE for better accountability, they certainly need to be held accountable
ICE is recent. We don't need ICE, the organization and people that are currently doing what they're doing, to continue to be a part of the government. If the whole organization is behaving badly, the whole organization should be scrapped and a new organization with different people and a different plan and enforcement style should be created.
ICE was created in 2003. We had immigration enforcement actions happen well before 2003. Getting rid of ICE does not mean "no longer enforce immigration laws".
Looking it up, it seems that ICE used to be part of INS, which was broken up into: -USCIS: Handles services (green cards, citizenship). -CBP: Handles the borders (Border Patrol and ports of entry). -ICE: Handles interior enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations).
So I'm not really sure I follow. If we get rid of ICE, who handles Handles interior enforcement (raids, investigations, and deportations)? Another org?
This feels like people who argue to get rid of the police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces", or something of the likes.
Yes, a different org, back under the Department of Justice, staffed by very different people and with a different way of going about enforcement of immigration law. I'd argue there have been a lot of issues with the Department of Homeland Security and that massive parts of the organization should probably be reworked.
The DHS' mission is supposedly all about protecting people from terrorist attacks, go read the arguments on why it was a good thing right after it was created to see that kind of connection[0]. Why do we have an organization designed to fight terrorists in charge of handling civil infractions? Its no wonder we have agents treating everyone as a terrorist; its what the department is supposed to focus on, fighting terrorists! Its almost like maybe we should have a different group of agents equipped to handle potential terrorist threats to the agents making sure foreigners aren't overstaying visas or working while not authorized to work.
In another direction but related to this, we should also pretty much scrap and redo all of our immigration laws as well. They really don't work well and are generally pretty bad. Note I'm not saying we should have no immigration laws at all, but the systems we have today are largely dumb, ineffective, and just end up hurting a lot of people while not really doing much good for the American people.
> This feels like people who argue to get rid of the police, and replace it with "Community Security Forces", or something of the likes.
A lot of what the police do these days probably should be re-tasked to different, potentially new agencies with different trainings and different focuses. Police these days are expected to handle such a wide range of community issues, many of which probably don't need the same kind of people who respond to violent threats and what not. When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis we probably shouldn't send people who spend their days training to perceive every action as a threat to be handled with a gun as the first line responder. When there's someone on the street strung out on drugs having the police respond and put them in jail/prison probably isn't helping the situation.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20071114000911/http://www.dhs.go...
Yeah, it's strange that this take is so polarizing.
> I imagine you'd agree that if ICE agents/supervisors act beyond the scope of their duties or with excessive force, they should be disciplined/prosecuted. Yes of course, it's hard to disagree with that.
It may appear innocuous yet it normalizes ICE's actions as mere "immigration enforcement". Their actions are far more and far worse than that, as you note:
> ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem to be used politically.
It is not an issue of immigration laws being enforced, it is an issue of rights being infringed. The "overly aggressive" tactics being "used politically" is exactly the problem.
Despite the ridiculous narrative that Obama and Biden were "bringing in illegals en masse to vote for Democrats," if you look at the actual numbers, it's not surprising that folks are down-voting that comment.
Mostly because those previous administrations (Obama and Biden) managed to deport many more undocumented folks than either this or the previous Trump administration, without the thuggery, violence and murder we're seeing now.
I'd note that even without the gratuitous violence and intimidation, folks were also protesting Obama's and Biden's ICE activities.
Because the real issue around immigration in the US is that our system is broken and we haven't constructively addressed those problems for nearly 40 years.
So no. I'm not surprised by the down-votes because there's nuance that's being glossed over and, while doing so, giving violent thugs a pass by claiming that they're "enforcing the law," even though they're doing a crap job while harming our citizens, legal residents and helping to destroy what's left of our civil society.
I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just pointing out a few things not mentioned in your or GP's comments.
I combined my response to your comment[0] and its parent[1], as I mentioned:
I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just pointing out a
few things not mentioned in your or GP's comments.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46620707
It also wasn't an agency prior to 9/11. It should be dissolved. All ERO agents should be prosecuted and or barred from all future public service.
I think we're one or two bad incidents away from wide-scale rioting.
Right underneath the headline. That’s pretty normal for the FBI, assuming they had a search warrant.
The problem is that "classified materials" means whatever the government wants it to mean in this context. Is there a journalist you want to target for a particular reason? Just accuse them of handling classified information, which they don't ever have to produce to the public because it's "classified".
As in, the US's full knowledge of the technical capacity of Israel's nuclear weapons program, including how we obtained that information. That's now in the hands of the Saudis, Iran, the Chinese, the Russians, etc. And it was found in a fucking bathroom.
Yet nobody seems to care that a Trump-appointed lackey magically (whose husband has credibly been linked to organized crime) found themselves on the case "by chance" and issued a whole bunch of bullshit non-appealable verbal rulings on how and why Donald Trump is innocent.
On what grounds? Just repeating a BS assertion doesn't make it true.
The feds have been abusing journalists like this as long as I've been alive. It's not a lot, it's a trickle of them, maybe one a year or so in recent years. But one raid on one person isn't unprecedented or abnormal in any way. Now if you want to talk about frequency or the minimum size of thorn in side they'll go after it might be a different story. But nobody is saying that.
I might think the behavior is despicable and probably also unlawful, and their "they had classified info" excuse is flimsy BS, but it is unfortunately somewhat normal.
The problem is way, way, way worse, way longer running and way more institutionally entrenched than flabbergastingly moronic "these specific people right here right now did misdeeds" surface level assessment may comfortingly imply.
Who said they were?
>Raiding a reporter's house is very much an abnormal act to have taken place.
Only by invoking the most numerical slight of hand sort of "a DV is abnormal because we hand out a thousand traffic tickets a day and make only one or two DV arrests" logic is it abnormal.
For the past 5+yr the FBI has raided the home of about one journalist per year. Every time the allegation has been about investigating the source of some leak.
They didn't do one in 2024/2025 I don't think. Time Burke and the Kanye thing, Project Veritas in 2022 and 2023 and the ABC news guy the year before are recent ones that come to mind. I'm not gonna say they get a pass, but this is "the normal amount" for them.
Once again, that doesn't make it right and I shouldn't have to say this but this comment should not be construed as an endorsement of the FBI or any specific activities they engage in.
Those were for computer fraud, possession of stolen property, and possession of child pornography, respectively. The first amendment allows journalists to publish classified material, it does not give them free license to commit crimes.
“ Natanson was told that she is not a target of the investigation, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
Instead, it appears to be related to an ongoing probe of a government contractor in Maryland.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/media/fbi-hannah-natanson-was...
James Burke, the Veritas guy, the ABC News guy, etc.
But don’t you think it’s more interesting you care less about a journalist being raided, then you do the outcome of a diary that explains that Biden according to his daughter sexually abused her?
This is blatantly false two people were charged in connection with interstate transport of stolen goods, and the raid was part of the investigation. The diary was taken because it was the stolen good in question and important for the FBI's case on prosecuting the individuals charged.
>then you do the outcome of a diary that explains that Biden according to his daughter sexually abused her?
The diary was never published, verified or entered into evidence VS the current POTUS has had multiple credible allegations with affidavits and testimony
I was not aware that the filings were public.
That is relatively minor compared to ICE shooting protestors and then stopping people from giving them medical attention.
Interestingly enough, that was an event related to classified information with the same newspaper.
> Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop another Snowden type leak.
In what way is what she was doing similar to Snowden? Snowden was a huge bombshell, with droves of material, proving what a lot of people suspected was happening, but had no proof.
This journalist seems to have been receiving a ton of "small leaks", of improper firings and a lot of other federal misbehavior, but all within the US, and all with things we already knew was happening.
So rather than "one big sea of bad", she was investigating "a thousand small cuts of bad" across thousands of people who had evidence.
Snowden leaks had global implications that changed relationships between countries, while this seems mostly internal to the US.
I bet it's the recipe for the military-grade copium some people are on
Trump is merely a symptom of the problem that is the Imperial Presidency. If we can’t tackle the problem itself we’ll get another politician doing the exact same shit after Trump.
Unless the system changes, it'll continue to let people misuse it to their own gain. Trump was hardly the first one, and depending on how things will go, he might be the last, but "last" in a good way or in a bad way remains to be seen.
Who is responsible for the system if not the individual - and the collective thereof?
The fundamental problem is the citizen not being educated or caring enough about their own independence and state of being in the framework of a global economy and sovereign nation state
It helped my mental model a lot at the very least.
I think we came away with very different conclusions
To me it is abject proof that individuals do not have the mental emotional or other capacity to actually behave in the modern world such that they retain their mental independence and develop a sense of personal epistemology
Humans are way too dumb and prone to propaganda to actually have a coherent society at the scale needed so that we don’t collectively kill each other through poorly identified and attributed externalities
Media, from obelisks to tiktok, enables exploitation of our evolutionary quirk.
For example, how is someone who led/incited an insurrection against the government able to become head of said government? Already there, something is gravely wrong. You don't let undemocratic leaders lead a democratic society. So the system is broken, and the current administration is proof of that.
Otherwise what other commentators said will happen, someone who might even be worse than Trump will eventually lead the country.
The only answer to that is the people who form the citizenry.
If the citizens cannot influence the system such that they can actually affect change on the system then they are irrelevant in it and the system needs to be replaced
As long as they continue to fail to organize then they will continue to be dominated by it
That’s just reality
There is no alternative organization that can counter the global capitalist system currently
A five year old can see the problems with a lot of this stuff, which once upon a time you'd defend with vague notions of a self-policing culture or the ghost of ethics in governance. Those kinds of non-safeguards can work fine in a stable system, but they inherently rely on foreknowledge of future conditions not changing in unpredictable ways.
The self-reinforcing recursive loop underlying all this is that the systems of governance can only be changed by the governors. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that democracy will fail so long as it's representative - the incentives to fix the system itself are simply not there because any inefficiency is exploitable for personal gain (so why fix it?) The doomsday proposition that comes out of that though is that the system cannot be changed - only replaced once it decisively breaks. Maybe that's what all this is. I would hate to find another bottom but I fear there's more to go before we get there.
It has big problems when the people running it don't embody the values that it depends on.
We have been setting the stage and preparing the throne for an American dictator or emperor for at least 50 years, just waiting for one to decide to sit in the chair and wield the power we've laid at their feet. The only thing that stopped this from happening sooner is that none of the prior administrations truly wanted to do this.
Bush, in particular, could have become dictator easily after 9/11. I dislike George W. pretty strongly but I do give him a little credit here.
"They're gonna take my guns away!" Yet that never happens.
But people are being targeted for what they say, for disagreeing publicly. That's real. And a lot of "patriots" don't seem to notice or care.
They notice. They care. They just love it.
The "free speech absolutist" folks never were.
I too wish people also cared as much about the 1st amendment, but sadly I think the tide is turning on that. Too many on both the right and left seem okay with censorship and harassment.
Things like this is just another way of trying to drive a wedge.
With the ridiculous leeway American law enforcement has when it comes to harming people ("qualified immunity"), I don't think that second amendment will be relevant until there's an outright civil war happening. And when it comes to that, one or both sides have access to predator drones and fighter jets.
The people claiming that having guns won't save you against the weight of the army are only partly correct. Having a few guns won't save me personally. I would certainly be killed on my own. But no government can kill everyone, either as a practical matter, or simply because you still need folks to produce the food. When everybody is armed, the government simply cannot oppress them to the same degree.
Police can kill you if they feel fear or pretend to feel fear. And having a gun was already ruled valid legal reasom for police to kill people.
If protesters carried guns, ICE could legally murder them. Not just J.D.Vance legaly, but legaly per how courts interpret such situations.
But I think you are underestimating the effect it will have on individual federal agents, who might decide the pay isn't good enough anymore.
These scenes are also put on for the benefit of the politicians watching.
They already sorted it out - in open carry states. In the above situation, the court in open carry state sides with cops.
It is really simple. Sentencing cop for on duty murder is extraordinary hard even in clear cut cases. Guns presence means a cop can say he was afraid. And afraid cop is entitled to kill.
> But I think you are underestimating the effect it will have on individual federal agents, who might decide the pay isn't good enough anymore.
You are over estimating it. They would just shoot and feel good about it.
Even if they left, the state would send better trained troop the next time.
The political roles being different is key factor - ICE wants to kill and this administration wants them to kill. It makes them feel manly.
Frankly, the theory that armed forces would step back is absurd. They are cowards, but they are not afraid to kill. They are so afraid of everything that they are more likely to kill
And other side are people with moral limits. People who are not afraid and are showimg courage every day, but not murderers. And ICE knows that.
No one in ICE fears life ... they fear being emasculated.
They don't need to take your gun away, they just need to give you enough reasons to not use them. And even in 1779, it required lots of planning and coordination, and lots of loss to life and property to achieve change that way.
The focus should be more on elected politicians, and voters themselves and how they vote/not vote. If the mid-terms were being held today, how many people would vote? It's scary, who wants to risk their lives for a vote? not many.
I fear the governors of states will have to intervene, and the way that goes might lead to a conflict with the federal gov.
I'll be honest, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna take it for what it's worth ... nothing.
That's certainly possible. Maybe even likely. Fortunately, we now have more information[0] to correlate whether or not that's true.
Perhaps soon we'll see a "Show HN" with a searchable database of those folks with links to known "patriot" groups. That would be interesting.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/whistleblower-leaks-person...
> the dataset includes names, work emails, phone numbers, job roles, and other employment details for frontline agents and support staff—a level of detail that has alarmed officials concerned about the safety and privacy of federal employees and their families
Worth noting that all of the information specified is public information and the people it concerns are public officials.
That never happens because the parties vested in that right resist every single time. Effectively. With real numbers. Not media campaigns or propaganda social media mechanisms. Largely without protesting, with no need to get into degrees of legality in doing so.
You don’t get to say “that never happens” as if it isn’t the explicit goal of an entire political party. You get to realize “we don’t let that happen”.
As to current events… the mass deportation guy won elections, why is it you expect armed resistance to federal officers carrying out the exact thing the majority of voters wanted?
You can disagree on anything you like, but, I find the “why aren’t people shooting federal officers who are enforcing immigration law!?” posts to be extreme affirmations of echo chamber. If you don’t like it, get your reps to change the laws, not suggest murdering people who you don’t like.
I don't think they're bad people, just think sometimes we humans seem stuck in a very us vs them mindset and it becomes more about my team vs your team than anything else.
One day, a woman wrote to me on Signal, asking me not to respond. She lived alone, she messaged, and planned to die that weekend. Before she did, she wanted at least one person to understand: Trump had unraveled the government, and with it, her life.
I called William, feeling panic rise like hot liquid in the back of my throat.
He told me to stay calm. He told me to send the woman a list of crisis resources, starting with the 988 national suicide hotline. He told me to remember that reporters are not trained therapists or counselors, just human beings doing the best we can.
“You should try to help, but whatever this woman does or doesn’t do, it may happen regardless of anything you say,” William said. “It’s not up to you.”
I did what he said, then fell asleep refreshing the app, checking for a reply. The next morning, a message appeared below her name: “This person isn’t using Signal.”Chemical and/or clinical depression can be debilitating, and i consider it mental instability.
1. Feed cat, ensure that friend will adopt cat.
2. Talk to any family members.
3. Uninstall Signal
4. Take too many Ambien.
Or:
“I’m sending this to you confidentially so please don’t respond since metadata will show I contacted you.”
Reporter: responds anyway
What's the point of the reporter not responding?
I should have worded that part more clearly.
-Nils Karlson, Economist and poltical scientist, founder of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, former professor of political science at Linköping university, Sweden, visiting fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, etc.
Did you miss the lesson from the actual guillotine? It’s just another escalation in the cycle. The parties switch from raiding to guillotining each other. The guillotine doesn’t solve the problem, it just raises the stakes.
But Robespierre was a believer in capital-R Reason, and he had to face the National Assembly all the time. So his speeches are a fascinating gradual slippery slope from “it would be good if Jews and actors would get to vote too” to “only Terror will purify the world.”
I’ve got a little book of them, aptly titled “Les plus beaux discours de Robespierre” — his most beautiful speeches. It would be an odd adjective to use about almost any other political monster’s output (excepting Antiquity and the distance we have to them).
The irony being the elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].
Guillotines have historically been a time for the elites to consolidate wealth and power (with some shuffling among them). The poor and middle class eat shit.
(The only exceptions to the first part to my knowledge being the o.g., and only the o.g., communist revolutions in Russia and China. Still shit for the poor and middle class. But the elites fully rotated.)
> For the Terror, that lasted a while, but then we got Napoleon, which was definitely a new chapter
Sure. One which involved shuffling between Bourbons and an imperial Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna brought peace to Europe until WWI. But to the extent the French Revolution benefited ordinary people, it was in Britain and America.
Being temporally proximate to a guillotining is precedentedly fine. Being physically proximate to it is pretty much shit unless you're already powerful (or lucky enough to land a seat in the new oligarchy).
Guillotining–and violence as a tool of politics more broadly–is pretty much a one-way signal in the historical record (outside civil wars). More concentration of wealth and power. Or anarchy. Either way, the poor and middle class end up worse.
As for my civil-war caveat, even that's starting to look one way in the age of information and globally-mobilised proxy-war assets.
2. Modern societies are really complex, and a great deal of information-processing work is required to keep them functioning. Authoritarian governments maintain control by concentrating power, which means there are too few people available to make decisions about the behaviour of the system. A good example is the centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union, which was outperformed by 'the invisible hand of the market', which is really a metaphor for the collective decisions of all participants in market economies. Consequently, authoritarian governments always collapse in the end. It's interesting to note, however, that the Soviet Union and the fascist or quasi-fascist governments in Spain and Portugal lasted much longer than Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, because they built up some institutions that resulted in less concentration of power.
Also, since many people bring up the french revolution. Peak weapons tech back then was front loading muskets and the fights in paris were desparation driven bloodbaths, where such weapons were eventually captured by the revolution. Today, the power gap to be outperformed by free markets is much bigger.
Luckily we're still only in the "kidnap and beat-up by the secret police" phase, haven't had the mass executions yet. Only a singular execution here and there.
> I’m glad to be a bystander and not participant, that’s for sure.
Hope that's because you're not in the USA. USA-based bystanders is how this shit happens.
> Liberal democracy emphasizes the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances between branches of government. Multi-party systems with at least two persistent, viable political parties are characteristic of liberal democracies.
Some administrations may see this as a feature not bug…
But ICE is behaving pretty sloppy. I'm not sure it could get to that point without (just due to risk multiplied by sheer number of interactions) ICE accidentally escalating something via sloppiness, crossing something that they don't value but is a hard line to their local PD security detail, refusing to stop and getting smoked that way, either by their own security or by a passer by while their security shrugs.
A fed might not care about literally doing a George Floyd, but your security force might just walk off rather than be party to that.
As curretly constituted, no. But it doesn't hurt to start contingency planning to build a force that is eventually loyal to its state and the Constitution over the men who hold the office at that time.
Where are you getting this?
J6ers attacking cops is currently being celebrated. That's an ad hoc militia. (Tarrio built an actual one.)
This is nonsense. The numerous videos of the insurgents violently assaulting said police not giving its proponents pause indicates the standard of evidence its propoents are using.
Reporters are not federal employees and it’s not illegal for them to have or discuss classified materials. Most of what Snowden leaked was classified, and remains classified to this day, but you and I can read about it on Wikipedia. The government pursued Snowden because he was legally obligated to protect that info. They did not pursue Barton Gellman because he wasn’t.
So in this case the government is raiding the home of someone who did not commit any crime, in the hopes of getting at people who might have. I think it’s not hard to imagine how this concept could get ugly fast.
It's funny you say that because that'd be just the same, classified information that leaked. They'd just change the codes and try to find who leaked them. The codes themselves would be inconsequential (once changed).
You absolutely can't offer someone money to steal documents. That's clear. Even providing advice on acquiring documents is probably going to be unlawful. And if possession of the document itself is otherwise illegal (i.e., CSAM) there's no protection there.
It isn't necessarily illegal to offer money for a document, particularly if you don't have knowledge of how the document was acquired. I'm not familiar enough with this case to have a strong opinion other than knowing the DoJ elected not to bring charges.
And, yes, it was Trump's DoJ. In this case I'm unaware of any evidence that the decision was politically motived and I still have some confidence that whistleblowers would speak out, particularly given the recent wave of resignations due to directives in Minneapolis. I think people of good will could disagree with me there for sure.
Most courts would assume someone who purchased a private diary of a living person would know that it was stolen.
Prosecutors don't need to prove the buyer actually dispositively knew the document was stolen, only that reasonable person would have known it to be such.
Which would be obvious in this case.
But I appreciate you iterating on this -- I understand your position and while I disagree with you on the question of what "reasonable" would be in this case, I absolutely think that if I could read minds I would find that Project Veritas staffers at the very least knew the diary was stolen.
Obviously not many <$20 stolen objects would warrant an FBI raid, but also if it were actually worth <$20 then Veritas wouldn't have paid $40,000 for it.
AFAICT their journalistic immunity basically got them out of charges for buying goods they knew to be stolen at time of purchase, which is federally illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2315 and separately illegal in all 50 states.
I don't think the O'Keefe raid was justified and it's certainly the first step on a slippery slope. I also think the current situation is a worse violation of norms.
Along with the diary, tax records, cellphone and family photos were stolen from someone's home, then sold for $40,000 to a far-right activist / centrist paragon of journalism James O'Keefe (whichever you prefer). Said paragon was alleged to have paid these (eventually convicted so I'm allowed to say) criminals more money to steal more stuff from this home.
While the warrant's probable cause section was redacted (maybe inappropriately), the facts of the case are still that the person being raided was alleged to have actually participated in an ongoing conspiracy to commit theft and transporting stolen property across state lines.
It's all unacceptable and it's exhausting, but apathy is the enemy here.
The problem is nobody is willing to use their constitutional right to fight for justice, because everyone is deathly afraid of losing even a little bit of their comfortable life.
If people were more willing to use the rights given to them by a specific amendment, none of this would happen.
Absolutely, but you can't make someone believe that things like trans athletes, DEI, multi race populations, and whatever else are all extremely minor things compared to how good your life is, until that good life goes away. Its exactly the same thing as with all the anti vaxxers who were dying on respirators saying that they were wrong and begging people to take the vaccine. Everyone needs a reality check.
And on the other side of the isle, people need to realize that is not just political opinions, some people are truly just evil.
The middle class of America has got to be the most spoiled, pathetic group in all of history.
You have your anarchic situations, International Relations, non-law breaking situations like having a conversation with a friend/stranger, and everything not covered in (signed) (legal) writing.
You have your hierarchy. When the police get involved, when your boss can fire you, legal, etc.. In this case, you still need 4 things to happen: There needs to be a legal basis(Legislature), they need to be caught(Executive), they need to be found guilty (Judicial), it needs to be enforced (Executive).
I wouldn't give up in hierarchy yet. But know the limitations.
> The search came as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.
I looked at a lot of search warrant affidavits in a previous job and there's really nothing all that unusual about this aspect (doing it to a member of the press or doing it on a pretext are separate issues that I'm not commenting on). Police execute search warrants at other locations all the time because the relevant question is whether there is probable cause to believe that there is evidence of the commission of the crime they are investigating at that location, not whether the person who lives or works there is guilty of that particular crime. Given that fact, of course, it's all the more reason that judicial officers should subject search warrant affidavits to careful scrutiny because when they come to look through your stuff they will just turn your house or business upside down and they don't get paid to help you clean up afterwards.
> The warrant, she said, was executed “at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars.”
> Bondi added: “The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
I do wish that the law provided for concepts of minimal damage and repair should there be actual damage (not just creating a mess) that doesn't result in evidence. ie: if you tear open drywall, there better be something behind drywall that was collected as evidence.
However, that's not the case, and even civilly it's hard to collect damages even when it's the "wrong house"... though thatt's one of the few exceptions I've seen... also, iirc, there's been some 4th amendment arguments to construe having to pay for use/damages, not sure where that has landed.
IANAL.
Whren doesn't seem to track in this case or am I missing something? In the example provided, the hunch directly ties the target to the crime ("drug selling"), which matches the stop's pretext. Natanson isn't accused of any crime, she's essentially writing about the "selling of drugs", not organizing or committing it.
Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really at risk of my home being raided and communications seized solely because I might have evidence leading to their conviction?
Then extrapolating this to the implications on freedom of press... This doesn't sit well with me.
If the police can convince a judge to give them a warrant for it, sure, but if they were targeting you specifically they probably wouldn't bother with the indirect route of your drug-dealing friend and would just harass you for j walking and not using your blinkers properly until you raised your voice at a cop and charge you with assaulting an officer.
> if they were targeting you specifically
They are not targeting Natanson at all from what I can tell. They're targeting a source she's writing from (to what extent isn't clear to me). This is precisely why I'm positing Whren doesn't apply here.
I get the idea of being 'papered' out of a system, but I'm trying to distinguish a pretext that can be justified (objective probable cause) from one that can't (abuse of process). My boss can easily provide reason relating me to fire me, however fantastic the reality, but those would be refused, for good reason, if they surfaced them through private channels outside the organization.
The really strange thing here is the massive raid in the middle of the night rather than a more proportional response. That suggests that the journalist was being targeted specifically.
To keep with the analogy: If I had a public history of contact with the dealer (and was a prolific writer on the inner workings of drug trafficking), police could claim "reasonable suspicion" that I have communications/evidence related to them. That would justify seizing my devices for investigation under the same logic.
I agree there's more context to evaluate, but even Bondi's provided framing troubles me. It seems broad enough to target any journalist with relevant sources to a provided crime.
Could you litigate to recover the costs and repair any damage done? Is there case law around what is a reasonable level of dishevelment?
The issue here is the American tradition of a free press and the legitimate role of leaks in a free country. The PBS article is a bit better on context:
> The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal guidelines governing how it will respond to news media leaks.
> In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued new guidelines saying prosecutors would again have the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make "unauthorized disclosures" to journalists.
> The moves rescinded a Biden administration policy that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fbi-searched-home-of-w...
My understanding is that searches of journalists still must be signed off on by the AG personally.
If that's true, it's a direct violation of the fourth amendment. I'll paste it here for convenience:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
if someone goes snooping around my 1000yd backstop without signing in at the range house, they are suicidal.
there is a lot of signage, and curtailage, and a darwin prize
Does that include (former) presidents as well?
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65775163
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_...
(Asking for a friend.)
Of course that was before right wing supreme cpurt decides presidents can vreak the law as they wish (wink wink only as long as they are right wing, I am sure they would rule differently on democrat).
To my understanding, a US search warrant authorize law enforcement officers to search a particular location and seize specific items. The requirements are:
1# filled in good faith by a law enforcement officer 2# Have probable cause to search 3# issued by a neutral and detached magistrate 4# the warrant must state specifically the place to be searched and the items to be seized.
There is nothing about the owner of the location. It can be a car, a parking lot, a home, a work place, a container, a safe, a deposit box in a bank, and so on.
The significant question here is about probable cause. Why were those items interesting for the FBI to collect? Are they looking to secure evidence against the leaker, and if so, what was the specifics of the search warrant? The article states: "The statement gave no further details of the raid or investigation".
Probable cause should not be about preventing journalists access to documents they already got, as that would be like going after Barton Gellman.
Something worth noting at least for pedantic purposes, since practice is quite different; technically speaking every person has the same rights and laws to follow as a journalist. Fundamentally, there are really no differences between a journalist and a regular person engaging in the same activities.
It's an indication of the unique system architecture that differentiates the USA from all other societies on the planet.
It has been attacked, infiltrated, poison pilled, and really rather devastated in especially the last 100 years, but it is still standing, for better or worse, whether it can be restored or it just needs to die in order to give others a chance to rebuild something improved on the core characteristics of the Constitution.
Based on your own logic then Assange did not have any requirement to protect classified information yet he was Public Enemy number one.
I know people who personally sat on the Edward Snowden board and spent years of their life trying to create a case within the intelligence community against this guy
There is a difference between someone essentially just handing you a pile of classified documents and you going around soliciting and encouraging people to break the law and mishandle the documents to give to you.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2011-09-28/the-dangerous-cult-...
> The low point in Leigh’s role in this saga is divulging in his own book a complex password Assange had created to protect a digital file containing the original and unedited embassy cables. Each was being carefully redacted before publication by several newspapers, including the Guardian.
> This act of – in the most generous interpretation of Leigh’s behavior – gross stupidity provided the key for every security agency in the world to open the file. Leigh has accused Wikileaks of negligence in allowing a digital copy of the file to be available. Whether true, his own role in the affair is far more inexcusable.
> His and the Guardian’s recklessness in disclosing the password was compounded by their negligent decision to contact neither Assange nor Wikileaks before publication of Leigh’s book to check whether the password was still in use.
> [The Guardian] made no mention either of Leigh’s role in revealing the password or of Wikileaks’ point that, following Leigh’s incompetence, every security agency and hacker in the world had access to the file’s contents. Better, Wikileaks believed, to create a level playing field and allow everyone access to the cables, thereby letting informants know whether they had been named and were in danger.
Jonathan Cook does a good job of telling this story.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2013-07-29/the-assassination-o...
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2022-05-04/persecution-julian-...
And yeah, it's not a great situation with terrible optics. It would've been better for everyone if he just didn't steal the classified documents to begin with or, once requested, he returned them.
Is there another law saying that government officials need to return all classified documents that would apply to him and not to the reporter?
That's unequivocally a lawful basis for a court-ordered search warrant. They must have probable cause that the person being searched has evidence of a crime; not necessarily that the search target and the criminal suspect are one and the same. Search is investigative; not punitive.
The newsworthy part of this is it's a journalist they raided, and to go after their journalistic sources at that. It's previously been a DoJ policy not to go after the media for things related to their reporting work. But that policy wasn't a legal or constitutional requirement. It's merely something the DoJ voluntarily pledged to stop doing, after the public reaction to President Obama's wiretapping of journalists in 2013,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Department_of_Justice_inv... ("2013 Department of Justice investigations of reporters")
Let's be real, it can be both. A legal, valid and justified search can be done in a manner calculated to inflict maximum pain. Raiding in the middle of the night instead of when they step out their door in the morning, ripping open walls when all they're really looking for is a laptop, flipping and trashing the place in a excessive manner, breaking things in the process, pointing guns at children, shooting the family retriever, etc. I don't know if they took this raid too far in any of these ways, but it wouldn't surprise me.
US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of evidence obtained illegally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ("Exclusionary rule")
There's no "retroactive" exception. The core point of this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating people's rights, under the expectation that what they find will, "retroactively", vindicate them. Won't work.
How would you know when it did? You can’t “retroactively” justify an arbitrary search under the exclusionary rule, but this doesn’t exclude evidence tangential to a legally-executed warrant during the execution of that warrant. For example, suppose someone is suspected of illegally possessing wildlife. A search warrant is issued on the residence. No wildlife is found, and in fact no wildlife was ever on the premises. If officers find large quantities of cocaine during the search, they aren’t precluded from making an arrest, because the warrant used to gain entry and conduct the search was legal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
> In Arizona v. Hicks, police officers were in an apartment investigating a shooting and suspected that a record player in the apartment was stolen. The officers could not see the serial number, which was on the bottom of the record player, so they lifted the player and confirmed that its serial number matched that of one that had been reported stolen. However, the Supreme Court ruled that lifting the record player constituted an additional search (although a relatively nonintrusive one) because the serial number was not in plain view.
There were laws in Germany to prevent what Hitler did. It still happened.
None. The endless videos, from better-years-gone-by of people refusing to answer questions at the border then having drug dogs run all over their car to scratch it up was my first exposure to federal agents acting maliciously.
You might be able to argue harassment or malicious prosecution if it's just one part of an ongoing campaign but even that is going to be hard to argue if everything is within the bounds of the law.
See "three felonies a day" - if everyone will casually and unknowingly break some law daily, selective enforcement can be used maliciously.
It's amazing how many people offer free internet advice off of ideological groupthink rather than actual laws.
This raid was authorized by a warrant. Do you really think a judge doesn't know the law, but you do?
If a crime happens in your neighborhood, and you have a camera, the cops could get a warrant to search your footage. It doesn't mean you committed a crime, it just means you can be compelled to provide information pertaining to an investigation.
Especially, if as is the case here, the criminal was already behind bars.
When you phrase it that way though, it doesn't actually sound that bad. If a crime was committed, and some uninvolved person possesses evidence about that crime, the authorities need to be able to access it.
To give another scenario: if someone gets shot in front of my parked car, but the bullet passes through them and gets lodged in my car, the police should have the power to compel me to hand over the bullet even if I don't want to (which is important evidence that only I have).
> Reporters are not federal employees and it’s not illegal for them to have or discuss classified materials. Most of what Snowden leaked was classified, and remains classified to this day, but you and I can read about it on Wikipedia. The government pursued Snowden because he was legally obligated to protect that info. They did not pursue Barton Gellman because he wasn’t.
But if Barton Gellman was the only person in possession of the full collection, and the police needed it to help find the perpetrator of the crime, it would be legitimate for them to compel Gellman to hand over a copy.
However, it wouldn't be legitimate for them to go after you or me if we download the information from some public website, because that would serve no legitimate investigative purpose.
Regarding Gellman, he could have been prosecuted. Under strict interpretation he admitted to retaining classified information. The government is then in a catch 22 situation where they have to verify, publicly, the information he held creating a Snowden like situation where it is no longer secret. It is a very messy area of law and a zealous DOJ can exert tremendous pressure on individual journalists even though they are better shielded than non-journalists. Essentially, by prosecuting someone they have to prove it is national defense information and in so doing they will end up disclosing the information themselves making it dubious a jury would ever convict.
It is the same reason we can freely discuss Snowden-leaked information now. It is not a secret. Even if it is classified it has lost its legal protection.
In short, if this journalist even vaguely induced anyone to leak information to her she can be prosecuted and the precedent there is much less in her favor.
- it's okay when Side A goes after Assange (a journalist) for possessing classified material. Also, Side A encourages journalists in certain countries to do exactly what Assange did.
- it's not okay when Side B goes after journalists aligned with Side A
CNN tells viewers its illegal to read Wikileaks emails (2016)
“Also interesting is—remember—it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.”
Former administrations, to their credit, exhibited some degree of restraint that the current administration lacks. However, they indicted Julian Assange and plenty of people back then have warned precisely about the kind of things happening today.
- The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19653012
- Traditional journalists may abandon WikiLeaks’ Assange at their own peril https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19639165
From the EFF back then:
> Make no mistake, this not just about Assange or Wikileaks—this is a threat to all journalism, and the public interest. The press stands in place of the public in holding the government accountable, and the Assange charges threaten that critical role.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/governments-indictment...
The classification system only works if the handling requirements for information that it covers are unambiguous.
'Could'? Its because you people are acting as if its not already ugly that it got this ugly.
uh oh sounds like the Guardian is asking for a raid too
Of all the things trump has done, I actually like this one. At least he’s being honest about his intentions for what this department does.
Advanced? No free healthcare, no paid maternity leave, two weeks paid leave, no free higher education, etc etc.
Journalists have always shown great tenacity when it comes to reporting news even if it jeopardizes their employment, but if it jeopardizes their safety… that’s perhaps one level too far for many journalists.
That's what the government said when Pentagon Papers were released. Guess what happened.
But I guess time is different now, and today's supreme court isn't the same as the one in those days.
FU USA FU
And just to be clear: The biggest military force of the world threatens denmark, scrambles the economy around the world due to sudden politic changes (tarifs) and destroys its own integrity as an ally
We're just powerless to do anything, as the (probably) legally elected administration runs this ship like its own personal party barge into ... everything in sight.
Our Checks refuse to speak up in Congress, and our Balances keep voting to make the (current) POTUS immune to the law.
If you don't like that, the only solution is to push for limited government next time you're in power.
Whatever power you put into the hands of the government is guaranteed to fall into your enemy's hands some day. This is a deliberate design feature of the US political system. It's the only way to get people to wake up for the need to limit government power.
A good start would be ending selective prosecution by restoring the original role of grand juries: to decide whether or not to hire a contract prosecutor for a single case. Public Prosecutors can be just like Public Defenders -- contractors of the court, with no discretionary powers.
Trump doesn't take the normal route as any other president did.
Of course with his second term, at least people can't complain how he interacts with your ex allies like us germany. Thats fair to do, shitty and short viewed but hey.
But certain things like his fraud coins etc. this is bluntly illegal and he did not do this shit in his first term.
Only if there's a functioning system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, there is not. This Court is willing to use motivated reasoning to achieve its preferred outcomes; to slow-walking favorable rulings for Democrats while expediting favorable rulings for Republicans (often without explanation via the "shadow docket"); and to throw out decades of precedent in the process by ignoring stare decisis, a bedrock legal principle which ensures stability of the judicial process.
Just to give an example, consider the ban on universal (national) injunctions. One might be surprised to learn that it was the Biden administration that initially petitioned the Court for the ban. However, the Court found such a ban unnecessary then (i.e., when lower Courts were blocking the Biden administration's agenda), but conveniently found it necessary during the second Trump administration (when lower courts started blocking the Trump administration's agenda). And just as another kick in the balls, they used the birthright citizen case as a vehicle to bring the matter to Court, strengthening the President without even deigning to address the Trump administration's obviously illegal executive order.
The result of this mess is that, if the Trump administration is eventually voted out, it is highly unlikely that an incoming Democratic administration would be able to capitalize on the expansion of executive powers that this Court has given to this President. We see a similar situation in Poland. After ~a decade in power the Law & Justice party was voted out, but the new coalition government has not inherited the same ability to government, with its agenda constantly curtailed by Law & Justice appointees embedded throughout the government (including the highest court).
Also the US has always kind of been the biggest threat to world peace, with the exception of Nazi Germany. It only feels outrageous now because White people are being attacked too instead of the usual targets
We can disagree on tax policy, immigration policy, even very strong issues, and I'm happy to fight about those issues and respect disagreement. But in the last month, the president has invaded a foreign country without even notifying congress, has used literal thug tactics to try to get lower interest rates, and now he's obviously illegally entering the home of a reporter to take information which is clear violation of the first and fourth amendments.
This is unamerican. It's a violation of the clear principles of the constitution. It's against the law. It's trivially deserving of impeachment.
Your assertion isn't supported by, well, anything. The problem is that constituents think they can't affect their representatives' positions. They can.[0][1] Especially if there's a concerted effort to do so.
For every constituent who writes/calls/emails, there are at least a half-dozen more who feel the same way.
The problem isn't that contacting your representatives isn't effective, it's that by not doing so, you're ceding power to those that do.
[0] https://act.represent.us/sign/does-calling-congress-really-w...
[1] https://americansofconscience.com/calling-congress-still-mat...
Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/active
See: james o'keefe
edot•3w ago
Wow. So they're going to plug her phone in to whatever cracking tech they have and pull down the names of everyone who has been helping her tell the story of the destruction of our government. The following question is "what will they do with the names of the people they pull?". I can only imagine. Horrible. Hopefully she had good OPSEC but she's a reporter, not a technologist. I bet enough mistakes were made (or enough vulnerabilities exist) that they'll be able to pull down the list.
Traubenfuchs•3w ago
HumblyTossed•3w ago
Traubenfuchs•3w ago
Exactly what I was thinking about when I was writing my comment.
I can understand that big corpos are not our friends and are purely money driven, but publicly bribing the president with gold is on a level no one ever expected. Right in line with the Fifa peace price.
derektank•3w ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA?wprov=sfti1#Corruption
fhdkweig•3w ago
DetectDefect•3w ago
Traubenfuchs•3w ago
MAYBE non US governments? They probably have deals with all the big governments allowing them to spy on their own people at least.
DetectDefect•3w ago
luddit3•3w ago
beeflet•3w ago
embedding-shape•3w ago
snowwrestler•3w ago
weberer•3w ago
SpicyLemonZest•3w ago
dkdcio•3w ago
still doesn’t really prove much
parineum•3w ago
fwip•3w ago
iAMkenough•3w ago
kuerbel•3w ago
beeflet•3w ago
iamtheworstdev•3w ago
I'll take a shot at the answer -> Charge them with treason. Because that's the country we live in now, and most of us are just sitting by passively watching it happen.
lawn•3w ago
That's how the US is right now.
mikeweiss•3w ago
joering2•3w ago
At least DHS is not interested in finding out. And there has been plenty US citizens deported under DHS.
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118180/documents/...
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
andsoitis•3w ago
Are you sure? Do you mind linking to information / reporting about that? I have not seen any.
throwaway38294•3w ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_deporta...
Then you can read the congressional report:
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118180/documents/...
At this point this is not an accident it's an intentional policy to spread fear and suppress dissent
joering2•3w ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_deporta...
andsoitis•3w ago
joering2•3w ago
prh8•3w ago
srean•3w ago
cultofmetatron•3w ago
Ice has already summarily executed two US citizens. one literally on camera and broadcasted to the world.
blhack•3w ago
toomanyrichies•3w ago
Relatedly, here's a fuller list of recent shootings by immigration agents. [2]
1. https://www.foxla.com/news/ice-shooting-keith-porter-northri...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shootings_by_U.S._immi...
KaiserPro•3w ago
But as an outsider, its really not normal for agents of the state to detain people without legal basis. much less deliberatly make sure they can't be found. (citizen or not.)
You as a US citizen are not required to carry ID, so being arrested on the spot for not having proof of citizenship is grossly authoritarian.
Not to mention shooting someone in the street.
srean•3w ago
jimt1234•3w ago
srean•3w ago
Quite an interesting phenomena though, how affiliations color some unarguable facts. Many clearly believe that ICE agents are doing the right thing, they got what they voted for.
lawn•3w ago
There are quite a few examples where they did detain US citizens, even claiming that the papers they had weren't good enough.
The president has also multiple times said that he will strip people of citizenship. Yes, it's not exactly legal but they're doing illegal shit all the time and nobody's stopping them.
lokar•3w ago
rozab•3w ago
toss1•3w ago
This regime has already illegally stopped, assaulted, arested, jailed, and/or deported multiple US citizens. They now stop people and demand they show citizenship papers, and the AsstDirFBI has said people must carry proof of citizenship at all times, and if not, ICE are free to abuse you under the presumption you are an illegal.
We are already under a "May I see your papers, please?" Nazi-like system.
Except without the superficial politeness of the "May..." and "...Please" and seeing the face of your accusers who hide behind masks.
rambojohnson•3w ago
gvedem•3w ago
anon84873628•3w ago
ryandrake•3w ago
TitaRusell•3w ago
But half of Congress sucks Trump's cock and the other half is literally denied the right to do their job.
sneak•3w ago
mikeweiss•3w ago
cdrnsf•3w ago
pxc•3w ago
cdrnsf•3w ago
an0malous•3w ago
quietbritishjim•3w ago
NewJazz•3w ago
ceejayoz•3w ago
Others do what the parent post described.
HN is certainly not a monolith, and we've got our share of loons on all extremes of the political spectrum.
heromal•3w ago
kgwxd•3w ago
bix6•3w ago
There’s 30 posts on the front page. If someone doesn’t care about politics why can’t they just ignore that 1 post instead of flagging it into oblivion?
pureagave•3w ago
They are plenty of places for political discussions. HN is a rare great place for tech so personally I'd rather keep it that way.
Levitz•3w ago
addandsubtract•3w ago
sofixa•3w ago
I don't agree. Crypto scams get discussed at length here for days, but when it's a Trump crypto scam, it gets flagged and disappears.
simgoh•3w ago
I sympathize, relate, and I'm not about to lecture you like some corners of the internet about "the privilege" to try and ignore stuff like this, but it is important to keep stuff like this at the forefront. We continue to experience unprecedented life events.
Levitz•3w ago
simgoh•3w ago
Levitz•3w ago
The argument is that it should be everywhere, and I staunchly disagree.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•3w ago
The argument is that it should be here, and that is a very reasonable stance. There is no shortage of places where anything can be discussed; that's not the point. "Here", there is a certain expectation around how to comment which makes this place a more interesting discussion forum, no matter the topic. That some topics bring out the worst in some people is not a good reason to make the topic verboten, but instead a reason to be more critical of the commentary under those topics.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
That doesn't say "no divisive topics" for a reason. The topics are not what make this place interesting, but instead the rules of engagement are.
filoeleven•3w ago
throwworhtthrow•3w ago
That's why I stopped reading them.
It's never once occurred to me that I should rather open them up, dive into the comments section, and tell the participants that I'm trying to get away from boring discussions about diet and fitness.
MSFT_Edging•3w ago
IE Flock being a ycombinator startup, Ring cameras giving free access to police and others[1], AI systems being used for targeting dissent, ad-services and the data they vacuum up being bought by agencies to build up profiles for dissenting citizens[2]. We've watched this type of technology even be used to target the families of people in warzones to explicitly perform war crimes[3].
This is a forum of people who have effectively built the panopticon but don't enjoy hearing about how the panopticon is being used. Politics is now interwoven into our careers whether we like it or not. There is no pure technology, everything we work on effects the world for better or worse. Pulling the wool over our eyes to pretend there's a pure non-political form of talking about these topics is childish and naive.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/home/security/amazons-ring-cameras-push... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-i... [3] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/10/questions-and-answers-is...
quietbritishjim•3w ago
Possibly true. Just irrelevant.
I already have far too much exposure to Trump, and I'm not even American. I'd like it not to come up here. You may disagree, and that's fine, but the original question was - why are stories about him flagged. I maintain that the answer, for many people if not nearly all, is simple: ugh, not again.
filoeleven•3w ago
GJim•3w ago
Whilst I sympathise, it's a bit hard to avoid politics on here, when the tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley are actively supporting a corrupt administration to line their own pockets.
A statement of fact that will no doubt earn the ire of many tech-bro's.
afavour•3w ago
Difficult not to see it as folks plugging their fingers in their ears. And there are folks on here that are flagging things because they paint the administration in a bad light. There are DOGE folks here, there are Palantir folks, etc. etc., I don't think you can dismiss those motivations even if they aren't true for you personally. I think the core problem is that flagging system is too powerful and too anonymous.
Teever•3w ago
Donald Trump has threatened to annex my country. Are posts about that political? Sure doesn't seem like it to me. From my persective this subject seems more like an existential threat then a discussion about policy. But I suppose to Americans it is just a matter of policy and politcs.
The incessent posts about Bay Area housing regulations -- political or not? Seems pretty political to me but apparently it isn't?
tdeck•3w ago
When I'm hiding in my basement from the Patriot Press Gangs, I want to read about the difference between TCP Reno and TCP Tahoe, not about some boring politics.
SauntSolaire•3w ago
JCattheATM•3w ago
Were there? I just saw people blindly advocating and excusing their incompetence. The discussions were very polarized, not well thought out or supported with evidence, and not remotely productive. At least from what I saw.
belorn•3w ago
I have a very different impression of those discussions, with more or less half of the comments being flagged and downvoted into oblivion, and the overall mood being very heavy in negativity and hostility.
I would like to see great HN-related conversations. Maybe if they disabled donwvotes and flagging, and did some heavy handed moderation against negativity and hostility. A great conversation depend on a safe environment where people feel free to express their genuine views and opinions.
mullingitover•3w ago
an0malous•3w ago
Second, that justification doesn't make sense because you could just not read the post. There's even a feature to hide it for yourself.
Third, that's not what flagging is for. Per the HN guidelines, posts should be flagged if they're spam or off topic, not if you personally find them tiresome.
billfor•3w ago
jyounker•3w ago
rtp4me•3w ago
<logging off now>
SpicyLemonZest•3w ago
When Trump decides to destroy your life, as he's destroyed so many others, I hope you'll find supporters who aren't so determined to ignore the inconvenience as you.
Sparkle-san•3w ago
kilroy123•3w ago
KaiserPro•3w ago
yoyohello13•3w ago
ap99•3w ago
expedition32•3w ago
lokar•3w ago
parineum•3w ago
If these people were caught, they'd always have been punished. What they did is extremely illegal. The issue is with the manner of obtaining evidence, not with the crimes being pursued.
immibis•3w ago
bregma•3w ago
baggachipz•3w ago
cmiles74•3w ago
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5649729/trump-administr...
AnimalMuppet•3w ago
actionfromafar•3w ago
naravara•3w ago
They sent her off to a certain country with highly repressive speech laws and secret police to interview and survey various civil rights activist groups. They gave her little to no guidance about how to protect herself aside from “Use a VPN to send any documents to us.” They didn’t even instruct her to use an encrypted email provider or to use a VPN for any online work that didn’t get sent to the employer.
It’s very fortunate she knew me and I could at least give her some basic guidance to use an encrypted email service, avoid doing any work on anything sensitive that syncs to a cloud server, make sure she has FileVault enabled, get her using a password manager, verify that her VPN provider is trustworthy, etc.
gruez•3w ago
How would those advice have helped?
>an encrypted email provider
Unless this was in the early 2010s the email provider was probably using TLS, which means to the domestic security service at least, is as safe as a "encrypted email provider" (protonmail?)
>FileVault enabled
That might work in a country with due process, but in a place with secret police they can just torture you until you give up the keys.
>password manager
Does the chance of credential stuffing attacks increase when you're in a repressive state?
None of the advice is bad, but they're also not really specific to traveling to a repressive country. Phishing training is also good, but I won't lambast a company for not doing phishing training prior to sending a employee to a repressive country.
naravara•3w ago
It was the mid 2010s yes.
And they’re not going to abduct and torture and American citizen out of the blue. The more “intensive” methods are higher cost, the intention is just to increase the friction involved with engaging in the routine and scalable, ordinary forms of snooping.
tuna74•3w ago
naravara•3w ago
bink•3w ago
https://freedom.press/digisec/
https://tcij.org/initiative/journalist-security-training/
https://ssd.eff.org/playlist/journalist-move
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•3w ago
tuna74•3w ago
srean•3w ago
Look up Stanswamy [0], an octagenarian jailed on the basis of trumped up charges and planted evidence (most likely with the help of Israeli companies). Journalists held in jail for five years without any charges pressed. Same fate for those who criticize the government too vocally.
Now pretty much all of the press is but a government press release with a few holding out here and there.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/13/stan-swamy-h...
bn-l•3w ago
everdrive•3w ago
But it's still illegal. I'm not making a moral claim here. Rather, people who release classified information without authorization are breaking the law. If I rob a bank to feed my family vs. robbing a bank because it's fun, it's still illegal. A jury might be more or less sympathetic to my cause, but I will still be arrested and charged if the police can manage it.
kasey_junk•3w ago
everdrive•3w ago
kasey_junk•3w ago
This government brought sham charges against the Fed president, what are they going to do to a run of the mill federal employee?
irishcoffee•3w ago
It is not illegal to talk to a reporter, it is illegal to share classified intel with someone who doesn't have a clearance and a need-to-know.
Do I think they should have raided this persons house? Absolutely not. Is it illegal to share classified information, absolutely.
"For my friends everything, for everyone else, the law" or whatever the saying is, applies here. In this case, the reporter did nothing wrong, but the raid on the home of the reporter can be justified according to the law, so it isn't illegal. Should it be? Probably.
Legislation is good, rules are good, the classified rules seems to make sense if you subscribe to Hanlons Razor at the least. Sometimes though, laws just don't make sense and shouldn't be codified.
For example:
MCL 750.335 - "Any man or woman, not being married to each other, who lewdly and lasciviously associates and cohabits together, and any man or woman, married or unmarried, who is guilty of open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year, or a fine of not more than $1,000.00."
This shouldn't be a law.
Tadpole9181•3w ago
You seriously think this administration is going to get a list of 1,200 government employees who are (legally) informing reporters of the goings-on and just... Let it go? Those people are about to get punished.
And since we're at the point of an unaccountable, unidentifiable Gestapo going door-to-door and arresting / murdering citizens openly in the streets...
Nicook•3w ago
Now is overclassification a problem too, yes but that's bureaucracy.
Tadpole9181•3w ago
> But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well.
...
> so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
So we, in this thread, are talking about what happens to the majority of her sources that are NOT sharing confidential information or committing any crime.
alphawhisky•3w ago
epistasis•3w ago
everdrive•3w ago
I think instead what that poster meant is was "people who didn't share classified information will be targeted and prosecuted as well."
So, apologies for misunderstanding.
mingus88•3w ago
We are on step 3
HNisCIS•3w ago
immibis•3w ago
mindslight•3w ago
Sure, maybe some ICE home invaders will be shot in self-defense while committing their crimes, but we already know how that plays out legally and even in the court of public opinion sadly (Walker/Taylor). So instances of self-defense won't change the big picture, regardless of such self defense options perhaps being pragmatic for those who are likely to be attacked right now or in the near future.
So that brings us back to the question of the large scale situation, which IME rests entirely on there being so many people Hell-bent on using the ammo box to "save" the country with the net effect of trashing it. We've essentially got flash mobs of brownshirts, understandably frustrated at how they've been disenfranchised and their liberties taken away, but having their frustration channeled into being part of the problem. Which I'd say comes back to filter bubbles, social media, pervasive and personalized propaganda, etc.
Of course freeing people from those filter bubbles is much harder than if we had managed to avoid the corporate consumer surveillance industry from taking hold and strongly facilitating them in the first place.
itsanaccount•3w ago
imo they're usually too late, as guns without training and a group aren't very useful. but i can tell you the number has went up about 4x the baseline in the holiday season. and thats after its doubling after November's elections.
this country is a powderkeg and what's worse is i think these provocations are international. the admin seems to want to start a civil war.
KaiserPro•3w ago
The number of police and public based killing is much higher than comparable countries elsewhere.
clarkmoody•3w ago
SpicyLemonZest•3w ago
cjs_ac•3w ago
HNisCIS•3w ago
The question is how many people will side with them vs reality.
selectodude•3w ago
HNisCIS•3w ago
pixl97•3w ago
Eh, they killed them by the hundreds of thousands, and were not even trying to genocide them. If the current regime decided to actually just exterminate people our level of technology would make what the Nazis did look like babies playtime.
>The question is how many people will side with them vs reality
At least 40% of the population given what we've seen so far.
HNisCIS•3w ago
johnisgood•3w ago
Where can I read more about this?
ceejayoz•3w ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
johnisgood•3w ago
It was a political struggle for legitimacy, not just territory, and the enemy did not have to win any battles, just avoid losing until the political will collapsed.
The thing is, military power does not automatically translate to political success, and guerrilla fighters do not need to defeat tanks and jets, they just need to survive, persist, undermine legitimacy, and exhaust the opponent's political will.
So, in this sense, the US was not beaten by farmers, it was beaten by a strategy that made military superiority irrelevant.
SpicyLemonZest•3w ago
johnisgood•3w ago
ceejayoz•3w ago
The American military at the time cared - at least somewhat - about the international reputation of the United States. That may not always be a thing. It may not be a thing now.
HNisCIS•3w ago
Keep thinking along these lines and you realize the situation for them is actually quite dire.
afpx•3w ago
SpicyLemonZest•3w ago
DANmode•3w ago
HNisCIS•3w ago
We used to have at least vague concepts like that but the admin has eroded that in the pursuit of "anything goes" political maneuvering.
scarecrowbob•3w ago
At the same time, it's entirely legitimate to look at a set of laws and think "fuck that". Just because you're correct that bad things might happen to folks doesn't mean I have to be happy with it.
At the end of the day, having bad laws doesn't make the rest of us cower in fear.
Rather, those laws help us understand that the folks protected by those laws (and the systems that they are using to harm us) neither have our interests in mind nor have any legitimate claim to authority.
So while your "bad things will happen if I break the law" is maybe pragmatic, consider a similar pragmatic point:
"writing laws that folks feel justified in breaking might lead to shifts in how legitimate people see that government".
srean•3w ago
comments that it's only federal employees who are legally bound regarding classified documents, reporters are not.
kuerbel•3w ago
stevenwoo•3w ago