To clarify why it’s aggressive: federal employees have a legal duty to secure classified information, but everyone else does not.
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.
This is not a comment about if journalists homes should be more sacred than other people. Some countries do give journalists extra legal protection against this, but I do not know US law in this regard.
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.
>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 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.
I appreciate the added nuance here and would like to hear your comments on the seperate issue of doing this to a member of the press, or better, the sepcific pretext presented by the reporting:
> 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.”
It's possible (and in fact the law) that the journalist against whom a search warrant is issued is suspected of aiding in the leak or committing a crime, though. I don't think we yet know that she's not in that category; only that she claims that she was told that she wasn't the focus of the probe and was not currently formally accused of a crime.
Sure, though the government routinely searches the personal property of innocent people if they think that search will yield information about a suspect.
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.
> the government routinely searches the personal property of innocent people if they think that search will yield information about a suspect.
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.
That includes an explicit carve-out for reasonable searches. And given "innocent until proven guilty" any search is technically targeting innocent people in hopes of yielding information about a suspect. Sometimes that's a reasonable thing to do.
Well, "routinely" should have been interpreted to mean "routinely, after showing probable cause and obtaining a warrant". Law enforcement obtains warrants for that routinely, that is, it's not an exceptional case for them to do so.
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
They have duty to not take documents with them when they leave office. And they have duty to protect the documents while in the office.
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).
We are - but it's important to not allow our standards to be shifted. This is unacceptable and while there is plenty of stuff happening today that's unacceptable it's still important to call it out. The past year has been a test of our endurance as illegal actions are piled up (in imo an intentional effort to overwhelm) and our minds must ping pong from foreign leaders being kidnapped to murders to threats against our closest allies all while legal demands from congress specifically passed against the administration are blatantly and illegally ignored.
It's all unacceptable and it's exhausting, but apathy is the enemy here.
Calling out does nothing. Everyone is aware of the issues.
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.
"Natanson said her work had led to 1,169 new sources, “all current or former federal employees who decided to trust me with their stories”. She said she learned information “people inside government agencies weren’t supposed to tell me”, saying that the intensity of the work nearly “broke” her."
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.
In India we have been going through this the last 14 years or so.
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.
It's important to note, that the law is not written such that it's only illegal to share classified information when you have a good president. I think a lot of us are very sympathetic when classified information is released to the public due to public interest, concern regarding government action, etc.
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.
But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well. It’s perfectly legal to tell a soldier they do not have to obey unlawful orders, in fact in many cases it’s a requirement. But the us military started court martial proceedings against a sitting congressman person for doing it.
It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
This government brought sham charges against the Fed president, what are they going to do to a run of the mill federal employee?
> It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
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."
Aren't you arguing against a straw man here? It seems that you can't address the concerns of the comment and are instead saying obvious truths as if that is somehow counter to the person you replied to.
They can and do make whatever they want illegal, but you're correct not to make a moral claim about it. I'm not making a moral claim, either, but a pragmatic one.
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".
i keep tabs on posts roughly along the lines of "maybe we need guns after all."
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.
I understand what you're saying, but we as a society need to have some sort of baseline above the law and order view of the world. I know a lot of people are either too stupid or too tied up in the propaganda machine but we DEEPLY need to agree on some sort of universal ethical standards as a country or we will die.
We used to have at least vague concepts like that but the admin has eroded that in the pursuit of "anything goes" political maneuvering.
I reject the current legitimacy of that law. After Donald Trump claimed personal immunity for classified document violations in his interregnum, any prosecutions his government launches based on it are presumptively invalid.
I certainly don't agree that quantity of firepower determines what laws do or don't stand. Ask the federal agents who tried, and failed, to convict a guy for throwing a sandwich at them (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/dc-sandw...).
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders…
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.
Yeah, but... the quoted phrase should not be taken literally as a statement about battlefield capability.
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.
Absolutely, and I think the domestic opposition strategy here makes military superiority irrelevant. The US government doesn't want to, and would collapse if they tried to, shoot everyone who says that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president and any prosecution he wants to succeed should fail.
>The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
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.
I hope Washington Post does a better job of training their reporters than my friend’s former employer did.
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.
>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.
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.
> Unless this was in the early 2010s the email provider was probably using TLS
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.
> The following question is "what will they do with the names of the people they pull?".
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.
There’s a good fraction of people, especially on this forum, who are actively encouraging this. Posts that criticize the administration consistently get flagged off the front page even when they’re related to tech
You are severely misreading why people flag posts about that discuss the administration (whether for or against): they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to be what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
There is also a conflict of interest for many in the tech space who browse this forum. Many of the technologies we work on are being abused by this administration.
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.
I understand the instinct to remove "politics" from HN but it's fuzzier than that. There were great HN-related conversations to be had around DOGE and what it was (purportedly) trying to achieve with automation, AI, replacing old code bases etc. There was a fascinating discussion about COBOL and what DOGE didn't understand and it immediately got flagged off the front page. Same thing recently with Grok and non-consensual adult content. Folks on HN are well placed to speak knowledgeably about it yet it is instantly voted off the front page.
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.
> Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
On the contrary, there's no need whatsoever to even deal with this since it already happens everywhere else, it's not some niche, subtle matter, it's probably the most talked about subject in the last decade.
I find the political discussions on here interesting and generally of decent+ caliber. Plus so much of what’s happening is tech related / enabled.
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?
Flagging off news about current events (whether you support the regime or not) is counterproductive to a forum nominally for the startup community. Startup founders need to be aware of the environment they are operating in, so if the current environment is a corrupt fascist authoritarian one then you need to be prepared to operate in that type of business environment. If you now need to bribe certain officials in the regime in order for your startup to succeed, for example, flagging posts about how that's necessary is counterproductive.
There are many topics discussed on HN that I find tiresome to read about. For example, diet and fitness topics. You could swap the comments from one article to another and not even notice.
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.
> Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
Is this thread not about the administration? The FBI currently acts at the will of the White House / GOP / Trump. Stick your head in the sand all you want, but don't betray the people who are standing up against oppression.
> they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to be what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
It's pretty shocking how many people on HN are ok with government officials killing citizens in the streets, but writing diversity statements is just too far.
It's flagged because its historically not Hacker News. Many of the newer accounts seem to bias towards using this forum as a "reddit" to discuss how much they hate the current administration or their mental issues. The technical "hacker" content is getting less and less -- thank God for https://lobste.rs/.
So that's all fine and maybe hackers should just change be a reddit forum, but don't take it personally or be surprised if 15 old accounts are flagging your posts. I say this noting that the account you posted from is only 9 months old.
We historically haven't had an administration like this either. People need to get over politics creeping into their every day life because that's what it's actually doing. We're at the point where the government is using tech to police and surveil the public and many of the CEOs of tech companies are openly coordinating with the President. Tech is politics at this point.
Wow, thanks for this! I normally don't login to HN and comment anymore due to all the reddit-style comments - especially the constant hate for the US and the President. Thanks for giving me another outlet to review tech-related stuff.
Hating the current administration is one of the top technical issues on my mind. There is a substantial chance that all US-EU software collaboration is going to get blown up in the next few months if Trump makes good on his threats to invade Greenland, just as international trade has been reoriented around his illegal tariffs and responses to them.
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.
They also lie to local police. There was a case here where they drove erratically to try and make it look like a legal observer rammed their vehicle. They hit him twice, called the local police, lied to the police and then said observer provided his dash cam footage and was released. Will ICE face any repercussions? Nope.
That only works if they aren't U.S citizens... Which if they're working for the gov means they are. This administration is creative they will find other more 'legal' ways for retribution so the punishment sticks.
Nah, ICE is snatching and robbing US citizens too, even when they have ID on them. My (US citizen) friend got taken last month and driven hundreds of miles to another state simply for speaking spanish in public.
This would only be true if ICE cared to obey the law, which they do not. They are not observing even the most basic facsimile of due process or probable cause. Protesting them is being treated as grounds for brutalization or arrest. They are actively flaunting their contempt for the Constitution while "conservatives" cheer from the sidelines.
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.
Nonsense. You are seriously mistaken if you think mere legality will stop them.
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.
His policy is very consistent and clear. He does not care about the form of government, how they treat the population etc, only that they show deference to him (personally).
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.
You must accept that 3 letter agencies have full root access to any Tim Apple or Google device and will use it if they already went far enough to do an FBI raid on a reporter.
It actually proves that they _don't_ (or didn't) have that kind of access because they first publicly asked for the access and then rescinded that request when they, not officially but widely accepted, acquired access through some kind of hack/bug/exploit given to them by, probably, the IDF or an Israeli private company.
The same reason federal agents wear GoPros. Security theater, and to send the message that journalists should not pursue stories like this that put the federal government in a less-than-favorable light.
Appeasing a moron with a shiny, valuable object is low effort. Covering up and adding a backdoor to Apple's widely used iOS is not in the same ballpark.
> They literally went to the king with gold in hands.
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.
IDK, the FIFA world peace prize was completely unsurprising to me. It’s a massively corrupt institution and has been for decades. It’s out of the norm in a US context, for sure, but that kind of thing is penny ante for an organization whose Wikipedia article has multiple subsections on corruption
What is especially insane is people STILL praise Apple for championing "privacy" - after Snowden, after China, after Trump ... the well-engineered sunk-cost fallacy is just too potent to resist, I guess.
I'm afraid Snowden was so long time ago, that the most vocal people don't even seemingly know about it, so yet again, we're in a period of time where assuming Apple/Google has full access to anything you do on your device, is seen as conspiracy theories. People seem to forget the past so damn quick, it's a wonder we humans manage to accomplish anything at all at this point.
Keep your eyes on protecting the midterms from interference... re ICE / militias etc.
I encourage governors to call up their State's National Guards to protect their State's electoral systems from Federal intrusion and extremist militia groups. This move is founded in the most republican of urges: State Sovereignty. (btw, I'd even consider that as a move in Minneapolis, right now).
Do you think the Minneapolis National Guard are willing to fire on ICE if ordered to do so? What do you expect the legal fallout of that situation to be?
There is a lot of room before that. Rather that the Guard would intervene illegal searches etc, and the inevitable tense ICE - National Guard interaction would change the dynamic, temper ICE's behavior. Moreover, the expected outcome would actually be Trump trying to nationalize that guard, then a constitutional crisis/emergency supreme Court intervention. The most power move that Democrats could make right now is the Republican one: state's rights/ sovereignty
I think the Minnesota National Guard might be willing to fire on masked goons trying to abduct voters from polling stations, regardless of what agency they claim to be from. Even if they're not, their presence might deter the goons from showing up, which I think is a significant risk in the status quo.
I think that is becoming a less and less ridiculous scenario over time and I hope blue state governors have had long conversations with their national guard leadership about it.
Or as some 'uknown' VP would say: We will protect freedom of speech until the last journalist is behind the bars. That is the price we are willing to pay.
“When populists get into power, the rhetorical discourse frames tend to be used to implement successive autocratic measures, such as limiting opposition through electoral manipulation, thwarting the free press, changing the constitution in their own favor, and circumscribing minority, civil, political, and economic rights. Populists are usually not against electoral democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Since they believe they represent the ‘true people,’ other people’s votes do not really count as legitimate. Consequently, they are hostile to the underlying values and principles of constitutionalism, pluralism, minority rights, and checks and balances.”
-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.
So how does the cycle work? I’m not being sarcastic I actually find this a relevant and on-point summation. I happen to be very interested in the systemic consequences and results in Western history as much as is applicable in present USA. I’m glad to be a bystander and not participant, that’s for sure.
One final resolution is the guillotine, dangling upside down on a meat hook, or a bunker fire. Those are extreme but we have to wonder what will stop a specific leader from pushing so far that they meet such a fate. This personality type does not stop unless they have to.
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.
Just to add to this, it still blows my mind how quickly this happened. The French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours within 5 years, and in the same short timespan Robespierre went madder than any Sun King had ever been. "La Terreur" was total madness.
On top of that he was a tremendous speaker. Tyrants don’t usually bother to justify their actions much beyond “because I can and I want to.” (Cf. current US administration’s discourse over Greenland.)
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).
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.
Usually there's a bodies-in-the-streets phase... guillotine was theatrical, bolsheviks called it the red terror, nazis were well the nazis, italians strung em up on meathooks, tienamin used tanks (after the famines), baltics did straight up ethnic cleansings, last week iranians gunned down thousands corralled in the squares.
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.
This is Nathanson's recent article (gift link) describing her work and the story that likely triggered the FBI's interest. Her reporting tells the stories of federal workers, she's not involved in any investigative work beyond interviewing current or former civil servants who feel helpless and lost now that the career that gave them purpose is no longer the same: wapo.st/49BQBrh
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.”
mentally unstable people can hold down jobs sometimes, too. Like, those under treatment, but a stressor can cause "relapse" and now you got a predicament at work.
Chemical and/or clinical depression can be debilitating, and i consider it mental instability.
This strengthens my belief that all governments, mafias, urban gangs, and even cliques, are literally all just ancient tribalism manifested in modernity; may the biggest rocks win.
The American Left has spent the better part of the last century attacking the 2nd Amendment, limiting firearms ownership, and portraying gun owners as paranoid losers. That would drive many on-the-fence gun owners away from supporting them.
Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
Is there any surprise that there's a dearth of armed citizens ready to stand up for them?
"A rifle behind every blade of grass only works if you've been watering the lawn"
I don't know whether you've noticed, but being armed is simply giving the Federales more reasons to kill you first. The woman shot in Minneapolis was shot on the pretext of using her car as a weapon.
How do people really expect this to work? In detail? You show up with an armed militia at a school and the ICE guys just drive on past (and then raid someone else)? Or are they expecting more of an Amerimaidan situation? Jan 6th situation?
It’s a bunch of dudes who think they’re literally Rambo. Like, sure with enough firepower you can maybe take out two before they take you out but any sort of application of your second amendment rights is going to end quickly for you.
The irony of the romanticizing of the "Lone Wolf" is that, in reality, the lone wolf dies alone.
Coordinating with your neighbors and compatriots is essential from the soap box, to the ballot box, to the jury box, and to the cartridge box. And I'd like to emphasize the order of those boxes should be followed.
I'm gonna say the same thing I said the last time you trotted out this dumb opinion (which is far more excusable now that you've outed yourself as a brit BTW). At a societal level the LARPers don't matter. They are a rounding error compared to all the people who have a single daily carry piece or purse gun or whatever. And those people affect the numbers and the risk calculations happening in offices far away.
ICE is thuggishly and sloppily prowling places like Minneapolis because statistically they can get away with it without causing too many bodies. Up the potential body number and their tactics are forced to change for the better.
If the statistical average door they kick in in Minneapolis had the same likelihood of "shit I ain't going back to prison <bang> <bang> <bang> <dives out bathroom window and hops neighbors fence>" behind it as the statistical average door in St. Louis ICE wouldn't be behaving the way they are in MN. They would have specific targets, specific places and times to pick them up, etc, etc. (i.e. operating like the local professional police do) because the risk calculation with even a tiny change you might get shot back at, even if only ineffectively, makes that (much higher) resource expenditure pencil out, with consequences in terms of how much they can get done.
Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence if cornered (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an AGTM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. You're not gonna take a squad with TOWs on the offensive against a bunch of tanks, but if attacked you've at least got a prayer. The same math holds on the individual level. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses. It forces the superior force to still be much more careful and expend far more resources when engaging. When it comes to domestic policing what this means is that ICE would be under more pressure to "be careful and professional" in every city like the DEA did during the war on drugs we wouldn't even be having this discussion because they wouldn't be employing the tactics that everyone hates.
This math is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a few cheaply (poorly) trained cops, minimal equipment and support, minimal planning and surveillance, etc. it would've gone on way longer (but they couldn't, because that would have yielded too many bodies and cost too much political capital).
>Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident into an us-versus-them narrative.....
Yeah, it is a fantasy. Oh, and if anything really gets out of hand, that political empire also has nuclear weapons.
>One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident into an us-versus-them narrative.....
How does legal immunity or a media empire affect a dead man?
>Oh, and if anything really gets out of hand, that political empire also has nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are not very useful in a civil conflict... Or pretty much any conflict
Can't fight ICE because they have no laws they need to uphold, and they have an unlimited budget to buy tools to fight you with.
And the whiplash is quite small, if not nonexistent. Why? Because there's no depths to which this regime, which is openly hostile to its own population, won't go to assert power, as well as to maintain it.
OK, now what happens when you show up in front of an ICE agent while carrying an AR-15? How, specifically, do you use the gun to effect political change?
Well done! Step one is getting armed, and step two is training. There are a lot of good resources out there for non-right-wing shooters, such as InRangeTV.
At this point, unfortunately, that appears to be where the Overton window is resting. I didn't intend any sideswipes or sarcasm in my comment, I was just trying to characterize the opposition to the 2nd Amendment in broad terms.
If you genuinely think we're at the point that we need to start shooting, the onus is on YOU to get armed, get trained, and take action. Don't expect anyone else to come and fight for you, especially those you perceive as your political enemies.
> The American Left has spent the better part of the last century attacking the 2nd Amendment
That's doing a lot of heavy lifting. I know Republicans who unironically say shit like "We can't do background checks. What if I'm trying to buy a gun really quick for a hunting trip?" I would imagine your idea of "attacking" the second amendment is just common sense laws.
> Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
In your heart of hearts, do you really believe this has anything to do with it? If we were to take your comment seriously, it just illustrates the right never actually cared about standing up to oppressive governments, they just wanted to be the oppressive government. That is actually pretty consistent with how the left clocked them.
But in reality, it has nothing to do with what you wrote. The biggest 2A fanatics, as someone related to quite a few of them, just have a fantasy of shooting people. They are openly celebrating the death of Renee Nicole Good because that's the kind of thing they want to do.
The guns haven't been taken away only because people do care so much about the 2nd amendment. Those people understand that the 2nd amendment is the only ultimate defense for the people against the government.
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.
Kind of ironic that there's a big overlap in the venn diagram between 2nd amendment enthusiasts and the crowd that is cheering on the government's authoritarian actions.
Because the visible 2A enthusiasts essentially trace a lineage to the KKK. Of course, they don't actually care about upholding the Constitution or fighting tyranny. That was just a convenient cover tactic and accusation to use against political opponents.
There isn't, it just appears that way. There is a subset of people that are cheering on the government in this situation and they are 2nd amendment supporters but the 2nd amendment supporters are much larger than that overlap.
Things like this is just another way of trying to drive a wedge.
With the government harassing, attacking, and now killing innocent American citizens, I'm not so sure if the second amendment is working out so well.
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.
Imagine every protestor you see on video was instead standing rank and file in the street with a rifle on their shoulder. I.e. a well regulated militia. That would sure send a very different message, wouldn't it?
Not civil war, but a revolution. The 2nd amendment isn't worth much except as a very last resort, when the vast majority of people are willing to die to overthrow a government, as we're seeing in Iran.
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.
The second amendment people are quite fine with the current administration. All you're learning is what real power means and sadly what performative opposition does (nothing).
it's a universal thing I think. in self-defense, when your life is at risk, you can use those guns, what do you have to lose. But in every other case, you have more to lose so guns are useless outside of use by aggressors.
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.
People care more about their guns because, in their minds, that's the last thing that stands between them and complete helplessness. They have fantasies of starting up an Idaho or Montana-style militia to protect themselves from the liberal and immigrant hoards.
> "They're gonna take my guns away!" Yet that never happens
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.
Not asking adversarially at all here: what do you mean by resisting with "real numbers" without media campaigns, social media, or protesting? What do the vested parties actually do to secure their second amendment rights? Do you just mean having large voting blocs?
Take it for whats its worth but I been good friends with someone who works in Newsom camp, and constantly goes for a bite with his team. They talk alot. The main theme now is how to use illegal immigration situation to their benefit. If Newsom is elected President, he wants to go door to door in search for illegal guns that illegals are harboring. Of course all this is BS, or in such insignificant amount that its rather irrelevant. But they want to use Republican's hate for immigrants to help them catalog all serials numbers and ownership of us-owned guns. To some degree it will be fun to watch the "all she had to do is comply with Federal law not to get killed while running away in her car" people rounded up and having their guns cataloged in the name of fight with illegal immigration, and in accordance with Federal law :)
Huh? Are you saying that if Gavin Newsom is elected, rather than turning down the rhetoric, restoring the rule of law, and taking the pressure off of the immigrants and brown people who are scapegoats of the current administration, he instead wants to commit violations of the 4th amendment under the color of searching for immigrants but _actually_ in order to find firearms that are legally owned by US citizens? Presumably in preparation for a mass violation of the 2nd amendment (aka "round 'em up boys")? And your source for this is ... you're friends with someone who works "in the Newsom camp" and you go out for lunch with them?
I'll be honest, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna take it for what it's worth ... nothing.
In your “it would be fun to see people I don’t like being killed” you have conflated legal gun ownership that you don’t like to illegally crossing the remaining the borders of a country… and you can’t see it huh?
"that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at the request of the “department of war”, the Trump administration’s informal name for the department of defense."
uh oh sounds like the Guardian is asking for a raid too
There were over 1000 protests over the weekend. The one I went to in Surprise, AZ had almost 1000 people, in a fairly conservative area with mostly older, white demographics. I think the tide is turning.
Serious question from a clueless european here, who should they vote for?
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?
If you're talking age, the US just had a 60 year old run in the last election and the party that complained to no end about the elderly running for office still voted for the 80 year old. Next election, the other frontrunner is currently 58.
We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to have him win the primary.
The 83 year old dropped out before the election took place. Kamala Harris is 61. No spring chicken, but at least not old enough that she should've retired years ago.
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.
US elections happen in two stages, a "primary" where each party decides their candidate and then the "general" where the final winner is decided. It sounds like you may only be getting news about general elections (and may have missed the news where the 83 year old ended up getting swapped out).
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.
There are plenty of young politicians. Their parties deliberately keep them out of power. Political power in the united states gets strangely concentrated by our 2 party system in a way that tends to ossify policy and promote more ring-wing versions of both parties.
If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party because that's effectively voting for the other major candidate. So the problem of not having more than 2 choices perpetuates indefinitely.
Whichever choice has the least favour is malleable. Right now, by switching up their candidates and policies, the democrats can't do any worse than they're already doing, which is losing. If the democrats next time, then the republicans will have 4 years with nothing to lose.
> If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party
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.
That only works if the message of the third party is more appealing to those voters. And so the major party also pays attention to which third party messages from those who would support them are getting through and changes.
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.
I don't know if it's fair to say we're chilling - there have been fairly organized (although admittedly not very large) protests around the nation related to the killing of Nicole Renee Good. I live in southern California and there were at least 6 within easy driving distance this past weekend.
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.
I understand protesting ICE for better accountability, they certainly need to be held accountable. But I don't understand those who protest the presence of ICE as a concept. Are there any countries that don't enforce their immigration laws?
A protest movement can't be very subtle. A clear and short message like "No ICE" or "ICE Out" is much preferable to "We would like an immigrations and and custom enforcement agency that respects people and the law, efficiently inspects imports, checks in on visa overstayers, pursues charges against business owners that have a business practice of not checking work eligibility of new hires, and works with competent, trained agencies to perform traffic stops and home/office raids or trains their own officers for such"
My libertarian philosophy is not compatible with immigration laws in general. I'm not quite let everyone in - but I require strong reason to not let someone in. People should have the right to move, only restricted in the worst cases.
ICE as an agency was created in 2003. Most of the posters here are older than it by a significant factor. We can live without it and create another agency to enforce immigration laws that isn't thoroughly rotted and filled with criminals.
I live in Seattle and I've seen multiple large protests around the ICE murder of Renee Good. Part of the problem is that the US is too large as the people responsible for the jackbooted thugs kicking in doors and killing citizens are on the other side of the country. Business in Minneapolis is practically grinding to a halt as stores and businesses close their door out of fear.
I think we're one or two bad incidents away from wide-scale rioting.
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.
> Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately?
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.
We're actually dumber than the frogs. The original 19th century experiment involving frogs that didn't jump out of heated water was using frogs who had had their brains destroyed. The question being asked was whether the escape reaction to hot water was caused by the brain or by something further down in the nervous system. With an intact brain, the frogs would jump out. Without one, they wouldn't. Question answered.
It's just a simple analogy that quickly breaks down.
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.
Maybe that's a strong element, but I think we are simply too addicted to comfort and our way of life. We've been encouraged to "just vote" for so long we've lost all political muscle.
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".
> 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.
Not really surprised at this point. After Bush allowed, and Obama pardoned the collateral murder pilots, whistleblowers and journalists in the U.S. have been continually threatened, hazed, jailed and killed at the pleasure of whomever the current president is. This isn't party politics, Bush through Trump, are guilty. This is fascism at its finest...
I think you’re fundamentally right. Trump is obviously the worst we’ve seen yet, but power has been accumulating unchecked in the executive branch’s hands for decades now.
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.
The photos you saw after the Mar-a-Lago raid of top-secret folders and classified files were fabricated. To look worse than they were.
You can be mad at the FBI for raiding a journalist (although we don’t have all the details and maybe there is some context you don’t know)… but be consistent.
The difference here is that the journalist got passed information by people who were committing the same crime Trump did. Trump directly committed his crime. The two are not equal.
Furthermore, Trump is no journalist, nor did he steal the secret files for journalistic purposes.
Indeed, don't blame the individual (all thought the individual has plenty of individual blame going their way, rightfully so), blame the system.
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.
I have an ongoing debate (argument? fight?) with my father about this. He recalls a time when it felt as if there were 'good guys' in politics, and can't understand why it is that I'm so hard on the democrats (this has begun to shift in recent months as Chucklefuck and Aipac Shakur have consistently disappointed him). Besides the obvious issue of republicans being a lost cause, it's policies like too big to fail and dodd-frank and nafta that created the conditions for our current mess, all the while expanding and allowing basic, obvious bad policy to persist (presidential pardons, executive order powers, life terms in the supreme court).
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.
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
I would highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death if you are looking to understand how the populace got to the point where truth is irrelevant and nothing really matters.
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 I’ll kill each other through poorly identified externalities
Similar to how we investigate and figure out airplane crashes, the system should not allow you to get into those situations in the first place, that's the solution that works across time, instead of for just individual situations.
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.
So then again my question is who ultimately audits and holds the system accountable such that if the system needs to be fixed it gets fixed?
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
No, this is absolutely not normal as the article clearly states. Reporters are very rarely raided in the US under circumstances like these.
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".
Please don’t be so naive as to think that this administration is above creating a pretext for raiding the home of their real target while claiming it’s about something else. It’s the same thing (minus the raid, plus an indictment) they’re doing to Jerome Powell.
Trump keeps that kind of stuff in their guest bathroom, cool. Reporter, raid and straight to jail. What a timeline to witness. Elected officials glut preventing them from doing their duty.
Not only that, the word going around is some of the stuff found in the bathroom were far above top secret, including some Q-Clearance level stuff from the DoE.
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.
Q clearance isn’t “far above top secret.” It’s TS plus Nuclear Weapons Information. The background investigation is exactly the same as TS and almost everyone that works at a DOE lab gets one: almost 100,000 people have access. It requires no polygraph like SCI and higher clearances.
In some ways this is just desserts after American journalists decided that Julian Assange was not worth defending[1]. Still disheartening to see, since we need robust journalism to keep companies/politicians honest.
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.
>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.
Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of journalists to investigate leaks? If not, it's hard to make a compelling case that this is "normal"
I think James O’Keeffe was the Project Veritas guy. He had a legally obtained the original of Ashley Biden’s diary. Joe Biden’s daughter. Where in it a page she wrote while in therapy said she had inappropriate showers with her father.
As others pointed out, the problem with this is that you end up with a government that can target any reporter by claiming they have "classified materials". No need to prove what those materials are (because they are classified). This is how third world countries choke journalists.
In order for ICE to raid homes they need to have a valid warrant signed by a judge, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them in Minneapolis doing warrantless raids.
To clarify why it’s aggressive: federal employees have a legal duty to secure classified information, but everyone else does not.
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.
This is not a comment about if journalists homes should be more sacred than other people. Some countries do give journalists extra legal protection against this, but I do not know US law in this regard.
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.
>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 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.
I appreciate the added nuance here and would like to hear your comments on the seperate issue of doing this to a member of the press, or better, the sepcific pretext presented by the reporting:
> 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.”
It's possible (and in fact the law) that the journalist against whom a search warrant is issued is suspected of aiding in the leak or committing a crime, though. I don't think we yet know that she's not in that category; only that she claims that she was told that she wasn't the focus of the probe and was not currently formally accused of a crime.
Thank you, this is really useful context!
Some added context for this raid. It allegedly is about a govt contractor
> The search came as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.
So, wait, the administration cares about people illegally retaining classified information now?
When you're a star, they let you do it
Sure, though the government routinely searches the personal property of innocent people if they think that search will yield information about a suspect.
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.
> the government routinely searches the personal property of innocent people if they think that search will yield information about a suspect.
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.
That includes an explicit carve-out for reasonable searches. And given "innocent until proven guilty" any search is technically targeting innocent people in hopes of yielding information about a suspect. Sometimes that's a reasonable thing to do.
Well, "routinely" should have been interpreted to mean "routinely, after showing probable cause and obtaining a warrant". Law enforcement obtains warrants for that routinely, that is, it's not an exceptional case for them to do so.
How does this apply to Trump and mar-a-lago, then? Genuine question.
Explain why they pursued Julian Assange then.
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
> To clarify why it’s aggressive: federal employees have a legal duty to secure classified information […]
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.)
They have duty to not take documents with them when they leave office. And they have duty to protect the documents while in the office.
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).
Didn’t they persecute (or tried to, I don’t remember anymore) Assange for the same reason though? Or is there some clear difference there?
They had a flimsy argument that Assange actively conspired with Manning to hack government machines based on some chat logs.
Yet others just invite journalists to signal groups accieentally and don't face any repercussions. Strange.
Not to belittle good framing, but we are /waaaaay/ past the ugly point of law and order.
We are - but it's important to not allow our standards to be shifted. This is unacceptable and while there is plenty of stuff happening today that's unacceptable it's still important to call it out. The past year has been a test of our endurance as illegal actions are piled up (in imo an intentional effort to overwhelm) and our minds must ping pong from foreign leaders being kidnapped to murders to threats against our closest allies all while legal demands from congress specifically passed against the administration are blatantly and illegally ignored.
It's all unacceptable and it's exhausting, but apathy is the enemy here.
Calling out does nothing. Everyone is aware of the issues.
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.
"Natanson said her work had led to 1,169 new sources, “all current or former federal employees who decided to trust me with their stories”. She said she learned information “people inside government agencies weren’t supposed to tell me”, saying that the intensity of the work nearly “broke” her."
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.
In India we have been going through this the last 14 years or so.
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...
It's important to note, that the law is not written such that it's only illegal to share classified information when you have a good president. I think a lot of us are very sympathetic when classified information is released to the public due to public interest, concern regarding government action, etc.
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.
But also note the government is punishing people for legal acts as well. It’s perfectly legal to tell a soldier they do not have to obey unlawful orders, in fact in many cases it’s a requirement. But the us military started court martial proceedings against a sitting congressman person for doing it.
Well yes, but you can't tell a judge "yes, I broke the law, but it's OK because the government broke the law first."
It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
This government brought sham charges against the Fed president, what are they going to do to a run of the mill federal employee?
> It’s frequently not illegal to talk to a reporter. Let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about classified material it’s about loyalty, so watch what happens to sources that didn’t do anything illegal.
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.
Aren't you arguing against a straw man here? It seems that you can't address the concerns of the comment and are instead saying obvious truths as if that is somehow counter to the person you replied to.
No, but you can tell it to a jury.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46617645
comments that it's only federal employees who are legally bound regarding classified documents, reporters are not.
They can and do make whatever they want illegal, but you're correct not to make a moral claim about it. I'm not making a moral claim, either, but a pragmatic one.
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".
Soap box > ballot box > jury box > ammo box
We are on step 3
I fear over the past week we've hit 3.99
i keep tabs on posts roughly along the lines of "maybe we need guns after all."
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.
The other side is already using box 4.
I understand what you're saying, but we as a society need to have some sort of baseline above the law and order view of the world. I know a lot of people are either too stupid or too tied up in the propaganda machine but we DEEPLY need to agree on some sort of universal ethical standards as a country or we will die.
We used to have at least vague concepts like that but the admin has eroded that in the pursuit of "anything goes" political maneuvering.
I reject the current legitimacy of that law. After Donald Trump claimed personal immunity for classified document violations in his interregnum, any prosecutions his government launches based on it are presumptively invalid.
That's all well and good, but the law stands because the administration has more firepower than you.
I certainly don't agree that quantity of firepower determines what laws do or don't stand. Ask the federal agents who tried, and failed, to convict a guy for throwing a sandwich at them (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/dc-sandw...).
The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders, they sure as fuck can't handle the most armed country in history.
The question is how many people will side with them vs reality.
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders…
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.
The American military would have zero problems massacring an unlimited number of rice farmers and goat herders.
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
Where can I read more about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
Yeah, but... the quoted phrase should not be taken literally as a statement about battlefield capability.
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.
Absolutely, and I think the domestic opposition strategy here makes military superiority irrelevant. The US government doesn't want to, and would collapse if they tried to, shoot everyone who says that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president and any prosecution he wants to succeed should fail.
>The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
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.
Usually you would only communicate through secure drop. Looks like the Washington post uses it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/securedrop/
I hope Washington Post does a better job of training their reporters than my friend’s former employer did.
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.
>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.
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.
> Unless this was in the early 2010s the email provider was probably using TLS
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.
> The following question is "what will they do with the names of the people they pull?".
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.
There’s a good fraction of people, especially on this forum, who are actively encouraging this. Posts that criticize the administration consistently get flagged off the front page even when they’re related to tech
You are severely misreading why people flag posts about that discuss the administration (whether for or against): they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to be what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
There is also a conflict of interest for many in the tech space who browse this forum. Many of the technologies we work on are being abused by this administration.
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...
I understand the instinct to remove "politics" from HN but it's fuzzier than that. There were great HN-related conversations to be had around DOGE and what it was (purportedly) trying to achieve with automation, AI, replacing old code bases etc. There was a fascinating discussion about COBOL and what DOGE didn't understand and it immediately got flagged off the front page. Same thing recently with Grok and non-consensual adult content. Folks on HN are well placed to speak knowledgeably about it yet it is instantly voted off the front page.
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.
> Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
On the contrary, there's no need whatsoever to even deal with this since it already happens everywhere else, it's not some niche, subtle matter, it's probably the most talked about subject in the last decade.
I find the political discussions on here interesting and generally of decent+ caliber. Plus so much of what’s happening is tech related / enabled.
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?
Flagging off news about current events (whether you support the regime or not) is counterproductive to a forum nominally for the startup community. Startup founders need to be aware of the environment they are operating in, so if the current environment is a corrupt fascist authoritarian one then you need to be prepared to operate in that type of business environment. If you now need to bribe certain officials in the regime in order for your startup to succeed, for example, flagging posts about how that's necessary is counterproductive.
Some people do that, yes.
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.
This is just conjecture
There are many topics discussed on HN that I find tiresome to read about. For example, diet and fitness topics. You could swap the comments from one article to another and not even notice.
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.
> Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
Yeah, because "AI is so great guys!!" is any better.
Maybe we'll be able to flag more than 1 type of post someday :/
Is this thread not about the administration? The FBI currently acts at the will of the White House / GOP / Trump. Stick your head in the sand all you want, but don't betray the people who are standing up against oppression.
> they are tiresome to read about, and it doesn't lead to productive interesting discussion (which is supposed to be what the vote buttons are for here). Politics isn't 100% off topic for HN but mostly I come here to get away from it and I'm sure others do too.
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.
It's pretty shocking how many people on HN are ok with government officials killing citizens in the streets, but writing diversity statements is just too far.
Sadly, a lot of people in Silicon Valley now subscribe to this "dark enlightenment" nonsense.
It's flagged because its historically not Hacker News. Many of the newer accounts seem to bias towards using this forum as a "reddit" to discuss how much they hate the current administration or their mental issues. The technical "hacker" content is getting less and less -- thank God for https://lobste.rs/. So that's all fine and maybe hackers should just change be a reddit forum, but don't take it personally or be surprised if 15 old accounts are flagging your posts. I say this noting that the account you posted from is only 9 months old.
We historically haven't had an administration like this either. People need to get over politics creeping into their every day life because that's what it's actually doing. We're at the point where the government is using tech to police and surveil the public and many of the CEOs of tech companies are openly coordinating with the President. Tech is politics at this point.
Sadly politics in the US has reached the point where it is impossible to separate, particularly if you're involved in any kind of business.
Wow, thanks for this! I normally don't login to HN and comment anymore due to all the reddit-style comments - especially the constant hate for the US and the President. Thanks for giving me another outlet to review tech-related stuff.
<logging off now>
Hating the current administration is one of the top technical issues on my mind. There is a substantial chance that all US-EU software collaboration is going to get blown up in the next few months if Trump makes good on his threats to invade Greenland, just as international trade has been reoriented around his illegal tariffs and responses to them.
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.
The seeds of fascism are in the hearts of well over 50% of the people around you.
Denaturalize and deport?
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5649729/trump-administr...
Don't be ridiculous. Charging someone can be fraught. They will simply and quietly disappear.
But I would think they'd like to publicly make an example of them. So, disappear most, publicly flog the rest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-resign...
If you've got a way for us to not just passively sit by and watch it happen, well, we'd all love to see the plan.
Charging with a crime is so last decade. Nowadays they just shoot people they don't like.
Or they'll have ICE take them and they'll be deported or made to disappear. Some might even end up dying.
That's how the US is right now.
They also lie to local police. There was a case here where they drove erratically to try and make it look like a legal observer rammed their vehicle. They hit him twice, called the local police, lied to the police and then said observer provided his dash cam footage and was released. Will ICE face any repercussions? Nope.
That only works if they aren't U.S citizens... Which if they're working for the gov means they are. This administration is creative they will find other more 'legal' ways for retribution so the punishment sticks.
> That only works if they aren't U.S citizens
Ice has already summarily executed two US citizens. one literally on camera and broadcasted to the world.
I think you're talking about Renee Good - who is the other person?
His name was Keith Porter. [1]
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...
ICE just summarily executed a US citizen in the street with the full support of the administration.
Practically, what is stopping them from black-bagging and deporting citizens? Congress? The courts?
Nah, ICE is snatching and robbing US citizens too, even when they have ID on them. My (US citizen) friend got taken last month and driven hundreds of miles to another state simply for speaking spanish in public.
This would only be true if ICE cared to obey the law, which they do not. They are not observing even the most basic facsimile of due process or probable cause. Protesting them is being treated as grounds for brutalization or arrest. They are actively flaunting their contempt for the Constitution while "conservatives" cheer from the sidelines.
Instead of calling them "conservatives" we should be calling them reactionaries. They want to erase the progress of the 20th century.
Don't be so gullible.
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.
There are many documented cases of them detaining natural born US citizens for close to a month.
ICE is now close to being Trump's private police, funded by tax payer's money and beyond accountability.
Close? That's been the case since ICE started rocking face masks and getting deployed only to "blue" cities.
What difference does it make whether they are US citizens or not?
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-...
> And there has been plenty US citizens deported under DHS.
Are you sure? Do you mind linking to information / reporting about that? I have not seen any.
It's easy to not see anything if you willingly close your eyes
Or what Upton Sinclair said.
How about starting on the wikipedia page:
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
Sure, since you haven't heard of Wikipedia, or internet in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_deporta...
Nonsense. You are seriously mistaken if you think mere legality will stop them.
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.
oh how naive you are... do you not watch the news / go outside?
Ironic that the orange man is telling Iranians to risk their lives.
His policy is very consistent and clear. He does not care about the form of government, how they treat the population etc, only that they show deference to him (personally).
That's always the country we've lived in.
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.
You must accept that 3 letter agencies have full root access to any Tim Apple or Google device and will use it if they already went far enough to do an FBI raid on a reporter.
I don’t have to accept any assertion in the absence of evidence directly supporting it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
I don't think that PRISM involved root access to any devices and this link does not claim that it did.
I was expecting this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
still doesn’t really prove much
It actually proves that they _don't_ (or didn't) have that kind of access because they first publicly asked for the access and then rescinded that request when they, not officially but widely accepted, acquired access through some kind of hack/bug/exploit given to them by, probably, the IDF or an Israeli private company.
Counterpoint - if they have full root access to any phone, why did they need to do the raid?
To intimidate other reporters
So they don't burn their 0day
The same reason federal agents wear GoPros. Security theater, and to send the message that journalists should not pursue stories like this that put the federal government in a less-than-favorable light.
This isn't hyperbole. They literally went to the king with gold in hands. There's no WAY they didn't open up their platforms to him.
Appeasing a moron with a shiny, valuable object is low effort. Covering up and adding a backdoor to Apple's widely used iOS is not in the same ballpark.
They don't need a backdoor. They can push whatever update to the OS they want. They have a front door.
> They literally went to the king with gold in hands.
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.
And don't forget the $400 million airplane that is probably filled with listening devices that will feed info to all of our enemies.
IDK, the FIFA world peace prize was completely unsurprising to me. It’s a massively corrupt institution and has been for decades. It’s out of the norm in a US context, for sure, but that kind of thing is penny ante for an organization whose Wikipedia article has multiple subsections on corruption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA?wprov=sfti1#Corruption
What is especially insane is people STILL praise Apple for championing "privacy" - after Snowden, after China, after Trump ... the well-engineered sunk-cost fallacy is just too potent to resist, I guess.
Magical end to end protection in Meta and Apple (chat) software to protect you from… whom exactly?
MAYBE non US governments? They probably have deals with all the big governments allowing them to spy on their own people at least.
I'm afraid Snowden was so long time ago, that the most vocal people don't even seemingly know about it, so yet again, we're in a period of time where assuming Apple/Google has full access to anything you do on your device, is seen as conspiracy theories. People seem to forget the past so damn quick, it's a wonder we humans manage to accomplish anything at all at this point.
Keep your eyes on protecting the midterms from interference... re ICE / militias etc. I encourage governors to call up their State's National Guards to protect their State's electoral systems from Federal intrusion and extremist militia groups. This move is founded in the most republican of urges: State Sovereignty. (btw, I'd even consider that as a move in Minneapolis, right now).
Do you think the Minneapolis National Guard are willing to fire on ICE if ordered to do so? What do you expect the legal fallout of that situation to be?
There is a lot of room before that. Rather that the Guard would intervene illegal searches etc, and the inevitable tense ICE - National Guard interaction would change the dynamic, temper ICE's behavior. Moreover, the expected outcome would actually be Trump trying to nationalize that guard, then a constitutional crisis/emergency supreme Court intervention. The most power move that Democrats could make right now is the Republican one: state's rights/ sovereignty
I think the Minnesota National Guard might be willing to fire on masked goons trying to abduct voters from polling stations, regardless of what agency they claim to be from. Even if they're not, their presence might deter the goons from showing up, which I think is a significant risk in the status quo.
I think that is becoming a less and less ridiculous scenario over time and I hope blue state governors have had long conversations with their national guard leadership about it.
Or as some 'uknown' VP would say: We will protect freedom of speech until the last journalist is behind the bars. That is the price we are willing to pay.
“When populists get into power, the rhetorical discourse frames tend to be used to implement successive autocratic measures, such as limiting opposition through electoral manipulation, thwarting the free press, changing the constitution in their own favor, and circumscribing minority, civil, political, and economic rights. Populists are usually not against electoral democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Since they believe they represent the ‘true people,’ other people’s votes do not really count as legitimate. Consequently, they are hostile to the underlying values and principles of constitutionalism, pluralism, minority rights, and checks and balances.”
-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.
So how does the cycle work? I’m not being sarcastic I actually find this a relevant and on-point summation. I happen to be very interested in the systemic consequences and results in Western history as much as is applicable in present USA. I’m glad to be a bystander and not participant, that’s for sure.
One final resolution is the guillotine, dangling upside down on a meat hook, or a bunker fire. Those are extreme but we have to wonder what will stop a specific leader from pushing so far that they meet such a fate. This personality type does not stop unless they have to.
> One final resolution is the guillotine
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.
Just to add to this, it still blows my mind how quickly this happened. The French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours within 5 years, and in the same short timespan Robespierre went madder than any Sun King had ever been. "La Terreur" was total madness.
On top of that he was a tremendous speaker. Tyrants don’t usually bother to justify their actions much beyond “because I can and I want to.” (Cf. current US administration’s discourse over Greenland.)
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).
It’s somewhat hopeful to assume that it is a cycle.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
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.
Usually there's a bodies-in-the-streets phase... guillotine was theatrical, bolsheviks called it the red terror, nazis were well the nazis, italians strung em up on meathooks, tienamin used tanks (after the famines), baltics did straight up ethnic cleansings, last week iranians gunned down thousands corralled in the squares.
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.
I'd say it's not that unusual in totalitarian dictatorships actually.
This is Nathanson's recent article (gift link) describing her work and the story that likely triggered the FBI's interest. Her reporting tells the stories of federal workers, she's not involved in any investigative work beyond interviewing current or former civil servants who feel helpless and lost now that the career that gave them purpose is no longer the same: wapo.st/49BQBrh
[flagged]
mentally unstable people can hold down jobs sometimes, too. Like, those under treatment, but a stressor can cause "relapse" and now you got a predicament at work.
Chemical and/or clinical depression can be debilitating, and i consider it mental instability.
> impair public interest reporting in general.
Some administrations may see this as a feature not bug…
This strengthens my belief that all governments, mafias, urban gangs, and even cliques, are literally all just ancient tribalism manifested in modernity; may the biggest rocks win.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and gave a boatload of money to Trump's campaign. Democracy dies in darkness.
Don’t ever forget what Bezos chooses to do or not to do here, whenever his name comes up in any context in future.
It'd be real cool if all the second amendment (guns) people cared as much about the first amendment (free speech and freedom of press).
"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.
The American Left has spent the better part of the last century attacking the 2nd Amendment, limiting firearms ownership, and portraying gun owners as paranoid losers. That would drive many on-the-fence gun owners away from supporting them.
Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
Is there any surprise that there's a dearth of armed citizens ready to stand up for them?
"A rifle behind every blade of grass only works if you've been watering the lawn"
I don't know whether you've noticed, but being armed is simply giving the Federales more reasons to kill you first. The woman shot in Minneapolis was shot on the pretext of using her car as a weapon.
How do people really expect this to work? In detail? You show up with an armed militia at a school and the ICE guys just drive on past (and then raid someone else)? Or are they expecting more of an Amerimaidan situation? Jan 6th situation?
It’s a bunch of dudes who think they’re literally Rambo. Like, sure with enough firepower you can maybe take out two before they take you out but any sort of application of your second amendment rights is going to end quickly for you.
The irony of the romanticizing of the "Lone Wolf" is that, in reality, the lone wolf dies alone.
Coordinating with your neighbors and compatriots is essential from the soap box, to the ballot box, to the jury box, and to the cartridge box. And I'd like to emphasize the order of those boxes should be followed.
I'm gonna say the same thing I said the last time you trotted out this dumb opinion (which is far more excusable now that you've outed yourself as a brit BTW). At a societal level the LARPers don't matter. They are a rounding error compared to all the people who have a single daily carry piece or purse gun or whatever. And those people affect the numbers and the risk calculations happening in offices far away.
ICE is thuggishly and sloppily prowling places like Minneapolis because statistically they can get away with it without causing too many bodies. Up the potential body number and their tactics are forced to change for the better.
If the statistical average door they kick in in Minneapolis had the same likelihood of "shit I ain't going back to prison <bang> <bang> <bang> <dives out bathroom window and hops neighbors fence>" behind it as the statistical average door in St. Louis ICE wouldn't be behaving the way they are in MN. They would have specific targets, specific places and times to pick them up, etc, etc. (i.e. operating like the local professional police do) because the risk calculation with even a tiny change you might get shot back at, even if only ineffectively, makes that (much higher) resource expenditure pencil out, with consequences in terms of how much they can get done.
Personal ability to credibly threaten lethal violence if cornered (note: I did not say "firearms") acts much like an AGTM or MANPADS for an infantry squad. You're not gonna take a squad with TOWs on the offensive against a bunch of tanks, but if attacked you've at least got a prayer. The same math holds on the individual level. Making any potential target substantially more prickly to a potentially superior force and doing so for little cost is a huge boon for the little guy. A firearm is a force multiplier same as a bomb carrying drone or a cell phone that records things the government does not like or a media platform that puts those things in front of the eyes of the masses. It forces the superior force to still be much more careful and expend far more resources when engaging. When it comes to domestic policing what this means is that ICE would be under more pressure to "be careful and professional" in every city like the DEA did during the war on drugs we wouldn't even be having this discussion because they wouldn't be employing the tactics that everyone hates.
This math is a large part of why drugs won the war on drugs. There were enough glawk fawtys wit da switch kicking around on the "wrong" side of the law that the cops needed to adopt militarized tactics, the public didn't wanna pay for that shit (monetarily or politically) over weed, and thus drugs won the war on drugs. If they could've rolled up on just about anyone "cheaply" with just a few cheaply (poorly) trained cops, minimal equipment and support, minimal planning and surveillance, etc. it would've gone on way longer (but they couldn't, because that would have yielded too many bodies and cost too much political capital).
>Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident into an us-versus-them narrative.....
Yeah, it is a fantasy. Oh, and if anything really gets out of hand, that political empire also has nuclear weapons.
>One dude in his home with a gun or two versus a 50 billion dollar ICE force that has complete immunity and a massive media and political empire ready to spin any bad incident into an us-versus-them narrative.....
How does legal immunity or a media empire affect a dead man?
>Oh, and if anything really gets out of hand, that political empire also has nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are not very useful in a civil conflict... Or pretty much any conflict
Thew whiplash from "Why isn't anyone fighting ICE???" to "the government will nuke us if we fight back" is frankly stunning
Can't fight ICE because they have no laws they need to uphold, and they have an unlimited budget to buy tools to fight you with.
And the whiplash is quite small, if not nonexistent. Why? Because there's no depths to which this regime, which is openly hostile to its own population, won't go to assert power, as well as to maintain it.
> there's no depths to which this regime, which is openly hostile to its own population, won't go to assert power, as well as to maintain it.
Sounds like a regime worth fighting if that's what you believe, but it seems you've decided it's futile.
It took me 15 minutes to buy an AR-15 and a pistol in 2025, how did the left do this?
OK, now what happens when you show up in front of an ICE agent while carrying an AR-15? How, specifically, do you use the gun to effect political change?
Sure, but this has nothing to do with gun ownership policy or the political left.
Edit: oh, you were responding to the second half of their comment, not the first. I see.
Well done! Step one is getting armed, and step two is training. There are a lot of good resources out there for non-right-wing shooters, such as InRangeTV.
You'd have to be pretty insane to see opposing raids on journalists as supporting "The American Left".
At this point, unfortunately, that appears to be where the Overton window is resting. I didn't intend any sideswipes or sarcasm in my comment, I was just trying to characterize the opposition to the 2nd Amendment in broad terms.
Adding this on as a separate thought:
If you genuinely think we're at the point that we need to start shooting, the onus is on YOU to get armed, get trained, and take action. Don't expect anyone else to come and fight for you, especially those you perceive as your political enemies.
> The American Left has spent the better part of the last century attacking the 2nd Amendment
That's doing a lot of heavy lifting. I know Republicans who unironically say shit like "We can't do background checks. What if I'm trying to buy a gun really quick for a hunting trip?" I would imagine your idea of "attacking" the second amendment is just common sense laws.
> Just a few years ago, their own supporters were smugly saying that standing up to the government is a fantasy for paranoid whackjobs.
In your heart of hearts, do you really believe this has anything to do with it? If we were to take your comment seriously, it just illustrates the right never actually cared about standing up to oppressive governments, they just wanted to be the oppressive government. That is actually pretty consistent with how the left clocked them.
But in reality, it has nothing to do with what you wrote. The biggest 2A fanatics, as someone related to quite a few of them, just have a fantasy of shooting people. They are openly celebrating the death of Renee Nicole Good because that's the kind of thing they want to do.
The guns haven't been taken away only because people do care so much about the 2nd amendment. Those people understand that the 2nd amendment is the only ultimate defense for the people against the government.
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.
Kind of ironic that there's a big overlap in the venn diagram between 2nd amendment enthusiasts and the crowd that is cheering on the government's authoritarian actions.
Because the visible 2A enthusiasts essentially trace a lineage to the KKK. Of course, they don't actually care about upholding the Constitution or fighting tyranny. That was just a convenient cover tactic and accusation to use against political opponents.
There isn't, it just appears that way. There is a subset of people that are cheering on the government in this situation and they are 2nd amendment supporters but the 2nd amendment supporters are much larger than that overlap.
Things like this is just another way of trying to drive a wedge.
With the government harassing, attacking, and now killing innocent American citizens, I'm not so sure if the second amendment is working out so well.
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.
Imagine every protestor you see on video was instead standing rank and file in the street with a rifle on their shoulder. I.e. a well regulated militia. That would sure send a very different message, wouldn't it?
Not civil war, but a revolution. The 2nd amendment isn't worth much except as a very last resort, when the vast majority of people are willing to die to overthrow a government, as we're seeing in Iran.
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.
The second amendment people are quite fine with the current administration. All you're learning is what real power means and sadly what performative opposition does (nothing).
it's a universal thing I think. in self-defense, when your life is at risk, you can use those guns, what do you have to lose. But in every other case, you have more to lose so guns are useless outside of use by aggressors.
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.
> 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.
The “don’t tread on me” folks converted to “comply or die” shockingly quickly.
"Don't tread on me, tread on them"
It feels like all of the "patriots" joined ICE.
People care more about their guns because, in their minds, that's the last thing that stands between them and complete helplessness. They have fantasies of starting up an Idaho or Montana-style militia to protect themselves from the liberal and immigrant hoards.
It was never principled opposition to anything, just a power fantasy that the current admin lets them live even more viscerally.
> "They're gonna take my guns away!" Yet that never happens
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.
Not asking adversarially at all here: what do you mean by resisting with "real numbers" without media campaigns, social media, or protesting? What do the vested parties actually do to secure their second amendment rights? Do you just mean having large voting blocs?
Take it for whats its worth but I been good friends with someone who works in Newsom camp, and constantly goes for a bite with his team. They talk alot. The main theme now is how to use illegal immigration situation to their benefit. If Newsom is elected President, he wants to go door to door in search for illegal guns that illegals are harboring. Of course all this is BS, or in such insignificant amount that its rather irrelevant. But they want to use Republican's hate for immigrants to help them catalog all serials numbers and ownership of us-owned guns. To some degree it will be fun to watch the "all she had to do is comply with Federal law not to get killed while running away in her car" people rounded up and having their guns cataloged in the name of fight with illegal immigration, and in accordance with Federal law :)
Huh? Are you saying that if Gavin Newsom is elected, rather than turning down the rhetoric, restoring the rule of law, and taking the pressure off of the immigrants and brown people who are scapegoats of the current administration, he instead wants to commit violations of the 4th amendment under the color of searching for immigrants but _actually_ in order to find firearms that are legally owned by US citizens? Presumably in preparation for a mass violation of the 2nd amendment (aka "round 'em up boys")? And your source for this is ... you're friends with someone who works "in the Newsom camp" and you go out for lunch with them?
I'll be honest, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory, so I'm gonna take it for what it's worth ... nothing.
He's saying his friend and his friend's coworkers who somehow work for Newsom wants Newsom to do that. Not that Newsome wants to do that.
In your “it would be fun to see people I don’t like being killed” you have conflated legal gun ownership that you don’t like to illegally crossing the remaining the borders of a country… and you can’t see it huh?
"that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at the request of the “department of war”, the Trump administration’s informal name for the department of defense."
uh oh sounds like the Guardian is asking for a raid too
Not sure why they call the name ("Department of War") informal. Seems pretty formal to me. It's displayed on the building.
It takes an act of Congress to change the name. Trump just made one of his dictatorial proclamations.
Between this and Minneapolis I guess the water temperature just keeps on being turned up, and us frogs are just chilling out in our warm baths.
There were over 1000 protests over the weekend. The one I went to in Surprise, AZ had almost 1000 people, in a fairly conservative area with mostly older, white demographics. I think the tide is turning.
> There were over 1000 protests OVER THE WEEKEND
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.
Serious question from a clueless european here, who should they vote for?
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?
> One is 79 and one is 83, where are all the young politicians?
Down ballot. There are very few elections where nothing on the ballot is of stake.
The 83 year old wasn’t the candidate.
If you're talking age, the US just had a 60 year old run in the last election and the party that complained to no end about the elderly running for office still voted for the 80 year old. Next election, the other frontrunner is currently 58. We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to have him win the primary.
The 83 year old dropped out before the election took place. Kamala Harris is 61. No spring chicken, but at least not old enough that she should've retired years ago.
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.
US elections happen in two stages, a "primary" where each party decides their candidate and then the "general" where the final winner is decided. It sounds like you may only be getting news about general elections (and may have missed the news where the 83 year old ended up getting swapped out).
Yes, the system sucks and there should be more and better candidates.
But when one side represents fascism and the other doesn't the choice is still easy.
(also a Brit)
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.
There are plenty of young politicians. Their parties deliberately keep them out of power. Political power in the united states gets strangely concentrated by our 2 party system in a way that tends to ossify policy and promote more ring-wing versions of both parties.
If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party because that's effectively voting for the other major candidate. So the problem of not having more than 2 choices perpetuates indefinitely.
Whichever choice has the least favour is malleable. Right now, by switching up their candidates and policies, the democrats can't do any worse than they're already doing, which is losing. If the democrats next time, then the republicans will have 4 years with nothing to lose.
> If there's one thing both parties agree with, it's that you can't ever vote for a third party
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.
That only works if the message of the third party is more appealing to those voters. And so the major party also pays attention to which third party messages from those who would support them are getting through and changes.
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.
Not everyone is chilling. Some of us are protesting and/or moving our families out of the country.
I don't know if it's fair to say we're chilling - there have been fairly organized (although admittedly not very large) protests around the nation related to the killing of Nicole Renee Good. I live in southern California and there were at least 6 within easy driving distance this past weekend.
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.
I understand protesting ICE for better accountability, they certainly need to be held accountable. But I don't understand those who protest the presence of ICE as a concept. Are there any countries that don't enforce their immigration laws?
A protest movement can't be very subtle. A clear and short message like "No ICE" or "ICE Out" is much preferable to "We would like an immigrations and and custom enforcement agency that respects people and the law, efficiently inspects imports, checks in on visa overstayers, pursues charges against business owners that have a business practice of not checking work eligibility of new hires, and works with competent, trained agencies to perform traffic stops and home/office raids or trains their own officers for such"
My libertarian philosophy is not compatible with immigration laws in general. I'm not quite let everyone in - but I require strong reason to not let someone in. People should have the right to move, only restricted in the worst cases.
ICE as an agency was created in 2003. Most of the posters here are older than it by a significant factor. We can live without it and create another agency to enforce immigration laws that isn't thoroughly rotted and filled with criminals.
"I don't understand why people protest the Gestapo as a concept. Are there any countries that don't have undercover police?"
I live in Seattle and I've seen multiple large protests around the ICE murder of Renee Good. Part of the problem is that the US is too large as the people responsible for the jackbooted thugs kicking in doors and killing citizens are on the other side of the country. Business in Minneapolis is practically grinding to a halt as stores and businesses close their door out of fear.
I think we're one or two bad incidents away from wide-scale rioting.
We have the tech elite to thank for this disaster
That was one of the main plot points in Andor.
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.
Reminds me of the West Wing:
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.
We have left wing accelerationists in the US too.
Woah woah woah! I still haven't watched this. (I know, I know...)
Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately? Did someone famous use it or something?
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.
> Why has this analogy been repeated so much lately?
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.
It's a 100+ years old metaphor widely used at virtually any point in time since then to describe all kind of situations
Have fun seeing "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon" everywhere.
Baader-Meinhof effect.
Because it's appropriate and descriptive?
We're actually dumber than the frogs. The original 19th century experiment involving frogs that didn't jump out of heated water was using frogs who had had their brains destroyed. The question being asked was whether the escape reaction to hot water was caused by the brain or by something further down in the nervous system. With an intact brain, the frogs would jump out. Without one, they wouldn't. Question answered.
Relevant Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...
It's just a simple analogy that quickly breaks down.
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.
Exorbitant education costs and free flow of thought extinguishing media means Americans are the brainless frogs.
Maybe that's a strong element, but I think we are simply too addicted to comfort and our way of life. We've been encouraged to "just vote" for so long we've lost all political muscle.
To think that this administration makes Nixon look principled.
They should have gone to Mar Lago to find their missing classified documents. Do they not watch the news? /s
In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop another Snowden type leak.
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".
> 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.
Agreed. Snowden also wasn't a journalist but the source himself. Having over 1000 individual sources of information is not at all the same thing.
Or intimidate a member of the press that isn't "bending the knee" to them.
>In all seriousness, it sounds like they're trying to stop another Snowden type leak.
I bet it's the recipe for the military-grade copium some people are on
Not really surprised at this point. After Bush allowed, and Obama pardoned the collateral murder pilots, whistleblowers and journalists in the U.S. have been continually threatened, hazed, jailed and killed at the pleasure of whomever the current president is. This isn't party politics, Bush through Trump, are guilty. This is fascism at its finest...
I think you’re fundamentally right. Trump is obviously the worst we’ve seen yet, but power has been accumulating unchecked in the executive branch’s hands for decades now.
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.
Most of which is downstream of 9/11 and the War on Terror. That provided lots of bipartisan support for state sponsored killings.
They raided Trump's wife's underwear drawer too so Trump is a victim of this FBI overreach as well.
Its not really overreach if they get a warrant and find the things they were looking for.
The photos you saw after the Mar-a-Lago raid of top-secret folders and classified files were fabricated. To look worse than they were.
You can be mad at the FBI for raiding a journalist (although we don’t have all the details and maybe there is some context you don’t know)… but be consistent.
Fabricated by whom? Like, out of whole cloth? Did the files not exist in the bathroom?
Citations needed.
The difference here is that the journalist got passed information by people who were committing the same crime Trump did. Trump directly committed his crime. The two are not equal.
Furthermore, Trump is no journalist, nor did he steal the secret files for journalistic purposes.
Indeed, don't blame the individual (all thought the individual has plenty of individual blame going their way, rightfully so), blame the system.
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.
I have an ongoing debate (argument? fight?) with my father about this. He recalls a time when it felt as if there were 'good guys' in politics, and can't understand why it is that I'm so hard on the democrats (this has begun to shift in recent months as Chucklefuck and Aipac Shakur have consistently disappointed him). Besides the obvious issue of republicans being a lost cause, it's policies like too big to fail and dodd-frank and nafta that created the conditions for our current mess, all the while expanding and allowing basic, obvious bad policy to persist (presidential pardons, executive order powers, life terms in the supreme court).
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.
I absolutely blame the individual.
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
I would highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death if you are looking to understand how the populace got to the point where truth is irrelevant and nothing really matters.
It helped my mental model a lot at the very least.
I’m extremely aware of amusing ourselves to death
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 I’ll kill each other through poorly identified externalities
Similar to how we investigate and figure out airplane crashes, the system should not allow you to get into those situations in the first place, that's the solution that works across time, instead of for just individual situations.
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.
So then again my question is who ultimately audits and holds the system accountable such that if the system needs to be fixed it gets fixed?
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
We must blame the system and the individual, otherwise the system will never change.
“ Agents searched Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials case”
Right underneath the headline. That’s pretty normal for the FBI, assuming they had a search warrant.
No, this is absolutely not normal as the article clearly states. Reporters are very rarely raided in the US under circumstances like these.
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".
Here’s a less sensational article. The journalist is not even a target of the investigation, the target is a contractor leaking documents.
“ 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...
Please don’t be so naive as to think that this administration is above creating a pretext for raiding the home of their real target while claiming it’s about something else. It’s the same thing (minus the raid, plus an indictment) they’re doing to Jerome Powell.
oh you sweet summer child... to see the world with your simple star-spangled eyes...
Trump keeps that kind of stuff in their guest bathroom, cool. Reporter, raid and straight to jail. What a timeline to witness. Elected officials glut preventing them from doing their duty.
Not only that, the word going around is some of the stuff found in the bathroom were far above top secret, including some Q-Clearance level stuff from the DoE.
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.
Q clearance isn’t “far above top secret.” It’s TS plus Nuclear Weapons Information. The background investigation is exactly the same as TS and almost everyone that works at a DOE lab gets one: almost 100,000 people have access. It requires no polygraph like SCI and higher clearances.
In some ways this is just desserts after American journalists decided that Julian Assange was not worth defending[1]. Still disheartening to see, since we need robust journalism to keep companies/politicians honest.
[1] https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1116371239705227265
>, this is absolutely not normal
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.
Not all bad things are the same. Raiding a reporter's house is very much an abnormal act to have taken place.
>Not all bad things are the same.
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.
Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of journalists to investigate leaks? If not, it's hard to make a compelling case that this is "normal"
>Can you point to other instances of the FBI raiding homes of journalists to investigate leaks?
James Burke, the Veritas guy, the ABC News guy, etc.
I think James O’Keeffe was the Project Veritas guy. He had a legally obtained the original of Ashley Biden’s diary. Joe Biden’s daughter. Where in it a page she wrote while in therapy said she had inappropriate showers with her father.
Legally obtained is dubious in this context. He likely knew it was stolen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown
As others pointed out, the problem with this is that you end up with a government that can target any reporter by claiming they have "classified materials". No need to prove what those materials are (because they are classified). This is how third world countries choke journalists.
In the USA, the claim has to be convincing to a judge, so it’s not quite as arbitrary as you indicate.
Clearly, the bar for it to be convincing seems quite low here
In order for ICE to raid homes they need to have a valid warrant signed by a judge, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them in Minneapolis doing warrantless raids.
They're supposed to. They've been breaking into homes without them.
The current administration is utterly lawless.
That is relatively minor compared to ICE shooting protestors and then stopping people from giving them medical attention.
Of course they had a search warrant.
ICE has been knocking down doors and ripping folks from their homes without warrants. Why would the FBI under this administration behave differently?