> After a local activist uploaded a license-plate search tool
on Fly.io, a developer-focused public cloud platform, to an
infiltrated Signal chat, HSI agents reviewed website DNS
queries and Stripe data along with data purchased from a
commercial broker. This gave HSI access to SSH session
logs, outbound connection records, the Fly.io account’s
signup IP, and a Stripe card fingerprint on an account that
had never completed a payment. Agents fused that with
Minnesota DVS records and commercial data from the Thomson-
Reuters CLEAR platform to produce a driver's license
nummber, Social Security number summary, years of address
history, phone numbers, property records, and jointly
registered vehicles.
DNS, too. I imagine they weren't using their ISP's DNS server, as that could cut out needing a bunch of this data, but then I wonder what data they did get from whatever DNS provider...
Cloud equals not your computer, folks. Any cloud company can be legally subpoenaed and required to hand over any data they have, and they can also be legally gagged from telling anyone about it. Doesn't matter if they support it or not, they are a corporation subject to the laws of their jurisdiction and disobeying can expose the directors personally to civil or criminal penalties. Every corp will comply with a legal subpoena, and those are often easier to get than warrants.
For you they at least require a warrant. Usually. Unless you're crossing the border or are undocumented or something.
"technical and network-activity records from fly.io included:
SSH session logs (CSV format) listing multiple "New SSH session" entries for <redacted> with verified=true between approximately 2026-03-26 and 2026-04-01, timestamped in UTC.
outbound-connection records (CSV format) reflecting numerous TCP port 443 connections originating from internal fly.io addresses <redacted> to external IP addresses attributed to AMAZON-02 (Amazon Web Services) in the US and Cloudflarenet (Cloudflare)".
However on page 8 the document states that these "session logs" don't record commands, they're just audit logs of when, where, by whom the sessions were initiated.
All of your comments are coming up as [dead]. I vouched and upvoted your first one shortly after you posted it, I think that's probably why you couldn't edit it anymore.
Also SSH isn't a perfectly opaque protocol. There's stuff you can use to fingerprint e.g. client/server versions and often narrow it to architecture, OS, even OS version. That helps.
I change countries a lot and my default assumption for any new country is that overstaying your visa will be treated seriously, resulting in something like immediate detention (in a very lousy environment), probably a fine, and near-immediate deportation (at your expense), and probably some sort of quite serious ban (probably greater than merely months). And that's if the individual has a clean record; I'd expect it to significantly less benign otherwise.
Although this default expectation is pessimistic (and some countries might not be nearly that harsh), I don't think it's wildly inaccurate. What I don't understand is why it's common for intelligent people (seemingly only in the US) to think violations of visa/immigration conditions is acceptable and ICE are bad guys for enforcing the law?
It has always been obvious since ICE’s budget was raised over 10x what it used to be, even though ICE was already struggling to find enough people with criminal records to deport, that ICE was intended to be far more than an immigration enforcement agency.
>Americans’ liberties have been trammeled in a variety of different ways. Under the guise of stopping terrorism, law enforcement officials and government leaders have now been given the right to conduct searches of homes and offices without prior notice, use roving wiretaps to listen in on telephone conversations, and monitor computers and e-mail messages, even to the degree of eavesdropping on attorney/client conversations.
>Conceivably, these extensions of the definition of “terrorist” could bring within their sweep diverse domestic political groups, which have been accused of acts of intimidation or property damage such as Act Up, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Operation Rescue, and the Vieques demonstrators.
Its too much work, we did violent rounding up of brown people to have images to re use for campaigns and now we can use the paramilitary force for chasing political dissidents like any normal democratic goverment would do.
Lets ignore that the richest man on the planet has a credible record of being n immigrant who stayed in the US illegaly, and has open criminal record probes in at least 2 countries. But I guess a 350 million donation to the standing goverment in campaign donations might make it difficult for ICE to find him
Immigration in the US has always been more complicated than "no papers? gotta go." Moving north to do some seasonal work then moving back south is a very old thing, and was enshrined into law by the "Bracero program" in the post ww2 era. In the 60s, however, it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally. ... and business owners no choice but to keep hiring them.
The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.
Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission, executing people is not.
You can argue about how they should go about deporting people, but them deporting everyone even those without a criminal record is their intended purpose.
It’s also the federal government’s job to go around arresting everybody carrying or smoking weed, as it is still illegal no matter what any state says and every single person consuming it is a lawbreaker.
We have evidence now that they execute people without a criminal record.
See the execution of Renée Good. Remember how the ICE terrorist deliberately
stepped before her car, to try to make a defensive claim aka "had to shoot her to stop her". Meanwhile his other two terrorist buddies were standing NEXT to the car,
thus invalidating the lie quite logically. After all, how did two other ICE terrorists
manage to not get into that situation that the murderer chose to employ here? So there is a lack of consistency among ICE terrorists.
Man, this is chilling. Between this and those "anti-ice" protestors that got a collective 450 years of jail time, it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.
I would urge you to attempt to define fascism in a way that does not reflect the behaviour of the current admin, and its a pretty fungible political theory so there are multiple valid definitions, and I would still think you would fail
Add to that the weaponization of the justice department. Former FBI directory charged 3 times as retaliation, Senator Mark Kelly and other senators, even lowly aides such as Cassidy Hutchinson, all facing retaliation.
David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist was accused and indicted for damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, purely as a scapegoat.
All federal funds to the state of Colorado frozen to force them to release a convicted-and-imprisoned ally of the administration (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOE6DTMjPEc )
Yeah it isn't "pretty close", it is a police state.
Didn't they get 450 years of jail time (spread among nine people IIRC) for attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder?[0] If the start of your pattern of "police state levels of power, corruption and control" is people engaging in organized terrorism, (i.e. using violence for political ends) being convicted of terrorism offenses, then I guess I don't see it. Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.
I think in another universe where they just stood outside and shouted while holding signs and shooting up fireworks, then peaceably surrendered when when the cops came, they would get slaps on the wrist, maybe.
But instead a few of them had guns, and one of them decided to get into a shoot-off with the police.
You are unequivocally fucked if you have any degree of association with those people doing shit like that on federal property.
(the bodycams and security footage for this event are on youtube)
Small nitpick, but I believe this all happened on private, not federal, property. The ICE facility they were protesting at was a private company ICE was contracting with, not an actual federal building.
People are killed and maimed every year from Fourth of July fireworks. You're proving my point that these were LARPing revolutionaries who nevertheless engaged in real violence.
And please don't forget the attempted murder that the leader really did carry out with a firearm.
No, the fact that people occasionally get hurt by accident with fireworks does not make the violent subtext in "attacking a government building with explosives" a correct description of the situation.
The way you frame the event is very misleading after reading the article.
I know that idiots will argue that "attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder" is "technically correct", but it is stupidity to not understand that it leaves out important nuances.
> Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.
Unless of course your guy ends up in power again and offers you pardons and reparations.
Non-US here but if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally, and they do that, where is the controversy? If people then impede them doing that, they should be sanctioned, right? I know the number of actual engineers on here are now dwindling since this became reddit 2.0 but
> If police arrest criminals, and people impede the police arresting criminals
> Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
> If paramedics help casualties, and people impede the paramedics helping casualties
> Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
> If <noun> <verb> <nouns>, and people impede the <noun> <verb> <nouns>
> Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
So long as it's a lawful activity, it shouldn't change from scenario to scenario. Being arrested or convicted is an act of law, not a moral or ethic act. To avoid lawful sanctions, you have to object lawfully. If you act unlawfully, then you risk lawful sanctions. That's a risk you take.
I know it's a little black and white but I'm one of the pre-reddit 2.0 hacker news inhabitants.
> if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally,
Following you so far
> and they do that,
Yeah, that's where you fucked up. That's not what ICE is doing that everyone is upset about. It's the locking up, deporting, and killing of people who are here legally, they just happen to be brown.
In terms of absolute number of incarcerated persons, though, the US is ahead of everyone else by a country mile. Depending on which inmate pools you include or exclude, the US holds 20-25% of all incarcerated persons in the world.
Just remember that there is a child somewhere who saw their mum for the last time happily dropping them for school only to be shot by an ICE agent seconds after he called her a fucking bitch - and the agent faced no consequences for this. Every time I think about that kid my heart breaks. Every time I think about the cruelty of the system unwilling to at least put this one wrong right and prosecute the agent properly my heart breaks. What a unbelievably cruel world we live in.
Those 450 collective years of jail time was due to all of the firearms they brought, running away from the scene, shooting at the facility, and lying to law enforcement. I'm all for protesting, but this is not the hill you want to die on as your "chilling" moment.
State resources and armed officers are all part of a political stance. If you don't recognise it it's because they are on your side. But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.
> But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.
Is that true, though? I don't expect that the individual biases of officers or judges, or the institutional biases of the police or immigration departments, can switch at a moment's notice.
Rational people act according to the incentives they’re provided. If that incentive is “follow these new instructions/directives or you’ll lose your job” (or worse?) it takes an especially principled person to object.
It's less true every day, now that Trump is busy filling the ranks of the bureaucracy with people who respond to the loyalty-test question "Who won the 2020 election?" with "Donald Trump."
Entities like the courts and law enforcement optimize for the retention of people who do what they're told and the turnover of those who have their own principals. And this is before you account for the fact that most people will do what they're told before they threaten their paycheck.
It’s so cute that some people imagine the armed forces and police were on the other side or are on their side. If you’re average Joe, the police in a tyrannical state are never on your “side”.
Both-sides-ism is probably the single worst stance to take here. You're tacitly siding with whoever actually holds and wields the power. Not caring which one wins isn't helping anyone at all, even you.
Both sides argument are springing up like weeds all over the various forums in the last couple weeks before a predicted major shift in Congress.
If you have deeply unpopular policies but only 1/3rd of the country is expected to vote, telling everyone their vote won't matter is the best stance to take.
If you're not American, then you should consider before commenting that you may be missing important context. The allegiance of US federal law enforcement agencies does not switch on a moment's notice or even follow electoral control of the government; note, for example, that the director of the FBI is always a Republican.
When, in the history of the U.S., have police forces ever been on the left?
Heck, historically the cops have even broken up peaceful union protests, despite being in unions themselves, throwing away all class solidarity in favor of their right wing leanings.
And the police unions have uniquely been extremely right wing, other than during rare highly localized conditions (often involving the democratic candidate being center right at least).
It's more a self reinforcing side-effect of a withering democracy than the cause. The rhetoric from the far right keeps implying that we're much closer to a single party state than the current election cycle suggests and they have proven themselves to be weak predictors of outcomes they don't directly control so I'm sure more shenanigans will be revealed shortly.
The same political groups that support hate speech laws are now looking for support from the freedom of speech groups? That sounds like a temporary alliance at best. They aren't going to support you long term because they know leftists are authoritarians of a different color. AKA your rhetoric isn't going to work because you have no principles and they do.
Freedom of speech is a first amendment issue, my friend. The "second amendment types" OP refers to are the people who claim that citizen ownership of any and all types of firearms is a buttress against tyrannical government. Since the Trump admin is at least arguably a tyrannical government, it seems legit to at least ask where the previously vociferously pro-gun people are right now. Many should be at least warning of potential tyranny, but appear not to be doing so.
The #1 reason sighted by 2nd amendment loyalists for needing such liberal gun rights is to protect us all from government overreach. I assume that's what he means.
turns out, they’re into it. they were in favor of it in the 60’s and still are.
the 2nd amendment (the entire Bill of Rights) was written to protect us from our own government, but it’s way more convenient to just shoot brown people or people who speak a different language.
Go join your local Pink Pistols/Brown Berets/SRA/whatever chapter.
The leftist gun community is mostly focused on arming the LGBTQ community at the moment though. Your chances of getting canoed while trying to stab a trans woman are way up over the past couple years.
Not without work it won't. Trump II has been using "Who won the 2020 election?" as a shibboleth to fill the ranks with True Believers. Nobody gets power without answering "Trump" to that question.
For me it wasn't so much that he was the only one to vote against it, as it was that when he did vote against it the people of his state promptly replaced him with a more Law and Order senator.
In the US we claim we want freedom, privacy, and all that good stuff. But where the rubber meets the road, it becomes pretty clear that we don't.
You have the power to stop them. There are plenty of technical opportunities out there and every internal security memo with your hn handle on it is another piece of grear they can't use and time they've wasted ratcheting their own paranoia.
I am from the US and the headline is accurate. Not “the largest,” but “one of the largest.” We’ve been here before. The question is does it get kneecapped or does it spin out of control?
I remember as a 14 year old (2004) thinking about how I'd make sites like TPB or 4chan without getting it shut down, a place that anyone could speak freely. Then Kim Dotcom happened, and even Lavabit, and I'm sure many others.
It's a thankless thing, but we need more people who are willing to just do it. Now I know some of you will point out that Kim Dotcom was hosting movies, shows, music, etc. That's not my point, look at HOW they took him down, and WHEN. They were trying to pass SOPA, claiming it would help them take down people like Kim Dotcom "because they couldn't" so what they did to Kim Dotcom was questionable from a legal perspective...
Sigh. I really do miss the internet before the 2nd and 3rd waves of "Eternal September" (Facebook then Smartphones) it was much nicer.
The evidence will remain in ssh logs and such. That is part of why it got posted here. This political struggle has gone technical and we're all involved.
> Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.
When they are arresting news anchors for reporting on ICE's activities, it should be obvious that Trump and his administration is fascist-curious.
It is eerily similar to the 1930s era in central Europe.
I would not call it "Anti-Left" though. Fascism should
never be confused with having an agenda other than
fascism itself, be it Trump's corporate fascism or
Putin's neo-Stalinism. All pocket away wealth and power
to their cronies.
What gets me is how much of this stuff is just bought, not built. Agencies can purchase location and social media data from brokers and skip the warrant step entirely, so I'd honestly put more energy into closing that loophole than into fighting any one agency.
> After a local activist uploaded a license-plate search tool on Fly.io, a developer-focused public cloud platform, to an infiltrated Signal chat, HSI agents reviewed website DNS queries and Stripe data along with data purchased from a commercial broker. This gave HSI access to SSH session logs, outbound connection records, the Fly.io account’s signup IP, and a Stripe card fingerprint on an account that had never completed a payment. Agents fused that with Minnesota DVS records and commercial data from the Thomson- Reuters CLEAR platform to produce a driver's license nummber, Social Security number summary, years of address history, phone numbers, property records, and jointly registered vehicles.
Wow, I wonder how they got SSH session logs?!
The breadcrumb trail here is chilling.
DNS, too. I imagine they weren't using their ISP's DNS server, as that could cut out needing a bunch of this data, but then I wonder what data they did get from whatever DNS provider...
Seems like it was fly.io, since they got the user IP from there and it would make sense they would have the session logs.
Cloud equals not your computer, folks. Any cloud company can be legally subpoenaed and required to hand over any data they have, and they can also be legally gagged from telling anyone about it. Doesn't matter if they support it or not, they are a corporation subject to the laws of their jurisdiction and disobeying can expose the directors personally to civil or criminal penalties. Every corp will comply with a legal subpoena, and those are often easier to get than warrants.
For you they at least require a warrant. Usually. Unless you're crossing the border or are undocumented or something.
indeed, the actual case report (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28831278-govuscourts...) states:
"technical and network-activity records from fly.io included:
SSH session logs (CSV format) listing multiple "New SSH session" entries for <redacted> with verified=true between approximately 2026-03-26 and 2026-04-01, timestamped in UTC.
outbound-connection records (CSV format) reflecting numerous TCP port 443 connections originating from internal fly.io addresses <redacted> to external IP addresses attributed to AMAZON-02 (Amazon Web Services) in the US and Cloudflarenet (Cloudflare)".
However on page 8 the document states that these "session logs" don't record commands, they're just audit logs of when, where, by whom the sessions were initiated.
Darned if you do, darned if you don't.
If there's a hack, HN will say, "How could Fly.io not be keeping logs? Malpractice!"
If there's a warrant, HN will say, "How could Fly.io be keeping logs? Malpractice!"
Choose whether you want logs when creating your instance? Good practice.
What about "it's not Fly.io and it's more about how the Fourth Amendment is effectively neutered in our dystopian, socially regressive era."
for some reason, the above comment wont let me edit it (despite it being a minute old). but i was going to add:
"i wonder if fly.io bothers to vet/challenge records requests or if they just hand data over".
(this one can be edited, though. very strange)
All of your comments are coming up as [dead]. I vouched and upvoted your first one shortly after you posted it, I think that's probably why you couldn't edit it anymore.
huh... shadowban of some sort because they aren't appearing as [dead] on my side. not sure what rule i broke, but okay.
thanks dang/tomhow.
They might mean SSH TCP traffic logs, maybe?
Also SSH isn't a perfectly opaque protocol. There's stuff you can use to fingerprint e.g. client/server versions and often narrow it to architecture, OS, even OS version. That helps.
I change countries a lot and my default assumption for any new country is that overstaying your visa will be treated seriously, resulting in something like immediate detention (in a very lousy environment), probably a fine, and near-immediate deportation (at your expense), and probably some sort of quite serious ban (probably greater than merely months). And that's if the individual has a clean record; I'd expect it to significantly less benign otherwise.
Although this default expectation is pessimistic (and some countries might not be nearly that harsh), I don't think it's wildly inaccurate. What I don't understand is why it's common for intelligent people (seemingly only in the US) to think violations of visa/immigration conditions is acceptable and ICE are bad guys for enforcing the law?
Ah, the just following orders person, always at least one in a discussion.
It has always been obvious since ICE’s budget was raised over 10x what it used to be, even though ICE was already struggling to find enough people with criminal records to deport, that ICE was intended to be far more than an immigration enforcement agency.
To be fair, this was obvious to many people who study domestic civil rights as early as the bill that originally created the DHS and ICE. For eg:
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...
>Americans’ liberties have been trammeled in a variety of different ways. Under the guise of stopping terrorism, law enforcement officials and government leaders have now been given the right to conduct searches of homes and offices without prior notice, use roving wiretaps to listen in on telephone conversations, and monitor computers and e-mail messages, even to the degree of eavesdropping on attorney/client conversations.
>Conceivably, these extensions of the definition of “terrorist” could bring within their sweep diverse domestic political groups, which have been accused of acts of intimidation or property damage such as Act Up, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Operation Rescue, and the Vieques demonstrators.
Could they not deport the ones without a criminal record as well?
Its too much work, we did violent rounding up of brown people to have images to re use for campaigns and now we can use the paramilitary force for chasing political dissidents like any normal democratic goverment would do.
Lets ignore that the richest man on the planet has a credible record of being n immigrant who stayed in the US illegaly, and has open criminal record probes in at least 2 countries. But I guess a 350 million donation to the standing goverment in campaign donations might make it difficult for ICE to find him
Immigration in the US has always been more complicated than "no papers? gotta go." Moving north to do some seasonal work then moving back south is a very old thing, and was enshrined into law by the "Bracero program" in the post ww2 era. In the 60s, however, it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally. ... and business owners no choice but to keep hiring them.
The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.
Sure, along with the occasional public execution, for optics.
Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission, executing people is not.
You can argue about how they should go about deporting people, but them deporting everyone even those without a criminal record is their intended purpose.
> Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission
This is not in fact the stated mission of the agency.
"Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety."
It’s also the federal government’s job to go around arresting everybody carrying or smoking weed, as it is still illegal no matter what any state says and every single person consuming it is a lawbreaker.
Should they go around and do that too?
Isn’t it so cool that none of the theoretical /s
That would be mean.
We have evidence now that they execute people without a criminal record.
See the execution of Renée Good. Remember how the ICE terrorist deliberately stepped before her car, to try to make a defensive claim aka "had to shoot her to stop her". Meanwhile his other two terrorist buddies were standing NEXT to the car, thus invalidating the lie quite logically. After all, how did two other ICE terrorists manage to not get into that situation that the murderer chose to employ here? So there is a lack of consistency among ICE terrorists.
Man, this is chilling. Between this and those "anti-ice" protestors that got a collective 450 years of jail time, it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.
I think we can stop pretending it's "pretty close" and just call it what it is.
The "pretty close" is a hedge in case if the gun ever ends up pointing at them.
Well it can definitely get worse. You're not yet scared of being picked up tonight for posting this comment.
Sparkling fascism?.
Another word like racism which is losing meaning due to this generation using it without understanding what it even means.
"ChatGPT, define fascism but do it in a way that it means what I want it to mean"
I would urge you to attempt to define fascism in a way that does not reflect the behaviour of the current admin, and its a pretty fungible political theory so there are multiple valid definitions, and I would still think you would fail
Except, in this case, it is actual fascism so no need to gaslight.
Add to that the weaponization of the justice department. Former FBI directory charged 3 times as retaliation, Senator Mark Kelly and other senators, even lowly aides such as Cassidy Hutchinson, all facing retaliation.
David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist was accused and indicted for damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, purely as a scapegoat.
All federal funds to the state of Colorado frozen to force them to release a convicted-and-imprisoned ally of the administration (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOE6DTMjPEc )
Yeah it isn't "pretty close", it is a police state.
Didn't they get 450 years of jail time (spread among nine people IIRC) for attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder?[0] If the start of your pattern of "police state levels of power, corruption and control" is people engaging in organized terrorism, (i.e. using violence for political ends) being convicted of terrorism offenses, then I guess I don't see it. Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.
[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyedgnyn4mo
The “explosives” being Fourth of July fireworks.
I think in another universe where they just stood outside and shouted while holding signs and shooting up fireworks, then peaceably surrendered when when the cops came, they would get slaps on the wrist, maybe.
But instead a few of them had guns, and one of them decided to get into a shoot-off with the police.
You are unequivocally fucked if you have any degree of association with those people doing shit like that on federal property.
(the bodycams and security footage for this event are on youtube)
Small nitpick, but I believe this all happened on private, not federal, property. The ICE facility they were protesting at was a private company ICE was contracting with, not an actual federal building.
People are killed and maimed every year from Fourth of July fireworks. You're proving my point that these were LARPing revolutionaries who nevertheless engaged in real violence.
And please don't forget the attempted murder that the leader really did carry out with a firearm.
Those aren't "explosives", they are explosives. Google death/maiming by fireworks for examples.
No, the fact that people occasionally get hurt by accident with fireworks does not make the violent subtext in "attacking a government building with explosives" a correct description of the situation.
The way you frame the event is very misleading after reading the article.
I know that idiots will argue that "attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder" is "technically correct", but it is stupidity to not understand that it leaves out important nuances.
Shot in the neck and lived. 420 years. Pretti filming peacefully and shot in the back. 0 years.
> Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.
Unless of course your guy ends up in power again and offers you pardons and reparations.
Tolerance? Jan 6.
Listen to the NYT Daily episode about this.
tldr, the govt (not the court) decides whether it is terrorism or not, which elevates misdemeanor into decades long felony conviction.
The J6 crowd was not charged with terrorism.
While the Jan. 6th convicts all get pardons.
Non-US here but if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally, and they do that, where is the controversy? If people then impede them doing that, they should be sanctioned, right? I know the number of actual engineers on here are now dwindling since this became reddit 2.0 but
> If police arrest criminals, and people impede the police arresting criminals > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
> If paramedics help casualties, and people impede the paramedics helping casualties > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
> If <noun> <verb> <nouns>, and people impede the <noun> <verb> <nouns> > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No
So long as it's a lawful activity, it shouldn't change from scenario to scenario. Being arrested or convicted is an act of law, not a moral or ethic act. To avoid lawful sanctions, you have to object lawfully. If you act unlawfully, then you risk lawful sanctions. That's a risk you take.
I know it's a little black and white but I'm one of the pre-reddit 2.0 hacker news inhabitants.
> if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally
This antecedent is false, so we don’t even need to read the consequent.
> if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally,
Following you so far
> and they do that,
Yeah, that's where you fucked up. That's not what ICE is doing that everyone is upset about. It's the locking up, deporting, and killing of people who are here legally, they just happen to be brown.
There are plenty of open borders folks among the woke.
> it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.
And: which country has the highest incarceration rate in the world?
El Salvador?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
Not an argument.
> [El Salvador (16.5/Mln), Cuba (8/Mln), Rwanda (6/Mln), Turkmenistan (5.5/Mln), United States (5.5/Mln)]
In terms of absolute number of incarcerated persons, though, the US is ahead of everyone else by a country mile. Depending on which inmate pools you include or exclude, the US holds 20-25% of all incarcerated persons in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
You think a prison sentence for shooting a federal law enforcement officer in the neck is chilling?
Just remember that there is a child somewhere who saw their mum for the last time happily dropping them for school only to be shot by an ICE agent seconds after he called her a fucking bitch - and the agent faced no consequences for this. Every time I think about that kid my heart breaks. Every time I think about the cruelty of the system unwilling to at least put this one wrong right and prosecute the agent properly my heart breaks. What a unbelievably cruel world we live in.
You know.. neither the child nor the mum should have been there to begin with. The onus is on her.
edit: She chose to gamble her and her kid's future. She lost that gamble to voter's willingness to tolerate the current state of affairs.
Those 450 collective years of jail time was due to all of the firearms they brought, running away from the scene, shooting at the facility, and lying to law enforcement. I'm all for protesting, but this is not the hill you want to die on as your "chilling" moment.
This is how we know "The 2nd Amendment is to protect against government tyranny" is complete, absolute bullshit.
State resources and armed officers taking a political stance like this is how democracy withers
State resources and armed officers are all part of a political stance. If you don't recognise it it's because they are on your side. But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.
> But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.
Is that true, though? I don't expect that the individual biases of officers or judges, or the institutional biases of the police or immigration departments, can switch at a moment's notice.
Rational people act according to the incentives they’re provided. If that incentive is “follow these new instructions/directives or you’ll lose your job” (or worse?) it takes an especially principled person to object.
It's less true every day, now that Trump is busy filling the ranks of the bureaucracy with people who respond to the loyalty-test question "Who won the 2020 election?" with "Donald Trump."
Entities like the courts and law enforcement optimize for the retention of people who do what they're told and the turnover of those who have their own principals. And this is before you account for the fact that most people will do what they're told before they threaten their paycheck.
It’s so cute that some people imagine the armed forces and police were on the other side or are on their side. If you’re average Joe, the police in a tyrannical state are never on your “side”.
Our armed officers are supposed to be upholding a constitution, not party preferences.
And definitely not religious preferences.
I'd say this is a pessimistic view (as opposed to than realistic view) of how it's been in the USA for, well, my lifetime, anyway.
Both-sides-ism is probably the single worst stance to take here. You're tacitly siding with whoever actually holds and wields the power. Not caring which one wins isn't helping anyone at all, even you.
Both sides argument are springing up like weeds all over the various forums in the last couple weeks before a predicted major shift in Congress.
If you have deeply unpopular policies but only 1/3rd of the country is expected to vote, telling everyone their vote won't matter is the best stance to take.
> You're tacitly siding with whoever actually holds and wields the power.
No, I’m not doing that. I’m not even American. But I know that giving someone a weapon means they can eventually try to use it against you.
If you're not American, then you should consider before commenting that you may be missing important context. The allegiance of US federal law enforcement agencies does not switch on a moment's notice or even follow electoral control of the government; note, for example, that the director of the FBI is always a Republican.
I'll take unfalsifiable statements for $300, Alex.
>But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.
Or, more appropriately, on an election's notice.
A plurality of voters preferred to have leaders of a certain political persuasion.
Now, we can complain about the fine print in the platform of those leaders, but..
I mean..
democracy is a team sport. We voted them in.
It's like football:
Yes.
That's an awesome DB. Guy got 2 interceptions and 4 TFLs in that game. I'd love to get that safety for my team.
All that said, his offense didn't score. So guess what? He gets to take an "L" too. That's just how it works.
That depends entirely on the degree to which those in power will respect the results of an election.
When, in the history of the U.S., have police forces ever been on the left?
Heck, historically the cops have even broken up peaceful union protests, despite being in unions themselves, throwing away all class solidarity in favor of their right wing leanings.
And the police unions have uniquely been extremely right wing, other than during rare highly localized conditions (often involving the democratic candidate being center right at least).
FBI in the 90's (maybe later). WACO, Ruby Ridge come to mind.
It's more a self reinforcing side-effect of a withering democracy than the cause. The rhetoric from the far right keeps implying that we're much closer to a single party state than the current election cycle suggests and they have proven themselves to be weak predictors of outcomes they don't directly control so I'm sure more shenanigans will be revealed shortly.
Not a peep from the second amendment types. Curious.
The same political groups that support hate speech laws are now looking for support from the freedom of speech groups? That sounds like a temporary alliance at best. They aren't going to support you long term because they know leftists are authoritarians of a different color. AKA your rhetoric isn't going to work because you have no principles and they do.
Are "principles" how this administration justifies its less than principled behavior or how you justify rewarding that behavior?
Freedom of speech is a first amendment issue, my friend. The "second amendment types" OP refers to are the people who claim that citizen ownership of any and all types of firearms is a buttress against tyrannical government. Since the Trump admin is at least arguably a tyrannical government, it seems legit to at least ask where the previously vociferously pro-gun people are right now. Many should be at least warning of potential tyranny, but appear not to be doing so.
They're not all quiet: https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/
What do you mean by this? This article seems to be mostly about govt surveillance and not gun rights.
A stated core purpose of the second amendment is for ordinary people to be able to keep a government in check by force or threat of force.
Some people view the actions of ICE, like in this article, to be crossing a line that would normally provoke a response from second amendment types.
The #1 reason sighted by 2nd amendment loyalists for needing such liberal gun rights is to protect us all from government overreach. I assume that's what he means.
Agreed. I'm pro-second amendment, what is the there to comment on here about guns? seriously asking.
turns out, they’re into it. they were in favor of it in the 60’s and still are.
the 2nd amendment (the entire Bill of Rights) was written to protect us from our own government, but it’s way more convenient to just shoot brown people or people who speak a different language.
Go join your local Pink Pistols/Brown Berets/SRA/whatever chapter.
The leftist gun community is mostly focused on arming the LGBTQ community at the moment though. Your chances of getting canoed while trying to stab a trans woman are way up over the past couple years.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6182901
no one poopoos the golem when its on their side
it might listen, and turn...
Not without work it won't. Trump II has been using "Who won the 2020 election?" as a shibboleth to fill the ranks with True Believers. Nobody gets power without answering "Trump" to that question.
Q: “Who won the 2020 election?” A: “I’m not a biologist”
There have been multiple instances of people doing things with weapons. It's not good, but it has been done.
Deny defend depose I suppose
Not clear how central the patriot act was to this operation, but it does pop up here.
Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act. I really do think about that a lot.
For me it wasn't so much that he was the only one to vote against it, as it was that when he did vote against it the people of his state promptly replaced him with a more Law and Order senator.
In the US we claim we want freedom, privacy, and all that good stuff. But where the rubber meets the road, it becomes pretty clear that we don't.
Feingold served another 10 years following his vote on the Patriot Act.
You have the power to stop them. There are plenty of technical opportunities out there and every internal security memo with your hn handle on it is another piece of grear they can't use and time they've wasted ratcheting their own paranoia.
Stop voting for these assholes.
https://archive.is/2026.10.28-130224/https://www.wired.com/s...
not a us citizen but this seems reasonable from historical US perspective
I am from the US and the headline is accurate. Not “the largest,” but “one of the largest.” We’ve been here before. The question is does it get kneecapped or does it spin out of control?
How is America any different from Russia or China?
the pendulum will eventually swing back and most of these fucks will be thrown in prison.
This is going to be moderated off the front page.
I remember the early days of the internet when hating surveillance was non-political.
Back when it was just nerds on the internet, and powerfull people with agenda's had not infiltrated everything
Half the people here are working to help them, intentionally or unwittingly.
Even back then, it was partly various three-letter agencies manufacturing their own criminals to justify the budget.
I remember as a 14 year old (2004) thinking about how I'd make sites like TPB or 4chan without getting it shut down, a place that anyone could speak freely. Then Kim Dotcom happened, and even Lavabit, and I'm sure many others.
It's a thankless thing, but we need more people who are willing to just do it. Now I know some of you will point out that Kim Dotcom was hosting movies, shows, music, etc. That's not my point, look at HOW they took him down, and WHEN. They were trying to pass SOPA, claiming it would help them take down people like Kim Dotcom "because they couldn't" so what they did to Kim Dotcom was questionable from a legal perspective...
Sigh. I really do miss the internet before the 2nd and 3rd waves of "Eternal September" (Facebook then Smartphones) it was much nicer.
Everything is political. Just people on the early internet tended to have a particular personality type that shared certain political views.
The evidence will remain in ssh logs and such. That is part of why it got posted here. This political struggle has gone technical and we're all involved.
I think the history of the FBI suggests this will continue long after Trump himself leaves office, effectively becoming a state run gang.
don't worry. Global warming will kill us all within the next 100 years anyways.
> Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.
When they are arresting news anchors for reporting on ICE's activities, it should be obvious that Trump and his administration is fascist-curious.
It is eerily similar to the 1930s era in central Europe.
I would not call it "Anti-Left" though. Fascism should never be confused with having an agenda other than fascism itself, be it Trump's corporate fascism or Putin's neo-Stalinism. All pocket away wealth and power to their cronies.
What gets me is how much of this stuff is just bought, not built. Agencies can purchase location and social media data from brokers and skip the warrant step entirely, so I'd honestly put more energy into closing that loophole than into fighting any one agency.
That's what happens when you have mass privatization of productive capacity. The power to procure surveillance pools in fewer and fewer hands.