Some FBI agents came to my house once and told me that my home Internet had been used to visit Islamic Extremist websites. They brought a local police office with them and a 'threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace. They asked me if my family was Muslim and wanted to know if we had been radicalized. We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white A…
> We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. I am most curious why you believe that is a defense against radicalization. In the US that is perhaps the most common demographic for radicalization of any type.
FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
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Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine being a muslim in such case. Trying to convince them that this can be a mix-up ( which is possible easily) won't be successful.
Imagine being a muslim and e.g. having a kid visiting those sites. Or just going there out of intellectual curiosity, like how a leftie might read Main Kampf to check what that shit is. You can end up in a very bad position...
The IRS proceeded to audit me (16 years old) and my $8k a year woodselling business I had with my dad. You tell me.
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#413I use LINE a fairbit, have a number of Japanese friends as well as friends that have traveled to Japan. I had no idea they had implemented much better encryption [1]. I'm convincing all my contacts to turn on the option now. [1] https://engineering.linecorp.com/en/blog/new-generation-of-s...
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#414Some FBI agents came to my house once and told me that my home Internet had been used to visit Islamic Extremist websites. They brought a local police office with them and a 'threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace. They asked me if my family was Muslim and wanted to know if we had been radicalized. We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white A…
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#415Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's (scarily) interesting that they react with actual personal attendance based purely on a very limited set of electronic information. From your further description: > We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. Would not the FBI have been able to any amount of backgroun…
> If such background checks were performed, then they either don't have much data or their threat weightings are set to red-scare levels of paranoia. Either way, it's scary. They're not gonna have anything happen to them if they go tough on (and fuck over an) innocent guy. They're gonna look bad if they miss a terrorist. So they have no incentive to not have "red-scare levels of paranoia".
Now, visit a 'bad' website, or somehow be mistaken for someone that visited a 'bad' website, and you'll get some deep personal treatment.
Feds can't win, but it seems to be through their own laziness or incompetence or lack of interagency cooperation.
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
For non-americans, what was J Edgar Hoover known for?
I'm also not an American - but as far as I've read - massive abuse of power in using the FBI to spy on political rivals, illegal wiretapping, illegal surveillance of US congressmen and even presidents, running the FBI while they were doing extremely controversial programs like COINTELPRO and programs and investigations that tried to hinder the civil rights movement, etc.
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I think they had no intel. You NEED intel for a judge to order a subpoena—and if a subpoena was issued, the ISP would open their firehose, and overwhelm the FBI with evidence suggesting that there’s nothing to investigate. And having visited extremist sites a handful of times—even if advertantly—is probably not going to meet the threshold for a subpoena. If the FBI visited me and casually asked about my web…
My gut reaction is simply speed. Why sit at my desk for a few hours reading documents when I can a couple phone calls and be scary for 20 minutes to feel secure in saying “yep - not terrorists”. Or - you know - “weeeelp, I’ve been sitting at this desk all morning, let’s go talk to someone”.
Why spend the extra time and effort, let's just hit the road and totally and completely fuck at least one citizen's opinion of the entire system upon which their life and livelihood depends.
Saves me a couple of hours, and the sun's out. Sold!
Ironically, maybe this will actually radicalise the people they're investigating for radicalisation.
Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#419Re: FBI's ability to legally access secure messaging app content and metadata [pdf]
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the NSA spying on Americans is unlawful [0] the FBI terrorizing political movements is unlawful [1] or the CIA operating in the US is unlawful [2] Yet, I'm pretty sure all these are still happening, to a certain degree, to this day. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSKBN25T... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
The NSA doesn't need to illegally spy on Americans when an ally can do it for them and then share the data legally. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
You know, like the US does in the countries of it's "allies" like Germany [0]
Do you really think the US would allow German intelligence agencies to build whole complexes, plugged right into the US's largest IPX?
That's why this situation is not nearly as "symbiotic" as it's often made out to be. At best that applies to Five Eyes countries, and even there only to a very limited degree as no Five Eyes member as as much foreign presence as the US.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...