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FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

theguardian.com

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Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#541

Post by LocalH »

perihelions wrote: post #394
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What recourse would an American have against a punitive search? And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?

> "And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?" US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of evidence obtained illegally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ( "Exclusionary rule" ) There's no "retroactive" exception. The core point of this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating people's rights, under the expectation that what they find will, "retroactively",…

Constitutional law doesn't mean anything when the authorities don't respect it. Constitutional law won't stop you from being arrested or killed if you don't fully submit to an authoritarian government.

There were laws in Germany to prevent what Hitler did. It still happened.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#542

Post by DetectDefect »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #65
DetectDefect wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"End to end" protection/encryption has lost all functional meaning when the masses accepted corporations as the arbiters of "ends". No one can even respond to the argument based on technical merit, because all that remains is hollow marketing bullshit.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#543

Post by anigbrowl »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #503
anigbrowl wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American left is very much in favor of the second amendment. You seem to confusing it with liberal centrists, the sort of people who say 'violence is never the solution' and wrings their hands wondering why someone doesn't arrest bad actors in government.

I specifically used the phrase "American Left" to try and head off this trite quip. I was referring, in general terms, to the left wing of mainstream American political discourse without narrowing it down to just "Democrats". I was trying not to trigger the waves of "Ackshyually karl marx says under no pretext" comments that one usually gets.

Then why not just say 'Democrats'? There's a large political community to the left of the Democratic party that is underrepresented electorally, as has been demonstrated at the ballot box over and over. Flattening everything together is an over-simplification.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#544

Post by nobody9999 »

rmah wrote: post #533
nobody9999 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has been down-voted so aggressively. Despite the ridiculous narrative that Obama and Biden were "bringing in illegals en masse to vote for Democrats," if you look at the actual numbers, it's not surprising that folks are down-voting that comment. Mostly because those previous administrations (Obama and Biden) managed to deport many more undocumented folks than either…

It's like you didn't see where I agree that current enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the sort of thing that confuses me.

>It's like you didn't see where I agree that current enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the sort of thing that confuses me.

I combined my response to your comment[0] and its parent[1], as I mentioned:

   I'm not pushing any "broader political narrative" either. Just pointing out a 
   few things not mentioned in your or GP's comments.
Rather than disagreeing with you, I was attempting to add nuance and additional substance. As the site guidelines[2] recommend:

   Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone 
   says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
You appear to have assumed bad faith on my part. Why is that? Was I not clear enough? What could I have added to the above to be clearer?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46620707

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618048

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#545

Post by dabluecaboose »

codezero wrote: post #532
dabluecaboose wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post I responded to basically said the left alienated people by restricting 2a, Incorrect, but judging by the responses here I conveyed my point poorly. I wasn't trying to say that the Left alienated existing gun owners. I was trying to say that their actions and positions prevented the formation of a grassroots population of responsible gun owners in their ranks. Specifically, a population that might be more r…

I apologize if I came off smug. Definitely wasn’t my intention, and I did misinterpret yours.

Likewise, I apologize for getting a bit snippy.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#546

Post by pxc »

Nicook wrote: post #433
cathyreisenwitz wrote: post #37

“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 d…

"Liberal Democracy" is such a charged word.

How so?

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#547

Post by dabluecaboose »

anigbrowl wrote: post #543
dabluecaboose wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically used the phrase "American Left" to try and head off this trite quip. I was referring, in general terms, to the left wing of mainstream American political discourse without narrowing it down to just "Democrats". I was trying not to trigger the waves of "Ackshyually karl marx says under no pretext" comments that one usually gets.

Then why not just say 'Democrats'? There's a large political community to the left of the Democratic party that is underrepresented electorally, as has been demonstrated at the ballot box over and over. Flattening everything together is an over-simplification.

Well, clearly I should have just said Democrats, although my thinking at the time was that the comment would appear too partisan and trigger reflexive negative reactions. Clearly that happened regardless.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#548

Post by BryantD »

estearum wrote: post #451
BryantD wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say that Project Veritas acted illegally in this case, although I have absolutely no love for them and I think they have acted illegally and immorally in other cases. In the end the Justice Department did not bring charges. You absolutely can't offer someone money to steal documents. That's clear. Even providing advice on acquiring documents is probably going to be unlawful. And if possession of the docum…

It is unambiguously illegal to pay for goods you know to be stolen. In all 50 states and federally. Most courts would assume someone who purchased a private diary of a living person would know that it was stolen.

"particularly if you don't have knowledge of how the document was acquired."

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#549

Post by GorbachevyChase »

potato3732842 wrote: post #13
CodingJeebus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

>, 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 af…

Right. Lincoln arrested hostile journalists without warrant or trial. FDR sent the FBI to shake down his critics. Going after the press isn’t unprecedented at all. I worry this is another sign that the people behind the administration are moving to a war-time footing and life is going to get a whole lot worse.

Re: FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

#550

Post by t-3 »

dugidugout wrote: post #535
t-3 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adjusting your example, if I'm simply friends (implying history of contact) with a known drug dealer, am I really at risk of my home being raided and communications seized solely because I might have evidence leading to their conviction? If the police can convince a judge to give them a warrant for it, sure, but if they were targeting you specifically they probably wouldn't bother with the indirect route of your dr…

I believe you have the hypothetical confused. > if they were targeting you specifically They are not targeting Natanson at all from what I can tell. They're targeting a source she's writing from (to what extent isn't clear to me). This is precisely why I'm positing Whren doesn't apply here. I get the idea of being 'papered' out of a system, but I'm trying to distinguish a pretext that can be justified (objective prob…

In the case of drugs, they probably wouldn't have any reason to raid you unless you were suspected of stashing drugs or money or some other evidence. The journalist is reasonably likely to be in contact with the leaker and so the cops have a somewhat valid pretext to seize things they thought contained evidence of the crime. Whether or not the cops should be able to do that is another thing, but the precedents have been long set.

The really strange thing here is the massive raid in the middle of the night rather than a more proportional response. That suggests that the journalist was being targeted specifically.

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