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Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

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Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#61

Post by mariusor »

noneeeed wrote: post #57
thinkingemote wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth pointing out that this pattern is kind of common. As here, these agents are often at the very top. Almost all Organisations of Interest will be compromised at the leadership level. It's something most grass roots activists don't feel intuitively at all. They look for spies among their own level but it's almost always going to be the organisers, the helpers, the ones with the van, the one that can prin…

As I mentioned in another comment, one of the most amazing examples of this was the British Army/MI5 mole inside the IRA, Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Steaknife. He was a leading member of the IRA's internal security team. It really feels counterintuitive that someone who has got to the top would be the one to turn, but it also makes sense that they would be the one's targetted.

I have no information about this specific case, but generally speaking I think that it would be in their best interests for an intelligence agency to push their asset to the top of the org through any means in order to maximise their impact, so, at least to me, it seems plausible that many of the people at the top are informants.

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#62

Post by boomboomsubban »

noneeeed wrote: post #56
lurk2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both organizations have had reputations for being honeypots as early as 2016. There have been a number of instances of federal agents becoming embedded in the organizational structures of groups like this (see e.g. the Malheur Wildlife Standoff and the plot to assassinate Gretchen Whitmer). Groups of this scale tend to fall into one of three categories: 1) They are honeypots set up by policing and / or intelligence a…

I've been struck by how often it is really quite senior people within criminal/terrorist organisations are the ones that get turned by the various agencies. In the UK, there was an informant for MI5 in the IRA for years codenamed Steaknife. It turned out he was the head of IRA internal security, it was his job to hunt moles. He was the perfect agent. I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an i…

> I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an informant, which seems wild to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#63

Post by bawolff »

roenxi wrote: post #5
lurk2 wrote: post #3

> This is why this dataset is hard to wrap your head around: there's just sooo much here. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to try to manually read through it all. Also, at a glance at least, it appears that the bulk of it is idle chatter and conspiracy nonsense, presumably with evidence of crimes sprinkled in here or there. Not exactly hard-hitting journalism. He then goes on to speculate that Scot Seddon's…

> Not exactly hard-hitting journalism. But nonetheless fascinating. There are must be some really good PhD thesii written (to be written?) about how someone is supposed to handle this sort of data dump with modern tooling. It is a non-trivial general problem; we have a lot of really data floating around in public (Panama papers, relatively transparent government info, dumps of less transparent info at wikileaks.org,…

> Taking a stand against riots is one of those easy-win political options that costs nothing and almost everyone agrees with. Riots are fundamentally ineffective; I doubt anyone serious wants to be associated with rioters. I suppose stranger things happen.

In full fairness "riots" is what its called when the rioters lose. If they win they are usually called something more positive and celebrated by the resulting new regime.

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#64

Post by lukan »

lurk2 wrote: post #47
lukan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No claim. Just a question that could not be answered yet, because the search tools are lacking. And this was about the search tools, not Scott.

Actually, you're right, he didn't explicitly state anything about Scot specifically, I just inferred it from his statement that the group chat "presumably" contained evidence of a crime. > Also, at a glance at least, it appears that the bulk of it is idle chatter and conspiracy nonsense, presumably with evidence of crimes sprinkled in here or there. [...] > Ahh, so he's the founder of American Patriot Three Percent,…

"While he doesn't come out and explicitly state: "Scot is lying about disavowing violence," I do think it's fairly obvious that this is what he's implying, given everything else he wrote."

I read it as implying, go check for yourself!

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#65

Post by roenxi »

bawolff wrote: post #63
roenxi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not exactly hard-hitting journalism. But nonetheless fascinating. There are must be some really good PhD thesii written (to be written?) about how someone is supposed to handle this sort of data dump with modern tooling. It is a non-trivial general problem; we have a lot of really data floating around in public (Panama papers, relatively transparent government info, dumps of less transparent info at wikileaks.org,…

> Taking a stand against riots is one of those easy-win political options that costs nothing and almost everyone agrees with. Riots are fundamentally ineffective; I doubt anyone serious wants to be associated with rioters. I suppose stranger things happen. In full fairness "riots" is what its called when the rioters lose. If they win they are usually called something more positive and celebrated by the resulting new…

There is a solid tradition of new regimes killing off the rioters because they are unruly troublemakers. Not a guarantee, but certainly a tendency. Nobody likes rioters when you get down to brass tacks.

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#66

Post by n4r9 »

mjfl wrote: post #59
forgetfreeman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of claims made there with no evidence supplied to support any of them, and especially nothing linking domestic terrorism with run of the mill Trump supporters, although it's quite telling that one would make that conceptual leap, ostensibly to fuel some sense of personal grievance? Based on first hand experience on the fringes of white supremacist organizations over the decades I'm totally unsurprised to hear…

[flagged]

You'll have to do better than linking the Western Journal on Hacker News. It's a rebrand of "Western Journalism", which has been repeatedly highlighted as a source of fake news, misinformation, and right-wing conspiracy theories.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/western-journalism/

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#68

Post by dmos62 »

mjfl wrote: post #15
ferguess_k wrote: post #9

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if these organizations are infested with FBI agents.

[flagged]

"War against Ukraine"? That's the first time I've heard that phrased that way from a non-Russian source. What have you been reading? Aren't you whitewashing Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

And, to call Azov an extremist group, or to liken them to people who literally tried to overthrow the US government, or to ISIS, that is plain disturbed.

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#69

Post by mjfl »

n4r9 wrote: post #66
mjfl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You'll have to do better than linking the Western Journal on Hacker News. It's a rebrand of "Western Journalism", which has been repeatedly highlighted as a source of fake news, misinformation, and right-wing conspiracy theories. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/western-journalism/

[flagged]

Re: Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks

#70

Post by noneeeed »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #62
noneeeed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been struck by how often it is really quite senior people within criminal/terrorist organisations are the ones that get turned by the various agencies. In the UK, there was an informant for MI5 in the IRA for years codenamed Steaknife. It turned out he was the head of IRA internal security, it was his job to hunt moles. He was the perfect agent. I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an i…

> I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an informant, which seems wild to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger

Aha, thank you.
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