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FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

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Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tried it, but Signal supports not sharing your phone number/just communicating with usernames: https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/ You still need to use your phone number to sign up, though.

> You still need to use your phone number to sign up, though. Which defeats the whole point. What if the FBI politely asks Signal about a phone number?

I might be misremembering or mixing memories but i remember something about them only storing the hash of the number.

So the FBI cant ask what phone number is tied to an account, but if a specific phone number was tied to the specific account? (As in, Signal gets the number, runs it through their hash algorythm and compares that hash to the saved one)

But my memory is very very bad, so like i said, i might be wrong

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#643

What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning. Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is say…

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Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#644
post #523

There seems to be wild speculation about freedom of speech rights or hacking Signal. The FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff.

Seems like there are hundreds of people in those groups. Can't be hard to get into for some skilled undercover cops. TV shows have shown me they do these things all the time!

They had already been outed by internet sleuths possibly, but not necessarily, informed by leaks from the police. The FBI is making a press release about an investigation only to save face because the criminal conspiracy is already common knowledge among those interested. In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network. They have well-publicized, patently unlawful dragnet signals intelligence collection capabilities. The targets are people who organize openly on Zoom and Discord, and broadcast volumes of their ideology on bumper stickers, Mastodon, and Blue-Twitter. So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate? I feel like ICE is Floyd/BLM repeated as farce.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#645
post #612
post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The FBI simply i don't think an investigation by FBI has ever been "simply" to the subjects of such an investigation. And to show bang-for-the-buck the "simply reading chat" officers would have to bring at least some fish, i.e. federal charges, from such a reading expedition. In general it sounds very familiar - any opposition is a crime of impeding and obstruction. Just like in Russia where any opposition is a crim…

Don’t be disingenuous. The people in these groups are coordinating for a specific reason: to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s textbook Obstruction of Justice. It is illegal to prevent an officer from doing their job. These groups are also documented to have harassed people who are _not_ federal officers under the mistaken impression that they are. That’s just a…

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Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#646

What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning. Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is say…

To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)

While being the focus, Minnesota is not the only place it's happening. For example, ICE took at least 15 people in the Los Angeles area today[1].

That article is from a local food publication that has largely shifted to covering all ICE behavior in the greater LA area. It's a good place to get a better picture of the kind of stuff that has just become background noise to the degree that it doesn't make the news elsewhere. People could also throw a few bucks their way if they think documenting this is important.

And I'll point to a single example from 13 hours ago[2] for the "the deporting of illegal immigrants is not oppression" type of people like that other commenter. Just a video of a nameless person, taken who knows where, for who knows what, screaming and crying out. This just doesn't make the news, but it's happening countless times every day all over the country in the name of the American people.

[1] - https://lataco.com/daily-memo-january-27th-border-patrol-att...

[2] - https://www.instagram.com/p/DUBjokvEnWh/

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#647

With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced, it won't take more than a few minutes for FBI to start taking actions, IF they had anything tangible. This is just an intimidation tactic to stop people talking (chatting)

I admire your optimism. They already started killing civilians openly on the street in bright daylight.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#648
post #634
post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t be disingenuous. The people in these groups are coordinating for a specific reason: to follow federal agents around, harass them, and prevent them from doing their jobs. That’s textbook Obstruction of Justice. It is illegal to prevent an officer from doing their job. These groups are also documented to have harassed people who are _not_ federal officers under the mistaken impression that they are. That’s just a…

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I am talking about 8 USC chapter 12 subsection II (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/chapter-12>). This is the law that defines how immigration works in the US, and how illegal aliens are removed. ICE is the Federal agency assigned to the task of locating and removing illegal aliens. Even if you don’t like that illegal aliens are being removed, it is illegal to try to prevent a federal agent from doing just that. Instead you should be trying to change the law so that the job doesn’t exist.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#649
post #643

What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning. Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is say…

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This misses the point of how "deportation", snatching of those from communities and decision-making for whom is illegal is actually occurring, and how people are being snatched with disregard to their actual state as a citizen, resident or otherwise of the United States of America.

When facial recognition is said to outrank any other proof, such as a birth certificate, one cannot claim to be operating in good faith when one allows for fallible systems to decide the lives of American citizenry, encourages false imprisonment and allows for violence to be recklessly committed against people who were guilty of no crime at all.

(also, the United States and Canada are alike in their statuses as countries formed of immigrants; we close the door now simply because we feel those coming today are ineducated or don't fit our racial preferences? No different than was done to Chinese people say a hundred years prior.)

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#650
post #643

What is it like in the US these days? I'm on the outside (occasionally) looking in, and it looks like something out of European history class! The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning. Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is say…

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