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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

#671
Keep in mind that with secure messaging, if the other side gets compromised, your chats with them are compromised. This seems obvious, but with signal groups of a large size, they're effectively public groups. Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.

Don't use Signal for organizing anything of this sort, I promise you'll regret it. I've heard people having better luck with Briar, but there might be others too. I only know that Signal and Whatsapp are what you want to avoid. Unless your concern is strictly cryptographic attacks of your chat's network-traffic and nothing more.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're d…

I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I…

It's not hard to find examples.

"You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple."

- Kash Patel

“I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign."

- Kristi Noem

“With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.”

-Donald Trump

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#673

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…

Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population. While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis. 2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of…

What you describe seems to fit the term 'Dual State', and you live your day to day life in the normative state. I hope foe your sake you don't get much contact with the prerogative one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#674

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…

Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population. While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis. 2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of…

It doesn't feel like you keep calm 'because he won the elections'. It's either that citizens can't do much in the US, fear of getting killed is real especially when disobeying police orders, or, you aren't too affected by Trump's actions to act.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.

That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan... It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.

That however is a political issue, not a military one.

Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#676
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I…

It's not hard to find examples. "You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple." - Kash Patel “I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign." - Kristi Noem “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.” -Donald Trump

And are these really 2nd amendment advocates to begin with? They don't strike me as principled people in general.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest or do anything terribly interesting, but at this point I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid publicly criticizing this administration. Palantir is weird and creepy and has infinite resources to aggregate anything that the government wants, and they could be building a registry of people who they're going to deem as "terrorist-leaning" or some such nonsense. It's not hard to fi…

> I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest Then you are part of the problem. Get off your ass and do something, before it's too late. FFS!

How exactly am I part of the problem? I vote in every election I'm allowed to vote in, I didn't vote for Trump, I donate to political organizations that support causes I believe in. Because I don't go outside and hold a sign that no one is going to read I'm enabling this? Get off your high horse.

My wife is a Mexican immigrant. She's a citizen now, but that doesn't appear to be something that matters to this organization. There is no way in hell I am going to put her in jeopardy just to go protest.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#678
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I would probably argue the opposite, given that Y Combinator is a venture capital firm. This would be more true for Lobsters than here.

(Edit: to go further, it's like... ok, if HN is far-left, what does that make Bluesky? What does that make the Fediverse? It feels almost reductive to compress the range of HN onwards down to "far-left".)

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#679
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…

[flagged]

Deportation of illegal immigrants happened in the previous administrations and nothing like the current chaos unfolded.

I grant that some people protesting against the raids are likely doing that because they don't want illegals to be deported,

but I suspect most of the pushback is against the way this whole thing has been set up and the way agents handled the encounters with protesters so far, leading towards a spiral of distrust and a polarization of the issue.

There seems to be an indication that many of the ICE agents have been insufficiently trained to perform police work in a proper and safe way. and instead behave very aggressively. The abuse of racial profiling is making non-white citizens (including native Americans!) feel unsafe too. To make things worse, there is a loud group of people who are cheering the though guys from the sidelines/armchairs.

People who share those concerns are not necessarily pro-illegal immigration. I know things can be done differently because they have been done differently.

But in this case, one political movement is leveraging the deportation rhetoric to rile up their base, providing another political movement the ammonito to call them tyrannical and riling up their base, which in turn causes the first movement to justify their aggressiveness as counterinsurgence.

This doesn't lead to a good place and it has nothing to do with the fact that the country deserves a sane immigration policy.

The current immigration situation is utterly broken, but it has become such over time (and has many complicated facets) but the idea that this can be fixed in a haste by applying lunt force is the product of a new low point in politics.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're d…

I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I…

The NRA is not a very honest or good gun association, their immediate statement was quite different:

> “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities.

https://x.com/NRA/status/2015224606680826205?ref_src=twsrc%5...

(they then go on to say "let's withhold judgement until there's an investigation" despite them passing quite extreme judgement, with a direct lie, and getting their judgment extremely wrong when there was lots of video showing it wrong when they posted...)

In light of their large change of attitude, the initial critiques were quite correct.

In another Minnesota case, they refused to defend a gun owner that was shot for having a gun, despite doing everything right when stopped by police.

Other gun associations besides the NRA have been more principled and less partisan.

Rep. Massie is barely a Republican, he's pretty much the only one willing to go against Trump on anything. Right now the Republican party is defined by one thing only: slavish obedience to Trump. For Republicans' sake, and the sake of the Republic, I hope that changes soon.

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