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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

#681

Post by swaits »

amarant wrote: post #632

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…

> What is it like in the US these days?

For the average American citizen, status quo.

For the scofflaws and illegal immigrants, the realization that accountability for their actions might be right around the corner must be unnerving.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#682

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

wsatb wrote: post #672
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #660

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

If you mean to say that officials in Trump's administration are hypocritical, then say that. But many are accusing thousands of rank-and-file gun rights supporters of hypocrisy on a thin to nonexistent evidence base.

Here's how one gun rights group responded to some of the statements you quoted:

https://xcancel.com/gunrights/status/2016268309180907778#m

https://xcancel.com/gunrights/status/2015572391217467562#m

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#683

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

katdork wrote: post #678
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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".)

[flagged]

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#684

Post by mullingitover »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #653
amarant wrote: post #632

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…

Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.

The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy.

This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#685

Post by epistasis »

RobRivera wrote: post #605
mw888 wrote: 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.

Yea, I just assume any easily joinable movement like this is a honeypot of sorts.

Most of these groups are centered around a neighborhood, or a school, or a church. For anything school related, people are very suspicious of outsiders trying to join. Churches and neighborhood groups might be more open, I suspect, but still gotta get somebody who lives there or goes to the church to vouch for you.

But the worst case for an outsider joining is not very bad; they get to see what's going on, but the entire point of the endeavor is to bring everything to light and make everything more visible. And if an outsider joins and starts providing bad information or is a bad actor, typical moderation efforts are pretty easy.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#686

Post by indigo945 »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #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 ha…

> Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.

That is no longer true, you can use user IDs now.

For the other problem, you can enable self-deleting messages in group chats, limiting the damage when a chat does become compromised. Of course, this doesn't stop any persistent threat, such as law enforcement (is that even the right term anymore?) getting access to an unlocked phone.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#687

Post by Epa095 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #667
Empact wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

FYI, as a center left from a European perspective that is a beautiful picture of just how right-leaning American politics is. The Democrats is such a big tent it contains pretty much the complete political spectrum in Europe, but for the actuall politics they have been doing, at least regarding economics (excluding identity politics) they are pretty solid right / center right from a European perspective.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#688

Post by youarentrightjr »

mullingitover wrote: post #684
tastyfreeze wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.

The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?

> The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?

If it's that easy, why did we spend 20 years in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat by goat herders holding AK-47s?

A quick review of the last 100 years will educate you on the viability of asymmetric warfare.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#689

Post by sawjet »

amarant wrote: post #632

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]

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#690

Post by vintermann »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #664
pseudohadamard wrote: post #659

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.

Is armed with knives enough?

Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants.

Presumably that also isn't fixed. So even if rifles might have been sufficient in the early US even though the government had cannons, rifles may not be sufficient when the government has chemical weapons and armored cars.

So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? For Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter in lots of conflicts the US weren't involved in (or were involved in on the anti-government side!) the answer seems straightforward enough: in foreign countries which also don't like your government. Without a bunch of neighbors and rival powers which really didn't want the US in Iraq/Afghanistan, could the insurgents have done much?

Who do you propose should arm the resistance in the US, if government supported "police" paramilitaries run amok? (Let's for the sake of argument not get into whether that has happened yet). It's going to have to be quite an impressive level of support, too, to stand up against systems developed precisely against that sort of eventuality and battle-tested in the US' sphere of influence.

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