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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

#801
post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in one of our concentration camps As a European, I find the use of "concentration camp" to be a very strong word. Trump and its administration are often touted as a Nazi and such. How much of this is hyperbole, and how much of this is real? Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people.…

Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people. Is this really what is happening in the US? It is often useful to differentiate between "concentration camps" and "death camps" or "extermination camps". The Nazis had both. Some of their concentration camps were focused on concentrating and…

> Here's one of these camps, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana

Thats a textbook concentration camp. You are correct in your descriptions and distinction from extermination camps, concentration camps are not that rare even these days around the world in troubled places.

They are as name suggests just to herd bunch of people behind the fence, not much more. Of course, the reasons are usually far from nice and thus due to at most OKish treatment even there some sad things happen due to amount of people crammed together for a long time.

In Europe during WWII we had tons of concentration camps all over conquered Europe but only few were actual extermination ones, usually converted/expanded from concentration ones. When allies were coming nazis often turned concentration -> extermination due to orders given from above.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#802

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…

People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement. If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems. If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have bee…

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Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement. If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems. If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have bee…

> in one of our concentration camps As a European, I find the use of "concentration camp" to be a very strong word. Trump and its administration are often touted as a Nazi and such. How much of this is hyperbole, and how much of this is real? Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people.…

I understand the sentiment, but it’s the correct term for such facilities. You don’t need gas chambers to qualify. As far as I know, the terms is also used for historic ethnical imprisonment facilities for Japanese people in the USA, which seems very comparable.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protesting is a fundamental human right and obligation. It is something that you should do as casually as you would voting, volunteering, and taking out the garbage: something you do from time to time when the moment demands it. See also: https://enwp.org/Chilling_effect

> Protesting is a fundamental human right That doesn't include vandalism, it doesn't include blocking roads, looting, or assaulting people. What's obvious to me is that a certain class of protestors are intentionally provoking a response from the government by breaking the law. Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed, and that is used as an excuse for more protests. The protests get increasingly violent in an…

> a certain class of protestors

Yes, a proportionally large and significant number of local Minnesota community members of long and good standing.

> are intentionally provoking a response from the government

are reacting to excessive over reach by outsiders, directed by the Federal government to act in a punative manner.

> Inevitably someone is arrested, hurt, or killed,

This has already happened. Multiple times. As was obvious from the outset given the unprofessional behaviour and attitudes of the not-police sent in wearing masks.

> [the people aren't] exercising a "fundamental human right"

they are exercising their Constitutional rights. Including their right to free speech, to bear arms, to protest the Federal government, etc.

> the correct answer is to vote, talk to your neighbors and friends, and peaceably protest,

Which they have done and they continue to do.

See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defe...

for more about the local community of neighbour loving US citizens acting in defence of their community.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is that the overwhelming majority of the country isn’t facing down ICE brutality right now, not the way Minneapolis is. So yes, most are much less immediately and violently affected by Trump. Hence, calm.

The question I was getting at is why those of us disgusted by Trump are protesting less vigorously, despite his government being much worse this time around. It’s a phenomenon widely noted.

For me, that largely comes down to the fact Trump not only won 2024 fair and square, Biden really was manifestly not up to the task of governing. Biden, and careerist Democrats hoping to ride on Biden’s coattails to another term in the White House failed utterly at the critical moment.

A democracy or republic isn’t guaranteed to deliver good governance. The primary goal is to enable peaceful transitions of power.

Trump is threatening that, explicitly. But how to actually address that threat is less clear.

In 2016, we were outraged to see a turd like Trump win. But at that time, the story wasn’t about electoral threats and fascism, it was his disgusting personal character.

The election threat only really manifested on Jan 6. It failed, he exited office, and was facing prosecution. It looked potentially done and dusted, and like the Democrats in federal government were successfully dealing with the problem, as is their role. We were ridin’ with Biden.

Then they slow walked the prosecution that mattered. Biden got on stage to debate Trump and we were absolutely horrified. Then we noticed how vacant he was at other public appearances. It was “my god, he’s not just sleepy, he is incapacitated, and they’ve been lying about it to us for who knows how long?”

Then there was the last ditch effort to field Kamala instead, another weak candidate who wasn’t even liked in the Biden admin. That was pathetic.

So we got Trump. And it wasn’t “we could have had ultra-qualified Hillary, but we got this POS from out of nowhere” like in 2016. It was “holy shit, I am extremely disappointed in my own party.” Nothing added up. We lost trust in our own party and leadership, and it hasn’t come back. Nobody’s excited for any Democrat. We all just know Trump’s gotta go and we’ll line up for Any Democrat (TM). But that doesn’t mean we are proud to do so. It’s a bitter, demoralizing pill to swallow.

Of course fundamentally, we are dealing with all the normal politics problems. Bad voting system, fake news, social media brainwashing, economic illiteracy, checked out voters. American presidential history (and its history as a whole) is full of depressing candidates and terrible shit, political violence, and disenfranchisement we’ve only even approximated eliminating for the last 61 years, since the Voting Rights Act.

So I am hopeful that in the grand sweep of things, we will pull through and keep finding ways to make progress. I think the main thing right now is to keep your energy, hope and belief in the future. They’d like to take that away, and I just won’t let them.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can protect the identity of the members, though.

Apparently, one member of the group uploaded a personal photo as an avatar. I've also heard of side-channel attacks on Signal that could allow for profiling a user's location, which with the FBI's resources could presumably eventually result in identification.

Sure, I was not talking about Signal. Something like Bitmessage[1] can.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement. If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems. If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have bee…

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Then you need better reading glasses, unless you killing of two innocent people is actually people guilty or illegals.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It would be absolutely trivial for the FBI to hash every single assigned phone number and check which one matches. Hashing only provides any anonymity if the source domain is too large to be enumerable.

Brief research says that Signal does store phone numbers.

Regarding hashing: while unsalted phone number hashes would be easy to reverse then I doubt that any hashing scheme today is set up like that.

Re: FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

#810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you getting at? The idea of any of the major news outlets in the US being left-leaning is risible nowadays.

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Hmm? These are mostly news reports of one person calling another person a fascist. Notably, one of the people doing the calling is Donald Trump!

>Last week, after being found guilty of falsifying business records, former President Donald Trump said Americans today live in a “fascist state,” building on his unfounded conspiracy theory that somehow President Joe Biden is behind his prosecution in Manhattan.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/fascism-trump-bi...

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