The affidavits supporting the applications to track Richardson claimed video showed Fort, Lemon, Richardson, and others “chanting with agitators.” Prosecutors have since conceded that Lemon and Fort did not chant. According to her lawyers, the government acknowledged that the false claim appeared in at least 15 warrant affidavits.
This administration has an impressive record of lying in order to manufacture charges against critics.
They also consistently lose in court once these charges are subjected to scrutiny. The point seems to be to merely manufacture bad headlines to smear the targets.
Prior to this administration, the feds had a 93% conviction rate. With so many frivolous cases falling apart in court, I'd be curious to know where that percentage is now.
Presumably they're relying on mass pardons, like for the profligate self-enrichment, the open treachery of deliberately alienating our allies, the domestic terrorist gangs killing protestors, etc.
But it occurred to me the other day - pardons aren't some ineffable thing, but rely on the discretionary power of the executive (plus some dubious ability to bind future executives). But if we actually get the rule of law back at some point (ie no more sparkling autocracy aka "unitary executive theory"), then Congress should be able to make a law declaring that all those prosecutions need to be pursued. And it wouldn't be an ex-post-facto law because the illegal actions had already been illegal when they were performed, rather the only legal effect would be declaring that the executive (or ideally an independent agency) must perform the prosecution.
(edit: pardon power is mentioned in the Constitution - "[the President] shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment". But that would seem to apply to only some of the crimes. And one would hope that if we were at the point where there was a political mandate to take these traitors to task, an impeachment and conviction could be quite swift - there needs to be impeachments and criminal convictions for most of the Supreme Council as well)
Federal persecutors have always been biased towards the expedient viewpoints of corpos and other let-them-eat-cake perspectives (eg their snuffing of aaronsw). But this new regime is at the next level of not even giving a single flying fuck about operating in good faith. Truly a "hackers mindset" of putting whatever value is needed in a box to make the desired effect happen, which might be laudable except the only thing being hacked (off) is our Constitutional rights.
Imagine if they went after the child predators listed in the Epstein files with the same amount of force they are going after journalists and critics of ICE.
>You must be able to demonstrate extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics through sustained national or international acclaim.
In an authoritarian regime like Trump's anyone who is deemed The Other ... gays, liberals, RINOs, ex-cabinet members, are Others and will be hunted by authoritarian a-holes.
Imagine your government and other influencial figures being overtly held hostage and blackmailed by a foreign power and your first thought is ideological nonsense that just happen to be funded and promoted by the same foreign power, ofc only in other countries they blackmail not in there own.
The EFF has the Rayhunter project at https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter - it is basically an IMSI catcher catcher. You install it on a pocket router and it detects typical signatures that IMSI catchers use, for example telling your mobile to downgrade from LTE to 2G making it easy for them to tell your device to join THEIR network and read the IMSI / IMEI for your device and possibly route your traffic through their network.
The device with Rayhunter installed will notify you when these signatures are being detected and you get a pcap file that you can dissect using Wireshark.
There are other tools that you can install on Android devices but Rayhunter certainly is a good start if you want to detect the use of IMSI catchers.
One caveat: IMSI-catching is a cat-and-mouse game, so no promises can be made that the Rayhunter heuristics catch all attacks.
Rayhunter is a great tool, but unfortunately, it is only a passive monitor for cellular state changes and not an active defense.
Modern Stingrays / IMSI catchers support all standards up to 5G. They easily exploit 4G networks and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) deployments.
The only effective active defenses include (a) using a device locked strictly to 5G Standalone (SA) mode with SUCI (Subscription Concealed Identifier) enabled, preventing fallback to 4G/3G/2G where identity spoofing is trivial, (b) keeping the device in airplane mode most of the time, only going online briefly from unpredictable, shifting locations, and (c) using custom cellular baseband firmware that can reject anomalies (like a tower suddenly appearing too close or lacking neighbor cell lists), though this requires custom building your own solution as ready-made consumer solutions are hard to find.
The last one can be achieved with Rayhunter, of course, but it would require some patching to Rayhunter and always carrying a mobile phone connected to the Rayhunter-supported Wi-Fi hotspot device.
Finally, intelligence mercenaries (and therefore LE agencies that contract them) use warrantless network-side exploits like SS7/Diameter attacks to remotely query the core telecom routing system and harvest the location of the tower target's phone is currently using¹ ². This doesn't even require sending legal DD requests to telcos to get target's cell tower.
Literally just airplane mode. It's ended up being a rather excellent privacy toggle that operating systems have to implement well.
GrapheneOS has "2G Network Protection" which prevents your phone from connecting to 2G networks and it also can notify you if your cellular identifiers were accessed.
https://www.cape.co seemed suspicious to me but apparently they actually do manage to make decent security improvements on the cellular stack. They also donate 100k/year to GrapheneOS [1] which is cool.
Almost everyone needs a solution that allows them to send and receive communication, including using the Internet, at arbitrary places and times.
> (Cape)
Cape is cofounded by Palantir alums; national security agencies are their main market. That doesn't condemn them - and it may speak to technical chops and requirements - though people should be informed so they can make their own decisions.
> They also donate 100k/year to GrapheneOS
Their valuation, as of this past March, is $900M [0]. GrapheneOS is mostly silent about donors and any arrangments with them, afaict.
>GrapheneOS has "2G Network Protection" which prevents your phone from connecting to 2G networks
This isn't just a GrapheneOS feature so you don't need a new ROM for it. Upstream Android provides this feature. Being enrolled in Google Advanced Protection program even forces it on. It is also available in iOS via Lockdown Mode. Just a great feature and I'm glad its broadly available.
>GrapheneOS has "2G Network Protection" which prevents your phone from connecting to 2G networks and it also can notify you if your cellular identifiers were accessed.
You should realistically be changing to it to "5G or LTE only", even better "5G only". The latter should provide complete protection from IMSI/IMEI sniffing by rogue base stations.
Yow, $70 a month is rather harsh. Honestly I'd rather just stick to Signal and avoid traditional calling/SMS and use HTTPS for everything over mobile data instead.
What will Stingrays do if a mobile device uses Starlink? There's no way the Feds are going to lose this ability to deploy Stingrays once Starlink Mobile comes around.
Stingrays don't care where the provider's towers are, they work by pretending to be their own, and (ideally for you if you are the person wielding one) causing your target's phone to connect to or through your antenna. The only way Starlink would help a target is if your phone rejects tower signals that are not mostly above you, or if Starlink Mobile would utilize something other than the 3GPP standards, both of which are unlikely unless they want to sell their own fully proprietary phones.
Current Starlink direct-to-mobile is proprietary. It's kind of the opposite: 5G NR NTN so far has required new chipsets which haven't found their way into phones yet, whereas Starlink's LTE has been deployed with firmware changes to existing phones.
Do you think that Musk wants to become the dominate global cell provider and does NOT plan to use that information collection capability to enable his friends and hurt his enemies?
> charged with conspiring to violate worshippers’ civil rights and interfering with religious worship at ... its pastors, David Easterwood, also led ICE’s St. Paul field office
Exciting potential here for government officials to use civil rights laws to attack their enemies
A law was passed under President Clinton that made it illegal for protesters to interrupt religious services or impede access to an abortion clinic.
> The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is a United States law that was signed by President Bill Clinton in May 1994, which prohibits the following three things: the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is obtaining an abortion, the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is exercising or trying to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship...
Reporting on an event is not the same as participating in it. The first amendment protects freedom of the press as much as it protects freedom of religion.
You can't participate in a mob that enters into religious worship and interferes with it. Lemon is on video interfering with religious service, and the pastor even personally asks him to stop. But even before then, he was no longer reporting on the event as soon as he went in with the mob and did his part to actively interfere.
The right to protest and peacefully assemble doesnt give you the right to do it in private property. The church is church property its open to its members and generally the public but that doesnt make it a public place or public property. If you want to protest a store, you are free to do so on public property outside the store. You are not free to do so inside the store disrupting the purpose of the establishment. The store is private property they are within their rights to refuse your business as long as it isnt based on a protected class.
A church really isnt any different, their business is worship and offering a peaceful place for contemplation, reflaction and prayer. If you disrupt that they can and should ask you to leave and should you refuse that becomes the crime of tresspass.
If you want to be empowered by your rights then you should first take the necessary time to understand them.
Exceptional irony in that somewhere within that church might be printed the line "and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us". Probably within some book that isn't very important.
Disrupting someone's federally protected right to assemble and worship is a civil rights issue, just like forcing people to do that would be. If you stop and think about this a bit it's really obvious how "disrupt what's happening in a house of worship I don't like" would play out if it was allowed.
In fact there's history of black churches, synagogues, mosques and Sikh temples have been attacked, bombed, disrupted, and otherwise interfered with. You don't have the right to disrupt a girl's baseball team practice on a campus either. The Klan can't march through your living room.
I’m not a Christian, but even I know that there’s more to Christianity than some parables. Even then if you want to get down to it Jesus is the same guy who cleared a temple by force.
So you know, cherrypick these things at your peril.
What if they haven’t committed fraud? Do you believe the federal government should be allowed to harass elected officials for their speech?
In the trespass charges, local government could have handled it without costing you as much. It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars using dragnet surveillance, violating the rights of others caught in their net. I believe the Feds are only wasting money on this because of who was involved, not the crime at hand.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
I'm just speaking hypothetically, of course. Otherwise the federal government ran by either party could just declare "fraud" or "show me your birth certificate" for 10 years without probable cause and keep repeatedly harassing the elected officials they disagree with.
> Interfering with religious worship is a federal offense
Pretty sure it's a misdemeanor offense in some states, but is not a federal offense. Open to reading the federal statute if you can cite one.
I can’t reply to your other comment so commenting here.
Thank you for being so civil, these discussions tend to get very heated very quickly.
You are right that it is a misdemeanor unless there was an aggravating factor but I don’t think that has been alleged. But it does seem to be a federal offense nonetheless if someone does violate the code below.
18 U.S.C. § 247
>intentionally obstructs, by force or threat of force, including by threat of force against religious real property, any person in the enjoyment of that person’s free exercise of religious beliefs, or attempts to do so
Don Lemon does seem to be charged with Conspiracy Against Rights (18 U.S.C. § 241) and FACE Act Violation (18 U.S.C. § 248). Given that 247 deals with interstate commerce which wouldn’t make sense like you said.
You have rights to assemble and protest, they have rights to assemble and worship. It’s all about trying to strike a reasonable balance between your competing rights.
Some people are wondering if the government has to prove it is a mob, or can just say that, and then do a bunch of illegal things once they assert it. And, whether if that turns out to be a lie, if there are consequences for lying. It would be nice to have clarity there.
You're just thumping the table. It's illegal to discriminate against Jewish university students, too, but that doesn't mean that Trump's treatment of Columbia et al was justified. What do you think it means for an official to use the law as a weapon against his enemies?
If you think that me calmly, accurately, and neutrally pointing out what's currently illegal is "thumping the table" then you're helpless, hopeless, and there'd be no point arguing with whatever point you're making here, as you'll interpret it as "violence" and me "attacking" you, I'm certain.
Those of us that believe in preserving civil liberties argue that we should take away powers of the government so it is harder to bully people under the color of law --- the process is the punishment. I'm not sure why the left only cares about this topic now, and not when the left was in power. The Left had a lot of opportunities to take away government powers before Trump entered office.
Because "The Left" is not some unified body as you're making it out to be. Rather it consists of professional politicians who lean authoritarian, and the grassroots who lean libertarian. And the same basic dynamic exists on "The Right" as well. It is the professional authoritarians' main job to sell their respective grassroots tribes on justifications for the authoritarian actions of their administrations. Currently, it is "The Right" who is cheering on the authoritarianism (and quite voraciously!), so anybody earnestly interested in preserving civil liberties should be opposing "The Right". When the buntings change, "The Left" gets the power back, and is back to being the marketers for authoritarianism, then it will then become necessary to oppose "The Left".
But of course to actually make any positive progress for civil liberties, it is necessary for the grassroots to hold their own politicians accountable rather than merely cheering when it is their team's at bat. Meaning it is currently the responsibility of the grassroots right to be calling out these flagrant abuses of power. They were easily easily recognizing when it was being done to them, but now they mostly seem silent. Which is the same condemnation as your comment makes, but applied to the tribe who can actually act act the moment.
"The affidavits supporting the applications to track Richardson claimed video showed Fort, Lemon, Richardson, and others “chanting with agitators.” Prosecutors have since conceded that Lemon and Fort did not chant".
Depends on what you meant by "it" here, the prosecutors' have already conceded that at least some of their claims in the affidavit were false, so I would agree that it's hardly settled. (I haven't watched the video nor would recognize Richardson).
Ah, so the law should only protect the ones that JMKH42 on news.ycombinator.com thinks don't need protesting. I'm sure the top minds in Washington are working hard to accomplish this totally sane and rational suggestion.
> Investigators also sought permission to use an invasive surveillance tool called a cell-site simulators against journalist Georgia Fort and a Minnesota state Senate candidate.
> Investigators also sought permission to use an invasive surveillance tool called a cell-site simulator against journalist Georgia Fort and a Minnesota state Senate candidate.
There, I fixed it for you. Now you can freely read and engage with the content of the article.
