Sheriff Raids House to Find Anonymous Blogger Who Called Him Corrupt
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Date: October 2015
Content: A page protesting a county animal control agency.
Request: We received a request from a county prosecutor's office to remove a page opposing a county animal control agency, alleging that the page made threatening comments about the director of the agency and violated laws against menacing.
Result: We reviewed the content and determined that the page did not contain credible threats and therefore did not violate our Community Standards. We took no other action on the page for reasons of the public interest.
Source: https://govtrequests.facebook.com/faq/, all the way at the bottom
"Facebook bows to anti-science activists, shuts down ‘We Love GMOs and Vaccines’"[1].
It seems like Facebook is playing both sides in this matter.
[1]: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/08/04/facebook-b...
One of the commenters indicated that FB took down that page for being "violent in nature" (details not provided) -- not simply for its pro-GMO/Vaccine stance.
It is possible to fool FB into removing a page or some content. One way that is sometimes attempted (with some success) is to spam the comments on the page with objectionable content (hopefully goading other people to respond in kind) or (if it's an open group) join it and do the same. Then have other people report the page.
Also, simple misunderstandings happen. E.g. a post gets removed due to being threatening; in fact the post was just citing a threat allegedly made by an official. This seems to be even more likely to happen if many people report that content as objectionable: thus, people opposed to some organization/idea organize into mobs that report related posts as being objectionable.
The examples I know of are groups of political movements that have a lot of haters, so that might be somewhat of an edge case.
I suspect that, when you're dealing with what must amount to tens of millions of reports a day from users, mistakes are made. Thankfully, it seems like this one was corrected.
I guess my dream of police officers who in their spare time have lively debates about Kant will never come to fruition ;)
EDIT: Spacing
The main person attacking me is a federal level law enforcement officer and politician working in the private sector. He is employed by a shady multi-billionaire who is objectively bad but I can't elaborate why.
All the others involved from the police, prosecutors and Judge are more perpetrating a conspiracy of indifference and incompetence.
This federal law enforcement person harassed my colleagues, lied about me, influenced a Judge and has continued to dedicate a huge amount of resources to me. He made a mistake attacking me, thinking I would be intimidated by him. Instead, his actions did the opposite. I did not break any law and the current charge against me is minor, unrelated and supposed to be dismissed.
Before it was, he had a Judge revoke my $0 bail, set it for $80,000 and sent 5 felony undercover warrant detectives after me and a team of private investigators.
Essentially it started as a dispute between me and some wealthy people, and the federal official got involved because his employer has a financial incentive.
This has been going on for a year and a few days ago, he sent my friend a long email at 11pm at night. Saying all this stuff and that he was dispatching a "team" to come hunt me down. He asked for my address.
I told my friend to send him a copy of my driver's license with my current address on and he did. The federal official is so dumb that he doesn't realize that my friend and I are toying with him. He thinks my friend is working against me but he's just collecting information for me.
I also have all these incriminating tapes, including of the official saying he doesn't want to know about serious criminals involved in exploitation etc. Instead, he is trying to prevent a scandal and so he has viciously attacked me.
I agree that we need to similarly professionalize local police forces. I'd rather see it done at the state level to maintain more local, rather than federal, control of policing.
Here is the modus operandi of the FBI. They bring a person in for an interview. Two agents interview a person. One agent asks all the questions, while the other keeps a written record of the interview. No audio tapes of the interview are made. At the end of the interview, the official and only record of the interview is the written account prepared by the FBI agent doing the recording.
None of the above is in dispute. Now for the part that you are free to ignore.
The FBI will then interview the same person at a later date, using the same method. They will then comb through the two accounts of the interviews, looking for discrepancies. Amazingly, they will find discrepancies. They will then bring the subject back in, tell the subject that he or she has "lied" to the FBI, a federal offense with non-trivial punishment. The subject will then be "invited" to work off this infraction by becoming an FBI informant.
The FBI does this again and again.
Maybe it's just me, but that's not cricket, my good man.
There is a famous video "Don't talk to police" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
Then later when he couldn't figure out how to view the documents and didn't want to read the instructions that were sent with it he demanded that we print everything off on paper and again threatened legal action for "not complying". I wound up hand delivering almost a ream of paper for all of the documents and emails that they subpoenaed. In the end, the biggest mistake made was complying with the order in the first place as they were ordering us to provide documents from third parties for the most part who should have been served with a subpoena directly.
Though I joined a few years after it was already finished, there were many employees still around who had worked on the project.
The reason the project failed was almost entirely the fault of the FBI project managers and other bureaucrats. Huge egos, technical incompetence, and petty politics were the biggest issues. This was coming from talented non-mgmt engineers, too, so i'm pretty confident in the veracity of their claims
Anyway, after working in gov. contracting for a decade, I've come to really believe that most Fed workers are actually pretty bright, but they become so fixated on politics instead of results, they end up doing far worse than their less educated counterparts in the private sector.
The more privileged the agency (i.e. FBI, other Intel agencies, State Department, etc.) the worse the politicking becomes as they are far more insulated from scrutiny and less limited with funding from Congress.
FBI Agents in their off hours have engaging philosophical debates? I hadn't heard about this. Is this from personal experience, or is this a criticism of the FBI of them being too impractical?
EDIT: This was a legitimate inqury. Is it really so absurd to imagine some FBI agents having Thursday Philosophical Book Club? That some people on HN might have gone to them? If so, it sounded interesting.
That would be a nice thing to have.
Put your time in (not bankers hours), move when transferred, whoa this is a lot of paperwork, climb the ladder, spend time at HQ and "make friends" at all your stops, go along and get along, now there are kids and spouse/house and schools, do your 20 so you can retire, start new job in security or back to private practice thanks to your well-tended reputation, etc.
Who's gonna stick their neck out anymore? (Besides Snowden.)
Whats worse is that the media im talking (CNN,MSNBC,FOX,ABC..Wash Post, NY Times) could have helped argue their case but they dont instead they are fed information from the government and report that as facts, of course this is nothing new, if anyone remembers the NY Times story about Saddam Hussein having WMDs)
Or maybe I'm still angry from that time I got arrested for cycling on the footpath, or that other time the cops turned my house upside down and stole a $1000 from me and charged me with drug trafficking, all charges for which ended up getting dismissed.
There are real reasons lots of people think the police are barely tolerable. It's high time the police were encouraged to act like professionals, and face the possibility of having their license to operate as an LEO revoked for misconduct rather than the present state of boys-club-protectionism.
At first I was shocked than situation described in this topic is possible in US. I mean not just the raid against activist, but the level of corruption revealed by ExposeDAT.
But let's face the sad truth: the cost to society of having professional, efficient and corruption-resistant police is unbearable too. At least for large country like US. It's comparable to cost of having professional, efficient and treason-resistant army, counted per one officer/soldier. But you need much more police officers than soldiers. You have to apply very strict selection and certification to ensure only most honest, incorruptible and motivated people are at service. You just won't find enough people, especially in economically depressed regions.
This all doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't improve the situation, of course.
You could certainly argue that there ought to be more policy officers than soldiers, but the military is currently quite a bit larger. The projected number of active duty military members is 1,301,300, with an additional 811,000 in the reserves [1]. The sources for the number of policy officers were around 800,000-900,00. Wikipedia has it pegged at 809,308 for 2008 [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
http://beautyce.com/california-cosmetologists-putting-in-mor...
If it weren't for perverse incentives turning every traffic stop into a potential drug hunt, we could move enforcement for minor traffic violations to much cheaper traffic officers without arrest powers.
We could even automate most of it, so the traffic officers don't even have to pull people over except for imminent safety issues.
Poll the population, and you'll get about 75% in agreement that it should be wound down or pivoted to a health issue. Even higher stats for the younger generations.
However, you still get half the politicians talking tough on crime, drug punishments, etc. The reason: big campaign contributions from local and federal police agencies, DEA, prison guard unions, and the lawyers and courts that feed off its misery.
The most recent and probably also the most well-known example of this is from the Prohibition era, when a federal law enforcement group referred to as The Untouchables brought down Al Capone and his criminal organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchables_(law_enforcement)
Each member of The Untouchables was hand-picked by Eliot Ness, the leader, for having an outstanding track record and extraordinarily strong sense of ethics. The result was a stunning success: Capone was simply unable to bribe, intimidate or otherwise blackmail any of the members. The group was instrumental in having him charged and convicted.
Your reasoning is not very solid here.
I could pick one Snowden out of 330 million US Americans. It doesn't mean all 330 million of us are patriotic like he is.
I'm sorry, but is that not what we are discussing here? The person I was originally responding to said that no organization seems to be fully immune to corruption, and I responded saying that it is possible to form such organizations. You just have to hand-pick each and every individual based on the criteria of "untouchableness."
its not just the agents either. I had a neighbor who was a lawyer and was going to be a legal clerk for the dea. I had to do an interview with an fbi agent, as did all of her family and friends. they already have a process in place to pick trustworthy people, and while I guess it isnt perfect, why would you be so confidant you can do it better?
What does work is significant, legislated transparency throughout society, and the teeth and willingness to enforce it.
On the other hand, it IS Louisiana, the home of such great statesmen as "Dollar" Bill Jefferson and Ray Nagin, whose service the federal government now honors by providing them with round the clock housing and sustenance.
Unfortunately, Constitutional protections are only a defense to libel, so the prima facie case can still be made, and the warrant could technically still issue.
Sigh. The law sucks sometimes.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4wapuz/sheriff_...
The downside, of course, is that you have to use the judicial system to achieve it.
In what circumstances is it a crime to defame someone, and not merely a cause of action in a civil suit?
Here is Virginia's
"§ 18.2-417. Slander and libel.
Any person who shall falsely utter and speak, or falsely write and publish, of and concerning any female of chaste character, any words derogatory of such female's character for virtue and chastity, or imputing to such female acts not virtuous and chaste, or who shall falsely utter and speak, or falsely write and publish, of and concerning another person, any words which from their usual construction and common acceptation are construed as insults and tend to violence and breach of the peace or shall use grossly insulting language to any female of good character or reputation, shall be guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor."
So don't be throwing around the 'ho word about your ex-girlfriend!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law#C...
Larpenter told WWL: “If you’re gonna lie about me and make it under a fictitious name, I’m gonna come after you.”
Edit: if what you are saying is true that's exactly the kind of behaviour that's undermining our entire justice system and faith in the government and the system as a whole.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238910 and marked it off-topic.
Perhaps you should have asked him to clarify under what circumstances he would support the death penalty rather than admonishing him.
I don't believe in censoring opinions I don't happen to agree with. I think that is one of the ideas of the original article.
HN is not all things. It is a site for civil, substantive discussion on topics of intellectual curiosity. A throwaway line suddenly invoking the death penalty is obviously not that—it's just talking smack on the internet. Maybe a detailed argument would have been different, but I doubt it. Pulling that rabbit out of hat is a stunt.
Not all opinions and contributions are equal. It's seductive to feel that they should be, until you realize that it isn't possible to treat all posts equally: if we did, the inflammatory, reflexive posts would win. That wouldn't just tip the balance—it would be a rout, because the people who prefer reflective, thoughtful discussion would leave. On HN we prefer reflective, thoughtful discussion. It's the rarer and more valuable species.
In a technical biological sense, no doubt all plants are equally valid. But if you want a garden you've got to pull weeds.
Like it or not, the death penalty is perfectly within the norms of the civilised world; it's popular even where not allowed.
In this case, the only thing incompatible with civil, substantive discussion was … you.
On HN, over-the-top rhetoric isn't in anybody's interest. It refutes itself and trivializes the subject.
There is a large province of the Philippines called "Davao" which, 20 years ago (more or less), was a haven for terrible, corrupt people. Were you to make the mistake of going there, you would be kidnapped, held for ransom, and executed if your family/friends could not pay. This was pretty much a guarantee. So, more or less, you wouldn't go there.
Enter a man named Rodrigo Duterte. Mayor of the biggest town (also called Davao). He instituted martial law, brought in the military, and started executing police, drug dealers, and local officials who were corrupt.
Today, Davao is one of the safest and nicest regions in the Philippines. His daughter, now the mayor, carries on in his tradition, but since the corruption is largely gone, I don't think she gets around to executing too many government officials.
The country noticed this. In the last 12 months, he was basically drafted against his will to be the president of the Philippines, on the hopes that he would repeat the process on a national level.
He is doing so. He was sworn in sometime in June, and has begun executing the people responsible for corruption in Manila and other northern regions of the country.
Now one can argue all sorts of things in this case. It leaves an unsavory taste in my mouth and those of some very smart people I know. But at some point it ceases to be civil society policing itself, and becomes civil war. We simply hope that the chieftans disband when the civil war is over (Duterte is probably one of the few authoritarians who will actually do so, so I hold out hope).
I don't think the United States has quite reached the level of corruption the Philippines has, but I see it heading that direction. It's best to think what we will do if it goes that far. Maybe today the death penalty for being a corrupt government official is too much, but the status quo penalty of: "get paid leave until it blows over" is, I think, too lax.