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Comment by glitcher | Hacker News Reader

> "No person would be on BOLO without credible cause," the Facebook spokesman said in regard to this incident.

A bit of backwards logic to justify the list contents, eh?

I'm having trouble making sense of your comment. If your company knew about credible threats ( disgruntled employees, bomb threats, etc ) wouldn't you have a BOLO list? How is that backwards logic at all?

The validity of a list entry is not related to the existence of the list itself, but the reason a person added them to the list.

The article gives an example of an individual who may not have deserved to be on the list. By stating "No person would be on BOLO without credible cause", they are using a circular logical fallacy (begging the question?) to dismiss any possibility that there may be mistakes made in managing that list.

Circular logic is "No person would be on BOLO without credible cause, and the credible cause is that they're on BOLO". What they're saying is that there is a valid reason for each person on the list to be on it. You can take issue with that as a matter of factual accuracy, but there's no tortured use of language happening.

Their justification for spying on these people is that they believe they need to spy on these people.

It’s cool that they’re not just picking people at random, but they are engaging in a level of electronic surveillance that would require a warrant if they were a government agency. Do they share this BOLO list with outside groups? Do they share the surveillance results with law enforcement or other people?

It’s disturbing behavior from an utterly disingenuous corporation. Zuck is like an incompetent Lex Luthor. We should expect him to announce a run for the presidency soon.

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