FBI used Etsy, LinkedIn to make arrest in torching of Philadelphia police cars
6abc.com
6abc.com
This could point at an earlier step in the pipeline - e.g. the recruiters at those companies may have been using LinkedIn as a primary search tool - but that's a signal of its own.
However, you can double your income by thinking differently about LI. If that doesn't speak to its value as a network, I might need to reassess what network value means.
How? I would love to double my income.
2. less LI, but become a thought leader
3. Network, write, promote. People are more likely do business with people they "know" so make sure they see your face on a regular basis.
4. Sales skills and business acumen, you will need this if you want to break out of the average
2. This is not a LinkedIn skill. I speak at industry conferences regularly through relationships I've built entirely outside of LinkedIn.
3. Conference speaking does this for me.
4. This isn't even tangentially relayed to LinkedIn.
My first job out of college was from a bunch of cold applications. Since then, I've gotten all my roles by reaching out to people (outside of LinkedIn) to connect, and through my network. The skills you highlight as important are not exclusive to, or necessarily learnable on LinkedIn.
The best way to use recruiters is to give them a few minutes regardless of the job, they have more, it's their business, and they will start pimping you out. Best job search hack ever!
I'm doing a few extra steps now
1. Tell them the company salaries are far too low, take a sample point back, hopefully a hack that raises everyone's salary
2. Getting intros to companies I want to do business with, not go work for. This has not been fruitful, but it is a recent strategy change
I did not have an expert write my profile and in fact I’ve hardly touched it in years.
Those numbers are highly tied to an independent event (your first salary, you could be a better negotiator today) and have been changed by inflation
My most recent job search consisted entirely of friendly intros (most by colleagues at the hiring manager level) at a mix of startups and major tech companies. I have met these people through the normal course of business and life, and never through LinkedIn.
Maybe I'm special, because I've spent my career in tech consulting, so I got to network that way, but this is hardly a unique career path.
What happens when you have do code features that you won't want to do? No one puts their dogshit, get-it-done-before-the-weekend code on github.
And it's useless for telling me how well you'll do on a team, how you'll interact with other stakeholders, if you're sketchy and will run off with our IP (or just sell creds on the darknet), and if you'll be able to handle high powered office/project politics and their pressures. Linkedin may not be a perfect (or even good) signal for that, but it's a start. Long work histories but no contacts on Linkedin? Okay, not a dealbreaker, but may be worthy of an explanation.
I only ever got cold-calls for shitty jobs that I obviously wouldn't be interested in. Every interesting cold call I've gotten has come from elsewhere (e.g. my blog).
Not having a linkedin has, I think, never impeded my ability to get an interview or a job offer.
If your resume is otherwise very weak it might be somewhat useful, but honestly if someone is relying heavily on linkedin in their resume, I'd view that as a pretty bad sign.
I could reverse that, though since they put a 45 day waiting period on deleting it. How would I use LI as a "primary platform" to promote my service or build a community around it?
I have gotten lots of recruiter emails saying they saw my LinkedIn profile, which is kinda funny, since it doesn't exist.
Could just be the kinds of jobs I'm interested in.
I personally think that for software dev at least, making connections via Twitter or via friends is a better way to go for the first internship, but everyone has different paths to success :)
"Can't risk" is interesting, you could say that about anything you could put on your resume if there's a chance it helps, but something like LinkedIn seems just redundant with your resume's content.
So people definitely use it, even if it isn't on your resume.
> Plus every career counselor I've seen has suggested it.
They're probably right, if your goal is to get a job as a career counselor.
If you are going to use it for a job hunt, then use it aggressively. Message/cold-call people that you want to work for, send them a cover letter and CV, ask to talk off LI and on the phone/over-coffee asap. Cold-emailing people from a company directory is kinda the same thing here. The 'rules' for Tinder aren't that far off for LI, sad as that is.
Outside of a job hunt that you're preforming, yeah, it's mostly recruiter spam. The feed is practically useless in my experience, but I am not a power user.
All that said, networking is that key to getting hired.
But yeah, it does not solve the problem of social pressure where you could be considered as less reliable or trustworthy if you don't have a public profile with many details.
Isn't it pretty easy to hide from Google? It's had settings like "don't let search engines index my profile" and "only show to people with an n-degree relationship" for a long time.
"Keep the immigrants, deport the racists."
"Keep the immigrants, deport the arsonists"
Burning down an occupied home, and burning an unoccupied car are both arson, do you think they're comparable crimes?
Actually let me answer that for you, because maybe this is just the legendary HN contrarian who does not let common sense stand in the way of making a point...
They're not. Sending pipe bombs to CNN is intentionally trying to kill people. Burning a police car is intentionally trying to destroy property. Sure someone could be hurt by both, but you'd have to throw out any semblance of common sense to pretend that they're comparable in malice...
I think it's fairly clear that this fire was not intended to spread and had little chance of spreading.
To be clear, I'm not saying what she did was right--but I am saying that if we look at intentions and what was likely to happen, this clearly was not done with the intent of destroying anything but property.
And to be clear, if you look at the George Floyd murder and protests, and your biggest concern is the torching of two unoccupied police cars, you aren't concerned about justice or public safety.
I'm sure that wasn't her intention, but serious fires are started by people who didn't intend to do anything more than have a campfire or fireplace. It's reckless, and it's counter-productive, turning people against the protests.
And just to be clear, it's entirely possible to be concerned about both police brutality and arson.
Well, first of all, "police brutality" is not the worst problem or the problem that incited these protests. Police murder is.
Second, if you're concerned about both of these things, then there's no reason to talk about putting protestors in jail. She didn't set fire to a police car because she didn't know there might be consequences. She set fire to a police car because those consequences don't matter to her. If you care about both police murder and arson, then you should be talking about stopping police murder, because that's the cause of the arson.
Focusing on the violent components of the protests is part of a strategy that controls the narrative. At every turn, kneeling on a man's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while he begs for his life and slowly dies is being downplayed--calling it "police brutality"--the same term used for slamming someone against a cop car while you handcuff them. And at every turn, things like burning a police car are being played up, calling it arson--the same term used for torching a city block with children inside. And in fact, people in this thread won't even call it arson when Philly PD actually did torch 61 homes, killing 5 children[1]. Where are the people insisting that we call that arson and bring the perpetrators to justice?
So yeah, it's possible to be concerned about both police brutality and arson, but "police brutality and arson" is not what's happening. "A police officer murdering a man and a woman setting fire to two unoccupied, isolated police cars" is a much more proportional description of the events. And if your main concern here is making sure that the woman who lit the police cars on fire is brought to justice, you aren't proportionally concerned about both these things.
Wow, this sounds horrible.can you elaborate on what you mean by "allowed" it to burn down?
Specifically - "Although firefighters had earlier drenched the building prior to the bombing, after the fire broke out, officials said they feared that MOVE would shoot at the firefighters, so held them back.
Goode later testified at a 1996 trial that he had ordered the fire to be put out after the bunker had burned. Sambor said he received the order, but the fire commissioner testified that he did not receive the order. Ramona Africa, one of the two MOVE survivors from the house, said that police fired at those trying to escape"
From the links, 60 neighboring homes burned down from it, no fire department presence. So...regardless of the reason, "the fire was allowed to burn".
> no one from the city government has been criminally charged for the attack
Much changes over 15 years.
I also wouldn't classify destroying the car of a government organization as violence. It's destruction, but fairly mild compared to burning people's homes to the ground. And even then, I wouldn't think to compare property damage to actual violence, like murder.
> There was an armed standoff with police,[6] who lobbed tear gas canisters at the building. The MOVE members fired at them, and a gunfight with semi-automatic and automatic firearms ensued.[33] Police used more than ten thousand rounds of ammunition before Commissioner Sambor ordered that the compound be bombed.
Seems like the bombing was perhaps not an unreasonable response? I mean, in this case an armed militia fortified itself in a bunker-like property and fired at the police. What were they expecting?
> The MOVE members fired at them, and a gunfight with semi-automatic and automatic firearms ensued.
This language is so evasive that it could accurately describe "MOVE shot at police once with a muzzle-loader, and police returned fire with semi-automatic and automatic weapons."
Words like "compound" and "bunker" don't have a particular meaning either--they are just there to sound cult-y and scary.
If this is actually a justified situation, why not tell the story straight? Why not say that MOVE used semi-automatic and automatic weapons if that's what happened?
5 children were killed by police.
61 homes were burned--the vast majority of these homes were neighbors who had nothing to do with MOVE.
Were either of these things "necessary to subdue the attacker"?
Keep in mind, this is a country where you are innocent until prooven guily. The cops don't get to legally go form hit squads and go shooting people they don't like. This isn't the 1800's.
I can certainly agree overwhelming force is not in general a good answer because it emphasizes and strengthens the belief the police are not to be trusted. Would you come out of a building someone was actively firing into? Surrounding the compound at Waco and firing into it was just dumb when dealing with a doomsday cult because it's just going to reinforce their beliefs.
The correct way to look at this tragedy is many police officers were previously soldiers, so keep in mind when they see a cult, their mindset is to kill or capture or dispense with extreme force and what you get is a whole lot of stupidity as compromise.
Compare to when arsonists burned down 61 West Philadelphia homes, killing 5 children. That's a threat to public safety, but the arsonists were never charged, because the arsonists were police. That's a threat to public safety.
Compare to systemic racism, repeated kidnapping and harassment, and over and over again, cops straight-up murdering black people. That's a threat to public safety.
Let's be clear here, you aren't concerned about justice or removing threats to public safety if your biggest concern here is the torching of two unoccupied police cars.
While I have no issue with police investigating lawbreakers, the public should know what the police are doing and how, so they can be confident that police are correctly following the law while executing their duty.
But perhaps I'm reading too much into that wording, and in fact some protesters who took photos thought the arson was over-reach, so they supplied the photos to the police.
Thank you.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/07/google-location-pol...
If there's an obfuscation of the actual investigation here, I'd guess it's more a hiding of highly automated tools that process open source intelligence, probably by policy of the federal agency with the tool. Imagine a FBI/DEA/NSA tool that links and summarizes social media activity based on identities. So facial recognition + cell database -> trail of pictures to craft a link-narrative, without the work of having to dig much or do automated facial recognition. Tangentially I wouldn't be surprised if declaring "antifa" a "terrorist" organization is actually an internal dog whistle that blesses the use of XKEYSCORE etc against American citizens.
Fun fact: the federal law that bans firearms in schools is based on "interstate commerce".
> the firearm in question "has moved in or otherwise affects interstate commerce."[3] As nearly all firearms have moved in interstate commerce at some point in their existence, critics assert this was merely a legislative tactic to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling.[2]
Sometimes when states fail to prosecute, or fail to get a conviction, the Feds will prosecute. But the original crime might not be a federal crime, so they prosecute under something else (there are ~3000 federal laws to choose from).
For example, sometimes when police kill citizens, and DAs don't prosecute, the Feds will. But the murder isn't in federal jurisdiction, so they charge them with "color of law"[2][3], which is a federal crime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_(United_States_law)#Jur...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_(law)
[4] https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-l...
[1] https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
You’ve violated numerous laws whether you know it or not.
> violence, or shit like this
Should white collar crime that destroys 1, 10 or 100 lives also “draw life”?
Why or why not?
You're advocating for arbitrarily cruel punishment that is out of line with sentencing guidelines in the US and international human rights conventions more broadly.
Given that, I'm asking where you draw the line when it comes to "violence" and if you'd be satified to see significantly more people imprisoned for life.
As far as it goes, I think conditions in prisons should be far nicer than they are now. In these days of videoconferencing, it needn't be very different than lockdown. I don't believe in punishment; I believe in permanent removal from society.
Laws are also designed around intent rather than outcome. So there are harsh punishments for intending to start/spread any kind of fire, even if it looks unlikely to go out of control in this particular case.
Also, it's unlikely that she'll really get 10 years without someone being hurt in the process.
If I were to highlight excessive penalties, I'd probably point to drug crimes rather than arson. I don't think lighting fires should be a part of the protest landscape.
https://www.essence.com/news/willie-simmons-life-prison-alab...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wirecard-shares-slump-over-mi...
Edit: Ouch, looks like quite a few people here do. Do y'all really think that's the best way to effect social and political change? A minority of Americans screaming louder and using terrorism to vent their spleens won't solve the issue. In a democracy, everyone must focus on getting more people to vote for different policies to effect change.
There is justifiable outrage. I do not condone wanton destruction and arson, but disruptive protests work in a way that peaceful ones alone do not.
If the suspect hadn't stolen the cop's Tazer, he may very well be alive today. I cannot fault an officer for using his sidearm when someone is running off with his Tazer given the situation. A suspect running off with your piece is nightmare fuel for cops as I understand it, and in that situation, I'm willing to wager training and instinct won over political consciousness.
Point being, things went through an escalation from non-lethal to lethal in the right order. There is no reason besides wanting to be outraged to use that encounter as an example of the system gone wrong. If anyone else had done the same, I have no doubt it'd end the same way.
If we're talking about the drunk fellow in the drive-thru at least.
But isn’t that the problem though? Shouldn’t police only use deadly force in the face of an imminent objectively reasonable deadly threat?
Someone running away from you with a taser doesn’t constitute that threat.
The reason the cop shot was pure ego. Him and his buddy just had their ass handed to them, and now the guy was getting away.
Someone running away from you with a loaded incapacitating weapon, in a state of altered consciousness, unresponsive to any commands, and uncooperative with any protocols that govern interaction with authority after you just got done fighting with them, so under the influence of an adrenaline spike.
Look, I'm no fan of the calculus of interaction with the justice system getting tilted heavily in the direction of 'your life is about to be permanently ruined anyway", but goddamnit, I'm not faulting someone in those circumstances, especially when everyone involved still managed to follow protocol.
I don't believe in "tough on crime" deterrence by punishment policing as a panacea. Hell, I think incarceration is done in excess, and some of the things we tack the felony label on which just so happens to disenfranchise someone from voting for life seems a bit damn fishy. I don't even blame the guy in making a run for it given the current climate, or otherwise. Willingly giving up your agency is unnatural as all hell when you're in your right mind. In an altered state? That doesn't mean you get some sort of get out of the consequences free card, or that you can get into a violent scuffle with an armed officer, run off with his equipment, and not run the risk of things getting escalated further, especially when there are other people around. If anything, that in and of itself should be motivation enough not to let yourself get that far gone.
It isn't like I don't feel for the family, or about the circumstances. It isn't like I threw a hat in the air to celebrate the story. Quite the opposite. I wanted to see what happened to judge for myself, and well, I can't with 100% certainty say that in imagining myself as an officer with training, and regular experience with violent interactions on the streets, and having a target painted on my back due to the current political atmosphere adding to already considerable job stress that I might not have done the same thing in the heat of the moment, especially if I thought other people may be harmed given that a suspect just ran off with a piece of my equipment, and my frontal lobe hadn't yet registered my handgun was in my hands, if I didn't get things under control now.
In my case, a hypothetical one mind, it wouldn't even come from a place of ego so much as concern in terms of an imperative to minimize potential harm to bystanders.
So... I guess what I'm saying is I can entertain the reasonability of his actions. You might not. I don't expect everyone to see things like I do. Given the footage I saw curated by the media, I can accept that things escalated, but an attempt at following protocol was made, which is enough to get the officers off the hook in my book. I may not like that it did, but I've been around enough scuffles and frenzied encounters where lives are on the line to know that when stuff goes down, 90% of the rational creature takes a hike until the substance of the confrontation is resolved.
And not a damn word of this response would change given the suspect's color.
We all want to get out alive. We shouldn't have to feel like today is going to be the day. We shouldn't be locked in a fundamental struggle to just get by and be left alone. Yet... Here we are. Wish it was different. Wish it was a hell of a lot different. Wish that what ever drove him to get that incapacitated to escape from it hadn't been so bad. I wish that getting perp walked weren't something so adept at ruining your life. I wish we were all a bit more forgiving of each other in our moment's of weakness; but you can wish in one hand, and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.
The cop did what he was trained to do. His partner did what he was trained to do, the courts will do what they're going to do. Whether I wish it different or not. You can condemn him. I won't. I can't. I didn't see a fundamental breach of protocol.
EDIT: and to be clear, I tried putting myself in the victim's shoes, as difficult as that is, and I'd probably be dead too in that case if dropped in at the moment his fight or flight instinct kicked in. So make no mistake, it isn't coming from a place of "it can't happen to me." Out of my sane mind, I'm fairly certain I'd elevate my freedom above all else.
If what I've said here makes me a horrible person... I guess I'm a horrible person.
But again, this isn't a deadly threat because they're running away. If they turned around and aimed it at you, then sure, you could claim that they are a threat to you–though still not a deadly one. If you shoot someone running away from you, you're not doing it because you're threatened, you're doing it because you don't want them to get away, and that's the point that was being made.
It’s one thing if you’re running away with nuclear launch codes, but I’m skeptical that was the case here.
He didn't get shot for having a weapon in his possession; he got shot because of how the weapon ended up in his possession. I'm not saying it should be endorsed as standard operating procedure mind. However, the reaction is far from unreasonable. There seems to be a belief that there is the luxury of extensive time during which one can reason in these types of encounters, and the fact is there isn't. You react and operate on training and protocol.
It is the very reason why protocol does exist; you rehearse it ahead of time so it comes naturally without thinking. When your training involves an effective level of operant conditioning to save your life in the event you have to resort to lethal force, protocol isn't just there for the Officer's protection, but also the suspect's. If it is a mistake, it can be (or should be) resolvable afterward. If the Justice system weren't such a bureaucratic nightmare, it may not even be that big a deal. Once you depart from that protocol though, that cop is going to do exactly what they are trained to do. A) (Hopefully) Protect the Public B)Protect themselves C)Neutalize the threat as quickly as possible. Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily in a way you and I like or approve of, but IF they follow the book, we tend to grant them the benefit of a doubt. That happened. The officer's tried a peaceful arrest, the suspect escalated, stole the Tazer, Officers realized the suspect was now armed, public nearby, suspect is unresponsive and was hostile. It isn't an unreasonable escalation path at all.
You're mad if you think it's at all reasonable to give an armed, violent assailant the chance to retreat and prepare an ambush, or take a hostage. As I stated earlier, Isympathizewith the suspect for running or being afraid in the current environment. But after he lifted that Tazer, he shifted the operational calculus of the situation, knowingly or (most likely), not. Further, based on previous decisions by the DA, the precedent of a Tazerbeing a lethal weapon was well on it's way to being enshrined, so you really can't even fall back on the whole non-lethal aspect.
There was a clear attempt at peaceful arrest and detainment after the initial encounter and sobriety test. That was answered with violent resistance. Goto threat neutralization.
Unarmed suspect: No lethal force, attempt to physically subdue or disengage safely. Possession of Tazer lost. Goto suspect armed.
Non-lethal takedown: partner attempts. Tazer shot fails to connect, other Tazer in possession of suspect. Officer involved in struggle draws firearm. Fires.
I can't fault that. They were out of options.
And even if you accept, for sake of argument, that protocol should be changed. Suppose instead of a Tazer being stolen it was the officer's firearm with rubber bullets, and the officer left with a rifle at hand. The rubber bullets are still "non-lethal" right? Should they just let the suspect run off? God no. Taking the Tazer was what escalated things into deadly force territory, and even then only after the other officer made a best effort attempt at non-lethal takedown.
They did everything we, the Public, have demanded they do, in the order we demand it be done. This is undeniably a case where this officer is being targeted because of the unrest provoked by that cretin in Minneapolis, and Riot police elsewhere. Those are not his actions. He's just a cop, doing his job, in the midst of a stop gone bad. Just as the suspect was a human being who let himself get into a state in which he made some exceedingly poor decisions; one of which escalated things to the point of elevating the threat level of a situation to the point an officer felt lethal force was the last option he had.
I'm not comfortable setting a precedent for all cops, when faced with an armed assailant not to take care of business in such a manner as to bring confrontation to an end as quickly and bloodlessly as possible. Nor am I going to lock up or discipline one that tried to do things right. That we have video evidence of that trying having been done.
I don't like how it ended. If he didn't call in a meat wagon and provide first aid soon enough... Well that I can see being a problem, but that's not a crime. That's a tragedy. If he ended up exclaiming "Got him!", I don't see it as him intending to kill someone that night, I see it asadrenaline come down.
If we expect police to do their jobs, to even work for our protection, and the safety of our communities, we have to extend them the benefit of being able to accept the outcome of their discretion when it falls within the bounds we demand. This one did. It was reasonable. No question. Minneapolis wasn't. Seattle wasn't, the protests in other cities weren't but this one was a clean shoot.
I guess the DA filed the charges before the GBI completed its investigation.
Interesting times.
(At least this is what twitter says.)
It’s too bad George Floyd (a drug addict career criminal) wasn’t shot and killed by an armed homeowner when he committed his home invasion.
Both of these scum are eulogized by BLM (domestic terrorist organization).
So this justifies being killed by police, while not resisting, without a trial?
> BLM (domestic terrorist organization)
Got a source on that? Sounds almost like Fox Entertainment.
In this particular case, I do find some of the violence justified, and I think it has more effect than a simple non-violent protest would. We get to see exactly how police respond when a few thousand dollars worth of property is being damaged versus when they have someone's life in their hands. The police are digging themselves into a hole here, and it's glorious.
That said, we aren't at the point where violence against people is a legitimate form of protest. In self defense, sure, but protesters should not, at this point, be attacking people. Burn down all the Targets, police stations, and cop cars you want. Let it be the cops who do all the violence against people. That's what's actually going to get peoples' attention.
I'm trying to be charitable here, so I will ask you to reflect on the reasons why you think protecting replaceable (or even irreplaceable) property is worth extinguishing a human life.
In light of your magnanimous question (inquiring after the views of another is called conversation, not charity), here's my rationale as to why one is justified in using lethal force to defend property.
Let's take an extreme case: Say I'm an immigrant from a third-world nation who arrives in America at a young age. I spend my life working to build a successful small business. I pour my blood, sweat, and tears into it. Now, someone comes along, full of "justified anger" and ready to burn it down. By doing this, he is destroying a huge portion of my life. While this is less severe than murder, it's on the same spectrum of evil; one is destroying another's entire life, the other, only part of another's life. Therefore, a man is justified in any amount of force necessary to protect his property.
I'm aware this isn't a common way to view, but I'm happy to answer more questions and defend it further. I don't believe life has any absolute importance over property because property represents a part of another life. While a person represents more life than a thing in most cases, a thief or arsonist forfeits his rights by committing crimes against another.
[0]: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm
[1]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=316114562717856...
BTW, yes, people do have insurance on their televisions. It's called "homeowners' insurance" or "renters' insurance."
Then, don't cry when you lose your stuff.
As I said, violence against people is simply not acceptable here. Showing how violence is often the first resort of police rather than a last resort is the entire point of these protests.
If it makes you feel a little better about the world, I downvoted you because I thought you were wrong that no one supports this, not at all because I support burning police cars. I've definitely seen lots of support online that accepts the destruction of police (aka public) property as a legitimate (or at least expected) form of protest, and am surprised that you haven't. So yes, there are supporters, but possibly not quite as many as it would first appear.
However, I haven't really seen others support it, aside from the obvious lunatics on television (many of whom simply want to grab free stuff). I'm not sure which sites I'd have needed to frequent to see such support, but I'm always looking to expand my knowledge base, so would appreciate a few recommendations.
I'm reluctant to give my best recommendation, because it's a fragile community, but hopefully this thread is far enough along that it doesn't have a lot of traffic at this point.
Currently, the discussion at http://slatestarcodex.com is the best that I've found on the internet for hearing intelligent views from people I otherwise disagree with. The "open threads" are very long, and contain a lot (50%?) of dross, but there are also a lot of gems within them. Post-Floyd, I was surprised by how many people whose opinions I generally respect were at least conditionally supportive of burning the police precinct office in Minneapolis.
If you are interested in this question, you could pose it there. It would be considered "culture war", and thus only acceptable in the "fractional" open threads. That is, the ones that end with ".25", ".5", or ".75". To reduce visibility, these aren't officially listed on the front page, but are available from the Recent Posts or from the Archives link. Create an account, post the question there in as fair and open-ended a manner as you can, and I think you'd get good responses.
I listened to a 1940's episode of Dragnet a couple of days ago, and it was pretty much the same thing. Burglar was identified by photographs, his job, and a tattoo.
This is just normal police work. People make a big deal out of it because it's "Cyber" this and "e" that.
But if you go around with your tattoos and face uncovered, and wearing uniquely identifiable clothing, any 4chan thread can find your identity in a few hours.
See: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/what-its-like-to-get...
I love how the msm feels the need to specify that the protests that resulted in Police cars bring burned, stores bring looted and cops being shot were "peaceful protests" up until the incident. Imagine if they talked about the Charlottesville rally as largely peaceful until the deadly car attack.
I'm also not really concerned what 'positives' their agenda might include, given the violence that is explicitly part of the ideology they are identifying with.
Even for those who aren't literally wearing symbols of the Nazi party, white supremacy isn't a non-violent ideology. It fundamentally seeks to supress, remove, or otherwise contain non-whites. Putting non-whites in camps is still violent. Expelling them from the country they were born into and lived in their entire lives is still violent. Etc. And if there's a "nice" white supremacist, who is "well, I think whites are better, but you know, live and let live, right?" I'm pretty sure they're not out marching.
A "violent protest" is a clear concept that means something. You can very easily imagine a peaceful protester with the most awful things written on their sign. And you can imagine the most violent rioters being inspired by the greatest message.
actually investigative work
no subpoena's, no user profile aggregators
its the most acceptable use of public resources and is hardly news in 2020 but its nice to read that public servants will do some basic stuff like this.
basic human investigative work that anyone could do just like we pay them to do, or this high tech unnecessary other thing for someone on film with identifying information.
It if were parallel construction, the intent would be for the forward construction to seem more logical to you.
In this case, you could be proving the efficacy of the tactic.
and really the only reason thats an interesting public service announcement is by thinking this kind of googling in this article was complicated at all.
the "forward construction" is so easy that you should just assume anyone in any agency is competent enough to do this.
anybody that has looked up a friend from high school, or a potential date, or needed a way to contact someone, should have been inspired enough to do this before. and if you weren't, now you are.
Yeah I agree that when parallel construction happens they make the parallel case a logical one. But that involves making a parallel case. You're saying that the shirt -> Etsy -> Poshmark -> Linkedin chain was not created in that order and was created in some other order. I don't see how it's logical that it could be created in some other order, even with illegal evidence.
Beyond this specific case, I think the point of parallel construction is an interesting one because it makes it really difficult to know the "truth" where law enforcement have significant control over the flow of information.
Sometimes traditional or other media can help with the information asymmetry but sometimes, perhaps, not.
This is as opposed to say a police officer pulling over a drug dealer's car full drugs for failing to use a turn signal. If we assume illegal evidence was involved there, it's most logical the police were given some heads-up that there would be a drug dealer with a car full of drugs in the area to pull over, and the failing to signal on a turn was just used as a convenient excuse.
or it was easy and took 20 minutes?
ya'll never done this before? it doesn't take training. find someone's username and then google their username to see what other services they use, find an email address and check haveibeenpwned to see what other services that has been on, cross link, cross reference, and ideally find some erotic photos from their modeling days and then ask the photographer if there were any more because its attractive
[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17253155/united-states-...
She'll likely plead out, so we'll never know what they actually have on her.
Kneeling didn't work, soooo...
Expected respondes: pass a law. Protest peacefully. Stand in front of city hall with assault rifles. Vote for (some centrist).
Just because you may not like how someone is dealing with the fact that they could be killed with no recourse by cops because of the color of their skin, doesn't mean their methods are invalid or even irrational.
The classic star wars question - is Luke Skywalker a rebel hero, or a terrorist threat to order? Before the Empire blew up an entire planet to make a point, it was a fairly valid question.
It also demonstrates that by and large, police don't prevent chaos and property damage. Most of the time, people simply decide not to do this, and when they decide they want to, police are largely powerless to stop them. This should lead others to more broadly question whether police are capable of stopping other bad actors, rather than merely reacting to them.
I don't know why, but as a general rule with people, if it bleeds, it leads. And that's what's worked here.
If she's going to jail for torching a car, then will the officers that committed similar property damage also be going to jail?
It turns out, Americans pay attention when you start smashing property and taking flatscreen TVs.
Given episodes 7-9, Luke is a terroristic threat to order. After destroying the existing order, he failed to establish anything better and it quickly devolved into what we see in 7. And he also failed to kill the main villain which meant that all the chaos and death that he was responsible for had no offsetting good.
I want to see people use live streaming to debate first, but then organize so effectively to just swarm on the old systems to make change. People need to move faster.
No, we don't know that.
Historically it has been violence that stopped violence, and crime (like toppling an unjust government, breaking segregation laws, etc) that stopped crime.
>People should use modern tools to reduce racial issues. Like voting or social media’s, never burn a state property.
Yeah, they've tried blogging about it. There are also tons of books on the matter, vlogs, articles, etc. They voted Obama twice. Didn't work.
A few months of angry riots and a few burned down police departments though, could send a very clear message to politicians and police chiefs, and help change laws to restrict police abuse.
Black people in the US constantly fear being killed or harassed by police. Yeah, burning a car doesn't solve anything, but keeping quiet and playing ball since the civil rights movement hasn't really moved the needle. Policing and constant surveillance of black communities has gotten worse since then, and protections for police, both legally and politically, have increased. Sometimes you have to burn a car or break some glass for the nation to pay attention.
Also I would say that the initial reaction of rioting is what drove people to organize and peacefully protest, and in a lot of US cities and states, the combination of these has already resulted in policy change. I'm sure most of these people are also posting on social media and planning to vote as well.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying that torching a car is small potatoes compared to government sanctioned murder and oppression, and this kind of thing is forcing people to pay attention and have conversations about this stuff.
World War II and the US civil war didn't ended the violence, it just changed the way that violence manifests. If you look in many groups on Facebook, 9gag or redit , you will see Violence in protests are being used to create more hate in people who hates. I really believe that the society was improved by ideas not wars.
Police departments around the country are being downsized, kicked out of their unions, and in some cases defunded entirely. That's good news! The money will be used for better things.
It's not the sort of thing HN likes to hear but the techniques used in these protests are pretty much working as expected.
The police are not perfect. We need to hold them accountable to some reasonable standards of behavior. But if you defund them entirely, then what do you expect is going to happen? Peace and harmony?
No, what's going to happen is that criminals will still be criminals, and perhaps bolder and more blatant criminals. Drug addicts will continue to be drug addicts, and will do crazy things while they're high, and crazy things in order to get money to get high. Such people will continue to interact with non-criminal non-addict people, who will feel threatened. But now the police won't be there. Now what?
In a country with an armed population, the police probably reduce the number of misbehaving people who are killed, because (for all their flaws) they are still less trigger-happy than a frightened gun-owner who feels threatened by an encounter with some strange-acting person.
As someone who has had many of these encounters, I've never had the police help. At best they'll show up a half hour later and take a report. The police were never "there" in any meaningful sense.
> because (for all their flaws) they are still less trigger-happy than a frightened gun-owner who feels threatened by an encounter with some strange-acting person
Time after time, this has proven to not be true. When a frightened gun-owner reaches for his weapon, he knows he is risking all his money and probably his freedom if he's found to have fired it when it wasn't necessary. And so they tend to use some discretion. Cops do not risk the same, and so they shoot people all the time when their life isn't threatened.
Some people think police should pay for the abuses that they regularly and without punishment do.
Some others think police should stop existing in general, or exist only in a very limited capacity, or be replaced by citizen patrols, and several other varieties...
So, that morality and cause... Doesn't have to agree with yours to be a morality, and even less so to be a cause...
Yes you do. You might not get away with it, but that's not really pertinent.
In fact historically most change happened through people breaking laws because of their beliefs and anger.
And in every past society, like ours, most thought its laws are the apex of law-making, and should never be challenged or broken in anger, nor its law agents assaulted etc. Only history doesn't work that way.
In the moment, with everyone and everthing going on around her, I doubt she was thinking rationally or even knew that torching a car would be a long prison sentence. (if someone asked me before reading this article, I would have assumed a large fine + some community service maybe; then again I am not American so I have no idea how sentences compare).
"Everyone else was doing it" didn't fly with my mom, and probably won't get a pass from Judge Wapner, either.
Anybody thinking of going outside and playing anarchist should know what they're getting themselves into, wait until your cellmate tells you that they're getting out in 2 months and you have to hold their contraband and weapons or the guards decide to put you in a high security yard because you're in there for something ridiculous like 'terroristic threats and arson'. You don't ever get out on schedule
Which is the logic behind Qualified Immunity.
King survived, but two innocents were murdered by a black man who sought to assassinate Koon[0].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200604062152/https://www.latim...
If only the FBI used the same zeal in going after the perpetrators of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wk-mRv1Nlo
huh, because you almost never see the cops caught committing crimes with their own dash cams. Seems to always be off when they commit a crime in front of their car.
I don't live in the US but I know someone who spray painted trains at night for a few year. That eventually did cost him a decent car. Obviously not as much as he caused damage over the years but enough to make some teens think twice whether a nice car or temporary colored train are their short term goals.
Then if someone can't pay it back, you either have to 1) not penalize them, making poverty equal immunity, or 2) jail them, making it jail for the poor and a fine for the rich. Neither seems fair.
It's far more costly to incarcerate than to get repayment for almost everything. It's still more costly to incarcerate than to just forgive the debt and make it painful enough to not repeat.
In 2015, according to [0], the average was about half that.
> minimum sentence of 5 years is going to run 1.2 mil
How do you get from 70K (presumably per year) to $1.2M over five years? On average it should be more like $135K, with some cheaper states spending about half that.
[0] https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...
These numbers are quite a bit lower, I was reading the CA LAO numbers from 18-19 the other day and didn't really factor in cheaper states.
Even at 135k, the cost to society is 135k + the cost of the car + lost productivity of the individual and the economic drag that has on the immediate community, family/roomates/partners and such. At that price, getting community service is a major cost savings and getting repayment is even better.
That phenomena is why I don't participate in this sort of events. The best way to avoid getting swept up in a mob mentality is to avoid the mob in the first place.
There have been instances in the past where fires set have spread and killed numerous people. People get freaked out and push for harsher sentences.
I have a hard time imagining smashing cars would result in that harsh of a sentence.
Philly Inquirer article has more on other cases where "alleged arsonists" are being caught via social media posts.
"If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of eighty years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $500,000."
She might be charged with terrorism crimes, but either way it looks bad for her. At least a felony - even without prison time that will sting.
It just means we're catching the stupid ones
That is a really dangerous move and doesn't really line up with my experiences. This woman was pretty stupid. She's not a criminal though, she's a massage therapist.
She may not be a career criminal but after she torched a police car she's at least an amateur.
There is a lack of accountability and people look for reasons to escape it, not embrace it.
1. This person is not a criminal in some particular all-encompassing sense of the word. I.e., some people commit one-off crimes of passion while others make a lifestyle/career out of crime. Presuming that the latter are stupid because the former are stupid is dangerous because organized criminals have learned good internet op-sec. That's interesting.
2. Thinking of people who commit crimes as "criminals" and making blanket assumptions about the criminal element is a mistake. That might be a well-trodden critique, but it's interesting enough that there have been some (quite influential) books written around the topic. This seems like the more likely intent. Thinking about how the social phenomena induced by the internet and social media interact with those 20th century ideas about identity and subjectivity might result in an interesting conversation. E.g., suppose torching a cop car was an act of passion and this person's name is now forever associated with a crime of passion. That seems... new and different... relative to 30 years ago. Back then, you could just move somewhere new where no one knew your past; as long as you didn't become a criminal in that new place, you could basically start over. What might be the societal implications of continuing to assign "criminal" as a dominant identity in the age of an internet that never forgets?
3. hoorayimhelping believes that there is no law in the US which prohibits the torching of cop cars.
The first two are charitable interpretations that might result in curiosity-driven conversation (in which you may or may not want to participate). The third.... isn't so charitable and is unlikely to go anywhere.
You are right to point out that we usually use the noun "criminal" more to refer to someone that makes a habit of crime or makes their living from crime.
And I'll also add that the word "criminal" is often used to imply someone is subhuman. Possibly subconsciously, but it's common to see people outraged by police brutality only if they think an innocent person is the victim. Things like "no innocent person should be treated that way." I think this is the primary objective of the ever-present ad-hominem attacks such as "well he was no angel."
The extraordinary permanence of certain aspects of identity ("criminal", "felon", "rapist", "racist", etc.) in the information age is radically different from how identity has worked for the past 100 years or so. The possibility of "starting over" is gone.
Legitimate question: What's your definition of a criminal?
"various videos captured her wearing protective goggles and gloves, taking a flaming piece of wooden police barricade from the rear window of the sedan that was already on fire, and then shoving the flaming wood into the SUV that was not on fire."
Having protective goggles and gloves?
The defense attorney could try the "Infectious toxic encephalopathy" gambit .
The smart criminals rule us.
Sounds like the kind of internet sleuthing I'd expect to see on 4chan. Glad to see the FBI was able to leverage those techniques too.
Reading the title, I was wondering whether an artisanal torch was used on the police car.
But is there a Kickstarter legal defense fund?
But the bigger question is, did they really find the person doing the work they claimed or did they use parallel construction to hide illegal use of surveillance tools?
Also, since police are notorious for hiding and protecting such metrics, care to provide any sources?
People shot to death by police in the US by race (technically not the same number as are killed, but should be close enough): https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
Percentage of population by race: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/IPE120218
Homicides by race: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
Violent crimes by race (2016): https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
If you are looking at black people in particular, they make up ~23% of the people shot by police while making up ~13% of the population of the US. They commit ~50% of the homicides, and more than 23% of violent crimes such as robbery, assault, and burglary so to me this shows that the police do not have a significant bias towards killing black people, as if there was no discrimination at all you would expect the number of police killings to match the violent crime rates (since violent crimes generally lead to justified police shootings).
The root cause of black people being so over-represented in violent crimes may be discrimination. However, the reality is that right now black people commit a significant portion of the violent crimes in the US, and as a result you would expect them to be over-represented in the number of people being killed by police, even without any discrimination by the police. This does not show that police never discriminate against black people, or that police brutality is not a problem, it just shows that when it comes to police killings, it does not seem to be an issue caused by police targeting black people.
Personally, I think that the biggest issue is that in the US there seems to be a number of dense areas of significant poverty and violence, which are predominantly black. If you grow up in one of these areas, there is a good chance you will be pulled into this violence and continue the cycle. Discrimination and over-policing of minor crimes just makes this problem worse, as black people in these areas are kept in poverty and with limited options to get out, and people who have the means to move get out of the area just leaving behind the people with no other options.
I'm all for major changes to policing in the US. Our police departments are far to aggressive. But...seems like we are hurting each other.
We can’t even get assault rifles banned, good luck banning hand guns.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...