Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago

Here we see that not only is that untrue, but also that even with tips they can't seem to get basic, non-surveillance policework right.

Remind me again why we tolerate these abuses in the name of safety? We and they now know they aren't being used for safety, if indeed that was even possible.

What else could and will these massive surveillance powers be used for?

For example, it's conceivable that law enforcement or intelligence agencies regularly get a huge volume of urgent tips, 90% of which are totally incorrect or useless, and that they nonetheless manage to stop 95% of super-bad acts like terror attacks. Then the public hears about the 5% that they don't stop, and especially hears about the 0.5%, say, where a probably-unreliable tip was not successfully used to prevent a super-bad act.

In order to argue convincingly that agencies are actually bad at using the powers or information that they already have, we would probably want to know a lot more about base rates (and about thwarted or deterred crimes).

Edit: This comment downthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25579252 just before mine makes a somewhat similar point (although I was emphasizing the idea that we should want more data for this argument, while the other comment emphasizes the idea that there are more fundamental or important grounds on which to oppose expansions of surveillance powers).

"oh if you just gave us the power by unshackling us from regulation, we could've done better! I promise, it's not related to our lack of efficiency or ingenuity!"

I don’t know much about the Fusion Centers, but post-9/11, the failure of intelligence and law enforcement to communicate was regarded as a major reason why the plot was never uncovered. In totality, there was a lot of signs something was coming but different organizations had different pieces so nobody could see the “big picture”.

So I’m just wondering if the focus on Fusion Centers and not on intelligence from foreign powers is just our gov’t “skating after the puck” instead of “skating where the puck will be”.

Their remit is to protect the state, not you. Occupy movements / class consciousness pose a real threat to the state and therefore is of far higher concern than some lunatics bombing some plebs doing a marathon.

As to invade and search without consent... you just get a midnight court to rubberstamp your no-knock raid. There’s your consent.

Maybe you didn’t notice the extensive protests about bias in policing in the US this year. The police do a hell of a lot more over a hell of a lot less - it just depends on your socioeconomic background and skin colour.

I've seen search warrants issued on a lot less. You seem to be unfamiliar with what judges consider sufficient for a warrant, in practice.

The idea that normal people are somehow protected from search warrants if they're not doing anything wrong is... not supported by facts.

I remember reading news about an old Indian man in America who was reported to be 'snooping around' by some concerned neighbors and then since he didn't understand English and comply with the police officers ended up in a hospital paraplegic (1). People condemned the police for being too harsh and making mountain out of a molehill situation.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel

We need accountability. We are entitled to it. We are entitled to asking law enforcement to demonstrate the actual need for the tools they are given and the latitude we allow them, not a landgrab during a moral panic. Currently, we seem to have none of that.

Search warrants are not intended to be difficult to obtain, but there must be some reasonable basis for the search. A close associate of the person in question with information regarding illicit activity on the property in question is probably sufficient cause, but IANAL. It is likely the police treated this as a frivolous complaint. There have been cases that were clearly bunk that were followed up with excessive zeal because of questionable reasons and just as many valid ones have probably been ignored.

> (incidentally, I believe this is the first time I have encountered the name “Throckmorton” in real life)

Weakly related fact: Throckmorton St. is a major thoroughfare in Fort Worth, Texas named for James Webb Throckmorton and 100 Throckmorton St. was once headquarters for Tandy Corporation -- Radio Shack.

It might make sense to switch this to "should be", as innocent people's privacy gets invaded by unlawful search and seizure all the time. Between civil forfeiture, DUI checkpoints, stop and frisk, etc, America is a country in which invasion of privacy under the guise of searching for nonexistent malicious intent happens very frequently.

It's all the more interesting that it happens so frequently without any evidence at all, and yet was not acted upon with actual evidence. Almost as if there was a bias modifying police behavior. You'll note, Anthony Warner was white.

Return the next day and knock again.

Actually:

The blast injured at least eight people

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/28/us/nashville-bomb-christmas-m...

His song choice and the fact that he made efforts to evacuate the area lead me to a similar conclusion. He was lost in nihilism, had no reason to live, and wanted to go out with a bang. Obviously not meaning to excuse his actions -- only to explain them.

>Throckmorton told The Tennessean while he represented Warner in a civil matter several years ago, Warner was no longer a client of his in August 2019. He disputes that he told police they couldn't search the RV.

>"I have no memory of that whatsoever," Throckmorton said of MNPD's claim that said they could not inspect the RV. "I didn’t represent him anymore. He wasn’t an active client. I'm not a criminal defense attorney."

Worst case, the PD might be making an excuse (either now or at the time of the original report) for why they didn't follow up properly.

> “The R.V., which has been identified by state and federal officials as the one that exploded in downtown Nashville, injuring three and disrupting telecommunications in the region”

The policing system needs an overhaul

> They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property

They did their due diligence and couldn’t do anything more. Are we supposed to live in such a police state where a single warning would be enough to ruin your life?

If he was just mixing tannerite in a relatively safe context he wouldn't have been breaking any laws.

There's a lot of risk for abuse there.