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Comment by sam_goody | Hacker News Reader

The big deal here is not the technology, it is that the FBI is involved in tracking participation of a protest.

For the past year we have had not-always-fully-peaceful riots with many deaths and tremendous amount of property loss. Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of the protestors- not even those who could have been actually committing a crime.

Most of the people who went to DC did so peacefully and lawfully. The fact that all protestors are being tracked - and are being told they are tracked- will send quite a chilling message:

Don't ever, ever admit that you are visibly or loudly on the "right". We are watching, and we are powerful, and you cannot prove innocence.

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FBI targets the left pretty extensively as well. COINTELPRO says hello, first of all. Other sources:

- https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-identified-...

- https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-survei...

- https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fbi-...

COINTELPRO ended in the 70s.

> For the past year we have had not-always-fully-peaceful riots with many deaths and tremendous amount of property loss. Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of the protestors- not even those who could have been actually committing a crime.

I don't think this claim is accurate. Federal, state, and local law enforcement have always been happy to investigate and suppress nonviolent protest activity (much of it from the left).

Other commenters have pointed out the FBI's involvement. Other state overreactions that immediately come to mind:

- Oil companies and the North Dakota AG working with private military contractors to "defeat" peaceful protests oil pipelines https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-...

- Military surveillance technology used against peaceful graduate student protests at UC Santa Cruz https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kppna/california-police-use...

- 'The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted sweeping new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” and collect intelligence on people participating in protests over the police killing of George Floyd, according to a two-page memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.' https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-flo...

Among others.

eta: more good reading here -- https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-...

> Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of the protestors

Someone should remind him of vietnam war protests I guess...

Surveillance in 2021 is way different than it was in the 60s.

So are police methods and brutality.

In the 60s they would just brutally beat and imprison everyone at the protests directly.

They did not need to track protesters afterwards, they were already in jail or hospital.

Even Russia cannot detain everyone at a protest. Most typically the leadership is followed and under covers trail them at protests and they get bagged.

The acting police chief of Seattle (acting because the black female chief resigned rather face a punitive pay decrease among other things) said today that they will start arresting rioters who destroy property or assault people.

He said the SPD has the support of the city attorney. The Seattle city attorney, Pete Holmes, is mostly famous for not prosecuting anyone.

The chief said it had nothing to do with who occupies the whitehouse.

Cell phone location data does not imply person is guilty and people will get their day in court if the FBI actually determines they've committed something illegal.

This is similar to 2011 England riots where end result was "By 15 August 2011 around 3,100 people had been arrested, of whom over 1,100 had appeared in court"

As I remember, they went pretty hard in England as well, a judge stated that "an overwhelming obligation on sentencing courts to do what they can to ensure the protection of the public", that "the imposition of severe sentences, intended to provide both punishment and deterrence, must follow" and that "[t]hose who deliberately participate in disturbances of this magnitude, causing injury and damage and fear to even the most stout-hearted of citizens, and who individually commit further crimes during the course of the riots are committing aggravated crimes".

Also, what do you expect them to do after 2 police officers were killed on tape, one lady got killed by her stupidity, pipe bombs found, imbeciles looking for Pelosi to hang... Computers with potentially sensitive data stolen... and god knows what foreign agents could have taken/compromised just blending in...

What would you do if you were in charge of the investigation?

The activity at the Capitol clearly went beyond the bounds of what I’d call a protest. Furthermore, as a resident in an area which saw destruction by left-leaning groups, I believe those individuals should also be prosecuted.

I don’t think this has anything to do with “right” or “left”, it has to do with illegally breaking into the Capitol, especially while congress was present. A group of left leaning trespassers would likely have seen, and deserved, a similar response.

People who went into the Capitol building are fair game, people who were protesting outside are not. They should not be part of the dragnet.

If people committed crimes, try them, else, they should not be dragged into it.

As I said, “the activity at the Capitol clearly went beyond the bounds of what I’d call a protest.” I have less concern about what people outside of the Capitol were doing.

There were estimates upwards of 300K people there to peacefully protest, that some people decided to enter the building does not negate the protesting. Even if social media calls for the arrest and ostracisation of everyone within a 5 mile radius.

I think you should back that claim up with data. 200K people were at The Women’s March in 2017 which is thought to be the largest US protest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/0...

Regardless, I stand by my words, “the activity at the Capitol clearly went beyond the bounds of what I’d call a protest.” I have less concern about what people outside of the Capitol were doing.

> The fact that all protestors are being tracked

If the riotors in Portland decided to travel to DC en masse to take down the US government, to hang members of Congress, you betchya it would be the same.

I condemn all violence but there is a major difference of the context.

Exactly. OP paints an extremely false equivalency. It’s oranges and tomatoes.

> Don't ever, ever admit that you protest something the left does

What does the political issue (left or right) have to do with this? Isn’t this a discussion about the surveillance state?

In this case that people become suspects because they happened to be near a riot.

Would the key here be that the FBI has jurisdiction to investigate rioters interacting with federal property, but not when they burn down a local Minneapolis police station or something like that?

I don't think many people inside or out of the FBI would agree that it is a tool of liberal politicians.

> Most of the people who went to DC did so peacefully and lawfully.

The story is about phones near the capitol building, not attendees at the Trump rally near the White House and certainly not the entirety of DC.

Most of the people at the capitol seem to have breached the perimeter, in fact. I haven't seen any coverage of a static demonstration that stayed outside the barricades anywhere. Once those fences went down the whole mob went across.

Can you point to the people at the capitol you think were incorrectly snared by this surveillance?

There's a great YouTube video that collects a ton of footage taken through the day you can review to see the behavior of the protestors on that day.[1]

As an aside, since you appear to feel that breaching a threshold is grounds to review the behavior of all parties in the vicinity—regardless of their involvement—do you feel similarly about breaching country border thresholds?

The reason I ask is simple: nobody disputes that people who illegally entered the capitol should be held responsible. What is under dispute are the methods used to determine who that was. The particular method outlined in the article implicates a number of completely innocent protestors. Further, it leaves ample room for things like "lists" used to monitor protestors—even if they haven't committed a crime.

I'm trying to understand your principled threshold for engaging in law enforcement tactics that involve people who haven't committed a crime.

1: https://youtu.be/_6uSYhyFao4

> What is under dispute are the methods used to determine who that was.

What's the dispute, though? Use of cell records to filter suspects has a long history. And here we have a situation (an assault on a single building) that is almost perfectly suited to exactly this technique.

> The particular method outlined in the article implicates a number of completely innocent protestors.

Again, I see little evidence for an organized protest outside the capitol. Virtually everyone walked across that barrier. And given that, yeah, I think it's reasonable to assume that people in the capitol building cell viscinity without an existing alibi are suspects.

Equating people protesting police brutality with people attempting to overturn an election by force is quite a stretch. But words mean precisely nothing to the right. One moment they'll be screaming "Blue Lives Matter!" and the next they'll be braining Capitol cops with fire extinguishers. Did a store owner kick out a kook ranting at and bullying people? Great! Did $WEBSITE boot a kook for doing likewise online? CENSORSHIP!

Here's what I think: Smash out a store window and steal stuff because the cops killed someone you might or might not know? Go to jail. Rampage through the halls of Congress, carrying zip ties and looking for elected officials to kidnap and hold hostage or kill, in the name of overturning the election, because your presidential candidate lost? You damn well better go to jail for a long time.

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