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Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly the way the Stasi used to get new agents.

Monitor someone who they wanted to recruit until they could

1) find an accusation for which the target would have no alibi (although they were clearly innocent)

2) confront the target with the accusation and the penalties for it,

3) say that (as an agent) "I personally think that you are innocent although you have no alibi and would have to be found guilty if reported,

4) "but to prove your loyalty, you could help us just this once in our fight against the criminals we just accused you of working with."

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The also hindered you in all kinds of ways like:

- You not getting a job.

- You losing a job.

- You getting "moved" to small villages (e.g. as a teacher).

And if they couldn't affect you they went for your relative. E.g. your children being bared from studying at a university even if they are qualified and so on.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AOJdpzCN-4

The whole film is fantastic.

That is a fine film. The protagonists are, however, not ordinary citizens.

I'd highly recommend also watching Christian Petzold's Barbara [1]. It's an equally fine film, but it has a different focus.

Here, the heroine is an ordinary physician (played by Nina Hoss), banished from Berlin to some province. The film captures the nightmare for the ordinary citizen of authoritarian police states, including the depressing fact that nearly anyone in your life could be informing on you. We also see how cooperating with the state authorities can get you privileges, such as better housing.

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2178941/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

p.s.: this review is quite good. Almost felt like quoting it in full, as it is rather topical to the thread as well:

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2764284/

As someone born in the USSR, I am fascinated by this movie.

It's very German, but also very Soviet, it's almost surreal.

> - You not getting a job. > - You losing a job.

These two seem to be getting more popular nowadays.

Remember, it's only a no-no if the government does it.

If it's "we the people", it's totally fair and indicative of a very progressive and tolerant society. Or something.

> If it's "we the people", it's totally fair and indicative of a very progressive and tolerant society. Or something.

This is a very dishonest framing.

Oh, in socialistic countries it was also the collective of your comrades, it wasn't The Government either. Or so they said.

It's only okay when it happens to people I don't like, so whoever is considered a nazi or a communist this week (delete as appropriate). Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, paradox of tolerance etc., you know the drill.

The paradox of tolerance in and of itself is okay. We've seen already what happened if intolerance was tolerated, and way more than once.

However, the tightly guarded boundary between "tolerant" and "intolerant", as well as "context thereof" must be defined precisely and not be moved around according to one's mood, or depending on whether someone is losing an argument, or whether someone is in an outgroup or in an ingroup.

A good application of the paradox of tolerance requires integrity, which is a threatened species among human traits.

In fact the law does forbid certain forms of discrimination by "we the people." You cannot deny someone a job on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. Redlining is illegal, discrimination in rentals is illegal (as the previous President discovered), etc.

Did the Stasi also permit you to lawyer up with the ACLU and sue them in open court?

What these FBI agents did, if true, was reprehensible. But surely we can come up with a better comparison than one of the most evil secret police regimes ever to exist.

The FBI doesn't "permit" you to lawyer up, the Bill of Rights does. Comparison of the tactics used is sound.

The FBI isn't "less evil" because they "tolerate" laws that they have no ability to ignore. They aren't tolerating them out of the goodness of their hearts, or out of a sense of morality. If they had the ability to ignore them, they would.

Edit: Re: responses

I'm not claiming that the FBI is incapable of violating the law, I'm objecting to the parent's claim that they are somehow "less evil" than the Stasi because they "allow" the law to be upheld, when they're not the ones allowing anything. Yes, when they are able to get away with breaking the law, they sometimes do. It's not clear how prevalent this is, because "able to get away with it" implies not getting caught.

> If they had the ability to ignore them, they would.

They do have the ability to ignore laws, lots of government organizations ignore congressional guidance all the time and it only ever comes back to bite them if someone objects loud enough.

The US legal system doesn't "prevent" people from doing anything, we just punish violations and for those violations to be punished someone who cares about the violation has to be aware of the violation.

It's a pretty common meme in cop shows today that "We can't wait for a judge to give us a warrant - let's bust down the door" to which the audience cheers since bad guy is obviously bad, but that is illegal and, it can potentially destroy a case IRL - but only if the defense finds out the entry was illegal.

I don't see how a legal system could prevent people from doing anything against the law. That's always a personal, moral/ethical choice. Aren't all legal systems going to be reactive because of that?

>If they had the ability to ignore them, they would

Not to be too inflammatory but there are plenty of cases where they ignore them without technically having the ability.

COINTELPRO

Being the first free generation out of Portuguese dictatorship I never understood this American belief that three letter agencies are angels following the law.

It's mainly a thing reserved for white collar people in urban and suburban areas.

The hicks and the inner city crowd both mostly hate federal law enforcement.

> the Bill of Rights does

The Bill of Rights doesn't permit anything, but rather lists certain inalienable rights held by all persons on U.S. soil--or so the story goes. The worry that it could be construed as a list of grants was extremely controversial.

The comparison is certainly valid. Almost all the FBI's "terrorism" convictions over the last 20 years have been people set ip by a CI or agent, including the FBI supplying materiel.

The fact that there still exists, to some degree, a mechanism in the USA to challenge this in some cases is indeed something to celebrate, but the quite reasonable comparison is not just legitimate and appropriate but is a tool for trying to fix the injustice, not just retail (one victim at a time) but wholesale (change of law).

> The comparison is certainly valid. Almost all the FBI's "terrorism" convictions over the last 20 years have been people set ip by a CI or agent, including the FBI supplying materiel.

There's a quantitive difference between an FBI agent inviting an idiot to coffee, and fabricating a plot with him to blow up a post office, and an FBI agent getting in touch with an idiot who is plotting to blow up a post office, and offering to give him fake explosives.

The former might be entrapment. The latter is good policework.

Much of the anti domestic terrorism work which the FBI did was entrapment. The FBI plants were frequently under pressure to show proof that their assigned organisations were in fact terrorist cells.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20...

The police would plant people in suspect groups who pressure the rest of the group to engage in terrorist activity.

This isn’t exclusive to 1970s USA. Similar things happened in mosques after 9/11 where Imans would know an FBI agent simply because he was the only extremist in the congregation.

And in the United Kingdom, there were long term plants in environmental organisations who engaged in ecoterrorism.

I've read several stories over the years and seen at least one documentary where it's pretty clear they were doing the former. It's generally chalked up as a win, gets good press / pr - keeps the funds going in that direction, and keeps the average headline reader scared enough to be fine with pariot acts and similar things going.

I do not recall any stories of the latter.. perhaps there is one or some - and perhaps things have occurred that saved the X Y or Z and we'll never know - and that's great.

However I think it's high time that people paid more attention to the details of these "be afraid / keep sending us budgets" stories and see that many are fabricated just to check off a PR box.

9 out of 10 sex trafficking headline stories are the same, and similar.

It's not just the top level of the DOJ - the local law agencies use the same playbook (especially vice squads) for the same reasons. imho.

They did also get involved with some bad people and rounded them up too, don't worry. But a lot of their work seems to have been ruining lives in order to look productive. Tragic!

But they both result in similar convictions, so it's just another day in the salt mines regardless.

Let’s focus on what’s important. Perhaps the comparison isn’t perfect but I don’t think it matters as much as horror the FBI regularly does.

The more we start comparing to other countries and say “oh well at least we’re better than them” the more complacent people are.

Not to mention many of US’s worst action have had the excuse of “well there was some worse country out there we gotta stop!”

How generous of my government to let me spend years battling them in court, while they get to violate my rights for the duration with little consequence if they end up losing. Much like a corporation getting fined or sued by the government is often just a slap on the wrist and the “cost of doing business,” the FBI has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t mind breaking the law to serve its goals. When the recourse for most people when the government violates their rights is to hope that some org like the ACLU will step up and represent you pro-bono, and that the courts will actually rule in your favor, and that even if they do you’ll still have a long time of suffering while the case goes through the courts... it tells the FBI that they can basically do whatever they want, because most people don’t want to deal with that crap.

I mean, the U.S. has been caught running interrogation black sites in our own borders, so the comparison extends further than even some of the other commenters are admitting.

Source for this please? Interested to read more.

I believe parent is talking about what the Chicago PD was doing a few years ago[1]. If there are others, I'd really like to know about those as well.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

The New York city police also maintain a black site in NE Manhattan.

That's because there are other powers of the state that (may) side with the citizen. The FBI is still behaving like a secret police here.

It seems to me that they were comparing the tactics, not the entire institution, or justice system.

What would you call a better comparison? Would you like a moderately evil secret police regime?

> But surely we can come up with a better comparison than one of the most evil secret police regimes ever to exist.

So we have to be thankful that we are "allowed" to spend our life's saving on fighting a lawsuits against a trillon dollar government ?

For every such case there are probably 100 other people who folded. There is no difference between those cases and cases where stasi might have done the same thing. It is 100% same.

Apples to Oranges. OP was referring to the MO of acquiring collaborators, not the legal environment surrounding it. Which is the same MO used by the secret police in basically all countries behind the iron curtain.

Let's not mention people lacking money for a proper legal defense.

But now that we're talking about it, you might want to read about FISA Courts. Also stuff like https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-sides-aclu... and yet..

Edit: Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.

No alibi == found guilty? Under the Stasi, probably. In a decent system? No. Presumption of innocence is supposed to fix exactly this.

There are a lot of gradations between "guilty" and "not guilty" in our system, some of them very unpleasant.

For example, the author experienced involuntary exile while technically "not guilty." Many employers will fire an employee who is charged with a crime, without a conviction. A "not guilty" person can be arrested and held in jail until a court date which could get postponed repeatedly.

There are plenty of cracks people can fall (or be pushed) into.

In a decent system? No.

Would you be willing to risk that the system you live in is decent? I live in the UK and I hope I never need to find out, because I have a few doubts.

The issue is most people don't think this way. They immediately jump to the worst case scenario and are pressured to accept.

Sure, in theory.

We (America) have lots of folks that accept plea agreements because we put pre-trial folks in jail and treat them like criminals, which can easily ruin lives even if you are found not guilty.

Of course, you might not be talking about the US system when you refer to a decent system, so maybe you are correct.

without an alibi it will probably come down to whose lawyer is better

USA is a beacon of freedom, Liberty and Equality

Am I correct in assuming that this is sarcasm?

It’s probably sarcasm but I don’t think it matters. A glib throw-away comment adds nothing to the discussion.

I'd note that all powers not granted in the US Constitution are denied and federal police forces are definitely NOT allowed by the US Constitution.

Once again, it's just the garbage logic that EVERYTHING can potentially affect more than one state, so they have the right to control everything via the interstate commerce clause.

So what happens to people refuse to work for the cops in other countries? "Sorry for bothering you, bye-bye"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relatio...

The UK is also proposing a law to give informers and police widespread immunity from prosecution for undercover crimes: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/spy-cops-law-bill-polic...

If it’s a government for the people, yes. If it’s a government for someone/something else, then make people do stuff for the other by threat of force.

yes-ish. No government is immune to corruption but certain forms of government narrow areas of operable corruption whereas others can expand it. It's always there but just harder to exploit.

I am asking about practice, not theory.

"make people do stuff for the other by threat of force."

That's the basic premise of any state and society.

That's exactly what happened to someone I know who refused to work for an analogue of a three letter agency in Poland. This was 10+ years ago though, so it doesn't say anything about the current state of affairs.

In a lot of countries, yes.

The reality is that when it really comes down to it, the institutions are fundamentally unethical. And this is no surprise because governments are essentially very official mafias.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Shafting people has been around for aeons

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