FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer’s Home | Hacker News Reader

FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer’s Home

rollingstone.com

68 pointsprogrammarchy29 comments

Seems like Tatiana thought there was an earth shattering story here, then turned up nothing. Had to make something of all the time wasted, so turned it into a shaggy dog story.

Who cares that neighbors in the apartment building and co-workers are wondering what happened to Meek? I don't notify my neighbors when I leave, or check-in with former employers after quitting.

Sounds like his lawyer is still in contact with Meek:

“Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents,” his lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, said in a statement.

And he's the one complaining about details getting out:

“It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ [Department of Justice] promptly investigates the source of this leak.”

...so apparently Meek doesn't want any publicity around this incident.

Umm it should concern everyone if FBI, a law enforcement agency with sweeping power, invades a journalist or a private individual’s house. This sort of normalization of FBI raids to individual citizens is bad for individual and civil liberties, the number of such raids have disproportionately grown over last decade. FBI is an agency known for broad abuse of power and the last thing we need is politicization and sweeping normalization of their abusive behaviours. Even as recent as July, a judge questioned their tactic of raiding a defendants hous instead of just asking them to turn themselves https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/07/15/judge-questions...

If anything we need more oversight from media, not less. FBI is known to bypass any scrutiny like FISA warrants and rubber stamp things as they wish.

FBI only has the power because a judge signed the search warrant. Hold the judges accountable.

A judge's signature is a necessary but insufficient part of such raids. It is absolutely reasonable to hold an agency with a troubled past accountable, regardless of which judge rubber stamps the raids. Hold judges accountable, sure, but the spotlight should be on the agency.

The FBI has been known to misrepresent information to judges to obtain warrants. It's not the judges that are exceeding their authority.

You've been using HN primarily—in fact exclusively, it seems—for ideological and political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of their politics. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

Since we already asked you to stop and you haven't, I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

a key fact is that this happened April 27.

> An ABC representative tells Rolling Stone, “He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.”

I get that investigations take time, but I can't see any possible justification for the FBI to be silent six months later. Even if there's still an "ongoing investigation" the public has a right to know more than just the fact that the raid happened.

> the public has a right to know

Um... no it doesn't? If the government chooses not to charge a crime, that's the end of the story. You don't have a right to other people's houses, papers and effects just because a warrant was issued for it. Sometimes law enforcement makes mistakes, and when that happens the correct and just result is just to forget the whole thing.

Obviously if Meeks has something to say, he has a first amendment right to do so. But you don't get to know what the FBI took from him.

> Obviously if Meeks has something to say, he has a first amendment right to do so.

Unless he's under a gag order, which wouldn't be at all surprising in a case like this.

> But you don't get to know what the FBI took from him.

Where did I suggest that?

OK, I see what you're trying to say. This is begging the question. You don't get to cite "the public has a right to know" as evidence that "he's under a gag order" unless you assume that he is. There's no evidence of a gag order or any other enforcement action beyond the raid itself, nor does the linked article provide any.

You're making crazy leaps in logic. Nothing I said was meant to provide evidence that he's under a gag order. You said he has a right to speak up, I said that he may not. That's all.

Uh... no? It's not all. This started with you saying that the public had a right to know what happened at the raid. Then you brought up a hypothetical gag order. Am I really "crazy" to have assumed that you were citing the hypothetical gag order as a reason the public had a right to know about the raid?

Maybe you could back out and explain this again?

Hasn’t been heard from by one person that he doesn’t want to talk to

https://archive.ph/0JJQp

There is clearly a story that the the FBI doesn’t want covered. That’s a problem.

Not clear at all. A journalist was raided and has said nothing about his current status except to withdraw from his apartment and work. The only seemingly questionable thing is a lack of charges, but he doesn't seem to be detained so it isn't necessary that he be charged

That was my take. He’s not being detained and he chose not to comment on an ongoing investigation involving himself. There may not be a big deal here. The Rolling Stone has a history of fabrication and exaggeration, not Meek.

"Documents pertaining to the case remain sealed."

Why? This tells me that the FBI is targeting this journalist because they don't like what he has to say. If this pattern of government behavior impacted a journalist in China, there would be little doubt as to why. I worry that the FBI is acting as a political praetorian guard.

Suddenly vanishing like that, with that level of force.. It has to be related to something involving national security, or something where they think he might react in a bad way. However, considering how FBI raids have been conducted in the past, this could be about nothing at all, or it could be everything.

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