Area 51 FBI Raid (2023)
area51fbiraid.com
area51fbiraid.com
Could you at least wait until we're at war before you bring out the usual wartime justifications for unconstitutionally restricting civilian's freedom of speech?
From the linked website,
>I was never given a reason for the raid, nor have I been charged with a crime. In fact, I have not heard from the FBI since the day of the raid. I have done nothing illegal.
1. Do you think that confiscation of property for use in an investigation is unconstitutional?
2. Do you think that prosecutors need to be able to press charges as soon as or soon after the execution of a search warrant? If so, what is a reasonable time frame?
3. Do you think that people who regularly obsess over and take pictures of secure military installations are reliable witnesses regarding their own actions?
4. What do you propose be done in this case?
2. The sixth amendment guarantees the right to a speedy trial. If law enforcement has a good reason to hold you or your belongings, it is in anticipation of a trial. I don't think the police have a right to hold on to your stuff forever only for the shortest reasonable time as determined by the speed of the judicial system, not "until they crack the case enough to figure out whether it was you."
3. There is a time and a place for determining who is a reliable witness of what.
4. That the FBI either give this guy his PC back or press the espionage charges you come across as believing (with no evidence) he could be found guilty of.
I take offense to this. Why does someone asking what you believe lead you to conclude that they are against you?
Thanks for explaining your position.
-https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/11/18...
-https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/joerg-arnu...
-https://nypost.com/2022/11/17/federal-agents-raid-nevada-hom...
Seems bad enough to me on the surface.
I have to admit I am intensely curious about what hit this big of a nerve with the feds.
Apparently after 6 months, that investigation is still active. This is why they’re not commenting on anything or returning anything.
Honestly this all seems pretty normal based solely on a long history of TV watching. I mean the investigation may not even be primarily about him. Who knows what it’s all about.
IANAL.
Taking photos and flying drones at classified military locations is probably what hit the nerve of the feds.
The warrants cite "Photographing and Sketching Defense Installations" a.k.a. it's over stuff like this https://dreamlandresort.com/area51/panorama_0523.html
They develop aircraft here, stuff that is wildly important to the (current) global security regime. Not a thing I’d personally want to be recklessly/ignorantly poking and prodding by releasing photos like that.
If you film stuff from public space, you are not breaking any law.
The onus is on the government to secure their stuff, not punish people taking photos from public lands.
18 USC 795: It's illegal to photograph or sketch secret military installations (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/795)
18 USC 796: It's illegal to use an aircraft to photograph secret military installations (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/796)
18 USC 797: It's illegal to disseminate photographs of secret military installations (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/797)
Arresting people for openly breaking the law is a perfectly valid component of "securing their stuff." In fact that is precisely how almost everything in our society is actually secured: by threat of law.
It's not really spying if it's done completely out in the open.
The same way you can't 'spy' on police or other government buildings by filming them from public view, something explicitly allowed.
They are largely meant to operate in the public eye. Some weapon development programs aren’t (thus they are secret).
Please note: If you pull up to the gates of CIA with a zoom lens and start taking photos of their doors and windows, you will also have a very bad time, despite the fact that both inside and outside the gates are public land.
It's the equivalent of sunbathing naked on your front lawn and getting angry that someone is taking photos.
The world you’re describing is one where government facilities have to all be in profoundly challenging places to operate facilities in, and even once you do that, a Chinese or Russian national is 100% within their rights to pull up a tent right alongside it, put a camera up on a 300 foot tower, and surveil the site 24/7.
Under the Constitution, anyone in the US has the right to do what you’ve described, and so they have the right to do what I’ve described too.
I think I would just prefer if rather than making it illegal to photograph a base that happens to be visible, actual treason or espionage should be the only things which are illegal, and the government needs to prove that.
It might make things harder on the government, but I think it is fundamentally more fair.
Compare the quality of satellite photography a well funded nation state has access to against Mr Arnu's taken from 42km away.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2019-08-...
https://dreamlandresort.com/area51/panorama_0523.html
It's not an unknown problem either and the 3 letter people have decades of experience dealing with it including moveable shelters.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/is-this-a-secret-aircr...
We’re also actively tracking where their satellites are at any given point in time and move things when they aren’t overhead.
So to act as if an individual on the ground couldn’t get info the satellites cannot is just silly.
With the proliferation of commercial LEO imaging satellites there's pretty much always one above you.
Synthetic aperture radar satellites work at night and under the clouds as well so if you're trying to hide an aircraft development program it's going to be rather difficult.
edit: Radar messes with SAR as well but the government hasn't even bothered to try to shield Area 51.
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2022/02/11/radar-interf...
Try buying pictures of Area 51 from one of those commercial leos and let us all know how that conversation goes.
> Synthetic aperture radar satellites work at night and under the clouds as well so if you're trying to hide an aircraft development program it's going to be rather difficult.
Which provide
1) I would prefer the US maintains a military advantage over all of its adversaries, and these types of programs have historically been extremely, extremely important to that.
2) I trust the military’s assessment of whether any particular images compromise those programs much, much, much more than I trust the assessment of random internet commentators or of a random guy who got sufficiently obsessed with Area 51 to move to its outskirts and start photographing it.
You, I, and the blogger have no way of knowing what important pieces of information he may be filling in for our adversaries. If you don’t care about our advantage, fine, or if you are of the “information wants to be free” religious persuasion, fine — I don’t think those are commonly held views however and I don’t think they will or should shield this guy from due process.
Though the fact that it's basically vandalism is still concerning. But the photos only show door damage, not sure where those $numbers are coming from.
I wonder how you would react if the police would take e.g. your car under the pretence of "we think you might have been speeding" and after six month you still have not have your car returned, or been actually fined (or taken to court for speeding). But the only comment on a forum is "well he should have been speeding".
This is just theft. How is this legal?
Police investigate before they press charges. Investigation involves gathering and seizing evidence. On a national security matter I would expect them to be thorough and tight-lipped.
In most nations simply attempting to photograph the base at all, whether trespassing or not, would be criminal. For all their problems the US feds are legally required to tolerate many activities that would be plainly illegal in most nations. The Snowden documents circulated because it's not illegal in the US for regular civilians or newspapers to view or distribute classified material, only those who are military or have a clearance (and no need to know) are forbidden. Elsewhere state secrets laws define that activity to be universally criminal.
As subjects of the King, canadians have no understanding of liberty, nor the founding principles of the American nation. They fled as soon as people suggested defiance. Subjugation is in the veins of canadians.
Not to mention the locals from Parhump in NV to further away in Shoshone,CA everyone kept asking me wtf I was doing there. The moment I mentioned area 51, I thought they'd think it was about aliens (it was sort of, but not seriously, just pop culture curiosity) but everyone got very serious suspecting me of trying to spy on behalf of some foreign country perhaps. My read was people getting paid to sneak and take pictures of area51 secret military stuff is not uncommon. I honestly thought, given the publicity, the government would only test not-so-secret stuff area51.
There are more isolated places in central and northern nevada for even more secret lairs.
“Nothing illegal”, my arse… There are reasons you shouldn’t be publicizing defense facilities photos, some folks had to learn it the hard way.
There are other areas of government you can, and should put a pressure on, but jeopardizing one's own defense is the most brain damaged way to go about it.
I would surely make a fuss if open/public/declassified information sources point at egregious inefficiencies of defense. I want more killer robodogs like they had in that Black Mirror episode, powerful and resiliend mine removal equipment, and swarms of inexpensive lethal and recon drones with dozens of lethal heavy drones to follow them please, not some swindle like a fence painted for $500k or something to that tune. I'm ok with many halfway failed killer robodog projects, though.
If you accept that it’s best that a country has a strong defense, and that part of that is your enemy not knowing literally everything you’ve got, then you accept that some things should be kept secret. And secret means nothing if they make no effort to stop people from snooping and then publishing everything online.
The ayy lmao obsessors need to move on. There are far more too secret bases out there that could hold actual aliens but they're all stuck up on this salt flat in the desert.
This is the reason I think it's interesting though
There's a reason why America never bothered to develop hypersonic missiles.