There have been several public library bomb threats this week | Hacker News Reader

There have been several public library bomb threats this week

bookriot.com

64 pointsanigbrowl110 comments

So weird. Of all the important causes, all the things in this world to really genuinely be angry about, these lunatics are angry about public libraries - calm, quiet gentle places of peace and learning.

Absolute lunacy. If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.

If you are going to be a terrorist at least target something big and important.

In the security space this sort of attack is referred to as 'resilience targeting', as it impacts a community resource and each such episode (even when it's a hoax) imposes a not-insignificant economic cost - shutdown of the facility, use of police resources to cordon off, sweep, and investigate the hoax threat. It's hard to assess exactly how much but I'd imagine it runs into the tens of thousands of $ per incident.

A similar phenomenon is the wave of computer-generated hoax active shooter calls against schools, a pattern which has prepeated in multiple states over the last year or two, eg https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/live-updates/police-acros...

If only there was a political party aligned with burning books appealing to increasingly unhinged followers that could explain it.

what are you implying?

I believe OP is implying that there is a political party aligned with burning books appealing to increasingly unhinged followers that could explain this.

In the U.S. there are at least two (colloquially known as the left/right uniparty), and several smaller radical unsupported parties, willing to burn books and delete websites.

> these lunatics

quite possibly only a single lunatic

How do you know?

It's possible, but searching for news about bomb threat arrests turns up lots of people, so I think it unlikely that all those directed at libraries come from a single individual. Terroristic threats are depressing common nowadays.

At what point do outlets like Libs of TikTok become guilty of incitement? There's a documented history of that and other outlets turning the spotlight on a person, school, or hospital, consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment. That would seem to meet the standard of "incitement to imminent lawless action" under US free speech law [0], especially since callouts-then-threats seems to have become a self-replicating meme in our society.

[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/970/incitement-to-i...

There is no anti-memetics division... But lordy do we ever need one!

At some point containment & prosecution becomes necessary, yes. But I keep wanting some better civilizational defenses, some visible strategies to de-de-program. Advocacy for stability, concerted & highly visible cries against extremism.

It's such a difficult issue to deal with this propaganda because it's so eagerly received, is such a hyperreal system that's bought into & is so engrossing.

There's other points in history where dialectic broke down, where communication was impossible. I don't know a ton about the one, but the Know Nothing Party had similar characteristics: an inability to be engaged with, an unshakeable confidence by way of being utterly detached & non participatory.

It fascinates me that the "censorship" of "kiwi farms" drew more than 400 outraged comments yesterday lamenting the loss of free speech, while stuff like this barely gets any attention here at all.

It's no surprise in the tech circle to pay more attention to Hurricane because we know how very, very easily such IP blocks can spread. KiwiFarms and 8chan today, blogspaces that happen to be critical of [insert political topic here] tomorrow.

But of course, this current topic is abhorrent and I hope the authorities throw the book at the instigators. There's way too many school shootings in the US to play this off as "trolling".

I have a feeling that part of the problem (i.e, why LoTT are allowed to continue doing their thing) is that there isn't any explicit incitement. It's just sort of implicitly understood by the audience that, if there's a post about some specific entity, that's an invitation to harass them. This isn't a situation which the law currently handles effectively.

Simply calling attention to or criticizing people doesn't meet the standard for incitement to violence, and it only takes a moment's thought to understand why someone who isn't calling for violence cannot be held responsible for the actions of the violent fringe.

This is the same reason that people who criticized Brett Kavanaugh's appointment and jurisprudence are (rightly) not held responsible for the man who was arrested outside his home for attempting to assassinate him.

One difference here is that lots of people criticized Brett Kavanaugh while one individual undertook to commit violence against him (before turning himself in when he arrived at his destination; his case is still pending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_assassination_...).

In contrast, a Twitter account with a lot of followers that has a habit of calling out specific people/institutions for being 'woke' has a following that has yielded multiple different bomb threats over the last couple of years; I think this is the 9th or 10th such incident, with many more incidents of general harassment (about 60). If it's happening so frequently that it becomes predictable one wonders why the person in question hasn't made any effort to dissuade followers from engaging in such activity.

That's my core question, and I am honestly curious about it: Aside from whether someone is intending to incite action (although I think a lot of these accounts are), at what point are they obligated to limit their free speech because someone else will more-or-less-reliably be incited by it? Is there any US jurisprudence around that question already?

- "consistently followed shortly after by bomb threats, doxxing, and other harassment"

And what on Earth do you think the KKK was? The very case law you're citing [0] secured their rights to hold white-supremacy rallies. LibsOfTikTok (probably) doesn't meet that standard either, and that shouldn't be even slightly surprising. Glorifying, advocating, inspiring actualized violence — like both the KKK and these people have done — don't pass the Brandenburg bar. "Directed towards" and "imminent" are key tests. Those are not present (I'm not familiar with what these hate groups say; I'm drawing inference from the choice of phrasing you used to describe it, "turning the spotlight on". That is not Brandenburg incitement).

[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/970/incitement-to-i...

I figured the difference is that the KKK rally was "just" a rally with no other immediate actions associated to it, while in this case, there is a pattern of callout videos or tweets that immediately inspire someone to call in a threat.

- "inspire someone to"

I get the impression your own choice of phrase shows you believe this isn't direct incitement.

(What more is left to say? Incitement is a thing where substantial culpability falls on the speaker telling the hearer to do something. If it's the hearer's own idea, their inspiration, to break laws, the speaker is not culpable for that).

I wasn't trying to be cute or anything -- I wasn't sure whether incitement legally has to be a direct suggestion like "You should call in a bomb threat against this library", or whether something like "This library has groomer books and someone should do something" would count if the person saying it can reasonably expect it would lead to a bomb threat based on past behavior, and says it anyway.

I do still want to find out whether there is a separate legal concept for that kind of indirect encouragement or negligence (depending on the intent of saying it anyway).

- "I do still want to find out whether there is a separate legal concept for that kind of indirect encouragement or negligence (depending on the intent of saying it anyway)."

That's the main relevance of Brandenburg: that ruling decided that things that fall short of its test are constitutionally protected free speech. It holds [0] "speech advocating illegal conduct is protected under the First Amendment unless the speech is likely to incite “imminent lawless action.”". That's the answer to your "indirect encouragement or negligence" question: if it encourages violence, and if it falls short of Brandenburg's test, then it is lawful. Encouragement or advocacy of violence is generally lawful.

[0] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/189/brandenburg...

If there's a history of such speech inciting imminent lawless action, then can't we say that such speech incites imminent lawless action?

So if you have a forum, where certain kinds of statements on that forum usually/often cause very quick lawless action, can't you say that such statements on that forum are not constitutionally protected free speech?

Or is that not a valid application of Brandenburg?

All absolutely correct, but the other poster has a point. It kinds depends on how one reads 'likely'. A rudimentary analysis from year suggested that that the probability of harassment (not all of which would be illegal) following tweets about specific institutions is in the 20-25% range: https://rpubs.com/TaskForceButler/984347

The probability of actual criminal threats is much lower, perhaps 3-5%. My understanding that LibsofTiktok has a little over 1m followers, but plenty of e-celebs have comparable followings without being associated to such problematic behavior.

- "It kinds depends on how one reads 'likely'."

Well, I understand it's "directed to... and likely to...", and that first test is necessary. Rhetoric that isn't directed towards causing lawlessness, but has a tendency to do so anyway, is protected.

I hadn't heard of this account before so I went and looked into them. What are they doing that any other journalist isn't doing?

Makes me think of the 2 people (Bruce Friedman and Vicky Baggett) in Florida who have gotten hundreds of books removed from libraries. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/08/24/florida-s...

I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.

Then again, it's not always a small force. America has voted for a party that has promised again and again to do everything they can to outlaw abortion as broadly as possible. And now, in 2023, that age has come. At least it was heralded in with really great ads though! https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-twitter-bans-ad-201139304.h...

It's with great regret that I find it seem like civilization has to armor up, has to really defend it's tolerance & getting along against what feels like rabid anti-tolerant extremism. The fringe has just made itself so vocal, so petulant, and the question of how the world copes with these strident folks looms: it seems so confounding, so difficult. We dont have the spare capacity to be dealing with the worst, letting them suck up our energy & roadblock the governance & progress this world needs to be making some headway on.

Like it or not, abortion is not a federal concern. It just isn't something the Constitution gives power over.

Last year, this statement would have been factually incorrect. This year, this statement is factually correct. Like it or not.

It was always correct, which is why by the end the defense of Roe was reduced to stare decisis.

The constitution - or rather, judicial interpretation of the constitution - is constantly in flux. The kinda things that were seen as constitutionally valid by SCOTUS less than a century ago are completely off the wall compared to today. And today's views will likely be very different from a future court's interpretation.

It's in flux because it's really difficult for us to change the constitution. So, we basically live patch the constitution with the supreme court.

A proper fix would let the constitution change over time.

That statement ("abortion is not a federal concern. It just isn't something the Constitution gives power over") was factually incorrect last year and is still factually incorrect this year – insofar as one accepts SCOTUS as the ultimate authority on what the US Constitution says.

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 [0] is a federal law prohibiting certain abortion procedures. SCOTUS upheld its constitutionality in the 2007 case of Gonzales v. Carhart, holding that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate abortion, and that the regulation in question was not contrary to Roe or Casey. Dobbs did nothing to overturn either the 2003 Act nor that 2007 decision, so abortion remains a federal concern, within Congress' power to regulate. (Thomas wrote a concurrence, joined by Scalia, casting doubt on whether such an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause is correct, but saying that this particular case was not the right vehicle for examining that issue.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Carhart

Tell that to the Republicans who want a federal ban.

p.s. It's a shame when so many people loose the right to their own bodies, despite the 13th amendment.

Not really. SCOTUS just ruled that constitution isn't responsible of enforcing that right, and noted that there's currently no federal law on the topic. But if congress passed a bill about guaranteeing abortion, it would become “federal concern”.

>I detest that so few people can hold the system in such terror, can have such outsized horrible impact on the world.

People should remember this whenever they feel "voting doesn't work" or "government ignores us". Look at it in another light; these are government institutions and two seemingly normal people made a huge change by being persistent.

Now imagine if we had a dozen people that persistent defending that content. I know the ability to be that persistent is in itself a sign of priveledge (or simply age. being retired gives a lot of time to lobby), but it also suggests that a lot of people in a few meetings can fight back.

I could write pages and pages of all the dumb crap that progressives do, but I guess "not voting for their candidate because "they're not vegan enough" or "has a more centered position in some fringe topic" to be at the top items of the list

I'm trying to remember the quote about burning the library of Alexandria. I am sure it's a modern(ish) invention, probably the enlightenment or even later. Romanticising what people said as they torched the scrolls has a fine quality to it.

(I think it's "if its not in the Koran its a lie, and if it is in the Koran it's superfluous")

I've seen quotes like that in other contexts, but in relation to the Library of Alexandria, it's surely apocryphal. The Library declined over several centuries, so gradually in fact, that it's impossible to say exactly when it ceased to be a major research center.

The ancient Library of Alexandria was lost to fire in the 3rd century BC.

The the even-more-ancient Library of Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC was not lost and was in fact found with over 30,000 texts. The irony being that it was preserved because it was burned, and most of the writings were clay tablets, thus were preserved even better in the fire.

There was no cataclysmic destruction of the Library of Alexandria. It declined slowly over several centuries. Wikipedia gives a decent overview. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria)

Jean-Yves Empereur discusses the archaeological evidence in "The destruction of the Library of Alexandria: An archaeological viewpoint" in the edited volume What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria? (2008).

In that same volume, Qassem Abdou Qassem and Bernard Lewis each discuss the origin of the quote mentioned above and dispute its authenticity.

I've hear something similar about the Spanish and the Maya but I might be mistaken

The quote is disputed, and historical accuracy is important. Additionally, it's worth noting that attributing the burning of the Library of Alexandria solely to Muslims oversimplifies a complex historical event. It's important to consider the broader historical context and the contributions of Muslim scholars, such as the establishment of the Grand Library of Baghdad, which reflects a different aspect of their relationship with knowledge.

The 415 AD murder of Hypatia of Alexandria, the first well-known female mathematician, was a 100% Christian operation... likely inspired by a political smear campaign put on by the Bishop of Alexandria who was trying to consolidate secular power.

It is time to outlaw bombs! Private citizens should not handle bombs, not even for hunting.

Bomb threats are wrong, but is someone really going to bomb a library? And if they are really going to go through all the trouble to plant a bomb are they really going to phone ahead with a warning?

Why are we taking these threats seriously?

Probably not, but planting real bombs and communicating threats has a long history as an asymmetric strategy. While bombings are somewhat unusual* in the US, they have occurred in the past, and politically motivated shooting attacks are so common as to be sadly normal. A neo-nazi went on a mini rampage in Florida last week, and also last week some guy in Southern California shot a clothing store owner because he disapproved of an LGBT pride flag displayed at the business.

* But not that unusual. Here's a report outlining two overlapping bombing campaigns in California last year - one by an unstable tech worker, the other by a group of meth dealers in Fresno.

https://leftcoastrightwatch.org/articles/what-if-there-were-...

> And if they are really going to go through all the trouble to plant a bomb are they really going to phone ahead with a warning?

Yes, if the goal isn't murder. It's certainly not without precedent.

One example - the IRA bombings where they phoned in warnings, like Manchester 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing

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

> His stated motive was an opposition to "the ideals of global socialism" and to "abortion on demand," both of which he claimed were condoned by the United States government.

> At age 29, Rudolph perpetrated the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which occurred on July 27, 1996, during the 1996 Summer Olympics. He made two anonymous 911 calls, warning about the bomb before it detonated.

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