British man's tattoo wrongly linked to Venezuelan gang in US Government document | Hacker News Reader

British man's tattoo wrongly linked to Venezuelan gang in US Government document

bbc.co.uk

38 pointsn1b0m21 comments

Hold the phone, since when is a "clock tattoo" a gang symbol?

>"Jump Man Symbol"

You mean Nike's Air Jordan symbol? Since when is that a gang symbol? Is this for real or is DHS just fucking with people based on movies they watched?

At this rate they will start arresting people with black hoodies as that's the symbol of computer hackers.

This sounds like the "gang database" the chicago PD uses. Where they can basically put anyone in it for any reason with no oversight, appeal, or even way to find out if you're in it and why. Whenever parts of it end up in court it's bullshit like this.

This reminds me of my old Middle School that banned wearing blue or red because they were "Gang Colors."

The fact that the images are coming from internet scrapings makes me think that their guide was generated with AI.

Nearly 50% of the US population voted for the people driving this mad agenda. Let that sink in.

Less than a quarter of it, but over 50% of those who voted (Trump got 77.3 million votes on a population of around 340 million)

Those who didn’t vote will have had different reasons, including “don’t care”, “my candidate will win, anyways”, “no time”, and “registering to vote was too hard for me”. We don’t know the distribution of that.

To be clear, under 50% of those who voted, but a plurality and enough to win in the electoral college.

Voter turnout was 64%, so really only 32% voted for it.

That's irelevant. The sample size of the population who voted is large enough to extrapolate and represent the opinion of the entire voting population.

When you don't vote you ceded your vote to the majority who did go to vote. That's how democracy works. You can't cop out because you don't like the end result.

Okay, 50% of those who voted. Does it make you feel better?

Absolutely not, but the current situation can't be understood without making the distinction.

And 0% of them signed the constitution, declaration of independence, or any of the fictions which authorize their government. Being forced to pick between a couple assholes and then being damned for it can be really rich (oh yes you can vote 3rd party like me -- then everyone tells you how dumb you are for wasting your vote). The federal government and executive keeps gaining more and more power via judicial branch sanctioned scope creep. I have serious reservations that you can vote your way out of that, but it is driving the ever higher stakes people see in the presidential election.

In this case, there was no symmetry between the parties and it was very clear which one will be anti-democrstoc authoritarian one.

That this will happen was clear and a feature Trump voters actively wanted.

I will totally agree you have a valid point. But ponder this, both the democratic and republican parties have held fully stacked power at various times since 1798. Why didn't any of them repeal the alien enemies act, which is clearly an authoritarian bypass of due process?

This isn't an attempt at "both parties equally bad." I understand some people and parties use the powers in a more brutal way than the other. My point is part of the problem is the power is there in the first place. You can't eliminate that with a simple vote, nor by majority vote, and in many cases the process of amending the constitution has been made so onerous you can't do it if it's block by a minority of people (that looks a lot like the guys that signed it).

Democracy is a beautiful thing. It's unfortunate people aren't as enlightened as you. Maybe if Dems had some self awareness and proposed policies that actually worked for people rather than demonize the electorate for sitting out or ticking the other box they wouldn't be in this situation.

Maybe AI should replace the DHS? This is absolutely ridiculous

The indiscriminate prejudice is intentional. Any tattoo may be a pretext. e.g. Neri José Alvarado Borges and his autism awareness rainbow ribbon.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/deported-bec...

The absolute banality of evil on display here with the ICE agents who can see that tattoo and still check the box for "gang member".

Banality of evil is maaaybe for the people who designed and implemented the database. Actual ice agents signed up for and underwent training on how to do this, they knew it would be this and they wanted to do it, and are willingly doing it now. That's just normal evil.

You know what, you're tight. Just plain normal evil. The eerie thing is I can't recall the last time I saw it phrased like that before today, and now I've seen it used twice in a few hours in two totally different spaces: https://bsky.app/profile/islan-kleinknecht.bsky.social/post/...

Some tattoos are cool though:

https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/us-news/all-of-secretary-of-de...

I thought basic human rights and creeping authoritarianism was "too political" for HN?

Are the foundations shaking even for the super rich? I guess tariffs threaten the number of "fucks" in "fuck off" money they have.

We're close to the phase that Trump casts off Elon and the rest of the techno oligarch utopia people that got him elected for the raw racists, and that's just me reading the tes leaves.

Insiders know a lot more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com