FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE

Do you mean just technically trivial? I agree with that.

If you mean more broadly trivial, I see that quite differently. An administration that has repeatedly abused its power in order to intimidate and punish political opponents is opening an investigation into grassroots political opponents. That feels worth being concerned about.

Seems like there are hundreds of people in those groups.

Can't be hard to get into for some skilled undercover cops. TV shows have shown me they do these things all the time!

Or just got control of 1 person’s phone/account.

"FBI simply joined groupchats and read them. This is trivial stuff."

Isn't the simply inserting an agent into the secret circle the most time honored way to crack security.

Yea, I just assume any easily joinable movement like this is a honeypot of sorts.

Funny how HN discussions about the development of encrypted messaging apps often include remarks from commenters about the need for a "group chat" feature

In some cases, popular messaging apps that initially did not provide "group chat" have since added this "feature", apparently in response to "user demand"

The so-called "tech" companies that control these apps from Silicon Valley and Redmond have aligned with one political party, generally whichever party is in power, for "business" reasons, e.g., doing whatever is necessary to ensure their continued profits free from regulation

Surveillance is their core business

More specifically, right-wing agitators joined the chats and posted screenshots online.

>The FBI simply

i don't think an investigation by FBI has ever been "simply" to the subjects of such an investigation. And to show bang-for-the-buck the "simply reading chat" officers would have to bring at least some fish, i.e. federal charges, from such a reading expedition.

In general it sounds very familiar - any opposition is a crime of impeding and obstruction. Just like in Russia where any opposition is a crime of discreditation at best or even worse - a crime of extremism/terrorism/treason.

I haven't tried it, but Signal supports not sharing your phone number/just communicating with usernames: https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/

You still need to use your phone number to sign up, though.

If the Signal Messaging LLC is compromised, then "updates", e.g., spyware, can be remotely installed on every Signal user's computer, assuming every Signal user allows "automatic updates". I don't think Signal has a setting to turn off updates

Not only does one have to worry about other Signal users being compromised, one also has to worry about a third party being compromised: the Signal Messaaging LLC

Using any mobile phone connected to mobile network is breach of OPSEC, period. Even more in countries, where you cannot get anonymous SIM card.

Not using phone numbers in chat app doesn't protect you against someone locating you.

When phone is turned on, even without SIM, your location is saved, in inches. Thanks to 5G.

And some phone turns itself on automatically, lol.

Using laptop (without any wifi card) -> Wifi card (rotating fake MAC) -> wifi network/LTE modem with IMEI spoofing

Hiding your phone number is a setting now. Has been for well over a year.

Gee, like any of competing systems like Session.

Physical keys are the real path. Sign every message with your Yubikey.

Zangi does this. No idea on their overall security posture compared to Signal, however.

If only we knew this would happen when these products were launched...

Oh wait, we did.

> it's crucial that the next set of secure messaging systems does away with tying real phone numbers to accounts.

https://olvid.io/

> Signal insists on using your phone number too, refusing user ids or anything that will make analysis hard.

That is no longer true, you can use user IDs now.

For the other problem, you can enable self-deleting messages in group chats, limiting the damage when a chat does become compromised. Of course, this doesn't stop any persistent threat, such as law enforcement (is that even the right term anymore?) getting access to an unlocked phone.

No cryptography will protect a group that allows a traitor to join. The fundamental problem is vetting, and you really just can't do that remotely.

source:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2026/jan/28/footag...

What I can tell is ICE starts to open a door, and a clerk immediately stops them and ICE shut the door a second later. The clerk opens the door to further tell them they are not allowed to enter. The ICE person states they will not try to enter and if the clerk touches them, they will yank the person out of the building. ICE then leaves.

I'm not ok with what ICE has been doing. But, it feels like a bit of a stretch to call this threatening staff, to me. Saying what will happen if the other party escalates feels like a different axis than threatening. Def taken as another data point in a sea of overreach however.

I think it's important to assess the quality of the comments - they aren't bringing facts, just stating opinions; doing so quickly and agreeing with each other. You can test this out - pick a few names on the comments that disagree, ctrl+f, and you'll quickly find one individual with 29 comments at the time of writing all over the thread; with a handful of others with 1-4 responses.

This is not actually what the majority of people think and feel.

IE; from recent polling > 55%+ of Americans have “very little” confidence in ICE, while 16 percent only have "some".

That's ~71% of ordinary US folks; and I would wager many international folks are very clear eyed about the situation.

But why don't you see a ratio of 7/10 of top level comments critical? It's reasonable to assume that about half of those people are just keeping to themselves or part of the political middle that feel something is a "bit wrong"; but not quite enough to go yell into the internet about it. For the others, arguing is tiring and doesn't seem to change much. Watching the situation induces feelings of dread, despair or helplessness.

On the opposing side, that 29% of people are faced with the fact that they might actually be the "baddies" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY), and a good number of them are flooding conversations to prove they are in fact "not"... because admitting otherwise would mean they are actually doing something quite morally or ethically wrong by their own or their community standards. Since that would be unthinkable! the only logical reaction is to post frequently in shrill defense.

If you keep that in mind - the relative psychology of each group - it's much easier not to despair if "everyone" seems to be saying the opposite of what you would expect.

Bots are more intelligent than MAGAs.

I'm never sure why people assume that Palantir is magically unlike the overwhelming majority of tech startups/companies I've worked at: vastly over promising what is possible to create hype and value while offering things engineering knows will never really quite work like they're advertised.

To your point, but on a larger scale, over hyping Palantir has the added benefit of providing a chilling effect on public resistance.

As a former government employee I had the same reaction to the Snowden leaks: sure the government might be collecting all of this (which I don't support), but I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.

Incompetence might be the greatest safety we have against a true dystopia.

It's noteworthy at this point in time that there is a contradiction. The government is currently ramping up Palantir and they are using "precise targeting" of illegal aliens using "advanced data/algorithms". And yet, at the very same time we are seeing time and time again that ICE/DHS agents are finding the wrong people, seemingly going to any house indescriminently, and generally profiling people instead of using any intelligence whatsoever.

Maybe now is exactly the right time to publicly call out the apparent uselessness of Palantir before they fully deploy their high altitude loitering blimps and drones for pervasive surveillance and tracking protestors to their homes.

(My greater theory is that the slide into authoritarianism is not linear, but rather has a hump in the middle where government speech and actions are necessarily opposite, and that they expect the contradiction to slide. Calling out the contradiction is one of the most important things to do for people to see what is going on.)

How does Palantir defeat Signal's crypto? I suppose it could be done by pwning everybody's phones, but Palantir mostly does surveillance AFAIK, I haven't heard of them getting into the phone hacking business. I think Israeli corps have that market covered.

I can easily think of reasons why an intelligence agency might not want to act immediately against members of a group they're interested in, simply because they've managed to identify those members.

I'm sure that people who actually work in intelligence agencies could think of more reasons.

I admire your optimism. They already started killing civilians openly on the street in bright daylight.

I'm far too lazy to go to a big protest or do anything terribly interesting, but at this point I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid publicly criticizing this administration. Palantir is weird and creepy and has infinite resources to aggregate anything that the government wants, and they could be building a registry of people who they're going to deem as "terrorist-leaning" or some such nonsense.

It's not hard to find long posts of me calling the people in the Trump administration "profoundly stupid", with both my "tombert" alias and my real name [1]. I'm not that worried because if Palantir has any value they would also be able to tell that I'm deeply unambitious with these things, but it's still something that concerns me a bit.

[1] Not that hard to find but I do ask you do not post it here publicly.

Meh. Palintir is optimized to sell data to the government. Said governments usually don't care about the quality of data about any one individual. Wear sunglasses when you go out and stay off facebook and it's amazing how little palintir signal you send up. Bonus points if you created an LLC to pay your utility bills. But... Palintir is not as good as you seem to be implying.

>With all the predatory tech Palantir has produced

Palantir is SAP with a hollywood marketing department. I talked to a Palantir guy five or six years ago and he said he was happy every time someone portrayed them as a bond villain in the news because the stock went up the next day.

So much of tech abuse is enabled by this, and it's somewhat more pronounced in America, juvenile attitude toward technology, tech companies and CEOs. These people are laughing on their way to the bank because they convinced both critics and evangelists that their SAAS products are some inevitable genius invention

> because it's just pitting people against law enforcement who have no idea what they're up against.

i think people know exactly what theyre up against: a lawless executive, many members of which have never had to work in places where they are held accountable to the constitution before.

its more important for the government to follow the constitution than for citizens to follow the law. if the government isnt following the law, there is no law

An American VA Hospital ICU Nurse was disarmed and executed. Which crime is it OK to be chemically and physically assaulted before being disarmed and shot dead?

Civil disobedience exists and does not deserve a death sentence.

At least, while decrying civil disobedience, you differ from the administration in one important aspect: You think there should be accountability for police shootings. That's different than the ICE leader, the DHS leader, the FBI director and the Vice President.

This is what collaboration looks like

Was true then, is true today with Project Esther.

I have full confidence in Signal and their encryption but this argument doesn't make sense to me. It could be the opposite, that Russia knows it's compromised by the US government and don't want people using it. I don't believe that's the case but the point is you can't put too much weight on it.

They aren't taking issue with Signal, per se... they are upset that people are sharing the whereabouts and movements of ICE officers. Signal just seems to be the medium-of-choice. And this just happens to give them a chance to declare Signal as "bad", since they can't spy on Signal en masse.

My personal connections who are in the military use it for texting from undisclosed locations.

I've heard from people who have worked with the Signal foundation that it was close to being endorsed for private communication by one branch of government, but that endorsement was rescinded because another branch didn't want people knowing how to stay private.

It doesn't mean much. Roblox is banned in Russia.

They've been just gradually banning everything not made in Russia.

You know it works because they banned it in Russia? Works for whom?

Sure, but using Signal for classified info is a violation of policy.

The DOD is not using "flagrantly using Signal." The Secretary of Defense, whatever his preferred pronouns are, is breaking the law.

The downside of opsec is that it breeds paranoia and fear about legal, civic participation. In a way, bullshit investigations like this are an intimidation tactic. What are they going to find - a bunch of Minnesotans that were mad about state-backed killings?

Also the current US government think it’s secure enough for their war planning!

> If NSA has a Signal vulnerability they will probably use it very sparingly and on high profile foreign targets.

Sort of. They wouldn't use such a client vulnerability but a protocol vulnerability is essential for the data-collection-at-scale the NSA is now infamous for.

Thanks. This really should be the top comment.

Feds and ICE are using Palantir ELITE.

The steps to trouble:

- identify who owns the number

- compel that person to give unlocked phone

- government can read messages of _all_ people in group chat not just that person

Corollary:

Disappearing messages severely limits what can be read

Presumably this is data taken from interdicted phones of people in the groups, not, like, a traffic-analytic attack on Signal itself.

I don't think it's much of a problem at all. Many of the protesters and observers are not hiding their identities, so finding their phone number isn't a problem. Even with content, coordinating legal activities isn't a problem either.

I highly recommend this book. It goes into who funds these things.

https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...

Was starting to think about setting up a neighborhood Signal group, but now thinking that maybe something like Briar might be safer... only problem is that Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.

but this is not a technical attack that returns the metadata.

much more closer to the $5 wrench attack

https://xkcd.com/538/

I've been hearing for years people say "Signal requires phone number therefore I don't use it", and I've been hearing them mocked for years.

Turns out they were right.

> willingly unlock their phones

Or they are running any mainstream iPhone or Android phone, they've unlocked the phone at least once since their last reboot, and the police have access to graykey. Not sure what the current state of things is, since we rely on leaked documents, but my take-away from the 2024 leaks was GrapheneOS Before First Unlock (BFU) is the only defense.

There are already people on X who have infiltrated chats and posted screen captures. Getting the full content of the chats isn't going to be difficult. They have way to many people in them.

Or has biometric login turned on and didn't lock their phone behind a passcode before being arrested.

Unlocking isn't necessary, We've already seen that Apple and Google will turn data over on government requests.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-complies-percent-us-go...

Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links.

But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.

> I would have thought that "how are these people organizing" would have been an obvious thing to look into.

You assume competence. Have you heard (or heard of) Kash Patel?

Why is it so obvious to you to investigate something that is perfectly legal?

People are experiencing wildly different Americas depending on their circumstances and level of political involvement.

If you're a tech worker and you still have a job and you think AI is pretty cool and you don't follow news very closely, things seem okay...ish. You are maybe dimly aware of some social problems, but they're all somebody else's problems.

If you're one of the many many thousands of people who have been abducted by federalized lunatics, or you have a child or family member in one of our concentration camps, things seem urgently and unimaginably bad.

If you're politically involved, things seem tenuous, at best. You likely know someone who either feels justifiably terrified by what's going on, or someone whose life has been seriously impacted by it.

I've spent several months successfully combating one of YC's contributions to all this mess. Tonight, federal law enforcement fired pepper rounds, flashbangs, and tear gas into a crowd of protestors who were noisy -- not violent, not even causing property damage, just noisy. One of the officers aimed the tear gas weapon directly at a protestor's head and caused a serious head injury (the kind that causes convulsions and foaming at the mouth after impact). And, they'll get away with that.

The local police department was flying half a dozen drones directly over this, but they are only there to surveil and look for an excuse to put on riot gear.

There were an assortment of reporters there, but most of them have editors or owners that won't run much of a story about any of it. A few politicians showed up, but they made a short speech and then left immediately. The building where this all happened is in a city center, so, just a block away, life and traffic continues as normal and most people are entirely unaware.

So that's also why nobody's really been making an organized 2A effort either. For most people, this isn't "real", in the sense that it isn't something they're experiencing, and for those that are experiencing it, they're trying to walk a tightrope that resists the current administration without spiraling into a widespread civil war.

> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?

If you think what you've seen is bad, consider how bad the stuff you don't see is, and then consider how bad it is for those who aren't the type to post on HN.

Use of 2nd amendment rights to combat government overreach is an outright declaration of rebellion. Cross that line and you are no longer playing rebel. If you dont have enough people behind you it will not go well.

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk?

It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement.

The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.

It's confusing and messy, like most of American history.

Most cosplayers exit when they meet a real villain

It’s the same as in the EU or Britain or the US ten years ago, where unauthorised migration is handled by law enforcement, except in some states the organised vigilante groups form this article exist and endanger everybody. The government hasn’t run amok: the laws are the same.

I'm wondering pretty much the same thing ...

> As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok.

Americans, yes - not illegal immigrant invaders. As it would turn out, American citizens aren't ready to die for these people just yet.

The best way I can put it... All the people I know are at work when most of this protest news is happening.

The news media is not saying a lot of what is happening. So if anything you are missing some of the insanity.

Depends which side you’re on and how far. If you’re far-left, you’re thinking the administration is the Fourth Reich, you’re watching movies with Leonardo DiCaprio doing terrorist attacks on border patrol, and fighting the Gestapo. If you’re far right, you’re thinking the administration isn’t going far enough, Trump “is a cuck”, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if they had just protested in front of a government building.

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but most places for most people are fine. Good even. Great, by historical standards. But that just goes to show how much room the US has to decline, and how well off the average American really is by global standards, even if they don't subjectively feel that way. Donald Trump and the politics of the last few decades have definitely been pushing things the wrong direction, but most people in most places live relatively well, by global standards. As it is, all we would need is a decade of politics and policies gently tugging the right direction and we'd be good to go.

    Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things?

Kind of both at the same time. America is a huge place. So if you live in Minneapolis, or in one of the cities where ICE is heavily targeting immigrants and are non-white, it's as bad as the media makes it sound.

If you live anywhere else, which in most cases are places thousands of miles away, it's business as usual. You have money, you go to work, the grocery store is full, you see your friends on the weekends. The only bad things in life are home prices and the news.

Minneapolis has 0.1% of the total USA population. It is to the USA as Dresden, Lisbon, or Genoa is to the EU in terms of population.

While ICE is mass deporting people nationwide, the murders of citizens and general mayhem they’re perpetrating are primarily just in Minneapolis.

2A supporters are mixed. Some genuinely outraged at the gov, some just making up reasons to support Trump anyway. Following the definition of conservatism, liberals are the group the law binds but does not protect, and they are the group the law protects but does not bind.

In the US, Republicans managed to stack the judicial system with acolytes in a well organized, long term operation over years. They broke rules to steal Supreme Court seats, giving them a majority. They control all branches of government. In that situation, the president has massive power to do what he wants. So he is.

Trump doesn’t really seem to care about any issue really. He’s not much of an ideologue. But his advisors certainly are. Stephen Miller is an open fascist who’s playing Trump like a fiddle and loving every minute of the chaos.

But for most of those of us lucky enough to be citizens, most of the time, we’re just dealing with institutional dysfunction exacerbated by Federal dysfunction. Funding cuts, broken commitments, uncertainty.

We also are all seeing the Federal government pre-emptively brand the citizens it’s new gunning down in the street every two weeks or so “domestic terrorists” and posing with signs saying “one of ours, all of yours,” and so on. So it’s very clear that the government is now building right wing paramilitary forces to try and intimidate us. Clearly that’s not working too well in Minnesota, however!

Liberal Americans overall are: 1. Disgusted with Trump et al 2. Keeping relatively calm and carrying on, because he genuinely did win the popular vote in a free and fair election 3. Figuring out constructive ways to deal with ICE, pressure the Democratic Party to pick better candidates, and thinking about how to protect elections in 2026 and 2028.

On a day to day basis, life feels normal where I live, for me, for now.

> Is stuff really as bad as it looks or are media somehow exaggerating things? I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying. But I'm curious to hear Americans view on matters?

The US media is downplaying things because they are terrified of Trump, who now has either direct or indirect control of most of it.

If you're talking about EU media, I can't assess, but I did see a clip of an Italian news crew getting harassed in Minneapolis that's fairly accurate.

It's bad. Really bad. I never thought this would happen in the US. But it's also inept. Really inept. Minnesota is super-majority white, but has taken great pride in being a home for refugee communities, and has gained many from around the world. Minnesotans are, of all the places I've lived in the world, the most open-hearted, caring, and upright moral I've encountered as a group. Hard winters make people trust community. The Georgy Floyd murders, and the riots afterwards, have made communities very strong as they had to watch out for each other, there were no police that were going to come.

For this area with hundreds of thousands people, there are only 600 cops, but 3000 ICE/CBP agents swarming it, a HUGE chunk of their forces. Yet people self-organized to watch out for their schools and their neighbors. Churches serve as central places for people to volunteer to deliver meals to families that can not leave the house due to the racialize abduction of people. Several police chiefs have held news conferences where they say in so many words "You know I'm not a liburul but my officers with brown skin are all getting harassed by ICE when they're off duty, until the show that they are cops, and that's pretty bad." A Republican candidate for Governor withdrew his candidacy because he felt he couldn't be part of a political party that was doing such racialized violence against his own people, and his job was literally to be a defense lawyer to cops accused of wrongdoing!

The deaths are so tragic, but because Minnesotans have been so well organized, so stoic, so non-violent, it fully exposes ICE/CBD for the political terror campaign that they are. That the entire endeavor has nothing to do with enforcing the law, it's all about punishing Minnesota for being Minnesota, for its politics, for its people. If the legal deployment of cameras and whistles and insults and yells is enough to defeat masked goons who wave guns in people faces, assault non-violent people with pepper sprays directly to the eyes, and tear-gas canisters thrown at daycares, then these stupid SA-wannabes are not going to win.

I live in a coastal California bubble that's even whiter than Minnesota, but here we are all rooting for Minnesota. I was talking to another parent today at the elementary school, an immigrant from Spain, a doctor, whose husband is from Minnesota. They are rethinking their choice of staying in the US.

The second amendment thing was always a charade. There are a few people that think it's for protection from the government, but what they really mean is it's for shooting liberals. There's no grander principle. There are a bunch of people that enjoy guns as a hobby, and support the 2nd amendment for that. But we all know that the time for armed defense against the government is only when you're in a bunker in woods or when you're storming the capital to overturn an election because you've been tricked into saying it's a fraudulent election.

They are buffoons, as the Nazis were, but they are very unpopular buffoons and I think the past week shows that after a few more years of grand struggle, normal americans will win. It will be hard. We need to have truth and reconciliation afterwards, and the lack of that after the Civil War and after January 6 are huge causes in today's struggles.

I'm just glad Minnesota is defeating ICE/CBP, as many states would give in to violence faster, and many states would give up faster.

> The ice seem to have roughly the same priorities and roughly the same methodology as the SA had in the beginning.

How do you figure?

> I mean I saw the pretti videos and it certainly seems to corroborate what media is saying.

Media coverage of the Pretti shooting has been awful. All seem happy to show the slow-mo recap of the officer disarming Pretti, but none show him reaching for/toward his holster in the moment before being shot (0:12-13 in this video https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1qm4b0v/slow_m...). If the officer heard the "he's got a gun" callout but didn't see him be disarmed, this would obviously justify the response.

> As a European I'm also somewhat confused. I always thought that the reason the second amendment was made into such a big deal was because Americans felt they needed to be able to protect themselves in case the government ran amok.

This is the reason for the second amendment. Trump and some others have seriously fumbled the messaging on this point. The issue isn't that Pretti had a gun, nor that he had a gun at the protest, but that he had a gun at a protest, obstructed law enforcement (a felony), then resisted arrest. Of course, doing so didn't mean that "he deserved it". Fighting the cops while armed with a firearm was extremely reckless and stupid, but that alone doesn't justify a shooting. Most attacks from the left are (whether honestly or disingenuously) based on only these facts, but ignore the most pertinent fact in play here, which is that cops have rights, too. Among these is the right to defend themselves. If a police officer perceives an imminent threat of lethal force, they are permitted by law to use lethal force in self defense. That is why it was so reckless for Pretti to fight the cops--because it is extremely easy, when fighting someone who is armed with a lethal weapon, to reasonably perceive an imminent threat of lethal force. Pair this with Pretti's aforementioned rapid movement of his right hand toward his hip in the moment before the first shot, and it is not a stretch at all to see this shooting as a justifiable use of force. Tragic, of course, but still legally justified.

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about?

2A supporters often spitball about scenarios that might justify a revolution. I've never heard anyone suggest that they would fight for protestors' imagined right to fight cops with total immunity from consequences.

>What is it like in the US these days?

Pretty normal unless you're an illegal immigrant. Despite what the media tells you and all your pearl clutching coworkers are told to think by said media.

It's bad, we are living under Hitler 2.0 in every single sense of the word. He admires Hitler and says he keeps Hitler's books by his nightstand.

That said, do not rely on a single or even a few Americans for insight into what is going on, as you might get a wildly different perspective from each one, as a consequence of the billions of dollars put into generational propaganda and subliminal mind control out here. We are a nation divided.

To put things in perspective, US is a massive country. All this news is coming from one tier 3 city. (Roughly speaking LA, NYC etc being tier 1. Seattle, Dallas etc being tier 2)

> What is it like in the US these days?

For the average American citizen, status quo.

For the scofflaws and illegal immigrants, the realization that accountability for their actions might be right around the corner must be unnerving.

People aren't shooting yet because they know it will turn into a blood bath and should only be used as a last resort. Also as bad as it is in some areas, vast swaths of the US are still only really seeing this in the news. I think the outcome of whats going on in Minnesota will be a sign of whats to come so we won't be waiting long. If citizens start shooting at government employees though, it will be chaos, the US population has had a VERY negative attitude about the government for a long time now.

Ah yes, the typical language of peaceful protestors

Jaywalking, misappropriating funds during a renovation? Whatever the police state wants...

I heard a totally unsubstantiated rumor that the participants were sending (ICE agent) plate numbers to people with NCIC access to run the plates. If that's the case it would be a pretty easy felony charge for all involved.

I have no reason to believe that's true, just what word on the street was they might be charged with.

domestic terrorism, of course

18 U.S.C. § 372 — Conspiracy to impede or injure officer

If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.

Federal felony

Coming soon, treason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e_BbsDgLmI gives a pretty good summary of the possibilities.

The article subhead implies obstruction of justice.

Or, at the very least, what they want to try to convince a grand jury to indict people on.

That's another angle that needs to be discussed more often with respect to Trump's DoJ: if you're impaneled on a grand jury for charges coming out of these investigations, you don't have to give them a bill.

Presumably Seditious Conspiracy, like many people involved in J6. Conspiracy to use force to prevent or delay enforcement of laws.

Terrorism seems to be their default claim if you're against the Trump admin.

Not voting for them.

They don’t need to if they just shoot them on the street.

I hope they're just looking for foreign influence I'm not sure what you could charge peaceful protestors with that would survive in court.

And importantly the DoJ attorneys who would be responsible for investigating g the murders resigned because they were prevented from performing the standard procedure investigation that happens after every single shooting. They were instead directed to investigate the family of the person who was shot:

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/nyt-6-federal-prosecutor...

We are through the looking glass, folks. This will be dropped and ignored like so many other outrages unless we demand answers from Congress, and hold SCOTUS responsible for partisan abdication of their constitutional duties.

“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law” ― Oscar R. Benavides

The police (FBI and ICE included) are never your friends. They work to protect the rich and powerful and not us.

They will, one day. No statute of limitations on murder.

No. They should investigate both.

It's a good thing FBI has capacity to do more than one thing at a time. Also Trump agreed to allow MNPD to handle the wrongful death investigation.

Two things can be true: the "resistance" rings in MN are behaving like the insurgents the US has fought for decades in the Middle East, and ICE agents wrongfully killed a man.

Not sure what the point of the service is. Given that it's more expensive than other MVNOs, and isn't even more private. You can still buy prepaid SIMs in store with cash, so it's harder to get more private than that. Not to mention this company asks for your zip+4 code (which identifies down to a specific street), and information for E-911. It's basically like Trump Mobile but for people who care about "privacy".

To intimidate. They're probably quite aware they'll lose in court. But in the mean time they might discourage some folks from turning out on the street.

Are you under the impression that the current administration cares about what the law says?

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"

They're "investigating", presumably with data gleaned from arrests and CIs; you have a right to speech, and a right not to be prosecuted for speech, but a much, much narrower right not to be "investigated", collapsing to ~epsilon when the investigation involves data the FBI already has.

When has the constitution mattered to this administration?

Because too many people dismissed the claims that electing Trump would lead to a fascist administration as alarmist. Turns out he meant every word he said during his campaign.

Conspiracy to commit a crime is typically not included in protected speech. Whether you think that's happening here will depend mostly on what side you take, I suspect.

Federal felony, not free speech.

18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

Coordinating roadblocks, "dearrests", warning the subjects of law enforcement operations, and intentionally causing the maximum amount of noise in neighborhoods neighborhood are not things you will be able to get a federal judge to characterize as "constitutionally protected speech".

For real, if you're legitimately worried about your officers being legally entrapped, you've got some really untrustworthy officers.

This sounds like IMAX level projection

I remember a time when people were better at lying, at least.

Osama bin Laden won.

Anyone organizing your neighborhood and events keep inner circle chats to only people you have personally vetted and use a new group chat for every event/topic and delete the groups for past events.

Be mindful of what you share in a big group chat where you don’t know everyone

Every one is a potential fall guy except the King. First sign you're a liability and under the bus you go. And unless you're on Truth Social you're usually the last to know.

Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him. He's the most hard-core fascist in the bunch.

Can I suggest that using the term "liberal hivemind" is really never going to help your case no matter what your "opposing opinion" is?

Ah, yes, that liberal hivemind saying that first amendment rights are a thing and that mild resistance is not grounds for summary execution. Classic liberal hivemind.

They don't have to get a conviction if they know your address and have a gun.

Maybe your understanding of things is wrong? Maybe the information you are getting on the situation is misleading?

I am a democrat who does support ICE. If there are any issues, as there are given the numbers, they should be investigated. There have been many instances where an “execution” is claimed but they, the agents, were reasonable to assume imminent harm and self defense.

Are you capable of accurately describing the other sides argument?

your comment will surely help!

For all the complaints about the previous DOJ, one thing nobody ever argued was that they weren't intending to get convictions. They only brought cases they thought they could win.

To see DOJ use its power the way we've seen (and I know the original story here is only with FBI at this point), it makes me think there should be some equivalent of anti-SLAPP laws but aimed at federal prosecutions. Some way to fast track baseless charges that will obviously never result in anything and that are just meant to either (a) punish someone into paying a ton of lawyer fees, (b) to intimidate others, or (c) grab some short-term headlines.

Considering ICE is executing people in the streets and were already breaking laws before this something little like free speech won’t help

Yep

What are you getting at? The idea of any of the major news outlets in the US being left-leaning is risible nowadays.