FBI director defends impersonation of AP reporter | Hacker News Reader

FBI director defends impersonation of AP reporter

cnn.com

98 points001sky87 comments

I had the distinct privilege of studying law under Wayne LaFave, author of the treatise on criminal procedure. When I read the headline, it brought me back to my first year in law school and the discussions professor LaFave kindled around the topic of deception.

Here are some related common tactics upheld by courts:

1. Planting a "criminal" in a cell with a defendant to elicit a confession. 2. Separating co-defendants into two interrogations and telling each the other has "ratted" them out. 3. Letting one co-defendant see the other receive a "reward" indicating that they have already "flipped." See the Wire scene with the cheeseburger. http://discoveringthewire.com/characters-of-the-wire-william...

In comparison, this seems inline. I can understand why the AP would strongly object. In reality, though, what else do you want them to do. They are a news reporting agency who's name is the subject of a news story. The result is predictable.

Continued use of this sort of tactic, though, not only undermines the AP, it also undermines the tactic.

That is, if criminals begin to distrust reporters as being potential cops, the FBI loses that mechanism to gain trust, -and- the AP loses the ability to talk to those society deems unlawful. Unlike those other methods you mention, which don't effect society at large, just the individual (and can be weighed solely on those merits).

So this is a procedure that is doomed to make itself obsolete as a criminal trapping tool -while also having repercussions on a facet of democracy-.

Imagine if this was a common occurrence, happening prior to the Snowden leaks. Would he have leaked? Or what about people who leak drafts of the TPP? Giving a voice to those the government deems criminal is a necessary function of a democracy, and this undermines that.

This is one of the reasons we are now having trouble with eliminating polio in Pakistan[0], and are now seeing a resurgence[1].

It turns out that, when military forces pose as humanitarian workers distributing vaccines, eventually people figure that out and end up distrusting - or even attacking[2] - real humanitarian workers distributing vaccines.

(It doesn't help that similar rumors existed previously, about sterilization efforts being conducted under the guise of vaccination. But let's not forget that the reasons those rumors are credible is that the US has done similar things in the past, including against its own citizens [3]!)

The White House recently announced that they are ending spying through vaccination programs[4], though my belief is that it really has more to do with acknowledging that the tactic itself is no longer effective (as you point out), rather than a true admission of how deplorable the effects on public health are.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/health/cia-vaccine-ruse-in...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_in_Pakistan

[2] http://www.rferl.org/content/feature/24803587.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27489045

It wouldn't surprise me if Obama using vaccines as part of secret assassination campaigns was also hurting coverage in the US.

Is there any good research on the causes of the vaccination gaps here? Most of the pro-vaccine organizations claim that the main/only reason people avoid vaccinations is because they (falsely) believe that vaccines are the cause of the autism epidemic, but this seems like pharma propaganda to discredit anyone who is skeptical of any vaccine for any reason.

> Most of the pro-vaccine organizations claim that the main/only reason people avoid vaccinations is because they (falsely) believe that vaccines are the cause of the autism epidemic

Neat, a recursive strawman. Is there a word for that?

Anyway, I don't know if you count the CDC as a 'pro-vaccine organization' but they are aware of and have responses to multiple misconceptions about vaccines.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm

> they are aware of and have responses to multiple misconceptions about vaccines.

That doesn't tell you how prevalent each of those beliefs is though, let alone why people actually avoid vaccinations.

And also, the very first link on the CDC's vaccine safety page is about autism.

Oh for heaven's sake. You don't have to look very hard on the internet to hear anti-vaxxer's arguments straight from the horse's mouth, although in my experience anyone who expresses disagreement with such arguments in a context where they are seriously entertained will be quickly labelled as a shill for the pharmaceutical industry.

>1. Planting a "criminal" in a cell with a defendant to elicit a confession.

If I'm locked in a cell with a big tough guy covered in tattoos you bet that I will make up some crazy story just as a defense mechanism. If I am being accused of murdering someone, even if I didn't do it, I would probably tell that story just to feel safer.

>2. Separating co-defendants into two interrogations and telling each the other has "ratted" them out.

>3. Letting one co-defendant see the other receive a "reward" indicating that they have already "flipped."

These two tactics can lead to a false confession too, just out of spite or fear.

So you have to consider if it's better to convict an innocent person or to let go a criminal. And you would not really be letting him go, you'd just need to gather more evidence.

The government has gamified the justice system: if you win (get more convictions) you will be promoted.

You will not be rewarded for putting guilty people in jail and letting go of the innocent, you simply have to do your best to score as many convictions as possible and anything you do to achieve this (intimidation, parallel construction, playing mind games and so on) is fair game. Guilt or lack thereof does not enter into the game.

I don't think it's fair to say the government has gamified the justice system. In most American jurisdictions, district attorneys are elected and so are state attorneys general. Candidates for such office aim to give the electorate what it wants, and it often seems as if the electorate wants prosecutors to be tough on the guilty to a far greater degree than it wants to protect the rights of the innocent.

You could run for DA on a platform of safeguarding the rights of criminal defendants and prosecutorial restraint, but that's not a winning platform in most jurisdictions except very liberal places. As long as we keep electing DAs (and in many jurisdictions, judges, albeit to a lesser extent), most of them are going to go for the lowest-common-denominator platform of promising to bring crime down and throwing the book at defendants.

big tough guy covered in tattoos

This tells us more about your stereotypes of criminals than anything else. If you made a story up out of whole cloth to impress someone it would be unlikely to fit with any other evidence in the case. Back in reality, if you read cases where such tactics are employed, they usually involve pairing someone up with a cellmate who is in for some relatively minor crime and gain's the suspect's confidence by talking freely about their own situation. Admissions to cellmates usually come after days or weeks, once the suspect has become comfortable, at which point the suspect may brag about their criminal activities - in much the same way as everyone else likes to share 'war stories' about their line of work from time to time.

A threatening or scary cellmate that glared aggressively at a suspect would be a gift to defense lawyer, since it would make it a lot easier to argue that the confession had been coerced and should therefore be suppressed. Criminology texts emphasize this point; the object is to elicit a confession that will stand up in court. In the vast majority of them the informant presents a friendly demeanor towards the suspect, and furthermore is instructed not to prompt or ask questions but simply to pay close attention to the suspect's conversation and report anything interesting to investigators - again, to avoid complaints that a confession was coerced or that a defendant was put in a position where they felt obliged to provide information without benefit of counsel. Indeed, law enforcement often uses undercover officers posing as prisoners, and courts don't consider this a violation of Miranda rights as long as statements made by a suspect are voluntary.

That makes much more sense than the big tough guy that I mentioned. But there are still many reasons why an innocent person thrown in jail could make up an story. I guess that it would be OK to use that confession if it leads the investigator to new evidence, but using it in court as an evidence in itself seems very wrong to me.

My knowledge about criminology or criminal justice is very limited, and it's probably polluted by all the cop movies and TV shows. So any input from somebody more knowledgeable on the subject is more than welcome.

Your instinct about using it in court as evidence is basically good - the 'hearsay rule' forbids testimony of the form 'so-and-so told me that the defendant was guilty,' with a few very narrow exceptions like the last words of a dying person that accuse someone of a crime. Because of teh 6th amendment, informants and undercover officers have to testify in court, where the defense can question them and challenge the veracity of their statements.

Of course this is not perfect. There have been cases where law enforcement or prosecutors told the informant what to say in an overzealous effort to gain a conviction, and sometimes innocent people have languished in jail for years on the basis of such false testimony. That shouldn't be allowed to happen, but when it does it doesn't necessarily mean the entire judicial process was corrupted. For example, a trial may have been properly conducted but if the defense lawyer was lazy or incompetent and failed to challenge the prosecution evidence the judge and jury may not have had any way of knowing about the flaws int he prosecution's case.

One important thing to bear in mind about American courts is that trial courts do not have an investigatory function to discover all the information about a case, but rather a decisive function to select between competing arguments from plaintiffs/prosecutors and civil/criminal defendants. So even if the defense lawyer is an obvious imcompetent the court inn't supposed to pre-emptively assist the defendant - the defendant has to ask for a new lawyer or bring up the issue at appeal.

In many other countries they use a different sort of system called civil law, where the judge is basically the lead investigator in the case. That can prevent some kinds of miscarriages of justice that occur in our system but as you might expect it opens to the door all sorts of other kinds.

Thank you so much for such a thorough and informative answer.

Who said anything about being upheld by the courts? This is contentious because news organizations have long held that it undermines the functioning of the free press when government agents pose as journalists. But I don't think anyone (including the AP) is suggesting it's illegal.

I don't think impersonation of a reporter would ever be considered illegal (as opposed to say impersonating a police officer). In the best/worst case, the evidence obtained would be deemed inadmissible. Once that happened, the FBI and other police would be less-inclined to employ the ruse. That would be the remedy that would help the press. Short of excluding the evidence, there is no other remedy I can think of that would help the AP in this instance.

On the other hand, the CIA got into a bit of trouble when it ran a vaccination program in Pakistan.[1]

The problem in this case is that the specific activity puts reporters in danger, since the nature of their job puts them in contact with criminals.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#Use...

One of the large issues with this kind of thing is that it undermines the safety of real reporters, and also provides a chilling effect on the access reporters will have in the future.

> "No actual story was published, and no one except the suspect interacted with the undercover 'A.P.' employee or saw the fake draft story," he wrote. "Only the suspect was fooled, and it led to his arrest and the end of a frightening period for a high school."

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable sting. Not sure what the fuss is about.

The AP is mad because this harms their reputation. Now no one will be sure if an AP story (edit: or person) is really an FBI plant.

Really? I'll be sure, because I can look at the AP's web site to see what stories are theirs. So maybe you can change "no one" to "no one but people who know how to fact check". Which I'd hope is everybody with a high school diploma.

I get why the AP is upset, but when I make my list of "sources for false information on the Internet to worry about", this is way, way, way down.

The FBI didn't publish a story, they just posed as an AP reporter, and only to the suspect. This seems like a perfectly fine tactic to me, it's basically just going undercover.

Well now people are going to be skeptical of anyone claiming to be an AP reporter. This is the same exact scenario as the CIA claiming to be an NGO giving out vaccinations in order to track down Osama bin Laden. Of course some folks will say "The ends justify the means".

Would it be outside the realm of possibility to have people outright refuse to cooperate or even harm actual AP reporters because they are now suspect? Claiming reporters to be spies is a fairly common phenomenon.

Good point.

I clearly see the issue with spying under the guise of humanitarian organizations. My guy says it's a little less severe with reporters, but still an issue.

I wonder where the lines are? Who else should law enforcement not impersonate?

In general, I would say impersonating a criminal in order to get into an organization isn't bad. Generic impersonations can also work as well, but it starts to get fuzzy there. Impersonating an NGO could still harm other completely unrelated NGOs. Then you get into impersonating a known entity and you have the potential to cause real damage. I don't want someone impersonating me or my family, that could cause a real, lasting damaging impact even if just by a bad reputation.

I can certainly understand a company having the same thoughts and issues. That's why banks spend money on fighting phishing attacks, someone leveraging a banks branding to hurt consumers hurts the reputation regardless of the bank's lack of involvement.

The point is that if the FBI makes a habit of impersonating journalists, anyone contacted by a real AP reporter would have good reason to doubt their motives. It's a contentious issue with a long history.

> The point is that if the FBI makes a habit of impersonating journalists, anyone contacted by a real AP reporter would have good reason to doubt their motives

Why? I could see that being the case if the FBI agent was actually working for AP, but in this case a simple phone call to the AP would have proven that the journalist didn't actually work there, no?

I suppose that would depend on whether the FBI used the name of a real journalist. But it's more a matter of principle, I'd say, than a question of whether the person could conceivably have checked if it was a real reporter.

If you're a criminal, talking to the press is an incredibly bad idea to begin with as 'reporter's shield' laws are wildly inconsistent. A lot of criminals get convicted because they just can't keep their mouths shut.

I see your point about going undercover. But I think the fact that they said they were with the AP modifies things slightly. If they had pretended to be a reporter from some made-up news agency, then sure, I could see it as "just going undercover". But they used the reputation of the AP to carry that out. It isn't quite impersonation, but it is close. And it potentially harms the credibility of the AP. So, in that sense, it is more than "just going undercover".

Of course, if the news agency didn't really exist how convincing would it be?

Convincing enough, e.g.:

> Hi! I'm Bob with KBBL Eyewitness News. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

It would be interesting to see whether the AP could sue the FBI under the 'takings' clause of the constitution, because the FBI has taken some of their reputation, and harmed the AP's ability to conduct its business.

And now the world knows that the next time someone from the AP contacts them, it could be an FBI agent.

If anyone contacts you it could be anyone. Isn't this only an issue if you're divulging something about yourself that you need to keep secret? Are you really going to confess to crimes to a random person who calls you on the phone? No, you're going to try to find the name of a reporter who can be trusted and call him.

And now the world knows that the next time someone from the AP contacts them, it could be an FBI agent. So no, it didn't impact only one person.

Right - yet, somehow, we all know about it and are discussing it. Perfectly confidential.

No one said confidential, and I'm sure this all come out via the public case, but they only represented themselves as a reporter to the target. They didn't publish fake stories or build a public fake persona.

Given that the results of said techniques have become public knowledge, I'm not sure how you can argue that no harm was done to an innocent party's reputation by the fact that it wasn't done in public initially.

Except for the fact that no one doing anything shady will talk to an AP reporter now if they have common sense. That likely impacts their ability to report the news in a timely fashion.

They caught a crook while simultaneously undermining the credibility of a respected news organization that's historically critical of them.

Sounds like someone's gunning for a promotion.

Imagine the AP would impersonate as the FBI to get raw material for some of their reports...

"The A.P.'s use of such techniques is subject to close oversight, both internally and by the people that read our work."

It certainly wasn't the FBI's intention to undermine the AP's credibility. They tried to keep it a secret that they had used this tactic. Only the user of the MySpace account "timberlinebombinfo" saw the fake news story.

They did not try to keep it secret because they could not. They were required to disclose the tactic in the court proceedings, explaining how they identified the suspect.

If leakers learn they can't be certain they can trust reporters (or entities claiming to be such), that's a chilling effect on leakers.

Thus, fewer leakers coming forward - or lots more friction as they try to establish with certainty who they're dealing with.

Thus, less info being leaked to the media (except when the government "leaks" it on purpose).

Thus ... less oversight by the media, and less shared understanding of things going on.

OK, but do you think the FBI cares? They're cops.

He's pointing out that this may be the governments's intended outcome. To stop leaks which paint the government and government officials in bad light. So no, the FBI could very well "not care" that there would be fewer leaks... that's what the government might be aiming for.

Corrupt and evil people realize that FUD is their friend. If a society and civilization can't trust one another then the truth can't get out. Look at North Korea.

Precisely. We've seen the IRS, OSHA, BATF, and other 3-letter agencies turn into the play-toys of the powerful (to say nothing of militarized police and swatting). It's no longer unreasonable to think the FBI could be used for political shenanigans (and depending on how you read history, that's part of the FBI's origin anyway).

It's interesting, after all, that Catherine Engelbrecht never had the trouble she found herself in until she got involved in politics. (and it's also interesting that the 7 of Lois Lerner's hard-drives under Congressional subpoena could have magically failed simultaneously) Not that it's one-sided, either: power corrupts, and I'm suspicious of both parties (and no, the answer isn't: well let's just make sure we always keep the other party out of power).

The FBI may not want to silence potential leakers, but the FBI answers to someone who may think differently, depending on how the political winds blow.

Perhaps this is exactly what they want, leakers not being able to trust reporters.

Are most of the people worried about catching the attention of the US government really going around just taking people's word on things?

Fed: "Yep, I'm a reporter."

Leaker: "Great, let's talk."

It just doesn't really scan.

I'm not saying I'm comfortable with what the FBI is doing (I guess I'm not sure about that), I'm wondering if chilling effects are an important aspect of it.

Whether it scans is just a question of how much effort goes into any given investigation, surely?

I mean, if one fed says "I'm a reporter", and a second says the same but also has AP business cards, and a third also has an authentic-looking AP badge with his photo and the name of a real AP journalist, I don't guess there's any bright line between those things. Once the feds decide to impersonate a journalist they could be arbitrarily convincing about it, couldn't they?

If I wanted to leak something, I would choose the reporter.

I would probably go to a library and evaluate the writings of several reporters, and choose from there.

I would then figure out how to identify the chosen reporter using materials that they did not provide to me.

I would not rely on my ability to authenticate an AP badge.

I don't think any of that is particularly sophisticated, so I would expect many leakers to at least take that first step (and hopefully they would usually see the problem with using information provided by the reporter to evaluate the identity of the reporter).

Your extrapolating from your own course of thought and actions and assuming that everyone in the world makes similar enough decisions as you do that it's not worth considering alternate scenarios.

Not everyone has the luxury of deciding if some proof is good enough in a a consequence free thought experiment where they can also shape the constraints. IRL constraints and persuasion tactics shift the ability to verify, and someone with legal considerations can't afford to be wrong even once. It shifts the decision making process in such a way that the fact "cops have posed as reporters" plus an abundance of caution means nobody talks to reporters. Exactly the circumstances the AP is afraid of.

We are talking about people choosing to commit a federal crime out of the belief that it serves the greater good. If they aren't capable of being cautious, I first don't want them handling sensitive government information, and second, I don't want them making the decision to share it with the public.

Sure, but don't you see that your personal opinions don't apply directly to someone else leaking information, or more generally, chilling effects on things that aren't federal crimes?

I don't think this issue particularly concerns leakers. A typical journalist spends most of their time contacting people to ask questions, and it would affect the functioning of the press if everyone had reason to suspect it might actually be the FBI calling. That's where I'd think the chilling effect comes in.

Edit: sorry, I'd overlooked that the top post in the thread was specific to leakers.

Don't leakers generally initiate contact with reporters? You raise a good point (eg whether people who would be committing a crime by revealing classified information might feel chilled), but I think you're overstating the severity of the effect. If I was working with classified material and someone approached me as a reporter soliciting classified information, it would be part of my job to suspect espionage and report the contact. Instances of legally privileged rather than classified information would be broadly similar, possession of privileged information usually involves some sort of fiduciary obligation towards the person who entrusted you with it.

I don't actually have much of a problem with this. Lying to a suspect as part of an investigation isn't infringing anyone's civil liberties, unless they lie about specific things, such as telling a suspect lies about their rights.

It depends on how certain you are that someone is a suspect. If you just get to go around doing anything to a person because the FBI put him on a list, that's sort of a slippery slope, in my opinion.

But I didn't say they could do anything to a person- I said they could lie to them. It doesn't matter how sure you are that someone is a suspect for something like this, because nobody's rights are being infringed.

I thought it was well known that the police can lie as part of their investigation. Perhaps people thought there was a limit to the lie: they're OK with "your accomplice already spilled the beans and we already know everything" but not OK with "hey I'm a reporter doing an interview." But how do they think the FBI poses as arms dealers, terrorist recruiters, drug dealers, corrupt lobbyists, etc. without lying about it?

The contentious issue is that the feds posed as journalists, not that they lied.

To the many commenting that they don't see anything wrong with feds lying during an investigation, the issue here isn't that they lied, but that they used journalism as a cover. There's a long history of contention over such practices - see for example this article on journalism and the CIA:

https://www.cpj.org/attacks96/sreports/cia.html

Not the first time for something like this http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024888170_fbinewspap...

I believe that both the submitted article and your link are referring to the same incident. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if there are other similar incidents out there.)

Edit: Some clarification here: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024894799_fbifakesto...

No parent would tell their kid "Deception is ok". "Thou shalt not lie" concepts are in most religions[1].

And yet it's ok for those whom are supposed to be examples of the morally upright to do so?

Hypocrites.

[1] - http://www.unification.net/ws/theme062.htm

Would you say that police should not be allowed to lie to criminals?

The FBI and government in general seem to think lying is appropriate and moral in every situation.

> As a result of the suspect clicking on a link relating to the fake story, the agency was able to track him down using court-authorized tools

I don't care about the impersonation but hacking into your computer using zero-days seems evil.

More or less evil than terrorizing groups with bomb threats?

That is not acceptable, not morally right and just plain wrong.

Lies and deception everywhere - what if the guy turned out not guilty? Do they still think it's fine?

I don't see anything wrong with deceiving suspects during the course of an investigation. Undercover work and stings are a time-honored part of law enforcement. They're a great way to catch corrupt politicians, for example.

If the guy turned out to not be guilty, then... he would have clicked on a misleading link title and read a fake news article. Oh noes! That's Taboola's entire business model. I'm much happier with small deceptions used to catch criminals than when deception is used for profit on an industrial scale.

Lesser of two evils is still an evil.

>"The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation."

They're really grasping at straws to explain why this is bad. For me, the insidiousness of the tactic is apparent--one would think the AP would be more adept at crafting a response. No entity can rightfully leverage the brand/trust/profile of another.

They're branching out from simply manufacturing their own criminals to catch now? I guess I'm sort of impressed. It's like a child, learning to tie their shoes, except this child has a gun and can send you to jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosam_Maher_Husein_Smadi

The guy planted and tried to set off a bomb. I don't have any sympathy for him.

Nor do I, but in reflection about my own youth and developmental years, I also am sensitive to the influence that others can have. No noose ties itself.

Yes but it isn't like they executed him or gave him life in prison.

He'll get out at 43 (at the latest) and be deported.

If they executed him or never let him out of jail, I think I'd take issue with it but in this case I think the punishment kinda fits the crime.

The point isn't whether he's guilty or not, the point is whether the actions of law enforcement are useful. If they create the crime they then prevent, did they really prevent a crime?

The answer is "just barely". Sure, real terrorists could have recruited this guy and given him a bomb, but then the real threat is still those terrorist who already have a bomb and not this guy.

I think [unless he is shown to have mental issues that would have handicapped him in some way] "just barely" is good enough for me.

The traditional crime triangle is motive, method, and opportunity.

If you find someone who has nothing more than motive, and you supply him with both method and the illusion of opportunity, you have done little more than to prove that he had motive.

That is, you are prosecuting him on the basis of his opinions and beliefs. Thought crime.

Undercover policing only works when the crime to be prevented would have definitely occurred in the absence of the undercover cop. What they can do effectively is take an potential opportunity and convert it into the illusion of opportunity.

So rather than supplying the guy with bomb parts, wait until he has actual bomb parts, and replace them with nonfunctional replicas. Then you wait for him to press the button. That way, there is no doubt as to the origin of the criminal intent. You stopped a real crime instead of abetting a fake one.

You can't just target someone with motive and trick him into acting on it. That's like putting a "live grenade dispenser" next to the number ticket roll at the DMV. Everyone walking in that door has daydreamed about enacting some form of violence against the state clerks, especially when the wait is long and none of the people behind the desk seem to be actually working. But no one actually tosses grenades at the DMV. They just wish someone would. Or for those who would, they have the foresight to not bring their grenades with them when renewing their license, to avoid the temptation. But if you stand there and give out free grenades to people waiting in line, a few of them will have their pins pulled. If they spit out a puff of confetti instead of flaming death, you haven't really prevented any crime. You just proved that some people hate the DMV. You could have accomplished the same thing by circulating a petition to lawfully dismantle the bureaucracy.

So I disagree that the answer is "just barely". I think it is "absolutely not".

I understand what you're saying and there is merit to your point of view. But, I want the people who pulled the pins on the fake grenades in jail for life. They attempted mass murder. I don't want them on the street when the only thing preventing them from murdering people is a temporary lack of convenience.

So how would you deal with the people passing out fake grenades while telling everyone they are real? Would it be any different if they passed out real grenades and said they were fake?

Would you support preemptively testing everyone in similar ways, and imprisoning all those who failed? If you described the hypothetical on a paper, and asked people to rate their likelihood of pulling the pin on the imaginary grenade in the imaginary DMV, on a scale from 0 (never) to 10 (always), what numbers would they have to choose to remain free?

I, for one, am completely uncomfortable imprisoning people based solely on their psychological profile rather than as punishment for actual harm inflicted in the real world. Some undercover investigations do seem eerily similar to selecting someone based on a profile and then continually testing him until he fails to meet the "stay out of jail" threshold. It just doesn't seem like ethical policing to me.

Someone seems to be downvoting anyone that they don't agree with.

edit I am being downvoted now, possibly because people don't know what I am referring to. When there were only a dozen comments or so, you could very clearly see that everyone with a certain opinion was getting downvoted.

I noticed this as well, glad you pointed it out.

*as soon as I posted the the refreshed page had all the downvotes back to normal.

Cops are allowed by the Supreme Court to lie. Is AP just now catching on to this?

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