FBI put Anonymous 'hacktivist' Jeremy Hammond on terrorism watchlist
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
1. US Gov. passes Executive Order permitting: a) the Depart. of State to identify individuals/organizations as "terrorist/terrorist organizations"; b) the CIA to put individuals (including citizens) on targeted kills lists; c) the FBI to put people on a Terrorist Watchlist;
2. There is no oversight to the process and the Government is not required to disclose who is on the list(s) or even the criteria to get on the list;
3. When the first (known) CIA targeted killing of a US citizen failed and the US Gov. was sued, the Court dismissed the case finding the Courts can not perform a Constitutional review, because such an Executive Order falls squarely within the Political Question Doctrine;
4. When the Government successfully killed the US Citizen, using a military drone strike, in a Country the US was not authorized to use the Use of Force (under International Law)...no one cared because the individual was Muslim and the Government assured us this was a guy with ties to Islamic terrorism. In fact, you can see in this article the such an attitude permeates all the way to the EFF, where one of EFF's Senior Staff Attorneys says he wouldn't have issue if Hammond had ties to Al-Qaida or Islamic State, but this is solely concerning to them because it is likely Anonymous;
5. Now the US Gov. has again extended their new found powers and now people are split...but what is really alarming is the people who think, well this guy was a piece of shit, so the Gov. got it right...no harm no foul.
This is not end of the World, sky is falling commentary, but wake up. It is never OK for any Government to have secret lists of any kind much less kill lists...and it is even more telling that the US Gov. refuses to disclose the lists (in full, certainly some lists are public) or the criteria/process.
Which international law address US use of force in Yemen?
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter is the general framework prohibiting the use of force between member States.[1] The UN Charter itself only provides for 2 exceptions to the prohibition on the use of force: a. Self-Defense and b. with prior authorization from the UN Security Council. However, much like the US Constitution, which has been interpreted and extended through legislation and through the Courts, the UN Charter has been interpreted through treaties, UN Resolutions, votes of the UN Security Council, case studies and customary law/international norms.
To put this in context, put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine a foreign national located in the US, who has been deemed a terrorist or equivalent by another country, and that country performs some kind of military/quasi-military/drone strike within the jurisdictional integrity of the US.
Separately, there is an entire second half to the analysis, so once the use of force is authorized (jus ad bellum), then we need to apply the actual laws of war (jus in bello). The easiest way to convey this is to say that the response must be proportionate to the act that authorized the use of force and otherwise use of certain weapons are prohibited, such as those that fail to distinguish between civilian and combatant (e.g. prohibitions against the use of chemical weapons). Looking at the facts of this particular case, it would appear problematic that before the CIA drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the US botched at least a first attempt that resulted in the killing of 2 unintended targets.
So, Al-Quaeda allegedly killed 10.000 people.
US then kill about 9000 more of its own citizens to kill some million and a bit more abroad, and cause some everlasting civil wars, including some that made Al-Quaeda, affiliates, allies and splinter organizations stronger, not weaker.
Essentially, there would be no rule of law if Use of Force was authorized, under the self-defense, so long as one Country alleges a terrorist is residing in another Country. To be fair, under these specific set of facts, it may have been possible to make a case before the Security Council and have the Security Council authorize the Use of Force. However, that is the whole point the US circumvented the established law and acted unilaterally, when they could have gone to the UN presented their case and had a vote on the merits.
As for the shoe on the other foot, that's an ongoing issue with the Polonium Tea incident being merely the latest.
Oddly the US legal justification is not that their action complies with International Law, rather that International Law does not apply...instead the US' position is that "a conflict between a transnational non-state actor and a nation, occurring outside that nation's territory, is an armed conflict not of an international character." However, the US' legal position is rather short sighted, and just imagine how quickly such a legal paradigm would break down if any foreign nation ever attempted to bomb one of their own citizens residing in the US and then claimed such use of force was not of an international character; therefore, International Law is not applicable.
In the case of the US operations in Yemen we are discussing, the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Yemen have been respected, since the US had the permission and cooperation of the Yemen government. The territorial integrity and political independence of al-Qaeda in Yemen is certainly not being respected, but al-Qaeda is not a State.
Again Yemen's consent/cooperation is not the litmus test. For example US/Afganistan, the US had Afganisttan's cooperation to use force against the Taliban; nevertheless, the US went to and obtained authorization from the UN Secruity Council. This is/was a legal requirement, irrespective of the consent of Afganistan. The reason the US did the lawful thing Afganistan and not Yemen, is due to a poor (self-serving) legal interpretation, where the US does not consider what it did in Yemen of international character but the US could not make the same argument for Afganistan. Essentially the US claims (in a legal sense) it can kill its own citizens anywhere in the world without international law applying because US believes such action is domestic in nature. In other words the US is not making your argument, that they can use force wherever a foreign nation consents, the US' position is that the can use force anywhere in the world (with or without consent) so long as the force is used against its own citizens.
>Yemen allowed the US strikes. The US thus no more needs UN support to strike AQAP than it does to raid a Montana militia compound.
Not even the US suggests this is the case, as you have expanded the use of force to non-citizens. The US' legal memo is very clear, the US believes they were allowed to Use Force in Yemen without UN authorization because the target was a US citizen making this a domestic issue. The US legal opinion was very narrow regarding use of force against a US citizen, anywhere in the World, but the legal opinion acknowledges if it was not a US citizen that International Law would apply.
Yes, doing something unilaterally also means it's done without the agreement or participation of other people it might affect. In this context any use of force outside self-defense or authorized by the UN is unilateral. Take for example, US going into Iraq, even though there was a "coalition of the willing" comprised of approximately 30 nations, generally the international community condemned the use of force as unilateral military action because it was not authorized by the UN.[1] While the UN retroactively authorized the use of force in Iraq, it is still viewed as unilateral in the eyes of the international community, where unilateral military action is defined as "non-Security Council authorized". [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateralism [2] http://interactioncouncil.org/justifiable-cases-military-int...
The only two member states with standing in the AQAP conflict are Yemen and the US. Both members agree on the action. Similarly, the US doesn't need the permission of the UN Security Council to raid the compound of a Montana militia group.
The UN Security Council is simply not implicated in the conflict with AQAP in Yemen.
Should Yemen withdraw its permission for the US to use air resources to combat AQAP in Yemen, that would change.
We aren't discussing the US invasion of Iraq, nor is the premise of this discussion that the US has never skirted the UN; clearly they have, just as Russia did in the Ukraine, the UK did in the Falklands, Turkey did in Cypress, and so on. So it does your argument no good to point out that the US has in the past not respected the UN. That has no bearing on the situation in Yemen.
What?
It's pretty offensive to muslims to lead your characterization of al-Awlaki with the fact that he was Muslim, rather than the fact that he went to Yemen and took up arms against the United States while inciting violence against the country. U.S. Citizenship isn't a blanket immunity against U.S. military action. It's certain that the U.S. killed Americans who went and fought for the Nazis in Europe. Few people would challenge the validity of such actions. Does it become wrong because you make a list instead of doing it indiscriminately?
And ultimately, it's deeply counter-productive to try and lump people like Hammond together with people like al-Awlaki. Military action against foreign aggressors is a fundamental right of sovereign nations. People will not give it up. If you tell them that such actions must be subject to "law" all you'll accomplish is distorting and diluting the law to accommodate the sorts of actions that must be taken against foreign aggressors. The law should not try to insert itself into foreign military matters. It's not a fight it will win, and it will be the downfall of the law.
It may very well be. But OP is not saying al-Awlaki was a muslim and therefore not worth bothing about raising a stink regarding constitutional issues, but rather that large swathes of population believe that.
Heck were are dealing with people who thought (and still think I bet) that Saddam Hussein was "al Qaeda".
> The law should not try to insert itself into foreign military matters.
All is well except for those pesky constitutional issues. If this was Russia or other countries which (I am guessing here), do not have the same rights in their Constitutions as US, there wouldn't be much to discuss.
So "foreign military matters" needs to be discussed a bit more. See, US is not at war with Pakistan. It is friendly with its government and allegedly is allowed by said Pakistani govt. to pick off people on the ground to kill using drones. So this needs to be talked about. Are we at war? Is "Global War On Terror" now an conventient cop-out to let us do this there without those Constitutional rights people getting into our business? What if those tribes in the mountains brought drones and started dropping anthrax boms or grenades on our cities, would we understand that as an equitable retribution and so on.
It was maybe too blunt, but it may have been part of the point to say it this way, as if it were said by the Americans who "didn't care" once they heard it was "just some Muslim-sounding name" and the person was accused of terrorism. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it's not hard to imagine many Americans would forget any outrage they might have had, once they heard the name "al-Awlaki." (I am an American myself, if it matters.)
[Later edit]: To build on the original point, maybe we need to stop using distracting mitigating terms like "drone", "terrorism", "citizen", "country", maybe even "al-Qaeda" etc. There's enough to talk about when we pare it down to: the Executive Branch is unilaterally and secretly a) investigating, adjudicating, and executing, b) spying on everything by default, c) instituting less-drastic but still restrictive measures, such as no-fly lists and watchlists. Is simplifying it to that extreme too naive? Maybe, but I'd rather start there and work forward, than getting sidetracked early about which nationalities it's OK to kill, and precisely which organizations are so knee-jerk evil that the mere whiff of them justifies almost anything.
P.S. I didn't lead with this because my other thoughts are more productive, but maybe you slighted Yemen almost exactly the way you accuse the parent of slighting Islam. At least, I read a negative connotation when you write "he went to Yemen", as if that's already half the case for why he needs to be killed.
It is difficult to call it a fact since there was no trial, no due process, nor evidence cited by US government in the killing of its citizen. Perhaps there was secret evidence presented in secret to a secret court, but that's rather grim consolation.
Also the concept of law should absolutely insert itself into matters of foreign military matters. WWI and WWII were both horror shows, Western civilization rightly decided to do their best not to repeat the worst of the atrocities committed therein. You seem all to eager to return to a world where Western governments kill millions without consequence.
Trials, due process, evidence, these are domestic legal concepts. They don't apply to military actions on foreign soil.
> Also the concept of law should absolutely insert itself into matters of foreign military matters.
Rule of law depends on the institutional capital of the judiciary. The judiciary inserting itself into diplomatic and military matters costs institutional capital. The more the judiciary stays out of the foreign affairs of the military, the easier it is to keep the military out of the domestic affairs of the judiciary. And ultimately when you make politically necessary things illegal, you set the rule of law up for failure.
Assassination by drone is (or should be) considered a political act, not a military one.
Yes, it indicates this is wrong. There's a profound difference between killing someone in the heat of battle versus the president reviewing kill lists every Tuesday. The latter suggests a lack of imminence. Add to that he's a citizen and that the battlefield is any place where "terror" is.
Arguably, al-Awlaki simply preached dissent. Granted, you can argue he was a traitor actively trying to harm the US. In that case, so is Hammond, and a lot of other people conveniently on official lists.
Just because you disagree, even vehemently, with al-Awlaki's message, does not mean that we should compromise our principles of due process. Larry Flynt wasn't an ideal poster boy for free speech advocates. But his justice affirmed the strength of the 1st Amendment and was a small step in erasing racial boundaries (he published interracial porn shortly before being tried on obscenity). So I think lumping al-Awlaki and Hammond together is very much productive.
This is a drastic oversimplification of what the USG believed about al-Awlaki. CT officials in the US believe al-Awlaki to have had direct roles in the "underwear bomber" passenger jet attack and an attempt to blow up two cargo jets with PETN. He was indisputably a counselor to Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood.
In sum, the USG and UK believed al-Awlaki to have been Osama bin Laden without all the money, operating from a secure location in Yemen, recruiting random people from around the world to conduct horrible crimes in the name of AQAP.
It does a grave disservice to the tradition and, one supposed, the very concept of "dissent" to equate the coordination of murderous large-scale attacks on civilians with "dissent".
Sharing this belief with the USG does not require someone to believe that it was justifiable to assassinate him. But you can believe assassination to be wrong without glorifying its victims.
Do we want to abandon such things as quaint and old fashioned when we're dealing with the death penalty? I really, really, really hope not.
(1) About whom I have no opinion whatsoever.
Thomas has already covered this quite well, but I'll briefly summarize again. al-Awlaki was actively at war against the USG. Killing him is roughly equivalent to killing US citizens who fight for other foreign governments. The drone strike was not carrying out a legal sentence, it was simply the use of force in a global conflict.
If he was, why was it too hard to run the case? Why all this apologist stuff about an accusation being good enough for a death sentence - also carried out on his son while he sat in a cafe a week later. This is Stalinist reasoning, what is it doing in the USA?
The logic of the strike was that waiting for that situation to resolve itself would have the effect of giving al-Awlaki many more opportunities to coordinate attacks, that the pattern of al-Awlaki's involvement in attacks was one of escalating intensity, and that the attacks plots themselves were becoming more ambitious. At some point, the logic goes, he'll figure out how to coordinate a strike that actually succeeds in creating mass casualties.
There are a lot of very valid reasons to oppose drone strikes. For one thing, you might believe Obama to be a fundamentally reasonable person, and then remember how awful Bush II's national security staff was, and think about what crazy things the next President will do with the capabilities. You might, like me, also categorically reject the death penalty. And you might also be concerned with the idea of a "declaration of war" on a terrorist brand name which any idiot in the world can revive and slap on a black flag any time they want, thus ensuring that the war is never brought to an end. I know that's what I think.
What I don't think you can say is that in the al-Awlaki case the USG struck al-Awlaki down simply because he was a "dissenter". That's all.
Is the evidence for literally all the claims above still "leaked to a newspaper by a public servant but officially neither confirmed nor denied"? Or are some public servants "on the record making the claim"? Is there anything testable and verifiable?
The claims may be entirely correct, I don't know and I don't actually care much. A claim is not evidence. I claim there are war criminals in the US government right now who should be extradited to the Hague, but so what if I claim that? It's of mild interest to some but has no baring on whether shooting them is legal, justified or something I should do anything but oppose.
Your closing comment:
"What I don't think you can say is that in the al-Awlaki case the USG struck al-Awlaki down simply because he was a "dissenter". That's all"
Strawman. Nobody claimed that in this conversation.
al-Awlaki wasn't a criminal and he wasn't given the death penalty. He put himself in a position of being a foreign military threat and was dealt with as a military threat. No country extends due process or the presumption of innocence to foreign military actions, and it's a tremendous conceit to suggest that the whole world's activities should be encompassed under U.S. criminal law.
First, he was not a foreign military. He was a US citizen and non-state actor. That is the crux of the US legal opinion on the matter, the US says it can use force against its own citizens anywhere in the world and international law does not apply because if it is a citizen, non-state actor, then it is a domestic issue no matter where the individual is located. So legally, the US makes the distinction between a US citizen joining a foreign military (state actor) and a foreign terrorist organization (non-state actor).
However, to your point if it was a foreign military while due process may not apply laws of war apply, for example, it would not be murder to kill a foreign military actor on the battlefield but it is murder if you killed a captured enemy (POW). This is applicable even in this case, because after the first botched drone strike, his father sued the US and was trying to negotiate the surrender of his son, but the US couldn't even entertain a surrender because then the US would have had to acknowledge the existence of the kill list and the fact this guy was on it. In any other context, under the law, an enemy combatant would be permitted to surrender and at least avail themselves to certain rights, like the right not to be killed while a prisoner of war. I am not suggesting or stating emphatically he would have surrendered, but I don't doubt the Father's sincerity in his desire and intent to negotiate the surrender of his son.
>"I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said. "If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.
I am sure the lawsuit would detail all attempts he made with the US to begin negotiations.
[1] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... [2]http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/10/yemen.al.awlaki.fa...
The "father" and "son" I'm referencing are Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Abdulrahman was Anwar's juvenile son, killed in a drone strike against senior AQAP militants some time after Anwar was killed. Nasser is his grandfather.
There is no evidence in here that Anwar al-Awlaki was attempting to extricate his juvenile son from the war zone he had taken him into.
Probably, but some Wikipedia browsing reveals several who were captured and _not_ killed. (Beware, list assembled hastily, along with usual disclaimers about it being from Wikipedia.)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Best - life in prison
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Peter_Burger - death, commuted to life in prison
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_John_Burgman - prison for 6 to 20 years
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Chandler - life, commuted after 16 years by JFK, on condition he immediately leave the US
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Gillars - 10 to 30 years
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_James_Monti - 25 years
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_John_Dasch - death, commuted to 30 years
Some even had a death sentence commuted! I'm not informed or motivated enough to dig into the relative threat levels of these people vs. someone like al-Awlaki, how warfare has changed, al-Qaeda vs. Nazis, the circumstances of their capture, etc. I'll leave it at just noting that we've found a way to not-kill even an American SS officer (Monti), so maybe we can keep that up. Or at least, we can know not all American Nazis were killed "indiscriminately", nor when they were "on a list." (Although, in line with my previous post, I would hope this restraint would not be only because they are citizens.)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_convicted_of_t...
Step 2: Evolve the definition of the world "terrorist" behind the scenes.
We are seeing similar word play in Canada as the word "terrorist" evolves into "radicalized". Of important utility to our government as they attempt to shift public perception of environmentalists over to "radical" or "extreme" due to the prominence of our oil industry. With success expect these sorts of labels to be slowly painted over our Native population in some old fashioned establishment racism.
That might be a little tough, because eco-terrorism is already a thing - I remember the word being used as far back as the early 90s. So they would have to equate participation in the democratic process to burning down housing developments and research facilities, a tall order.
Just... ass.
Lots of "freeman-on-the-land" types are being charged as terrorists. I had two that the CBC was chomping at the bit to sensationalize. Imagine their dismay when it was resolved administratively, without jail time.
For a good example of how they're attacking the Radicals, Google "Dean Clifford" sometime. In jail over a year, even though he keeps beating all his charges.
I hugely admire his morals, and that he lives his life by them so completely. And I agree with a lot of them. But, at least from the vague impression I have based off old (and no-doubt memory-distorted) conversations with him, mainly on IRC, and on news reports in the last couple of years, I'm not too sure "possible terrorist" isn't a fitting label for him. He's always wanted to fight against big chunks of society.
As far as I know he's never committed or planned to commit any violent crime, but his personality and view of the world make me think that he'd be willing to if he thought there was a greater good to come from it. The first thing he was caught and locked up for was stealing 1000s of credit cards from a right-wing website and using them - if I remember correctly, to donate to a charity. Those people who suffered at the hands of his credit card fraud were people he didn't know, but was willing to justify it morally in that they had donated or purchased something from this right wing website. And yes it was a very right-wing site, it was very much within the norms of the American political spectrum, it's not like they were neo-nazis or the KKK.
Maybe I'm doing him a disservice, and maybe the FBI were just abusing terrorism laws to crack down on (relatively-)innocent hackers. But the truth is that if I were in their shoes, Jeremy Hammond would scare me as much as the next plane from Al-Queda.
(And while on the subject of surveillance... I created a fake account from Tor to write this. Can't imagine anyone would really care about my saying I knew him, hell I'm 99% sure he wouldn't even remember my name, but I'd rather not make that tie if it hasn't already been made.)
Example distinct portions of your text you may be reusing "yet alone now", "(I think", "I hugely", "The first". Independently they seem meaningless but taken together they are a loose fingerprint.
(In this case it's pretty irrelevant, fairly sure I could post "I used to know Jeremy Hammond" on my Google+ profile and it not matter. In fact, I'm pretty sure if the FBI ever cared enough about the no-doubt lengthy list of people he's come into contact with over his lifetime then my name is probably already on a list. I didn't want to tie my public name to him anyway, but probably wouldn't have been paranoid enough to move to Tor if I didnt already have it open for some shopping.)
Hammond was arrested for violently protesting a holocaust-denier at a German restaurant in suburban Chicago. He and his companions entered the place wearing masks, apparently threw paint, and then glassware; one person was injured.
He also also plead guilty to battery after he threw red paint at and then struck a police officer in a 2004 gay rights rally.
If your definition of violence includes property damage, he was also arrested for tearing down and burning a Chicago 2016 Olympic campaign banner.
The latter two incidents --- with the cops and the sign --- who gives a shit, I guess. After watching the Chicago NATO protests a few years back, I gained some sympathy for the police and what they face with "Black Bloc" "protestors", but those situations are generally so fucked up and fraught it's hard to confidently take a side; the overwhelming majority of protestors work in good faith.
But the first incident --- storming a restaurant and throwing glassware because they're hosting a private event for a holocaust-denier --- that's unequivocally violent and criminal. The corrective for bad speech is more speech, not violence.
If by "agent provocateurs" you mean "the police sent people in as agents to incite violence", you've lost me.
In any case: none of that could possible apply to the Edelweiss restaurant incident with Hammond.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/terr-m21.html
from Norway, I'm not thinking: great way to support the right to peacefully assemble and protest.
But the examples you give are more like excited teenagers as terrorism. There's a big difference between planning an act of terrorism and planning to protest some little speech and a few of you turning slightly violent by throwing things.
You're right that my statement was probably technically inaccurate (although I don't know if there's evidence he was one of the ones who did anything more than "go there" regarding the holocaust denier, and the gay rights rally without knowing the details I'm just as inclined to assume police brutality as Hammond being violent). But in the context of my comment I was talking violence as relates to terrorism, not petty assaults.
You know, I just watched "citizenfour" -- and one thing stuck with me: when explaining X/Keyscore targeting, Snowden mentions that you can use anything that uniquely identifies you, like an email address or a phone number... or even a password.
Granted HN is served over SSL, so that shouldn't be an issue... but you know -- if you're being overly paranoid, make sure you're paranoid enough that it actually helps ;-)
A paramilitary organization may or may not use tactics of terror, and even if they do, their tactics may be a small part of why they are harmful and relevant.
Under this construct, we can talk about cartels, IS/ISIL, Al Qaeda, IRA, and so on.
And you know how in every large forum, when someone talks about the definition of terrorism, inevitably states also get pulled into the discussion, such as the actions of the US / Russia / China? That's because terrorism is an over-inclusive lens of discussion or perception, which means it requires "discretion" to use the term. It genuinely is wishy-washy.
Terrorism describes the strategy of pinpoint deployment of outlandish violence to coerce policy by generating fear. That's one strategy used by paramilitary organizations, but so is "seize and hold territory" or "persistently disrupt supply lines". Islamist terrorists don't target JFK airport in the hopes of disrupting our military supply lines. They do it to provoke the US public by creating fear.
Having said that: I'm not sure what coherent public policy objective is served by singling out "terrorism" from other violent crimes. At the level of law enforcement, criminal violence if criminal violence whether it be in the service of a bank robbery or a radical animal rights protest.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/boston-...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/18/david-f...
I don't think the Unabomber or Anonymous fits in the same policy discussion as IS or Al Qaeda, because I think these problems suggest very divergent courses of policy. Every time we have to make caveats to our category, every time we must exercise discretion in interpretation, we will find our construct proportionally less robust.
Imagine a government rule which authorizes military action against IS, cartels, or Al Qaeda, including assassinations and characterized by an absence of legal process. Whether or not I agree with this rule, I can accept that it is sensible and potentially productive to at least talk about. I can accept that these groups have common characteristics which behave consistently following military or civilian interventions, thus permitting policy generalizations. I can also see that there is an intuitive connection between the solution and the problem.
What is hard to accept is that Unabomber and Anonymous should be on that same table for discussion, because what the overinclusion of these groups do is move the line of justification to remove legal process a little closer to home, and a little more into the realm of capricious discretion. It's hard to accept that some domestic terrorists are anything like an organization that has revenue streams, human resource management, infrastructure, administration, a paramilitary force, and so on, and so it's hard to connect the solution to the problem.
Of course, behind all of this is the assumption that terrorist organizations are so mighty that they have graduated beyond the class of criminal and into sub-state actor, and that ordinary civilian instruments are totally inadequate, and that military solutions are the only effective solutions.
[0] https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule4
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Military_Reser...
Some guy fucking with you, is what our government has descended to.
DO NOT ADVISE THIS INDIVIDUAL THAT THEY MAY BE ON A TERRORIST WATCHLIST.
CONTACT THE TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER AT [REDACTED] DURING THIS ENCOUNTER.
IF THIS WOULD EXTEND THE SCOPE OR DURATION OF THE ENCOUNTER, CONTACT THE TSC
IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER. IF YOU ARE A BORDER PATROL OFFICER, IMMEDIATELY
CALL THE NTC.
ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN SUFFICIENT IDENTIFYING INFORMATION DURING THE ENCOUNTER,
WITHOUT OTHERWISE EXTENDING THE SCOPE OR DURATION OF THE ENCOUNTER, TO ASSIST THE
TSC IN DETERMINING WHETHER OR NOT THE NAME OR IDENTIFIER(S) YOU QUERIED BELONGS
TO AN INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFIED AS HAVING POSSIBLE TIES WITH TERRORISM.
DO NOT DETAIN OR ARREST THIS INDIVIDUAL UNLESS THERE IS EVIDENCE OF A VIOLATION OF
FEDERAL, STATE, OR LOCAL STATUTE(S).
First, this looks like boilerplate text. If so, "DO NOT ADVISE..." means, in general, "do not advise anyone on a terrorist watchlist that they are on the watchlist". That text would make sense if, for instance, this is what an LEO sees on their MDT screen when they look up someone's identity. Counterterrorist workers want to collect information from LEOs, so they need to flag people to get reports --- but they don't want that to come at the expense of tipping off terrorism subjects that they're under investigation. That's a warning that might make a lot of public policy sense when the FBI is tracking Abdul Kadir and his plot to blow up JFK, but not as much sense for Jeremy Hammond.
The all-caps text and awkward structure of the prose sort of suggests that's what this is: the stuff that shows up on the cop's MDT screen when they run someone's identity and they've been flagged.
Second, each of the three paragraphs in this notice to LEOs directs the officer not to detain the subject based on the notice. Presumably that's because doing so can generate evidence that will then be excluded at trial, because merely being on a watchlist does not provide the police with probable cause to search or arrest.
Finally, people should remember that while our immediate association to the word "terrorism" is 9/11 and Islamist militants, the FBI tracks a pretty broad range of domestic terrorist groups --- including parts of the militia movement, radical animal rights groups, white supremacist groups, and "anarchist extremists", a category they surely didn't make up for Hammond, but which Hammond could easily have fallen into.
(In case it needs saying, while it may once have been the case in the '60s and '70s that there were radical anarchist groups that merited special tracking at a national level, I do not think the "anarchist extremists" of 2015 --- even the ones who try to scare the horses the mounted police are riding at the NATO protests --- qualify as "terrorists". The separatist militia movement, though? I'm glad we're calling them what they are.)
Or, at least it did, before they moved from Reston to Vienna.
> A decade ago I knew Jeremy, a very little. Not enough to be particularly interesting even then, yet alone now, and I haven't spoken to him since he went to jail for the first time (I think around 2005).
> (And while on the subject of surveillance... I created a fake account from Tor to write this. Can't imagine anyone would really care about my saying I knew him, hell I'm 99% sure he wouldn't even remember my name, but I'd rather not make that tie if it hasn't already been made.)
I think this illustrates the real concern a lot of people may have over this story than the hair-splitting semantics about defining the word "terrorist".
How do we know who's labeled a terrorist and who isn't?
What if we're associated with someone on a terror watch list without knowing this?
What if you're on a watch list and don't know it?
What recourse do any of us have?
That doesn't mean the lists aren't fraught or regularly abused. For instance, you surely cross a line from "legitimate investigative tool" to "tool of oppression" when the watchlist ensures you get an extra hour of screening at the TSA checkpoint.
Fair enough.
> That doesn't mean the lists aren't fraught or regularly abused. For instance, you surely cross a line from "legitimate investigative tool" to "tool of oppression" when the watchlist ensures you get an extra hour of screening at the TSA checkpoint.
At this point, I want to say, "What can be done about this abuse?!" but I don't really have any answers. The best we can hope for is some form of independent oversight from someone who can remain some degree of objectively neutral (which is to say, not buddy-buddy with law enforcement), but who also can be trusted not to leak stuff to the press.
I dunno, does anyone have better ideas? This is way outside of my comfort zone.
Please elaborate. I have not heard this specific definition.
I'm pretty certain American revolutionaries used violence and intimidation against British soldiers and British property in the pursuit of political aims.
Do you disagree?
Read that line again - I don't consider actions (leading to or during a full scale conflict) against opposing soldiers as terrorism in the "modern sense" of the word.
Yes war is terror, terrorizing and many invading armies throughout history have used "terror" as part of their strategy.
I feel as though we are drifting too far from useful discussion - I will disengage with respect.
All while burning down a harbor.
https://www.google.no/search?q=american+war+freedom+united+kingdomIt may not seem like terrorism in the typical sense you think, but disrupting computer systems randomly and maliciously is a type of terrorism.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to consider this particular individual a type of terrorist based on his actions. ( see other comments about his additional violent actions and suggestions )
If you think you can go around doing whatever you want with computers, and not have the government add you to a number of lists, then you are in some serious denial.
An alternative example: I don't hack random people, nor do I advocate violence, but I recently purchased some aluminum powder and red iron oxide off the internet. If I was added to the watchlist just for purchasing those substances, then -that- would be much more ridiculous.
But the the government is entitled to do whatever it wants with computers why?
> If I was added to the watchlist just for purchasing those substances, then -that- would be much more ridiculous.
Maybe that's already the case. We don't even know how many lists of this nature exist let alone why people are put on them.
So hacking is equivalent to murdering people via bombs? Are protests that disrupt traffic also terrorism?
This person has no respect for government, and maliciously and repeatedly breaks laws put in place to protect the citizens.
Terrorism literally means to cause terror. People get pretty terrified when people steal and abuse all of their information.
Also, hacking can and does cause death. Consider what happens if you hack into the computers at a drugstore and change the prescriptions to give people the wrong drugs. Terrorism?
If he only causes economic harm, I could be convinced that he can still be guilty of: destruction of property, computer fraud and perhaps sabotage. But terrorism?
Depending on what was hacked. Anonymous on occasion challenged the notion of "activism" and indirectly endangered human lives. The mastercard hack would have been quiet scary for people whose, on the day, lives depended on their card.
Does that make them terrorists? No. It does place them into the exact gray area that they decided to act in, they are neither activist nor terrorist: rather something in-between.
Does that justify putting Jeremy on the watchlist? Just like his actions, it's a gray area, there is no good answer.
There is no right or wrong here, nor does there have to be. Anonymous's actions were often ignorant and dangerous: don't make yourself the same by blindly defending everything that they did. These are difficult questions, spend more time thinking about them before trying to answer them.
This comment would be better without that first sentence. Personal attacks are not ok on Hacker News, regardless of how wrong someone may be.
Consider how angry you are reacting to me; then consider how angry you would be if someone zeroed out your bank account by hacking. Do you still think people who engage in malicious hacking should be allowed to do what they do without being added to some lists of people who should be dealt with?
"Terrorists should be dealt with through our criminal justice system, including the presumption of innocence. If someone is a terrorist, I would be upset and want them to be prosecuted, but we don't need to call them names to do that."
All you are really doing is stating that criminals are not terrorists. The entire thread is arguing that the person in question is not a terrorist.
The thing everyone is ignoring here is that what you call someone is irrelevant. I could call you a terrorist, and it won't matter at all. It's just my personal statement and opinion. All that matter is the consequences.
What are the actual consequences of being added to the "terrorist watch list?" What I've always thought is that it means you cannot fly. Is there some other consequence?
We may be jumping to conclusions when we suggest that Hammond's inclusion on a watchlist means that the FBI views Anonymous as a terrorist group. What he did with Anonymous is surely what got their attention, but his other affiliations seem like a more likely grounds for being added to a list of people to flag.
Are you paid to advance such obvious crap? Are you posting against what you believe to try and stir up action? Are you trying to curry favour and get government contracts? It just doesn't make a lot of sense play the apologist so badly.
You put a lot of work into responding to these threads, I am asking why.
-- edit re-read the thread for a third time. What fnordfnordfnord has said is clearly entirely justified.
fnordfnordfnord is clearly correct.
Justifying putting someone on a terrorist list by the accusation of an assault happening is just ridiculous, which is precisely what you did.
But you haven't answered why you spend so much time sprouting this kind of utter rubbish on all these threads. How many posts did you make on this topic alone?
What is your motive. You just want to spend hours defending the USG with obvious garbage like this out of patriotic duty? Is that it? What is it?
Keep on downvoting, it doesn't change the content.
And you think that was by design. A guy said "Hey, I think I'll go ruin their books and their dinner, and then I'll maim one of them half to death pour encourager les autres? No, someone fell on broken dinnerware and received a cut(s).
>We don't consider the substance of their positions when we rightfully send them to prison for doing that.
We do, according to you. That's exactly what we're doing when we maintain terrorist watch lists of people who have committed no crimes, or when the crimes are as minor as this dinner crashing, or the Olympic flag burning. In the dinner crashing, tellingly, Hammond was found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to four days in jail.
>The antidote to bad speech is more speech, not violence.
I'm not making a unqualified defense of Hammond's behavior. I'm saying that it isn't terrorism.
On this particular subthread, I'm pointing out that Hammond's inclusion in a watchlist doesn't necessarily mean that Anonymous is a terrorist group (obviously, I don't think it is). He had other affiliations that freaked the USG out. As I've said elsewhere on the thread, this being 2015 and not 1970, I don't think the USG has a reasonable fear that "anarchist extremists" are terrorist groups.