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Posted by duxup 5 hours ago

FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE(www.nbcnews.com)
287 points | 276 commentspage 2
hypeatei 1 hour ago|
I'm convinced all this talk around Signal, including Hegseths fuckup, is to discourage "normies" (for lack of a better term) from using it. Even in this very HN thread, where you'd expect technical nuance, there are people spreading FUD around the phone number requirement as if that'd be your downfall... a timestamp and a phone number? How would that get someone convicted in court?
pjc50 7 minutes ago|
They don't have to get a conviction if they know your address and have a gun.
cdrnsf 2 hours ago||
They're going to give this more scrutiny than they did to Hegseth leaking sensitive government information.
bediger4000 4 hours ago||
Why? That's unequivocally constitutionally protected speech. Why is our tax money being wasted on this?
afavour 2 hours ago||
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.
JoshTriplett 1 hour ago|||
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"

tptacek 2 hours ago|||
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.
janalsncm 2 hours ago|||
Yeah whenever people say “the first amendment is not a freedom from consequences” it is only a freedom from certain consequences (and that freedom only goes as far as the government is willing to protect it). It is a freedom from being convicted. They can still arrest you, you can still spend time in jail, prosecutors can even file charges. A court is supposed to throw those charges out. And in extreme cases you can be convicted and sent to prison for years before SCOTUS rules.
tptacek 2 hours ago||
Nobody has been charged.
jakelazaroff 1 hour ago||
I think GP is speaking generally, not with regard to this situation specifically; obviously people have been charged for constitutionally-protected speech before.
andreygrehov 2 hours ago|||
No. According to the latest reports, while searching for ICE vehicles, the protesters are unlawfully scanning license plates, which strongly suggests they are receiving insider help.
janalsncm 2 hours ago|||
Can you rule out the much less technically advanced explanation that this information was crowdsourced? And people are simply observing the license plates that are plainly displayed?

Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.

andreygrehov 2 hours ago||
No, I cannot. One of the undercover journalists was in their group for days.

> Frankly I don’t think it should have to come to license plate numbers. In a free society law enforcement should clearly identify themselves as such. We should not need secret police.

None of that matters _today_, because _today_ the law is different.

janalsncm 1 hour ago||
What the law is, is a question for lawyers. What the law should be is a question for the people.

For example, a lot of people thought it was wrong that federal agents could cover their faces. Sacramento agreed. Now there is a law preventing it.

derbOac 2 hours ago|||
"Unlawfully scanning license plates"? What does that even mean?

Like searching a vehicle database? That's available to all sorts of people, like auto body repair shops.

Taking a photo of a license plate? Nothing illegal about that.

andreygrehov 2 hours ago||
You're confusing 'seeing a license plate' with 'querying restricted databases'.

Taking a photo is legal. Running plates through law-enforcement/ALPR systems is not, and auto body shops don't have that access.

Real-time identification != observation - it implies unauthorized data access.

plorg 48 minutes ago|||
Journalists doing ride alongs have already identified the system and it doesn't really on "restricted databases", they rely on observation and multiple attestation. In any case, there are indeed commercial services for looking up license plate data, and they rely on watching the notices that are published when you register your vehicle. It's the same reason why you receive all sorts of scammy warranty "notices" when you buy a car.

In fact the first clue that they look for is having Illinois Permanent plates because that is a strong indicator that they are using rental vehicles. That doesn't take a database, it's just a strong signal that can be confirmed by other evidence.

rhcom2 19 minutes ago||||
There is no evidence of this at all.
paganel 1 hour ago|||
> through law-enforcement/ALPR systems

Were they doing that? I haven't read the article, that's why I'm asking.

andreygrehov 1 hour ago||
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/minnesota-signal-gate-di...
plorg 28 minutes ago|||
I don't know what they think they're doing there. If the most interesting thing they found was the public website leading to a fundraising platform for mutual aid a) there is literally nothing illegal there, and b) you can find that website linked to publicly by conservatively 25% of the twin cities population. It's literally the most prominent fundraising website anyone has been posting.
janalsncm 1 hour ago|||
I don’t see anything there about querying license plate databases. There is a spreadsheet of donors to some kind of organization.
andreygrehov 1 hour ago||
https://x.com/camhigby/status/2015093635096658172

Also, what is the outrage about? This administration has deported the least number of people compared to all previous administrations. Obama deported 3.1 million people, ten times more than Trump today. Same ICE, same border patrol.

rhcom2 20 minutes ago||
It literally say it is a crowdsourced list... a completely legal activity. If you can't figure out what the outrage is about after Alex Pretti and Renée Good then you're being intentionally obtuse.
hackyhacky 4 hours ago|||
When has the constitution mattered to this administration?
Sparkle-san 4 hours ago|||
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.
PrettiGoodDead 4 hours ago||
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spankalee 4 hours ago||
Yes - very, very dumb people did vote for him.
therobots927 4 hours ago|||
The fascists won. That’s why.
JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago|||
No, they haven’t. This kind of advocacy crosses from lazy nihilism to negligence.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago||||
> > > Why is our tax money being wasted on this?

> > The fascists won. That’s why?

> No, they haven’t.

Yes, they did, that’s why they are able to use the executive branch of the federal government to enforce their wishes at the moment, with virtually no constraint yet from the legislative branch, and no significant consequences yet for ignoring contrary orders from the judicial branch.

They may lose at some point in the future, but something that might happen in the future is irrelevant to the question of why what is happening now is happening, and it is happening because they won. Unambiguously.

SR2Z 2 hours ago||
They are not able to enforce their will unchecked. The legislature is more than willing to turn on Trump when he crosses the line, hence the whole idea of "TACO."

The fascists haven't won because if they did, they would be killing a lot more dissidents in the street. They killed two and the public outcry is so angry that Kristi Noem might be impeached. Democrats are willing to shut down the government to starve ICE if they have to. Even GOP legislators are criticizing Trump, which is a dangerous activity for any Republican looking to keep their seat.

micromacrofoot 2 hours ago|||
Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot. No one is being prosecuted for the murders, and in fact at least one investigator has quit their career position in the FBI for being asked to bury it.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of meaningful checks.

dragonwriter 1 hour ago||
> Impeached and replaced with someone just as bad. This just happened with Tom Homan getting Bongino's spot

Bovino (Border Patrol “at large” Commander who may or may not have lost that title and been returned to his sector command), not Bongino (the podcaster-turned-FBI Deputy Director who resigned to go back to podcasting), and Homan didn't get Bovino’s job, only his spotlight (he was already the head of border policy for the White House.)

therobots927 3 hours ago|||
I should’ve clarified. They won the 2024 election. And the democrats are controlled opposition who take money from fascists. For all intents and purposes they have won. That may not be a permanent state of affairs.
JohnFen 3 hours ago|||
I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago||
> I don't think it makes sense to call winners and losers before the battle is anywhere close to being over.

I don't think it makes sense to reject an explanation of current events grounded in a battle that is clearly over having been won and the victor using the ground they’ve gained to produce the events being discussed merelt because the broader war isn’t over and that victor may potentially lose some subsequent battle.

s1artibartfast 3 minutes ago||
Yes, won that battle but not the war.

I think the dissent is about the latter. It's not over yet, so people should not give up.

The root comment clearly has ambiguity that people take both ways.

ActorNightly 2 hours ago|||
>And the democrats are controlled opposition who take money from fascists

Democrats, being generally way more in favor of law and order, keep themselves in check, and as a result, just simply can't compete with Republicans that unilaterally rally behind the president no matter what he does.

My hope is that we see someone like Gavin Newsom be as bombastic as Trump, not caring about optics of his own party and not afraid to sling shit on any Dem that opposes him, whether true or not.

thunderfork 30 minutes ago|||
Given that Newsom was on a podcast just last week caving to even the slightest pushback, I wouldn't count on him to be bombastic to anyone. He's 100% optics-driven-cowardice.
stronglikedan 2 hours ago|||
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ActorNightly 2 hours ago||
Why even bother replying

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MiiMe19 1 hour ago|||
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PrettiGoodDead 4 hours ago|||
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randallsquared 4 hours ago|||
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.
neogodless 4 hours ago|||
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

Are you pro or against this?

mycodendral 2 hours ago||
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.

nkohari 1 hour ago||
You keep commenting to cite this statute when you clearly have not actually read what it says. Peaceful protest is explicitly protected by the first amendment.
JKCalhoun 4 hours ago|||
Interesting that there would be people on a "side" that think there was a conspiracy to commit a crime. What crime?
direwolf20 2 hours ago|||
Interference with a law enforcement investigation?
rexpop 2 hours ago||||
It's a crime.

What do you have against crime?

Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.

mycodendral 2 hours ago||||
18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer
baerrie 1 hour ago||
This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech. If all info could be interpreted as impediments to federal officers then phones, the internet, the human voice, etc would be illegal
PrettiGoodDead 4 hours ago|||
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mrtesthah 4 hours ago||
We already know that "doxxing" on its own is not a crime, and moreover that [non-undercover] federal agents are not entitled to keep their identities secret.

We also know that legal observation and making noise does not constitute interference.

So those may be their stated reasons, but they will not hold up in court.

mycodendral 2 hours ago|||
Federal felony, not free speech.

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

derbOac 2 hours ago|||
There's been lots of legal writing pointing out these statutes basically refer to impeding an officer by threat or physical force, which that statute you cite states. It doesn't refer to anything about providing food to someone who is fearing for their lives and won't leave the home, or communicating about the publicly observed whereabouts of law enforcement.
kennywinker 1 hour ago||||
Are these federal officers? They’re men in masks with camo and body armor kidnapping people off the streets and refusing to show identification beyond a patch that says “ICE”.

That is who is alleged to be impeded.

OhMeadhbh 1 hour ago||||
Sure, but you should read what "impede" and "interfere" mean both in the regs and court precedent. Following ICE agents around is neither impeding or interfering by current federal court definitions. But yeah... that can change quickly.
janalsncm 2 hours ago|||
“Free speech” is a concept not a law. The first amendment protects certain types of speech. Whether something is free speech or not does not depend on the US government’s opinion or the Chinese government or your mother in law.

Publishing locations alone is not conspiracy to commit a crime. If ICE is impeded as a result of this information, that’s not enough. Conspiracy requires the government to prove that multiple people intended to impede them.

spiderice 2 hours ago||
Which is probably the easiest thing ever to prove, since people are openly trying to impede them
poplarsol 2 hours ago||
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".
OhMeadhbh 1 hour ago|||
Actually... making noise in a neighborhood is constitutionally protected speech (as I have learned when my neighbors crank the sub-par disco up to 11.)
poplarsol 9 minutes ago||
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.72
kennywinker 1 hour ago|||
The “arrests” are being done in a deeply unconstitutional way. Acting to uphold the constitution is beyond speech, it’s a duty of all americans.
quickthrowman 2 hours ago||
I’d be curious to know what they plan to charge people with.
netsharc 2 hours ago||
Jaywalking, misappropriating funds during a renovation? Whatever the police state wants...
Pwntastic 2 hours ago|||
domestic terrorism, of course
q34tlR4y 1 hour ago||
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mycodendral 2 hours ago|||
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

nkohari 1 hour ago|||
> by force, intimidation, or threat

You seem to be glossing over the key piece of that statute. Peaceful protest is protected by the first amendment (free speech, right to assembly).

advisedwang 2 hours ago|||
The article subhead implies obstruction of justice.
jihadjihad 2 hours ago|||
Coming soon, treason.
mothballed 2 hours ago|||
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.

sjsdaiuasgdia 1 hour ago||
If you have no reason to believe it's true, and understand the rumor to be unsubstantiated, why bother to spread it?
mothballed 1 hour ago||
Because the question was what they might be charged with, not what they did.

Did you expect the government to charge people in good faith? It doesn't matter it if it's true or not, even putting them in the slammer for a long time while awaiting trial and forcing them to hire expensive attorneys is a win.

sjsdaiuasgdia 1 hour ago||
No, I don't expect the Trump administration to operate in good faith.

The post you replied to didn't ask what they might be charged with. It asked what they "plan" to charge.

And you replied with internet rumor nonsense. It's actually fine to say "I don't know" or simply not reply at all when someone asks a question to which you do not have an answer.

hsbauauvhabzb 2 hours ago|||
They don’t need to if they just shoot them on the street.
lenerdenator 2 hours ago|||
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.

adrr 2 hours ago|||
Terrorism seems to be their default claim if you're against the Trump admin.
q34tlR4y 1 hour ago|||
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missingcolours 2 hours ago|||
Presumably Seditious Conspiracy, like many people involved in J6. Conspiracy to use force to prevent or delay enforcement of laws.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago|||
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.
cdrnsf 2 hours ago||
Not voting for them.
JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago||
I’ve never seen a set of voluntary fall guys like Noem, Patel and Miller. (And Hegseth for when a military operation fails.)
ourmandave 1 hour ago||
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.
metalliqaz 2 hours ago|||
Miller is not the fall guy. The other clowns, yes, but not him. He's the most hard-core fascist in the bunch.
lenerdenator 2 hours ago||
I don't know if I'd classify Noem as a patsy or fall gal, either.

When you mention an anecdote about shooting a hunting dog in your autobiography, that shows something beyond just being a "true believer" or stooge. That is willingly pointing out that you are willing to act out your lack of empathy through violence towards an animal.

I'm not a clinician (and haven't met Noem) but that just seems to me to be something indicative of a personality disorder.

spprashant 1 hour ago|||
She's an opportunist. For someone like her to be nationally relevant they have to latch onto MAGA and embrace the crazy. See MTG, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz.
lenerdenator 38 minutes ago||
To me, those people you list are absolutely opportunists, but there's just something different about Noem. Like they're hedonists who are engaging in a grift and know that they have to sling arrows that will own the libs in order to keep the gravy train rolling. MTG seems to have, at least for a while a few months ago, found her limit on what she'll put up with. Gaetz had at least enough shame/self-awareness to realize that his continued career was untenable at the time he was being considered for AG. Boebert's the girl who told your science teacher to go fuck himself when he caught her smoking behind the high school gym with her age-inappropriate boyfriend.

Maybe I'm just really hung up on the dog thing, but that is the crux of it. There's basically no one who hears a story of shooting a dog for misbehaving and thinks, "yeah, that'll show the libs". That's not a story out of a politician's biography as much as it is a story out of a book profiling a serial killer's childhood.

71% of American households have pets [0] and there's a good chance that those who don't have had at least one in the past. There was absolutely no benefit to including that in the book, and I'd be stunned if the publisher didn't at least try to talk her out of putting it in there, given her political ambitions. If they didn't try to get it cut, they didn't do their jobs; if she ignored them, then she really does display a tendency to take pride in behavior that is recognized across the political spectrum in American society as cruel and antisocial.

She genuinely gives me the creeps.

[0] https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/pet-ownership-sta...

xmcp123 1 hour ago|||
Noem strikes me as a loyalist and a team player through and through, so probably a fall gal.

Miller is different. He has his own agenda, a lot of which has becomes trumps agenda. But trumps agenda changing does not change what Miller’s agenda is.

cmrdporcupine 51 minutes ago||
Trump has loyalty only to himself and in his first term was constantly throwing people under the bus after he decided they were a liability to the Main Character.

I could imagine we'll see the same thing again, before or after the midterms, and Miller and Bessent are two I expect to see have a dethroning at some point simply on account of Trump never taking responsibility for anything.

That and I've seen both try to speak "on behalf" of Trump, something the authoritarian personality doesn't appreciate.

However some of that logic is based on 1st round Trump not being as senile and insane as 2nd round Trump. It's possible his weakening cognitive faculties have made him even more open to manipulation.

xmcp123 13 minutes ago|||
Honestly Miller strikes me different. It’s not coincidence he’s survived so long.

He’s not an idiot. He knows how much damage he can absorb and how to position himself to not take more than that. He never positions himself as the implementation person who will take the hits. He’s the idea guy, and the manipulator/cheerleader. He doesn’t seem to expect trump to take care of him for his loyalty, so he doesn’t position himself to require it.

I think ultimately he won’t be thrown under the bus because his relationship with Trump is mutually beneficial, and they both see it as transactional. For both of them, the other is a means to an end. Soul mates in hell I guess.

metalliqaz 41 minutes ago|||
From the outside it seems like he is so far gone that his inner circle is actually making all the decisions now.
superkuh 4 hours ago||
Tracking the murderers who executed citizens in the street and then fled the scene of the crime and any sort of trial or investigation? That ICE and Immigration and Border Patrol? I wonder why. And since when is tracking public officials operating in public in the capacity of their government jobs illegal?

These federal goons need to be tracked and observed to record their crimes. That much is indisputable.

stuffn 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
hackyhacky 4 hours ago|||
Are you holding up some random unverified substack, featuring an obvious AI-generated photo, as a reliable source of information?

> You should probably read the original source before taking the opinion of your favorite pundit.

This is not an "original source" of the article in question.

stuffn 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
Psillisp 4 hours ago||
Great add
superkuh 4 hours ago|||
And you need to watch the videos but I imagine the cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.
direwolf20 2 hours ago|||
When Trump saw the video of Renee Good's execution, he faltered. He hadn't seen that before.
stuffn 4 hours ago|||
[flagged]
hobs 4 hours ago||
No, the ones on broadcast television news where they go scene by scene breaking down any claims of Alex being at fault being bogus lies that you are now repeating.
OrvalWintermute 4 hours ago|||
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q34tlR4y 1 hour ago||
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q34tlR4y 1 hour ago||
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dang 2 hours ago||
Url changed from https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kash-patel-..., which points to this.
fleroviumna 4 hours ago|
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