Top
Best
New

Posted by root-parent 1 hour ago

Amazon, Facebook, FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network(prismreports.org)
278 points | 90 comments
baddash 3 minutes ago|
My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:

1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.

2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.

3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.

4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?

Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.

aliasxneo 1 hour ago||
> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.

That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.

giancarlostoro 1 hour ago||
4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.
errendgame 34 minutes ago|||
For people like me who had no idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
skrebbel 15 minutes ago|||
That was amazing. I once witnessed a protest like that, in Hannover Germany I think. The idea of 4chan people actually going up the stairs and out of the house into the open air and talking to people, like with molecules and sound waves and all that stuff, it still blows my mind.
picsao 8 minutes ago|||
[dead]
marcosdumay 1 hour ago|||
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
reaperducer 14 minutes ago|||
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.

There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.

I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.

psychoslave 51 minutes ago||||
Such a low level of expectation of ethical level for non human beings is not fair.
coliveira 1 hour ago|||
Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
colechristensen 1 hour ago|||
Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.

Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.

CGMthrowaway 27 minutes ago||
That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
colechristensen 22 minutes ago||
No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
sysguest 1 hour ago|||
damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...

I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?

sidewndr46 54 minutes ago||
people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.

But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.

hydrogen7800 34 minutes ago|||
This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
psychoslave 48 minutes ago|||
Religion is all about social function, at least from social science perceptives I guess.
QuercusMax 1 hour ago||
Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.
futuraperdita 1 hour ago|||
Infiltration of government institutions has been doctrine for the group since the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Deprogrammer9 56 minutes ago||||
Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs
stronglikedan 17 minutes ago||
Man, I wish something like this would have happened to me when I was younger and spunkier. For years, I've had so many scenarios planned in my head for how something like that would play out! Even today, I might not just ignore it even though my propensity to give fucks has waned over the years.
joe_the_user 55 minutes ago||||
It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.

But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).

QuercusMax 45 minutes ago||
Now I want to play Steve Jackson's Illuminati...

https://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/

acidhousemcnab 1 hour ago|||
Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.
red-iron-pine 3 minutes ago||
the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example
whimsicalism 58 minutes ago||
Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing

> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”

jedahan 51 minutes ago||
That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.
whimsicalism 48 minutes ago||
I encourage people imagining this as some high-scale surveillance dragnet to look at the Seattle Shield website and form their opinions https://seattleshield.org/default.aspx?MenuItemID=53&MenuGro...
jedahan 9 minutes ago||
Not sure if you meant to reply here?
shevy-java 52 minutes ago||
You have Trump. You see how he is surrounded by the superrich.

You have Palantir.

You still think this is "sensationalist"? I don't think so. The assumption here is that you wish to isolate this onto Seattle only. I think this is global instead. By focusing only on Seattle we lose the wider picture. Anyone remembers how people were surprised that Facebook connects offline-data to accounts? It's why they are more accurately called Spybook.

whimsicalism 50 minutes ago||
Interesting. You should write an article about this and post it on HN. This article is about an unfunded website run by someone at the Seattle PD.
jedahan 49 minutes ago||
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
6thbit 33 minutes ago||
If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?

If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?

Are there really ways out?

jedahan 6 minutes ago|||
Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
Barbing 12 minutes ago||||
> Are there really ways out?

Not with that attitude

pamcake 28 minutes ago||||
Are those things you are personally struggling with with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this rationalization at play?
croes 30 minutes ago|||
No

Yes

Maybe

Manuel_D 21 minutes ago|||
Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?

This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.

stronglikedan 13 minutes ago||
If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
red-iron-pine 1 minute ago|||
this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
ozozozd 5 minutes ago||||
So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”

Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.

jedahan 8 minutes ago|||
This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
sailfast 6 minutes ago||
I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.

Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?

tinix 47 minutes ago||
> All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.

  the number of times I've been harassed by police for taking photos... even in small towns in the middle of nowhere people are paranoid.
neoCrimeLabs 40 minutes ago||
I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/chronic...

Zhenya 19 minutes ago||
“ The notice lists a few examples of attacks on Jewish targets in other U.S. cities last year; it does not mention widespread anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian attacks throughout the country.”

Why would it mention it on an anniversary of an attack on Israel?

Bias alert!

lorecore 8 minutes ago|
Why would an attack on Israel warrant spying on US citizens? We are not Israel and our government should not be working for Israeli interests.
red-iron-pine 51 seconds ago||
you're not gonna believe this
ensen 1 hour ago||
archive that won't hijack your back button https://archive.is/Td9AR
andrybak 54 minutes ago||
archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog. This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
arcanemachiner 3 minutes ago||
Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.
Cider9986 58 minutes ago|||
Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.
PcChip 1 hour ago||
Why do our browsers even allow that?
herpdyderp 1 hour ago|||
When done properly you don't even notice! It is very beneficial when needed. But, as we know, very awful when done improperly.
nofunsir 7 minutes ago||
> When done properly you don't even notice!

This lame argument should be added to the List of Fallacies. It's used everywhere as a "wild card" argument.

> Makeup

> MLB Pitch Framing by catchers

> Surveillance States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies?useskin=vect...

sheept 1 hour ago||||
For websites like Gmail when you open an email
hkt 1 hour ago|||
To enable JavaScript crapware
codezero 1 hour ago||
Have a look at your local branch here: https://globalshieldnetwork.com/programs-2/
rc_kas 1 hour ago|
Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.

:(

jp_sc 36 minutes ago||
Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?
1234letshaveatw 55 minutes ago||
established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"
More comments...