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Secret docs reveal: an FBI with vast hidden powers
- coldcode 10y agoNone of this should be surprising after 9-11 and the Patriot Act.
- danielschonfeld 10y agothat! and yet nobody is willing to revisit that topic
- Mtinie 10y agoPeople are willing to revisit it but it ends up ending in one side of the debate yelling "BECAUSE TERRORISM!" and then plugging their ears as to not listen to a response. Mind you, the "one side" isn't a particular political party, it's both, depending on the context that lead up to the discussion.
- ashark 10y agoAny politician who supports weakening surveillance or anti-terrorism measures will be out on their ass as soon as there's another attack (maybe sooner). And there's always another attack. Unless that's the only issue they care about they're not going to sacrifice the possibility of advancing other parts of their agenda to commit political suicide over it.
- beamatronic 10y agoIt saddens me that we are still reacting to 9/11
- CalChris 10y agoOsama bin Laden predicted that America would overreact. https://www.odni.gov/files/documents/ubl/english/Letter%20to%20the%20American%20people.pdf https://www.odni.gov/files/documents/ubl/english/Letter%20to...
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAt this point I'd call this not just overreaction, but an acute case of autoimmune disease.
- szupie 10y agoIt looks like you are supplying the linked document as a reference to support the statement that “Osama bin Laden predicted that America would overreact.” However, I am having trouble figuring out the connection between the linked document and the statement. The document is from some time after 2009, as it makes references to Obama delaying the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. I failed to find any passage where he references previous statements he made in the past. From these observations, I am guessing that the prediction you are talking about is of some overreaction that takes place some time after 2009. However, I am failing to find this prediction of overreaction you are referring to in the document. I’m assuming that’s a failure on my part to read between the lines in bin Laden’s writing, and I’m hoping you could clarify that.
- CalChris 10y agoYes, you are right about the link which is more about OBL's thinking at that point. I had read something else back in 2003-5 whenever (NYTimes?) that was a prediction that America would overreact. And I can't find it. And searching through OBL's writings isn't easy.
- andy318 10y agoThis article does not reference a source for the quote but author writes this about Osama - "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them. “Bleeding the U.S.,” in his words. The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap." http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/osamas-ghost/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/osamas-ghost...
- CaptSpify 10y ago
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoTerrorism works.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoand no one will be surprised when you all continue to cower and do nothing just like you did then. you're all idiots.
- josephpmay 10y agoThis article is part of a massive 17-part drop about the FBI from The Intercept today. Wow. https://theintercept.com/series/the-fbis-secret-rules/ https://theintercept.com/series/the-fbis-secret-rules/
- overcast 10y agoWhat is going on with that page scrolling, picture changing insanity.
- news_to_me 10y agoHover state on an article changes the background. Took me a minute to figure out, def distracting.
- b2600 10y agoJust started diving into it. It's fascinating from a bureaucratic, administrative, and operational perspective. --we have to increase CI/Intelligence capability or we'll lose primacy to another agency-- Paraphrasing
- masonic 10y agoNote that Intercept claims to have been sitting on this content since "before the election" yet holds it for a massive flood in the first week of the new Administration.
- theWatcher37 10y agoThis seriously impacts my trust in them
- bainsfather 10y ago> Note that Intercept claims to have been sitting on this content since "before the election" Where do they say that? I don't see it in this article. Thanks.
- mmcwilliams 10y ago
- alrs 10y agoAnyone who thinks Trump is the problem is missing the mark: An imperial presidency with an unchecked intelligence apparatus is a systemic problem that inevitably led to this. If one person can pervert a system, that system sucks.
- news_to_me 10y agoIf there's any silver lining in all this, it's that Trump and the alt-right aren't moving in the shadows anymore, and they're moving too quickly. If this keeps up, surely there must be a breaking point when Congress and the people are too alienated.
- amr 10y agothere is the possibility of the breaking point coming too late.
- civilian 10y agoUh, that's not the silver lining from my POV. The silver lining is that liberals will realize that maybe limited government is a good thing, because they can't always rely on their person being in power.
- smcg 10y agoBigger government works when the systems of checks and balances work. In this case the courts failed to uphold the constitution and strike down the expansions of unlawful surveillance powers.
- Esau 10y agoLook at what can be accomplished with some fear-mongering and millions of apathetic citizens. The intelligence community must be so proud of themselves.
- pmarreck 10y agoAt the risk of invoking the genetic fallacy, beware of far-left and far-right sources of information: http://www.allsides.com/news-source/intercept http://www.allsides.com/news-source/intercept
- pmarreck 10y agoWhy am I getting downvoted? What is the rationale?
- tastythrowaway2 10y agomy guess would be that the source you cite is not a reputable measure of bias.
- anonbanker 10y agoAnd yet, the list of news media that biases "Right" seems to be pretty accurate, despite the big disclaimer at the top of the page. Are you disputing the data, or the concept that you can accurately measure bias?
- pmarreck 10y agoIt seems to sanity-check on every other source I look up, and its methods seem sound enough
- kelnos 10y agoIn addition to what the sibling says, if you actually read the bit on the page you linked, it says their source for their determination is "secondary research" and their confidence in it is "low".
- fulafel 10y agoYour comment is non-sensical because The Intercept is pretty well known to HN readers and it's common sense that it's not a far-right or far-left media. Your link doesn't help either: it doesn't support your implied claim that TI is far-left or far-right.
- caf 10y ago...the FBI’s so-called Type 5 assessments — through which federal agents have authority to investigate people in the United States who are not suspected of having committed crimes, but who, in a federal agent’s opinion, could be recruited as informants. In light of this, is anyone who has confidently declared "my personal threat model doesn't include nation-states" reconsidering?
- trendia 10y agoSometimes excluding nation states from your threat model gives you a blissful ignorance. After all, proper computer security protocol isn't going to protect you from being disappeared.
- caf 10y agoLet's get real, though - innocent people aren't being disappeared because they don't want to be CIs. On the other hand, "it'd be a shame if your wife saw these messages to your old girlfriend" doesn't seem that much of a stretch.
- theWatcher37 10y ago>innocent people aren't being disappeared because they don't want to be CIs. Not to get too tinfoil, but do we really know this? At any given moment 90k in the US alone are missing, and 60% of those are adults (source: google)
- anonbanker 10y agoSeeing as it has been established that Tinfoil Hats would acutally amplify brainwaves, could/should the "Tinfoil Hat" concept be modified to connote a person who is overly-paranoid, and adopts lifestyle choices that unintentionally amplify their perceived risk?
- EekSnakePond 10y agoAt the time of this comment: (6 hours after OP) 14 mentions of Trump. 8 mentions of Bush. 2 mentions of Reagan. vs. 10 wistful mentions of Hillary Clinton being the better choice. 4 mentions of Obama. 1 mention of Bill Clinton expanding ECHELON. Obama had 8 years building and using it this entire apparatus, after 8 years of Bush putting it into place after 9/11. Trump had been taking it for a test drive over the past 2 weeks. Can we please rename HN to "Silicon Valley and Democrats Only" so lurkers know what they are getting into?
- jarjoura 10y agoHow about we try not to shame liberals? This is a community and we should all be respectful of each other. Don't take comments of a president current or past so personally.
- theWatcher37 10y agoThe amount of "shame" from liberals is off the charts, not sure why you're upset by one comment to the contrary. Above the parent comment is a chain essentially saying "lets dispel this notion of reasonable republicans"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- elastic_church 10y agoWhere Republicans are the diversity hire.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Strom 10y agoI'm not from Silicon Valley and don't identify as a democrat. I've never even visited the Americas. Throughout my years on HN I've seen that there are plenty others like me on HN. To say HN is for "Silicon Valley and Democrats Only" is very naive.
- hindsightbias 10y agoI wonder how many people would have to know if a secret Executive Order required a few XKEYSCORE terminals be installed in the West Wing. If only Nixon had had that tech.
- anonbanker 10y agoSecrecy is incompatible with a republic.