14 ms·

Police have been spying on black reporters and activists for years

333 points by colinprince 6y ago

cybernabjo 6y ago
From COINTELPRO and beyond!
- jacobush 6y ago
  Mike Ruppert
mindfulhack 6y ago
This isn't even a matter of security vs. democracy. This is political control vs. democracy. How do we do helpful surveillance without destroying everybody's freedom? Perhaps we can't? Perhaps we just need to focus on response and deterrence measures to bad things people do? Are we sacrificing too much by having 'prevention' measures (surveillance) in place?
- danharaj 6y ago
  Who's "we"? Before we can even begin, let's dispose of the notion that the government serves "us".
  - mindfulhack 6y ago
    I guess the legal system.
  - IanSanders 6y ago
    Government, people and the country, three completely different non-intersecting concepts. There's nothing to begin though unfortunately.
- throwaway888abc 6y ago
  Exactly, similar question struck me after reading. Who give orders for this ?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Yes. That is literally the conciept of the 4th amendment.
- DenisM 6y ago
  >Perhaps we can't? Remember that modern societies allow their governments (nearly) exclusive use of firearms and jails, and yet those societies did not turn into a dystopian hellhole. Because laws, courts, checks and balances, all that stuff. Step outside of the modern world and think about it - the tremendous imbalance of power still allows the freedoms we have today. Properly securing information access rights is a child's play by comparison.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Information is different. If the government uses firearms or jails against you, you know it. You can make use of the courts and object. If they surveil you without your knowledge, you don't know. They're just one step ahead of you. They can gaslight you. Know where you're about to be and leave something there for you to trip over. Or they can just evaluate whether you're too much of an inconvenience and then arrest you -- Three Felonies a Day and all that, easy to find when you're spying, and then parallel construction and you're out of the way.
  - mindfulhack 6y ago
    To re-iterate the other reply in my own words: Surveillance is secret, and that's the problem - secret surveillance that gives law enforcement an advantage. As well as whoever in governmental and political power may choose to abuse this secret surveillance. Throwing people in prisons or gunning them down is visible and able to be protested against - like is happening now. How can people protest against something they don't know is even happening? It took Snowden to even know that. Secrecy is fire, and humans ought not to play with it too much.
reactspa 6y ago
Honestly, I was blind to police racism against blacks. Until I watched this video. ---------------- This is a shocking video: https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county-deputy-for-driving-under-the-speed-limit/18953130/ https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county... + white cop pulls over black driver (North Carolina) + refuses to tell him why he was stopped until he shows ID + asks driver questions about company name on his tee-shirt + expresses incredulity when driver says he works at the company + asks driver other irrelevant personal questions. + tells driver he was stopped for driving UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT (doing 65 in a 70) + asks driver: "wouldn't you find it suspicious if someone were doing 65 in a 70?" + gives driver a WRITTEN WARNING for driving 65 in a 70. + brushes off driver's questions saying "I've got stuff to do" + Feb 2020 Googling about the case `"Ace Perry" Sampson` it seems no action was taken against the officer. If anyone has an "in" with the ACLU (or similar), the police dept. could use some publicity. (Strange how some cases don't get the attention they deserve.) (Note: in response to a now apparently deleted comment: I'm aware that some roads have minimum speed limits. I remember once seeing on a highway: max75 min40. However, 65 in a 70 is just prudence.)
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  Absolutely you should be ticketed for going under the speed limit by a far enough amount. You're more dangerous to everyone than safe if you don't align with the flow of traffic. 5mph isn't enough to give a ticket.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    > 5mph isn't enough to give a ticket. Apparently it is just enough to harass a minority though.
  - woofyman 6y ago
    There are usually posted minimum speed limits.
    - vkou 6y ago
      Those minimum limits are never 5 miles under the maximum speed limits.
hedora 6y ago
The DEA’s founding mission was to persecute blacks, such as Billie Holliday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394789 That was back in the ‘30s, and it didn’t start then. Edit. Anslinger was the head of the Bureau of Narcotics, which eventually became the DEA. (At the time, most (all?) famous jazz musicians were black: > Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with rebels like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars. He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always simple: “Shoot first.” He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”
- burfog 6y ago
  You quoted his motivation, right at the end. Lots of people really hate jazz. Really! It not racist just because jazz musicians, by random historical accident, happened to mostly be black. It is unethical, without any racism, to go looking for excuses to arrest people who play jazz. The proper response is to leave the music venue. Jazz isn't awful enough to merit such heavy-handed tactics.
  - cheez 6y ago
    This is exactly what it has been like talking to people about the issue of blacks being targeted...
  - wetmore 6y ago
    I can't tell if you're being serious.
    - cheez 6y ago
      The comment is so well-written. This is pretty much the response I get from most people about the topic. He's not being serious.
theywouldagree 6y ago
Police spy on many groups. They spy on white nationalists. They spy on splinter anarchist groups. They spy on "BLM" too. This is hardly news, however some will try to portray it as a racial issue.
- hobs 6y ago
  One of those things is not like the others.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - waffle_ss 6y ago
    Which, and how so?
    - jkinudsjknds 6y ago
      BLM, a peaceful organization trying to earn attention to civil rights groups; anarchists who want to overthrow the government; and white nationalists, who want to enforce policies of racial supremacy against other citizens. Which do you think is different?
      - pnako 6y ago
        Peaceful white advocates, left-libertarian ideologues and terrorist racial separatists who want to loot and riot, which do you think is different? If you're disingenuous you can frame any group as anything. It's doesn't help anyone or anything.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        "anarchists who want to overthrow the government" is a group that has never been shown to exist, while the other two are regularly seen marching around. So, that's different.
        6y ago
rdgthree 6y ago
It's a bit frustrating that a large portion of articles just refer to "police" as a singular group. This article is about the Memphis Police Department. If a ring of doctors were caught illegally selling organs, we wouldn't title an article "Doctors have been selling organs for years". If bank tellers in a specific city were taking some money off the top of deposits, we wouldn't write "Bank tellers have been stealing money for years". I'm sure there are some national issues with policing in the United States, but most police organizations are local. It's very unlikely that every local organization is bad, and even if they were, it would be very unlikely that every local organization is bad in quite the same way. I don't think headlines like this help us balance the discourse. There's no concerted effort by police nationwide to spy on black reporters and activists. This is about a problem in Memphis, Tennessee. The content of the article doesn't imply anything beyond that. The title is extremely sensationalized, and many people will only read that far.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  Agree but disagree. In the context of police, the union brings a sort of solidarity across local borders. If individual lots don't want to be generalized as police, they should voice dissent (as some have done of late).
- hedora 6y ago
  I searched for “doctors caught selling organs”. Article title: “Do US Hospitals Push Organ Black Market?” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-us-hospitals-push-organ-black-market/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-us-hospitals-push-organ-blac... (Spoiler alert: maybe, some, some of the time) I don’t see how the current treatment of the police in the press is any different than other life-and-death professions.
  - rdgthree 6y ago
    This article is about US hospitals. It is not about one singular US hospital. > Mark McCarren, a New Jersey federal prosecutor involved in the case, said Rosenbaum indicated that the transplants he brokered took place at more than one U.S. hospital and that the hospitals were duped and were not in on the scheme. If exclusively New York-Presbyterian were potentially involved in pushing the organ black market (for example), and the title still said "US hospitals", this would be a fair comparison.
aSplash0fDerp 6y ago
At the very least, for those on their 1st rodeo (who missed the 2008 burp), they get to see the anatomy of a sh!t sh0w in vivid detail. The current display has a little bit of everything (pandemic, social unrest, narcissistic depravity, a few Trillion of deficit and China being China. Hollywood can do dumpster fires, but this is way out of their league. Its about the same on bad actors though.
temptemptemp111 6y ago
You mean they spy in order to find out skin color and then continue spying when skin color = black? No, you're lying as usual. They spy indiscriminately on everyone and especially want to harness all activities and reporters to play out their agendas.

333 points by colinprince 6y ago

cybernabjo 6y ago

From COINTELPRO and beyond!

jacobush 6y ago
Mike Ruppert

mindfulhack 6y ago

This isn't even a matter of security vs. democracy. This is political control vs. democracy. How do we do helpful surveillance without destroying everybody's freedom? Perhaps we can't? Perhaps we just need to focus on response and deterrence measures to bad things people do? Are we sacrificing too much by having 'prevention' measures (surveillance) in place?

danharaj 6y ago
Who's "we"? Before we can even begin, let's dispose of the notion that the government serves "us".
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  I guess the legal system.
- IanSanders 6y ago
  Government, people and the country, three completely different non-intersecting concepts. There's nothing to begin though unfortunately.
throwaway888abc 6y ago
Exactly, similar question struck me after reading. Who give orders for this ?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DubiousPusher 6y ago
Yes. That is literally the conciept of the 4th amendment.
DenisM 6y ago
>Perhaps we can't? Remember that modern societies allow their governments (nearly) exclusive use of firearms and jails, and yet those societies did not turn into a dystopian hellhole. Because laws, courts, checks and balances, all that stuff. Step outside of the modern world and think about it - the tremendous imbalance of power still allows the freedoms we have today. Properly securing information access rights is a child's play by comparison.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Information is different. If the government uses firearms or jails against you, you know it. You can make use of the courts and object. If they surveil you without your knowledge, you don't know. They're just one step ahead of you. They can gaslight you. Know where you're about to be and leave something there for you to trip over. Or they can just evaluate whether you're too much of an inconvenience and then arrest you -- Three Felonies a Day and all that, easy to find when you're spying, and then parallel construction and you're out of the way.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  To re-iterate the other reply in my own words: Surveillance is secret, and that's the problem - secret surveillance that gives law enforcement an advantage. As well as whoever in governmental and political power may choose to abuse this secret surveillance. Throwing people in prisons or gunning them down is visible and able to be protested against - like is happening now. How can people protest against something they don't know is even happening? It took Snowden to even know that. Secrecy is fire, and humans ought not to play with it too much.

reactspa 6y ago

Honestly, I was blind to police racism against blacks. Until I watched this video. ---------------- This is a shocking video: https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county-deputy-for-driving-under-the-speed-limit/18953130/ https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county... + white cop pulls over black driver (North Carolina) + refuses to tell him why he was stopped until he shows ID + asks driver questions about company name on his tee-shirt + expresses incredulity when driver says he works at the company + asks driver other irrelevant personal questions. + tells driver he was stopped for driving UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT (doing 65 in a 70) + asks driver: "wouldn't you find it suspicious if someone were doing 65 in a 70?" + gives driver a WRITTEN WARNING for driving 65 in a 70. + brushes off driver's questions saying "I've got stuff to do" + Feb 2020 Googling about the case `"Ace Perry" Sampson` it seems no action was taken against the officer. If anyone has an "in" with the ACLU (or similar), the police dept. could use some publicity. (Strange how some cases don't get the attention they deserve.) (Note: in response to a now apparently deleted comment: I'm aware that some roads have minimum speed limits. I remember once seeing on a highway: max75 min40. However, 65 in a 70 is just prudence.)

sieabahlpark 6y ago
Absolutely you should be ticketed for going under the speed limit by a far enough amount. You're more dangerous to everyone than safe if you don't align with the flow of traffic. 5mph isn't enough to give a ticket.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > 5mph isn't enough to give a ticket. Apparently it is just enough to harass a minority though.
- woofyman 6y ago
  There are usually posted minimum speed limits.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Those minimum limits are never 5 miles under the maximum speed limits.

hedora 6y ago

The DEA’s founding mission was to persecute blacks, such as Billie Holliday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394789 That was back in the ‘30s, and it didn’t start then. Edit. Anslinger was the head of the Bureau of Narcotics, which eventually became the DEA. (At the time, most (all?) famous jazz musicians were black: > Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with rebels like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars. He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always simple: “Shoot first.” He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”

burfog 6y ago
You quoted his motivation, right at the end. Lots of people really hate jazz. Really! It not racist just because jazz musicians, by random historical accident, happened to mostly be black. It is unethical, without any racism, to go looking for excuses to arrest people who play jazz. The proper response is to leave the music venue. Jazz isn't awful enough to merit such heavy-handed tactics.
- cheez 6y ago
  This is exactly what it has been like talking to people about the issue of blacks being targeted...
- wetmore 6y ago
  I can't tell if you're being serious.
  - cheez 6y ago
    The comment is so well-written. This is pretty much the response I get from most people about the topic. He's not being serious.

theywouldagree 6y ago

Police spy on many groups. They spy on white nationalists. They spy on splinter anarchist groups. They spy on "BLM" too. This is hardly news, however some will try to portray it as a racial issue.

hobs 6y ago
One of those things is not like the others.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- waffle_ss 6y ago
  Which, and how so?
  - jkinudsjknds 6y ago
    BLM, a peaceful organization trying to earn attention to civil rights groups; anarchists who want to overthrow the government; and white nationalists, who want to enforce policies of racial supremacy against other citizens. Which do you think is different?
    - pnako 6y ago
      Peaceful white advocates, left-libertarian ideologues and terrorist racial separatists who want to loot and riot, which do you think is different? If you're disingenuous you can frame any group as anything. It's doesn't help anyone or anything.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      "anarchists who want to overthrow the government" is a group that has never been shown to exist, while the other two are regularly seen marching around. So, that's different.
      - 6y ago

rdgthree 6y ago

It's a bit frustrating that a large portion of articles just refer to "police" as a singular group. This article is about the Memphis Police Department. If a ring of doctors were caught illegally selling organs, we wouldn't title an article "Doctors have been selling organs for years". If bank tellers in a specific city were taking some money off the top of deposits, we wouldn't write "Bank tellers have been stealing money for years". I'm sure there are some national issues with policing in the United States, but most police organizations are local. It's very unlikely that every local organization is bad, and even if they were, it would be very unlikely that every local organization is bad in quite the same way. I don't think headlines like this help us balance the discourse. There's no concerted effort by police nationwide to spy on black reporters and activists. This is about a problem in Memphis, Tennessee. The content of the article doesn't imply anything beyond that. The title is extremely sensationalized, and many people will only read that far.

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
Agree but disagree. In the context of police, the union brings a sort of solidarity across local borders. If individual lots don't want to be generalized as police, they should voice dissent (as some have done of late).
hedora 6y ago
I searched for “doctors caught selling organs”. Article title: “Do US Hospitals Push Organ Black Market?” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-us-hospitals-push-organ-black-market/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-us-hospitals-push-organ-blac... (Spoiler alert: maybe, some, some of the time) I don’t see how the current treatment of the police in the press is any different than other life-and-death professions.
- rdgthree 6y ago
  This article is about US hospitals. It is not about one singular US hospital. > Mark McCarren, a New Jersey federal prosecutor involved in the case, said Rosenbaum indicated that the transplants he brokered took place at more than one U.S. hospital and that the hospitals were duped and were not in on the scheme. If exclusively New York-Presbyterian were potentially involved in pushing the organ black market (for example), and the title still said "US hospitals", this would be a fair comparison.

aSplash0fDerp 6y ago

At the very least, for those on their 1st rodeo (who missed the 2008 burp), they get to see the anatomy of a sh!t sh0w in vivid detail. The current display has a little bit of everything (pandemic, social unrest, narcissistic depravity, a few Trillion of deficit and China being China. Hollywood can do dumpster fires, but this is way out of their league. Its about the same on bad actors though.

temptemptemp111 6y ago

You mean they spy in order to find out skin color and then continue spying when skin color = black? No, you're lying as usual. They spy indiscriminately on everyone and especially want to harness all activities and reporters to play out their agendas.