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ACLU Statement Opposing the 'Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act' (2019)
- SamBam 6y agoThis is relevant right now because Sen Durbin is planning on reintroducing the Domestic Terrorism Bill in light of recent events.[1] I agree with those who say that there is no need for another bill that grants sweeping new powers to law enforcement. They need only use the laws already on the books. There is plenty more that law enforcement could have done the other day, and plenty more they can still do. Passing another bill has no bearing on that. 1. https://abc7chicago.com/senator-durbin-plans-to-reintroduce-domestic-terrorism-bill-/9474897/ https://abc7chicago.com/senator-durbin-plans-to-reintroduce-...
- wombatmobile 6y ago> They need only use the laws already on the books. Existing laws already make certain acts a crime, but that isn't what the new legislation is trying to do. Rather, it is trying to signal that certain acts, such as the storming of the Capitol by Trump associates, are objectionable to those proposing the new legislation. That's a political statement - not a legal necessity, as you point out. The risk of making a political statement via legislation is that it can backfire when the shoe is on the other foot, which is what the ACLU is warning against.
- ihsw 6y agoThey can make political statements on Twitter, pushing legislation to make a political statement is a mockery of the process, a mockery of the actual victims of terrorism, and it costs a boatload of money with nothing to show for it.
- jimbob45 6y agoTo play Devil’s advocate, congresspeople don’t typically get re-elected without bills (failed or otherwise) to show for it and speeches don’t cut it. Also, such a bill targeted at Trump would have 0% chance of passing since it would go across his desk. But yes, I agree.
- rmrfstar 6y agoFrom the statement, "In addition to further harming already marginalized communities, these charges could be used to brand as terrorists people who protest against government injustices by engaging in civil disobedience or actions that result in property damage." Clearly demonstrated this summer, when these people [1] were charged with crimes punishable by life imprisonment. One of their charges had a 45 year mandatory minimum sentence. What sense does it make to create more Draconian laws? According to a former AUSA, "It's batshit... and I'm a pretty law-and-order guy." [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/nyregion/nyc-protests-lawyer-molotov-cocktail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/nyregion/nyc-protests-law...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raxxorrax 6y ago20 years ago people criticized it will be used inwards at some point. You should start to listen to these people. This kind of terrorism is mostly caused by people that wrote these bills and it slowly becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It is not due to some post on Twitter. Just a very old stupidity rehashed...
- hprotagonist 6y agosimilarly, hardening the capitol is not the way. To the extent that even trying to be a shining city on a hill is possible, I can tell you that it is impossible if you wall it off. Walling up the people's house this summer and violating the rights and bodies of peaceful protestors was rightly condemned, too. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/better-security-cannot-stop-coup/617607/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/better-...
- pii 6y agoRight because protests that we're aimed at begging officials to acknowledge a perspective is the same thing as an attempted coup. BLM is not the same as MAGA.
- leereeves 6y ago"Begging officials to acknowledge a perspective" is not an accurate description of protestors declaring an autonomous zone or taking over or burning down police stations and courthouses. Here's a BLM protest speaker definitely not "begging officials to acknowledge a perspective": "I'm at the point where I'm ready to put these police in a f***ing grave. I'm at the point where I want to burn the f***ing White House down. ... I wanna take the fight to them. And at the end of the day, if they ain't gonna hear us, we burn them the f**k down." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDTu4ctpglc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDTu4ctpglc
- 3131s 6y agoI for one support the yahoos on both sides. Burn it all down.
- sigzero 6y agoNo, but that doesn't mean they aren't just as bad.
- zaroth 6y agoIt’s not OK to describe shooting police in the head, lighting them on fire, burning down precincts, firebombing Federal courthouses, occupying city halls, and cordoning off entire city blocks with armed insurgents as “begging officials to acknowledge a perspective.”
- Anon1096 6y agoLink to the bill, since I don't see it in the article: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4192/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4192...
- nr2x 6y agoI can’t get upset about Twitter bans, but I’m old enough to remember this country before the patriot act and I’ve got no desire to double down.
- kristofferR 6y agoYou might not be upset, but the right is deeply upset by what they feel is censorship of their thoughts, which fuels their rage, which should upset you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691709
- paxys 6y agoAppeasing the right has gone on for long enough, and the country is worse off because of it. It's high time for the Democrats to execute on their platform, with or without support from the other side.
- Grakel 6y agoThat's exactly how the right feels about the left.
- lumpenprole 6y agoMerrick Garland.
- totony 6y ago>Appeasing the right has gone on for long enough You should reflect on what that really means. You're segregating the population into 2 segments, which furthers the current problems the US is facing. Each side ostracizing the other.
- lumpenprole 6y agoAgreed, the statement that "the right is deeply upset by what they feel is censorship of their thoughts, which fuels their rage" doesn't necessarily apply to the entire right. It certainly does apply to the subset that recently hijacked the Republican Party though.
- compiler-guy 6y agoThis title should probably have 2019 on it. It precedes the recent unrest by over a year.
- StanislavPetrov 6y agoThat's how power grabs always work - just like the Patriot Act. They draft unconstitutional, draconian bills and have them sitting on the shelf waiting for a crisis (real or imagined) so that they can roll them out and get people to sign on out of a sense of fear.
- MrStonedOne 6y agoIrrelevant my dude. Hacker news is not your political soap box, please stay on topic to the comment and thread you are replying to. The comment you are replying to is requesting a title change based on existing hacker news norms by the mod team because the article can be confused (given current events) with a recently released response to recently introduced legislation to congress, which this is not.
- sillycon-valley 6y agoWhich recent unrest? The riots last summer are still pretty recent. I doubt most of the businesses have even recovered from it yet. edit: I don't see why I'm being downvoted, the article seems to be written when the BLM riots were relevant.
- simonh 6y agoI think five people dead and pipe bombs being planted in the Capitol building counts as unrest.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- monoideism 6y agoHe just asked which one. I suspect we all agree that the Capitol attack definitely counts as unrest. But there was another recent unrest in the summer, replete with a seditious autonomous zone and attacks on a federal building.
- gulag4nerds 6y agothe 00s are back...when are we invading Canada?
- kombucha111 6y agoSomeone go dig up John Candy!
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoMichael Moore's most underrated movie. Too bad so few know it exists.
- ImprovedSilence 6y agoHa! had no idea it was a Michael Moore movie. Plenty of people have seen Canadian Bacon. It used to play on TV all the time too(early 00s?). I've fairly sure most of my generation knows it... (as a kid in the 90s)
- kombucha111 6y ago"Canadians: they walk among us!" https://youtu.be/pbfBzWJVbX4 https://youtu.be/pbfBzWJVbX4
- noizejoy 6y agoCareful[1812] now :-) [1812] https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-War-of-1812-the-burning-of-the-White-House/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-W...
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoACLU deplatformed in 3 21...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kristofferR 6y agoThe storming of the Capitol was another 9/11 type of event, we are now in the same climate that lead to the Patriot Act, war, torture and countless other abuses. People are cheering on the bans and new laws without thinking further of the massive negative consequences the slippery slope will likely lead to. Glenn Greenwald did an excellent interview yesterday where he explained exactly why acting hastily after traumatic events while in rage is so damn short sighted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc I'd also like to highlight this comment, the content of which is so damn important to think about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691709 Rage is never a good long-term solution.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI just fundamentally disagree with the equivalence between social media bans and the topic at hand. I strongly support the recent bans and strongly oppose the Domestic Terrorism Act.
- kristofferR 6y agoIt's not just targeted bans of specific people, Shopify banned Trump for completely benign merch and Apple/Google banned Parler (non-partisan Twitter clone which only removes illegal content). When half the country are feeling discriminated for just expressing their views you've gone too far. Twitter could just have enacted manual approval of Trump tweets instead of banning him for absurd reasons [1], and there would be far less hate all around. [1] The reasons stated for banned him was his two latest benign tweets that 1. his voters would have a voice and 2. that he would not attend Biden's inauguration. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm not interested in debating that topic here, and I've edited my original comment to try and avoid sounding like I'm inviting a debate. My point is that you're drawing a line between two very different things with different sets of supporters.
- kepler1 6y agoSincere question -- How many times have existing anti-terrorism laws been misused versus "well" used for the purpose they were intended? So many people's objections are based on the particular example they can quote, or the very bad outcome case that sticks in your mind. Just like in dumb presidential debates you can line up specific example after example of someone who got left out of the healthcare system, etc (for either side's argument). But laws are for dealing with hundreds or thousands of incidents, not optimizing for the 0.001% case. ACLU says that existing laws have unfairly targeted <xyz>, etc. etc. How many times? Versus what positive things did it prevent? The ACLU is an advocate -- it isn't required to weigh and balance both sides. Lawmakers should.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- speeder 6y agoWhy people think it is good idea to engage in mass suppression of speech? It is not just Trump himself, general Flynn, Powell, and even a random political cartoon satire author (that is not pro-trump) got banned. If you take speech (and thus diplomacy) out of your opponent toolbox to deal with you, what tool is left?
- casefields 6y ago>The four boxes of liberty is an idea that proposes: "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." Big tech, with crowds cheering, is pushing these people toward the one that we are going to regret.
- konjin 6y agoIt will be interesting seeing American politics get to be as high stakes as Ukrainian politics. If a former president can be held accountable for the actions of his supporters then that president has very little incentive to become a former president. All it would have taken for this to become an actual coup would be a few crates of automatic weapons and two dozen martyrs willing to kill for their cause. I find it odd that no one on the Democratic side is stopping to think what a civil war in which one side has disarmed themselves because they think weapons are evil and the other already is ideologically aligned with most of the police and military would look like.
- pqhwan 6y ago> I find it odd that no one on the Democratic side is stopping to think what a civil war in which one side has disarmed themselves because they think weapons are evil and the other already is ideologically aligned with most of the police and military would look like. That, my friend, would be a senseless massacre. You find it odd that most Americans don’t spend their daily lives worrying about getting literally murdered by Republicans? Why? Should they?
- konjin 6y agoWhen you decide that half of people's opinions are criminal don't expect the law to save you.
- GoReadVoltaire 6y agoPlease stop downvoting and flagging just because you disagree with what someone is saying!