8 ms·

UC Berkeley Library acquires FBI records of surveillance of Black leaders

150 points by xenocyon 6y ago

incomplete 6y ago
dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029608
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  It's not really worth citing a duplicate post unless there's an interesting discussion attached. I know it's annoying to be first with something and not have it recognized, as it happens a lot. But if it's important for you to get eyes on something, consider the time of day when posting, and what else is trending that day, eg if there's a huge story dominating the front page you might want to wait a day to post.
- detaro 6y ago
  4 points and no comments doesn't count as "dupe" on HN, some reposts are explicitly allowed in such cases.
  - f430 6y ago
    it does according to Dang. We can't keep making exceptions to the rule like this. Rules are rules. I've also flagged this submission for being dupe and frankly HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged politics. Nothing good is going to come out of it.
    - mc10 6y ago
      Do you have a link to the relevant comment by Dang?
    - detaro 6y ago
      > it does according to Dang. fairly sure it doesn't, but I'll email just to check.
      - f430 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        detaro 6y ago
        please quote the part talking about dupes there?
        f430 6y ago
        doesn't matter the submission was quickly buried after I flagged it mission accomplished
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 6y ago
      That's not the rule—if we were that strict about reposts, a huge number of good submissions would end up getting zero attention because the first time they got posted was a swing and a miss. There's too much randomness in what gets liftoff from /newest for that to work. We want good stories to get multiple cracks at the bat. This is in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." By that rule, the OP is not a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html The ontopicness question is orthogonal of course. Politics per se is not off topic here—some political overlap is both ok and inevitable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The main question is whether the post is intellectually interesting or not. I think this one counts. Historical material is generally welcome on HN, and this particular angle hasn't had a lot of discussion. You're right that we don't want race flamewar, political flamewar, or other flamewar. That means there's an extra burden on commenters to stick to the site guidelines when the topic touches on such flammables. This guideline, for example: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - f430 6y ago
        interesting because I've seen the exact same scenario play out before: someone posts a submission that previously had low amount of upvotes but it was still flagged as a dupe and subsequently forgotten. so with the precedent, what exactly is your criteria & process for determining whether a submission is dupe or not? It seems rather subjective. Also with the overwhelming amount of political submissions on HN lately, its leading to a fatigue and polarization of "right" and "wrong" views expressed through downvotes which is essentially censorship from a non-centrist mindset-which ever bias is present at the time of the submission in the absence of moderation prevails.
        dang 6y ago
        I'd have to see specific examples. It's most likely that there was another version of the story that had gotten significant attention. It's also possible that some software made a bad call.
    - chishaku 6y ago
      > HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged politics. Surveillance is a staple topic of HN. Can you explain how posting this article amounts to someone using "HN... as a platform to push racially charged politics"?
      - dang 6y ago
        Let's not go into political battle about this here. It's clear that the topic touches on race and politics—that's obvious, and also superficial, and we needn't litigate it.
        chishaku 6y ago
        I interpreted "platform to push..." differently than the "topic touches on...". But I agree we don't need a political battle here. Thank you dang.
- dang 6y ago
  anigbrowl is right. I'm sorry—I know it sucks to be the first to post a submission and then see a repost 'win'. It's on our list to fix that by sharing credit and karma across multiple submitters. We'll get there someday. In the meantime, the lottery at least evens out if you submit lots of good stories.
joe_the_user 6y ago
It is mentioned towards the end of the article but it's important to note that the revelations of the FBI's campaign of surveillance, harassment and murder of black leaders wasn't the result of voluntarily disclosure but instead the result of activists physically seizing records 1970s (the Church Committee investigations and the Freedom Of Information Act came later). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
- creato 6y ago
  > the FBI's campaign of ... murder of black leaders Source?
  - rescripting 6y ago
    The most notable one that comes to mind is Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers [1]. It was a common part of the COINTELPRO playbook [2]. > The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[15][69][73] Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home.[46] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      This is a good article on some recent new revelations about the involvement in Hampton's assassination: https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-edgar-hoover-was-involved-in-fred-hamptons-murder/ https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-edgar-...
seaourfreed 6y ago
Please put them online. Please. Please. Pretty please.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Maybe, but I wouldn't hold your breath. These sorts of things are like the bible before the printing press. The (metaphorical) clergy don't trust the laymen won't read it and draw incorrect conclusions like "this could happen to demographic groups I'm a part of maybe we need to reduce the scope of federal law enforcement."
AndrewBissell 6y ago
The term "surveillance" is always used in headlines of articles about this phenomenon, but "sabotage" would be more descriptive of the full scope and purpose of the intelligence agencies' activities.
jonas_kgomo 6y ago
Black History Month
kemitchell 6y ago
Berkleyside is a good local news source. Oaklandside, in neighboring Oakland, is my go-to. Very happy to send them a monthly donation.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  "The Oaklandside was launched with initial funding of $1.56 million from the Google News Initiative (GNI). This is the GNI’s third collaboration in its Local Experiments Project, which aims to develop new business, operational and product practices to create sustainable local news business models. Google has no input or influence on our editorial decisions." I had not heard of GNI. How's that going? Here in Australia Google is facing off with a conservative government that is assisting Murdoch with an extortion attempt (forcing Google to pay for linking and grabbing summaries from News Limited publications). Google's strategic response has been confused and ineffective, prompting commentators to suggest something possibly more like GNI would be a better destination for the dollars than Murdoch's pocket, since Murdoch's output isn't even predominantly news anymore - it is entertainment and ideology.
  - kemitchell 6y ago
    I hadn't hear of GNI. Thanks for the link. I'm slightly more suspicious now. Sounds like they want to seed nonprofit news sources that won't gang up and fight them for royalties, as in Europe or Australia. But I read Oaklandside pretty much every day, and I can vouch for their coverage. Especially Natalie Orenstein's writing on the housing and homelessness beat. It's amazing they have a housing a homelessness beat.
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      Sounds like Oaklandside's editors are well intentioned. How will they get funding to pay journalists' wages long term? If they try to do it through advertising, they compete with Google. If they find a sustainable alternative method which can scale to support thousands of local news publications all over the world, they are Houdini.
advisedwang 6y ago
The first half of the article paints the FBIs work against the civil rights movement as an anti-communist movement so fervent that it caught up the civil rights movement along with it. I'm sad to see this accepted so uncritically, especially as the rest of the article belies it. The truth is that american leadership opposed the civil rights movement because it challenged their power and wealth. Communism is just the boogeyman used to justify surveillance and sabotage.
- chishaku 6y ago
  To your point, the FBI memo referenced in the article specifically differentiates the new counterintelligence program focused on civil rights groups from the pre-existing program focused on communist groups.
cltby 6y ago
I wonder if any of these documents will shed further light on MLK’s alleged participation in a violent rape [1]. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-king-fbi-files.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-king-f...
dundarious 6y ago
On the same topic is this post from a bit over a month ago. "Ex‐FBI operative says he worked to disrupt political activities up to '74 (1975)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595897

150 points by xenocyon 6y ago

incomplete 6y ago

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029608

anigbrowl 6y ago
It's not really worth citing a duplicate post unless there's an interesting discussion attached. I know it's annoying to be first with something and not have it recognized, as it happens a lot. But if it's important for you to get eyes on something, consider the time of day when posting, and what else is trending that day, eg if there's a huge story dominating the front page you might want to wait a day to post.
detaro 6y ago
4 points and no comments doesn't count as "dupe" on HN, some reposts are explicitly allowed in such cases.
- f430 6y ago
  it does according to Dang. We can't keep making exceptions to the rule like this. Rules are rules. I've also flagged this submission for being dupe and frankly HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged politics. Nothing good is going to come out of it.
  - mc10 6y ago
    Do you have a link to the relevant comment by Dang?
  - detaro 6y ago
    > it does according to Dang. fairly sure it doesn't, but I'll email just to check.
    - f430 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - detaro 6y ago
        please quote the part talking about dupes there?
        f430 6y ago
        doesn't matter the submission was quickly buried after I flagged it mission accomplished
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 6y ago
    That's not the rule—if we were that strict about reposts, a huge number of good submissions would end up getting zero attention because the first time they got posted was a swing and a miss. There's too much randomness in what gets liftoff from /newest for that to work. We want good stories to get multiple cracks at the bat. This is in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." By that rule, the OP is not a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html The ontopicness question is orthogonal of course. Politics per se is not off topic here—some political overlap is both ok and inevitable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The main question is whether the post is intellectually interesting or not. I think this one counts. Historical material is generally welcome on HN, and this particular angle hasn't had a lot of discussion. You're right that we don't want race flamewar, political flamewar, or other flamewar. That means there's an extra burden on commenters to stick to the site guidelines when the topic touches on such flammables. This guideline, for example: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - f430 6y ago
      interesting because I've seen the exact same scenario play out before: someone posts a submission that previously had low amount of upvotes but it was still flagged as a dupe and subsequently forgotten. so with the precedent, what exactly is your criteria & process for determining whether a submission is dupe or not? It seems rather subjective. Also with the overwhelming amount of political submissions on HN lately, its leading to a fatigue and polarization of "right" and "wrong" views expressed through downvotes which is essentially censorship from a non-centrist mindset-which ever bias is present at the time of the submission in the absence of moderation prevails.
      - dang 6y ago
        I'd have to see specific examples. It's most likely that there was another version of the story that had gotten significant attention. It's also possible that some software made a bad call.
  - chishaku 6y ago
    > HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged politics. Surveillance is a staple topic of HN. Can you explain how posting this article amounts to someone using "HN... as a platform to push racially charged politics"?
    - dang 6y ago
      Let's not go into political battle about this here. It's clear that the topic touches on race and politics—that's obvious, and also superficial, and we needn't litigate it.
      - chishaku 6y ago
        I interpreted "platform to push..." differently than the "topic touches on...". But I agree we don't need a political battle here. Thank you dang.
dang 6y ago
anigbrowl is right. I'm sorry—I know it sucks to be the first to post a submission and then see a repost 'win'. It's on our list to fix that by sharing credit and karma across multiple submitters. We'll get there someday. In the meantime, the lottery at least evens out if you submit lots of good stories.

joe_the_user 6y ago

It is mentioned towards the end of the article but it's important to note that the revelations of the FBI's campaign of surveillance, harassment and murder of black leaders wasn't the result of voluntarily disclosure but instead the result of activists physically seizing records 1970s (the Church Committee investigations and the Freedom Of Information Act came later). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...

creato 6y ago
> the FBI's campaign of ... murder of black leaders Source?
- rescripting 6y ago
  The most notable one that comes to mind is Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers [1]. It was a common part of the COINTELPRO playbook [2]. > The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[15][69][73] Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home.[46] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    This is a good article on some recent new revelations about the involvement in Hampton's assassination: https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-edgar-hoover-was-involved-in-fred-hamptons-murder/ https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-edgar-...

seaourfreed 6y ago

Please put them online. Please. Please. Pretty please.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Maybe, but I wouldn't hold your breath. These sorts of things are like the bible before the printing press. The (metaphorical) clergy don't trust the laymen won't read it and draw incorrect conclusions like "this could happen to demographic groups I'm a part of maybe we need to reduce the scope of federal law enforcement."

AndrewBissell 6y ago

The term "surveillance" is always used in headlines of articles about this phenomenon, but "sabotage" would be more descriptive of the full scope and purpose of the intelligence agencies' activities.

jonas_kgomo 6y ago

Black History Month

kemitchell 6y ago

Berkleyside is a good local news source. Oaklandside, in neighboring Oakland, is my go-to. Very happy to send them a monthly donation.

wombatmobile 6y ago
"The Oaklandside was launched with initial funding of $1.56 million from the Google News Initiative (GNI). This is the GNI’s third collaboration in its Local Experiments Project, which aims to develop new business, operational and product practices to create sustainable local news business models. Google has no input or influence on our editorial decisions." I had not heard of GNI. How's that going? Here in Australia Google is facing off with a conservative government that is assisting Murdoch with an extortion attempt (forcing Google to pay for linking and grabbing summaries from News Limited publications). Google's strategic response has been confused and ineffective, prompting commentators to suggest something possibly more like GNI would be a better destination for the dollars than Murdoch's pocket, since Murdoch's output isn't even predominantly news anymore - it is entertainment and ideology.
- kemitchell 6y ago
  I hadn't hear of GNI. Thanks for the link. I'm slightly more suspicious now. Sounds like they want to seed nonprofit news sources that won't gang up and fight them for royalties, as in Europe or Australia. But I read Oaklandside pretty much every day, and I can vouch for their coverage. Especially Natalie Orenstein's writing on the housing and homelessness beat. It's amazing they have a housing a homelessness beat.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Sounds like Oaklandside's editors are well intentioned. How will they get funding to pay journalists' wages long term? If they try to do it through advertising, they compete with Google. If they find a sustainable alternative method which can scale to support thousands of local news publications all over the world, they are Houdini.

advisedwang 6y ago

The first half of the article paints the FBIs work against the civil rights movement as an anti-communist movement so fervent that it caught up the civil rights movement along with it. I'm sad to see this accepted so uncritically, especially as the rest of the article belies it. The truth is that american leadership opposed the civil rights movement because it challenged their power and wealth. Communism is just the boogeyman used to justify surveillance and sabotage.

chishaku 6y ago
To your point, the FBI memo referenced in the article specifically differentiates the new counterintelligence program focused on civil rights groups from the pre-existing program focused on communist groups.

cltby 6y ago

I wonder if any of these documents will shed further light on MLK’s alleged participation in a violent rape [1]. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-king-fbi-files.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-king-f...

dundarious 6y ago

On the same topic is this post from a bit over a month ago. "Ex‐FBI operative says he worked to disrupt political activities up to '74 (1975)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595897