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US to ramp up tracking of domestic extremism on social media
- idrios 5y agoAs someone who has cut themselves off from most news outside of HN, is this article actual news or is this just a website trying to stir the pot for clicks
- bigbillheck 5y agoAre you asking if 'the Associated Press' is a legitimate outfit?
- gentleman11 5y agoAssociated press is considered a pretty trustworthy and neutral news service, or was at one point anyway. Why would a story about surveillance plans be “just to stir the pot for clicks”?
- gccs 5y agoWe live in the era of headlines where the content of the article is irrelevant
- idrios 5y agoI've grown very cynical of the source/intention of any news I encounter. Ad revenue or shifting political opinion in their favor would be the reason to stir the pot. Not every new institution created by the govt gets posted on Hacker News and the verbage in the headline triggered red flags for me. As a conservative, it would make me concerned over government surveillance possibly targeting me. As a liberal, it would make me concerned over the presence of domestic extremists. So I was trying to gauge how I should feel about this story, whether 'ramping up' means creating a new NSA, or forming a volunteer committee that meets once/week.
- wsh 5y agoThe Associated Press, a cooperative owned by its member newspapers and broadcasters, is the most important American news wire service, and APNEWS.COM is its public website. If a story moves on the AP, it’s news, almost by definition.
- tablespoon 5y ago> As someone who has cut themselves off from most news outside of HN, is this article actual news or is this just a website trying to stir the pot for clicks I think it's real. IIRC, the Biden administration has been saying they're going to make "domestic extremism" a federal law enforcement priority and they're planning on throwing a lot of resources behind it. I beleive their position is that it got too little attention in previous administrations vs. stuff like drug trafficking and Islamic terrorism. This kind of monitoring fits with that, and seems to be reporting on a detail of those plans.
- bioinformatics 5y agoI think it you should cut HN from an actual source of news too.
- ffggvv 5y ago"domestic extremism" will slowly be defined as anything outside the center left/right consensus of washington. but i guess this is what everyone is begging for so let them have it.
- codezero 5y agoWhy? Isn't terrorism already well defined? What's changing here?
- jfengel 5y agoWhat's changing is admitting that terrorism is still terrorism, even when those doing it are American citizens.
- smbullet 5y agoI don't know where you got terrorism from. The definition under question is "domestic extremism" which is not well defined. Depending on who you ask an extremist can vary between anyone who believes in the 2nd amendment to actual terrorists.
- dragontamer 5y agoIts like pornography. You know it when you see it. * Abortion-center bombers? Clearly terrorism. * Oklahoma City bombing? Clearly terrorism. * Beltway Sniper? Terrorism. * Eco-terrorism? Such as bombing gas pipelines? Terrorism. * Blowing up a AT&T communication hub? Not terrorism, surprisingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nashville_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nashville_bombing . Seems to be "standard" workplace grievance. (EDIT: I thought this was terrorism originally, but apparently the investigation came back and said not-terrorism) There are some edge cases: a random shooting inside of a grocery store? Well, could be terrorism, might not be. ---------- Violent actions, even those that do not result in loss of life (ex: abortion bombers / eco-terrorists), that are designed to push an ideology is terrorism. Simple enough, right? Sure, there are edge cases here and there. But in the vast majority of domestic terrorism cases, there's no controversy in the label.
- ProAm 5y agoI wonder if they are going to look into congress? I wish I were making a joke but this seems like a problem that starts at the top. Nationally was it this bad before the Trump administration?
- dragontamer 5y agoAll you youngsters don't remember the 90s. Waco Siege, Oklahoma City Bomber, North Hollywood shootout, Ruby Ridge. Columbine. Gang warfare. Before "Terrorists" were dudes from the Middle East, "Terrorism" were religious cults, anti-government forces, and bank-robbers who had huge-ass weapons. Domestic terrorism was way scarier, even as Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center the 1st time in the early 90s, the other domestic events overtook our mindset. Now that Middle-East terrorism (ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc. etc.) seem to be on the decline (knock on wood), I'm not surprised to see the pendulum swing back to domestic terrorism.
- abfan1127 5y agoWaco? are you referring to the FBI?
- dragontamer 5y agoGood point. And there are many people today who still take the Branch Davidians's side in that shootout, furthering anti-government feelings today. Pro-gun groups believe that stockpiling of weapons is a holy right that should not be violated.
- abfan1127 5y agoPalestinians should would be better off with a stockpile of weapons... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s
- evgen 5y agoThey had several stockpiles, including actual fucking short-range missiles. Didn't help them at all against a modern military force, did it? But you think the US Army is concerned about Bubba and his cache of AR-15s?
- gentleman11 5y agoThis is just fuel to stir the right wing into more conspiracy theories, except this one is true: the government is closely monitoring everything they do online in order to profile them and put them on “high risk” lists so that they can potentially step in and “correct their decisions” if they get scared. Is the solution really to make their feelings of persecution worse? The USA tried that in the Middle East and it just gets dramatically worse every 5-10 years
- Guest42 5y agoI wonder how they perceive those that don’t partake in social media.
- codyb 5y agoHopefully sane and unencumbered by a never ceasing shit stream of dubious information. At least that's how I feel after leaving social media. I check NYT a couple times a day and browse Hackernews while I'm waiting for tests to complete. The rest of the time I'd spend dawdling on Twitter or Fark I put towards reading. YMMV, but for me, I find it far more pleasant and less hectic.
- ne0flex 5y agoI remember back in the early 2010s when employers started checking out the FaceBook profiles of prospects. There was an article about how people without Facebook profiles were deemed suspicious as though they were attempting to hide something by not having a Facebook account. [1] [2] [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-tech-abandoners-people-without-facebook-accounts-are-suspicious/?sh=41ed70228f95 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-t... [2]https://business.time.com/2012/08/08/does-not-having-a-facebook-page-make-you-suspicious-to-employers/ https://business.time.com/2012/08/08/does-not-having-a-faceb...
- wearywanderer 5y agoEven more dangerous, such people are clearly socially isolated and probably have extremist motivations for behaving in such an unusual way. /s
- adamiscool8 5y ago>DHS will also train analysts on tracking social media and how to distinguish a threat from the exercise of free speech. DHS officials say the goal is to better monitor and respond to story lines percolating on social media that could incite violence. Where have I heard this before... >China’s constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but the opacity of Chinese media regulations allows authorities to crack down by claiming that they endanger the country. [0] Seems like a good model for the West to follow... >China has around two million people policing public opinion online, according to a state media report that sheds light on the country’s secretive internet surveillance operations. Dubbed “public opinion analysts,” they work for the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department, major Chinese news websites and commercial corporations [0] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/media-censorship-china https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/media-censorship-china [1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/asia/china-internet-monitors/ https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/asia/china-internet-mon...
- twh270 5y agoYep. Regardless of which party has more of the "reigns of government", this is not a good path to go down. Modern McCarthyism.
- throwaway894345 5y agoThe extent to which this lends itself to abuse largely hinges on how precisely/narrowly and neutrally we define 'extremism'. We have to do better than the bipartisan counter-terrorism legislation of the 2000s, for example.
- marcusverus 5y agoBased on a cursory google search, domestic extremism results in ~40 deaths per year.[0] With that in mind, I'd like to pose a related question; would you be cool if the government monitored our speech to help end the scourge of death by lawn mower? Probably not, because it's not a serious threat, right? And yet, you're 20x more likely to be killed by a lawn mower than to be killed by a domestic extremist. This isn't a matter of precision, it's a matter of scope. And given that these people are, collectively, 95% less deadly than the fearsome lawnmower, I'd say the appropriate scope is zero. [0]https://www.adl.org/media/12480/download https://www.adl.org/media/12480/download [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike#Epidemiology
- shrubble 5y agoWill Susan Rosenberg who was involved in the literal bombing of the Capitol building, be tracked? And who is now at BLM? Doubtful...
- wernercd 5y agoCall me when they track the side that caused billions in damage "for justice" as well as the side that "rioted" for 6 hours one day in January. I have a funny feeling that they are going to continue letting the groups that are really causing destruction have a free pass.
- redis_mlc 5y ago1) The Jan. 6 protesters were invited into the Capitol building by Capitol police, and none had weapons. Of the 5 people who died, 4 died of natural causes and one was shot by Capitol police while entering a window. When you have a rally with 500,000 attendees and no extra security, it will probably look like a riot. (Pelosi was responsible for approving additional security.) 2) In 2018, Democratic protesters also entered the Capitol. There are photos in the MSM. I can't tell from the photos whether they were from 2018 or 2021.
- MikeUt 5y ago> President Joe Biden’s top appointees have called white supremacists the greatest security threat to the country Easy to do when you pull tricks such as not using per-capita statistics or refusing to consider other hate groups because their anger is "valid" [1], or give non-fatal events the same weight as fatal ones [2]. How can anyone consider an organization, that uses "While these groups can be virulently anti-white, this prejudice does not represent the same threat as white supremacy in America." as an excuse to ignore hate crimes, remotely trustworthy? [1] https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/12/youre-not-an-antiracist-if-you-hide-crimes-because-of-the-perpetrators-race/ https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/12/youre-not-an-antiracist... [2] https://www.investigativeproject.org/7674/splc-touted-terrorism-study-casts-a-wide-net-to https://www.investigativeproject.org/7674/splc-touted-terror...