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FBI misused surveillance powers more than 280k times in a year
- lapufifarre668 3y ago[flagged]
- i2cmaster 3y agoI don't see how the US recovers from the destruction in the government and among the people the past few years. It feels absolutely hopeless.
- 0zemp2c 3y agoLol, just tell people you'll do things like bail out their student loans and they'll easily overlook stuff like this
- sschueller 3y agoThis isn't new. It has been this way for a very long time, just now this information is easily leaked and seen by many.
- blitzar 3y ago> the past few years If by "few" you mean multiple decades; then yes, I don't know how they will ever recover.
- christophilus 3y agoIf by multiple decades you mean century, then yes, I don’t know how they will ever recover.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- strictfp 3y agoThey've been pulling shady stuff for ages. Ever heard of the false flag attacks in relation to Cuba? The bay of pigs false flag bombings, and the proposed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods ? Terrible stuff.
- aa-jv 3y ago.. not to mention the impressive apparatus that was applied to make people think that the Cuban missile crisis started with Soviet missiles showing up in Cuba ..
- jojobas 3y agoYou're right, it started with Soviet troops remaining all over Eastern Europe after WW2.
- geraldhh 3y agoyou mean like the us troops in western europe? no, srsly, idk what's what
- jojobas 3y agoMate, Soviets outnumbered USA+UK in Europe by a factor of 2 as of late 1945 (see Operation Unthinkable) and it only got worse from there. In 1949 there were about 3.5 million Soviet soldiers spread across East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechia etc. The entire US army went below 1 million by 1947, with a very small fraction deployed in Europe. The West was consistently on defensive/deterrence against the USSR throughout the Cold War, there's no point denying that.
- aa-jv 3y agoSure. This is why nukes were sent to Turkey...
- Sharlin 3y agoEver heard of Joseph McCarthy? J. Edgar Hoover? Dick Cheney, the PATRIOT Act, all that?
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoDidn’t it come out later that McCarthy was correct 100% of his accusations?
- nonethewiser 3y agoGet rid of the FBI as a start
- mistermann 3y agoLuckily we live in a democracy so this is the will of the people, imagine how bad it would be if we didn't live in a democracy.
- DrThunder 3y agoI don't know if you're being sarcastic, but the people have not elected the FBI or any other 3 letter agency that seems to have infiltrated every facet of our government. These agencies have more power than our elected officials right now.
- sixothree 3y agoThe country was founded on checks and balances. We keep forgetting that lesson over and over again.
- DrThunder 3y agoYep, it seem our executive branch, 3 letter agencies want to bypass all of those be Judge Dredd.
- mistermann 3y agoOh I'm definitely being sarcastic.....I am endlessly fascinated by the mental hoops (the various caveats they will inject into their articulation of "democracy") people will jump through to continue believing that their country "is" democratic. I appreciate that this is a very complicated space that requires flexibility, compromise, etc, my complaint is that we tend to pretend (often extremely enthusiastically) that the situation is actually simple. If something is good, I don't think it should require continual lying, deceit, and delusion to prop it up in the minds of the population.
- shadowgovt 3y agoI mean... 79% of Democrats say the FBI is doing a good job (https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-10-05/poll-americans-view-of-the-fbi-improves-but-partisan-gap-widens https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-10-0...). I'd say the US is democratic with a polity that is deeply split on some key issues. But that doesn't imply the government doesn't reflect the will of the people (sometimes the will of the people is "a hot mess;" this was one of the deep concerns of the people who set up the Constitution in the first place).
- micromacrofoot 3y agothe FBI has been misusing its power since its inception, it's always been this way, you're just aware of it now — hopefully this broader awareness can help
- Tozen 3y agoAbused nearly 280,000 times in a year. Now that looks like a "habitual line stepper", if ever there was one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9yQq4NxyOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9yQq4NxyOE (Habitual Line Stepper) At this point, it's an ongoing joke. Just doing whatever, whenever they feel like it.
- tgtweak 3y agoI think the real thought exercise is how does one resolve this problem? What are the avenues to correct this? Seems like this is much more of a political problem to solve than it is a legal one.
- kornhole 3y agoAccountability is something we are lacking in this country at this point in time. What good are laws and ethical codes of conduct if they are not enforced and bad actors are even promoted? It starts with the executive branch committing to enforcement and shaking up captured agencies by appointing people who will enforce.
- 93po 3y agoIt starts with actual democratic representation, which means ranked choice voting and ending unfair and illegal election tactics like gerrymandering. If our only two options weren't always two turds that were chosen for us we could get real accountability.
- cies 3y agoCombined with the Durham reports findings this is enough for some to say the FBI should simply cease to exist. The safety and justice they provide does not stack up to the lies, injustice, democracy subversion, illegal surveillance that comes along with it. It's an inherent problem with "dark budgets" though.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- MrBuddyCasino 3y agoSame issue with the German Verfassungsschutz ("Agency for the protection of the Constitution"). Over time these kind of agencies become political weapons, and thus a danger to the very thing they were created to protect - the constitution. When Nixon tried to stop it in his time, the intelligence services set him up, creating the Watergate scandal [0]. We are now learning from whistleblowers there were hundreds (!) of agents from many different agencies present at the Jan 6 "insurrection", it was probably the same playbook [1]. The FBI is even using this as an excuse and refuses to release hundreds of hours video, claiming it would expose too many agents [2]. Loosely connected to this is the "Russia Collusion" hoax, where they FBI willingly interfered in elections to smear the opposition with the full knowledge that the accusations were baseless, uncovered in the the Durham report. [3] Not long ago I would have laughed those stories off as nut job conspiracy theories, but the pattern becomes hard to ignore. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JHKYQP9/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JHKYQP9/ [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085527/3-FBi-whistleblowers-testify-abuses-power-agency-public-Weaponization-hearing.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085527/3-FBi-whis... [2] https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1659557297197133825 https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1659557297197133825 [3] https://auronmacintyre.substack.com/p/the-durham-report-and-our-carousel https://auronmacintyre.substack.com/p/the-durham-report-and-...
- Eumenes 3y agoWonder how many Stasi joined the ranks of the Verfassungsschutz
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- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- kingofkyiv 3y ago[dead]
- Gasp0de 3y agoI have not thought this through, but it seems like that is what you get for implementing such a law in the first place? Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? If they have a good reason, they can spy, and they can get a warrant for it. If they don't have a reason, they shouldn't be able to search anything, American citizen or not.
- fredgrott 3y agoName one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. The core part of story was the spying on citizen part without warrants. A Little history...in early 20th century there was a big concern when the pen warrant precedents were established as the FBI felt that it was somewhat illegal. Several SC cases changed their view on that namely specifying that they needed to get a pen warrant for telecommunication eaves dropping. current 702 upended that as pen warrants generally applied to US citizens even out of country whereas 702 changed that to a probability of there being a US citizen caught in the telecomm eaves dropping. What would be nice is a revamp of 702 to be warrant based wire-taps that go through a special court for the warrants with the appropriate increase in judges to handle such a change.
- sofixa 3y ago> Name one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. San Marino? Costa Rica? Tuvalu?
- pookah 3y ago[dead]
- ke88y 3y agoShockingly, even the smallest micro-states participate in surveillance of non-citizens. > San Marino Is 23 square miles of land with a population of 33K and is land-locked by Italy. Even still -- as a tiny micro-state land-locked by a friendly NATO and EU member state -- San Marino participates in foreign surveillance in a variety of ways; e.g., a member of the Customs union it collaborates with Europol on counter-terrorism. > Tuvalu Is 10 square miles with 10K people, and even then collaborates with a Five Eyes nation on maritime surveillance. > Costa Rica Unlike the other two examples, Costa Rica is a reasonably sized country. Like other countries which are not tiny micro-states, Costa Rica has its own dedicated intelligence agency independent of collaborative agreements/treaties. It additionally collaborates with both INTERPOL and western intelligence agencies.
- paulsutter 3y agoThis explains why “the russians” had to be involved in everything
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago[flagged]
- deepsquirrelnet 3y agoThey were most certainly involved with the FBI — or at least had influence inside [1] [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-special-agent-charge-new-york-fbi-counterintelligence-division-charged-violating https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-special-agent-ch...
- ss108 3y agoThis isn't new, but most Republicans didn't care when the brunt of this was felt by Muslims and others. Only when a far-right politician who plays to white supremacist tropes wanted to buy political dirt from an American adversary who was also emgaged in a digital misinformation campaign against the politician's opponent did they start to act like this was some abuse of power. Meanwhile, during peak "War on Terror", they routinely accused people who raised concerns about law enforcement abuses of being unpatriotic "bleeding hearts"
- ModernMech 3y agoYeah, there's a certain karmic justice to all of this. It really restores my faith to know that what goes around really does come around. Helps me strive to be a better person myself. It shouldn't be lost on anyone that the FBI was founded by a Republican, and has always been controlled by Republicans, at this very moment no less. Really no one to blame but themselves.
- bmelton 3y agoIf there's a lesson to be learned, it's that everyone needs to appreciate that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I have little faith in efforts to criminal justice reform, because just about everyone, regardless of party, has a crime for which the mere allegation is enough to justify throwing the book at the alleged perpetrator. This seems just as true with government abuses (at least in the social media era -- no idea what the real median is) -- but the far left seems more than happy to allow the government to abuse the rights of the far right, and vice versa. The degree varies depending on what suspected wrongdoing has occurred, but the point of rights is that if they don't apply in the worst cases (e.g., hate speech "exemptions") then they don't really exist, so nobody should be surprised when the government does a poor job of protecting them.
- 0zemp2c 3y agothe largest expansion of the "five eyes" program, and the high-profile fallout of Assange and Snowden, all happened during the Obama presidency
- philippejara 3y ago
- blitzar 3y agoTHE USA LIBERTY ACT I can't believe these traitors are against Liberty in the USA
- ARandomerDude 3y ago20 years ago I was in college and worked as a bank teller. Because of the PATRIOT Act, we had a new mandate to check a person's ID before letting them deposit a check. I would get so irritated that all the "old people" would gripe every time because "I've been banking here my whole life and have never had to show my ID to deposit my paycheck!" Sadly, it didn't occur to me at the time that they had a really good point.
- blitzar 3y agoSadly they were not PATRIOTS.
- tolduso5489 3y agoAgain giving you an answer you will hate and refuse to believe… Your fellow Man is corruptible and treacherous. You refuse to believe you are not alone in your own mind, and that thought control is screwing with you. You refuse to believe white hate Americans are waging a secret war for power among you. You refuse to believe Muslims Russians and Chinese aren’t the threat to the free world (though these may be instrumented against you); that white American thought control is playing God in your minds (and of these others), exploiting you in ways ordinary minds cannot perceive or comprehend (and would refuse to believe when confronted.) The US government is not the true enemy, while their incompetence and duplicity may well be a chronic threat. You are thought controlled America, and thought controlled America is the enemy of truth, law, and free world.
- urbigfan 3y agoCertain key words are auto blocked so I’ll spell them out for you. Again giving you an answer you will hate and refuse to believe… Your fellow Man is corruptible and treacherous. You refuse to believe you are not alone in your own mind, and that tho-ught contr-ol is screwing with you. You refuse to believe wh-ite ha-te Americans are waging a secret war for power among you. You refuse to believe Musli-ms Russians and Chinese aren’t the threat to the free world (though these may be instrumented against you); that whit-e American th-ought c-ontrol is playing God in your minds (and of these others), exploiting you in ways ordinary minds cannot perceive or comprehend (and would refuse to believe when confronted.) The US government is not the true enemy, while their incompetence and duplicity may well be a chronic threat. You are thoug-ht control-led America, and t-hought contro-lled America is the enemy of truth, law, and free world.
- thrweirupoi3423 3y ago[flagged]
- jxf 3y agoThis isn't mentioned in the article, but this number just scratches the surface of illustrating how broadly Section 702 gets used: https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/fbi_section_702_searches_2022/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/fbi_section_702_searc...
- hunglee2 3y agoUSA is a democracy, where there are checks and balances, as well as freedom of speech. This should be proof enough against misuse of powers by the FBI
- user6723 3y ago[flagged]
- knallfrosch 3y agoAnd Facebook wants to smuggle EU users' data into the US.
- ranting-moth 3y ago[flagged]
- tru3_power 3y agoHow exactly does this work? What’s the data look like when they issue a “query”? What information do they have collected about the average citizen?
- tru3_power 3y agoJeez reading over some of the other literature I could find looks like they can issue “batch jobs” to run many queries without having to do them manually/wait. Makes me think performance isn’t that quick and that there is an ungodly amount of data they are querying.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoThe US government can run warrantless wiretaps by sending Section 702 data requests to communications providers (iCloud, Gmail, FB Messenger, Skype, etc.) on people who aren't US citizens who live outside the US if they are suspected to be relevant to national security (email communications, chat communications, etc.). US law allows the FBI to search these foreigner's communications for mentions of Americans who are suspected to pose a national security risk without a warrant. Any other searches of this data related to Americans requires a court order. Here is a better article by a reporter who understands what the government's report said: https://archive.is/jgWUt https://archive.is/jgWUt
- newsclues 3y agoI guess the easy thing to do is redefine what misuse is and then this problem goes away right?
- bratgpttamer 3y ago[flagged]
- fareesh 3y agoSurveillance is the tip of the iceberg. Let's say for example country A invades country B. Country C sends aid to country B. Some segment of citizens in Country C are upset by this. Country A now creates an indirect funding route to people in Country C who are influential on social media. They amplify their voices through shares, likes, retweets and other aspects of social media algorithms. They employ farms of people around the world to ensure that these voices are liked, shared and amplified, to create the illusion that this is the popular view. Citizens in country C take the approach of "crowd wisdom" and go along with it. This influences elections and influences policy. The funding stops, and the invasion is now successful without the external defense funding. What mechanisms do countries have to deal with this? One could argue that surveillance may help uncover whether a common thread is linked to internal discord in society, and that thread can be pulled on to reveal a foreign adversary. Let's say the reverse happens. Country A and country B have a territorial dispute. Country A occupies parts of Country B. Country C is aligned with Country B. The intelligence agencies in Country C do the same kind of social media influence operations to manufacture consent for their policies. What mechanisms do countries have to deal with the intelligence agencies manufacturing consent in this manner? What if there are counter-intelligence operations run by foreign adversaries who are calling out these manufacturing consent operations on social media. One could see how surveillance will help follow the thread and identify these adversaries, if they exist in this part of the tapestry. In the 2016 election there was evidence that this type of activity is now routine and commonplace between countries. We also already know that the US government has conducted operations like Mockingbird, Cointelpro and others through the news media in the past. It is not a stretch to presume they engage in this as well, except now through social media. There is ample evidence to assume that all the conversations taking place online, and the downstream effects thereof, are simply the manifestations of some other prime movers. How does the citizenry become educated about these phenomenon in a way that somehow at least partially inoculates them against becoming pawns in this bigger chess game?
- lasermike026 3y agoThis is bad discipline. Make the regulations and enforce them. Make laws and enforce them. Keep applying the pain until agents comply. Bust enough heads and they'll get in line.
- vlovich123 3y agoI was listening to Lawfare and they had an interview wi to Matthew Olsen, the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice claiming that section 702 is absolutely critical for reauthorizarion and that all sorts of reforms have taken place and the problems we heard about aren’t. Now of course it’s possible the FBI instilled better controls since then but I remain highly skeptical. I’m glad there’s serious opposition against the intelligence community here. Too much of their signals collection is rubber stamped and there seems to be little pushback. Honestly, I’m surprised at how Wray was kept on by Biden considering this was squarely all on his watch.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago[flagged]
- backtoyoujim 3y agoOnce every two minutes for a year ? Is my arithmetic right there ? That seems excessive.
- hnburnsy 3y agoSo why isnt every single FBI prosecuted Defendant getting off due to this abuse? That would teach them to play by the rules.
- judge2020 3y agoTypically evidence is only void if it's been obtained illegally. In this case, it sounds like they used the intelligence to get leads, and only prosecuted after getting hard evidence admissible in court.
- hnburnsy 3y agoParallel construction I assume.
- ROTMetro 3y agoIn the USA there is a statute of limitations to challenge wrongful convictions, unconstitutional sentences, etc. Imagine that. Yes the government agrees your were wrongly convicted but because you didn't get a challenge together in time they will keep you in prison anyways and deny you access to the courts. Also, when a certain standard practice is found unconstitutional or agent found to be breaking the rules, etc they do not automatically release everyone who was convicted using it. Each person must (within the time limit as stated above) file a legal motion in court in the correct manner and then win that motion. Things that hold up guys challenging are stuff like you can't file in the Court where you are held (say you are at the supermax in Colorado, guys think they file to the Colorado court) but at the Court that sentenced you. And no, they don't forward your case. And no, your time window to file the case doesn't start over once the Colorado circuit court takes 9 months to find 'lack of jurisdiction' on your first filing.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThere is no incentive for Judges to play hardball with anyone in the judicial system. Meanwhile, if you are "soft on crime" you can expect to lose your job. There's also just a classic bias in that, if you have worked law long and hard enough to become a judge somewhere, you likely have a high opinion of the system and the status quo.
- varelse 3y ago[dead]
- kernal 3y agoThe "Patriot" act was a mistake. Unless, of course, being a "patriot" now means spying on your own people.
- deepsquirrelnet 3y ago“Patriot” in recent usage has come to mean nationalist. And when you view it that way, it makes a lot more sense.
- gyudin 3y agoSo nobody gonna be held responsible as usual? It just happened on it's own
- AndyMcConachie 3y agoDefund the FBI!
- chatterhead 3y ago[dead]
- tabtab 3y agoI haven't seen the FBI's response to this report yet. I'd like to hear their side before forming an opinion.
- flerovium 3y agoThis opinion is by the FISA courts, famous from the Edward Snowden case.