7 ms·
I wonder if any of this is a conscious act of resistance vs. just incompetence. And yes, I've heard of Hanlon's Razor haha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlo
by nickpinkston 10mo ago
I wonder if any of this is a conscious act of resistance vs. just incompetence.
And yes, I've heard of Hanlon's Razor haha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- wolpoli 10mo agoBlack square vs redaction tool difference is well known if someone's job involves redacting PDF or just working with PDF. It's most likely that additional staffs were pulled in and weren't given enough training.
- cynicalsecurity 10mo agoLet people believe it's deliberate sabotage. Unfortunately, in real life, minions of a dictator serve the dictator; they don't risk their live or safety for a noble cause. Any screw-ups are a result of gross incompetence that is typical for every dictatorship.
- andsoitis 10mo agoDo you truly believe the US is currently a dictatorship?
- idle_zealot 10mo agoIt's not so simple a binary. We're definitely much less democratic than a year ago, and the bar was low then.
- sneak 10mo agoI’m still always surprised that there are adults who think it is not. The CIA, for example, is entirely above the law.
- neutronicus 10mo agoThat's different from a dictatorship, though, especially if the CIA is not answerable to a supposed dictator.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago> That's different from a dictatorship, Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some other authority despite not being answerable to the law, and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that higher authority.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA No it's not. I can commit all manner of illegal acts in my home unnoticed, that doesn't make me a dictator.
- sneak 10mo agoThe CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture. Then they got caught hacking congressional computers to delete evidence. Nothing happened to them. They are above the law. You are not.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture One, source? Two, this above reproach. Not above the law. They deleted the evidence, they didn't just blow the scandal off. (Historically, our IC was popular. Right now, it's the deep state. You're seeing political appointees at the FBI and CIA exert control.)
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
- bdangubic 10mo agowhat is the US exactly currently if not dictatorship? is there a single thing “President” cannot do right now and if so who would be stopping him? so perhaps on paper US is not dictatorship much like Russia and China are not… We spend decades trying to fight these regimes and lost so much that now we are worse than them :)
- chocoboaus3 10mo agoThe supreme court did just stop him for the moment putting the national guard into chicago
- bdangubic 10mo agobookmark this for a few days and then come back to it… the story is “… for now” :-)
- jibal 10mo ago"rare setback"
- bdangubic 10mo agoit is not a setback, they have to play a little game now and again to entertain the masses. scotus as it was before doesn’t exist anymore and won’t for decades, it now just rubberstamps
- jibal 10mo agoI quoted the media. The main point in this context is the "rare" part. I'm well aware of the nature of the GOP operatives on the SCOTUS. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all voted in Trump's favor. That Beerhead, Ms. IDreamOfGilead, and "Citizens United/I hate the VRA/worst chief justice since Taney" voted to temporarily uphold the stay actually surprised me (Bart O' said he would have given Trump more leeway) but yes, it's theater.
- hattmall 10mo ago
- Loughla 10mo agoI truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents, both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in terms of bare naked power grabs. I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency. I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen. Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip the congressional approval part like he already does.
- irishcoffee 10mo agoThis is one of those instances where I with hn had some kind of remindMe feature.
- quesera 10mo ago> Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval There is literally no such obscure rule, and a new Congress will be seated two weeks before the 2029 Presidential Inauguration. Elections, and the compulsory ends of terms, inauguration of new Congresses, etc, happen on schedule without regard to any exceptional cases, including Civil War. If he can get a majority of the Electoral College for a third term, and a majority in both houses of Congress in 2028, then things get much more complicated. But there is no other path. Elections matter, and don't let anyone discourage you from believing that they don't matter enough to vote.
- vkou 10mo agoHow would the roadmap for turning a democracy into a one party dictatorship differ from the trajectory we are on?
- rurban 10mo agoWhich democracy? The USA isn't one for decades already
- vkou 10mo agoI've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a few important differences in the political organization of the two countries. Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap. Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.
- rurban 10mo agoUnfortunately this is unrealistic as we cannot travel to both countries easily.
- vunderba 10mo agoI wouldn’t go so far as to call it a dictatorship, but it’s definitely trending toward authoritarianism. Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180 countries published by Reporters Without Borders that measures the level of press freedom. https://imgur.com/a/4liEqqi https://imgur.com/a/4liEqqi
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- ourmandave 10mo agoThe pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition. If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
- refurb 10mo agoYou act like Trump’s policies don’t have broad support with a majority of voters.
- ourmandave 10mo agoPolls can be capricious, but Trump's recent numbers with some groups have seen big drops.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- DANmode 10mo agoTell us more about the sane (“common sense”?) gun laws! I love these.
- cyberax 10mo agoI'd love to limit the semi-auto rifles like the infamous AR-15. Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. In exchange for country-wide reciprocity for concealed carry and firearm transportation.
- pppppiiiiiuuuuu 10mo ago> Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for instance people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed (that is what I would cite as "common sense"), but this statement really damages your credibility. Of course semiautomatic rifles are useful for both hunting and for self defense. They are effective weapons. That's the problem.
- rootusrootus 10mo agoThe country as a whole, no. But within the regime? Yeah.
- culi 10mo agoA man who tried to overturn an election is in power and is disappearing people on the streets without due process. The other day there was news about some ICE members who blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried filming their cars on a public street. That's just one example but these cases are only becoming more common. One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an election again, he is way better positioned to succeed this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was to centralize the government and fill only with loyalists. [0] NYT investigation recently proved there were little savings https://archive.ph/y5guv https://archive.ph/y5guv
- andsoitis 10mo ago> disappearing people on the streets without due process. Undocumented immigrants can be detained and deported by the U.S. government but they are still legally entitled to due process. What is happening is aggressive enforcement and detention that can feel like “disappearing,” but it is not the same thing as extrajudicial abduction in the legal sense. When people use the word "disappeared" they usually mean families temporarily can't find someone after detention, detainees are transferred far aways, no lawyer automatically assigned, communication is difficult, deportation happens very quickly. While this is real harm, it is not the same phenomenon as disappearance under international law. The U.S. is aggressively detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants under civil law, sometimes with minimal process and poor transparency — but not through secret, extrajudicial disappearances. Due process is thinner than for citizens, enforcement can be opaque and traumatic, but this is not the same as "vanished" outside the legal system.
- brunoqc 10mo agoMaybe because facism favor loyalty over competence.
- zerocrates 10mo agoArendt: Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
- potato3732842 10mo ago>Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Same reason unions always work hardest when fighting on behalf of the worst workers. If you go to bat for a man who can't do better elsewhere he'll go to bat for you in return. But wait, the situation is more complicated than that you say? Why yes, that's exactly the point. Two of us can play at the stupid smug oversimplification game. While the effect being described is real to an extent, distilling it to the point you did is useless because there is so much more nuance. Why assume the place was staffed with first rate talent to begin with? And even if there is a lot of first rate talent many will stick around because they don't care who they serve (people not like this don't tend to make careers in government TBH).
- Dusseldorf 10mo agoColleagues whose full time job is doing this sort of thing for various bits of the government have told me this is exactly the case here. People from all over the government have been deputized to redact these documents with little or no prior training.
- mindslight 10mo agoI wonder if this activity is being used as a kind of loyalty test. Keep track of who is assigned to redact what, and then if certain files leak or are insufficiently redacted, they indicate who isn't all in on Dear Leader. It's not like a few more stories of Trump raping $whomever are going to move the needle at all, especially with how the media is on board with burying negative coverage of the regime. Also if you're wondering how this activity isn't some kind of abuse of government resources, keep in mind that thanks to the Supreme Council's embrace of the Unitary Executive Theory (ie Sparkling Autocracy), covering up evidence about Donald Trump raping under-aged sex trafficking victims is now an official priority of the United States Government.
- andrewflnr 10mo agoI guess they might try, but given all the other nonsense I certainly don't think the admin is organized enough to execute that plan.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- dboreham 10mo agoCUaaS. Cover Up as a Service.
- femto 10mo agoWith a sister website BAEaas (Backup and Extort as a service).
- culi 10mo agoIf there's that many people who have access to these files, I'm shocked there hasn't been leaks until this point.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- exasperaited 10mo agoYeah — don't attribute to resistance what can adequately be explained by idiocy.
- baby 10mo agoMy understanding is that many people were fired and replaced by loyalists at the FBI. I think there are a lot of incompetent people working there right now.
- _cenw 10mo agoIt seems insane that nobody at the other end runs something as simple as MAT or imagick (twice) over it to take the text layers out before uploading though. I hope this is at least partially intentional.
- neilv 10mo agoA third possibility is diversion, while the most damaging evidence would be suppressed a different way.
- apical_dendrite 10mo agoReporting is that they had a basically impossible deadline and they took lawyers off of counterintelligence work to do this. So a conscious act of resistance is possible, but it's a situation where mistakes are likely - people working very quickly trying to meet a deadline and doing work they aren't that familiar with and don't really want to be doing.
- jmward01 10mo agoIt seems like a common tactic by this administration is to just not do what they are required to do until they have been told 50 times and criminal charges are being filed. I suspect the actual truth here is 'don't do this' turned into 'you have 1 day to do this and keep my name out of the release' which led to lots of issues. They probably spent more time deciding the order of pages to release, and how to avoid releasing the things damaging to the administration, than actually doing the work needed to release it. Now they will say 'look, see! You didn't give us enough time and our incompetence is the proof'
- cosmicgadget 10mo agoConsidering the Comey, James, and Adams debacles, seems quite likely they're purged most people with a shred of competence.
- jmyeet 10mo agoIt's a good question. For context, lawyers deal with this all the time. In discovery, there is an extensive document ("doc") review process to determine if documents are responsive or non-responsive. For example, let's say I subpoenaed all communication between Bob and Alice between 1 Jan 2019 and 1 Jan 2020 in relation to the purchase of ABC Inc as part of litigation. Every email would be reviewed and if it's relevant to the subpoena, it's marked as responsive, given an identifier and handed over to the other side. Non-responsive communication might not be eg attorney-client communications. It can go further and parts of documents can be viewed as non-responsive and otherwise be blacked out eg the minutes of a meeting that discussed 4 topics and only 1 of them was about the company purchase. That may be commercially sensitive and beyond the scope of the subpoena. Every such redaction and exclusion has to be logged and a reason given for it being non-responsive where a judge can review that and decide if the reason is good or not, should it ever be an issue. Can lawyers find something damaging and not want to hand it over and just mark it non-responsive? Technically, yes. Kind of. It's a good way to get disbarred or even jailed. My point with this is that lawyers, which the Department of Justice is full of, are no strangers to this process so should be able to do it adequately. If they reveal something damaging to their client this way, they themselves can get sued for whatever the damages are. So it's something they're careful about, for good reason. So in my opinion, it's unlikely that this is an act of resistance. Lawyers won't generally commit overt illegal acts, particularly when the only incentive is keeping their job and the downside is losing their career. It could happen. What I suspect is happening is all the good lawyers simply aren't engaging in this redaction process because they know better so the DoJ had the wheel out some bad and/or unethical ones who would. What they're doing is in blatant violation to the law passed last month and good lawyers know it. There's a lot of this going on at the DoJ currently. Take the recent political prosecutions of James Comey, Letitia James, etc. No good prosecutor is putting their name to those indictments so the administration was forced to bring in incompetent stooges who would. This included former Trump personal attorneys who got improerly appointed as US Attorneys. This got the Comey indictment thrown out. The law that Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey co-sponsored was sweeping and clear about what needs to be released. The DoJ is trying to protect both members of the administration and powerful people, some of whom are likely big donors and/or foreign government officials or even heads of state. That's also why this process is so slow I imagine. There are only so many ethically compromised lackeys they can find.
- JohnTHaller 10mo agoGiven the sheer number of people they had to pull in and work overtime to redact Trump's name as well as those of prominent Republicans and donors as per numerous sources within the FBI and the administration itself, incompetence is likely for a chunk of it.
- sigwinch 10mo agoIt’s funny that this effort, the largest exertion of FBI agents second only to 9/11, seems to be unprepared to redact. Cynically, I’m prepared for it to be part of a generative set of PDFs derived from the prompt “create court documents consistent with these 16 PDFs which obscure the role of Donald Trump between 1993 and 1998.”
- _annum 10mo agoGenerative subterfuge aside, the information being "uncovered" through copy-and-paste could have been modified and we would never know. I'm leaning towards negligence though.
- russellbeattie 10mo agoThere's a third option: Ambivalence. Any major documents/files have been removed all together. Then the rest was farmed out to anyone they could find with basic instructions to redact anything embarrassing. Since there's absolutely zero chance anyone in the administration will ever be held accountable for what's left, they're not overly concerned. The thing that I've been waiting to see for years is the actual video recordings. There were supposedly cameras everywhere, for years. I'm not even talking about the disgusting stuff, I'm talking security for entrances, hallways, etc. The FBI definitely has them, where are they? What about Maxwell's media files? There was nothing found there? Did they subpoena security companies and cloud providers? The documents are all deniable. Yes video evidence can now be easily faked, but real video will have details that are hard to invent. Regardless, videos are worth millions of words.
- billy99k 10mo agoThe 'resistance' was not releasing them during the last administration.
- userbinator 10mo agoAnother option: also change some of the text underneath.