Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
nytimes.comI'm old enough to remember that time the Obama administration requested Edward Snowdens private SSL keys from Lavabit, because it would have opened up every email from every single user. So the owner nuked everything and was held in contempt of court. He was forbidden from talking about it for months too. Don't give too much unprecedented power to the government. It doesn't matter who the president is. They've all done some net-evil that feeds power to the next guy, and the next guy, until it's too late.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/lavabit-ladar-...
One difference, this was in response to an actual search warrant granted by a judge.
What DHS is doing are administrative warrants, with no judicial overview (unless you sue to stop them).
We shouldn't dignify their schemes with their jargon: They are generating internal memos and submitting complaint/threat letters.
I had an account at the time! He gave the govt the key, handwritten on paper, to stall for time so he could delete everything. I wish every admin had that sort of integrity.
He had a followup project, magma (https://github.com/lavabit/magma), that was supposed to be a secure email alternative. It's a shame it never took off.
Sounds like a whole bunch of “both sides!!”
This ain’t the same
Yeah? Because you can't just flip flop on these things once you open the can of worms, the next administration has the same toy box you leave behind.
>you can't just flip flop on these things once you open the can of worms
You sort of can when one is done illegally to begin with. While I don't like the Snowden overreach it was done through proper legal channels.
The discussion there should be focused on a judge giving too much leeway in their subpeona, not that this is the same was what's happening now.
Old enough is right. People forget the HN thread on the last day of Obama’s presidency and the bill he signed to expand the drone program.
We should have given him another peace prize after that.
> until it's too late.
I'm afraid it's far too late.
It can get much worse.
> It doesn't matter who the president is
It clearly does as your comment was very pointed towards Obama but fails to mention Trump once. I'm curious as to why that would be? Are you ignoring the massive amount of funding that ICE/DHS has received to invade cities of the President's opponents to crush dissent? Or maybe the threats of face scanning to be put on a "domestic terrorist" list? I don't recall Obama doing those things. A common pattern I'm seeing during this admin is: good things are attributed directly to Trump, but bad things are the government having too much power that his predecessors can be blamed for.
"Good tsar, bad boyars"
Because it distracts from the point I'm making. Our founding fathers setup this country a certain way, and along the way we left the different branches of government to assume new powers without any amendments, and now we're surprised that they're walking all over the constitution? This problem extends beyond the current administration. It will only get worse before it gets better.
Remember, someone FAR WORSE can run for president, someone far worse can absolutely win. Don't make the assumption that your current least favorite administration will be as worse as it gets, because that is how you wind up giving that future administration the keys to the kingdom.
> Because it distracts from the point I'm making
No it doesn't. If you're saying Obama did <bad thing> then explaining how the things Trump is doing are related is helpful. In this case, I don't see how them going after Snowden for stealing classified info (to be clear I support what he did) is the same as DHS going after meanies on Reddit for speaking out against ICE. One is using the intelligence apparatus for a plausible national security threat and the other is using them to crush dissent. Very big difference.
Did I ever said it was helpful or are you just putting words in my mouth? When I was 18 I emptied my bank account to fly my cousins to the US from Venezuela. I was making scraps per hour at the time mind you. But by all means put words in my mouth.
All this goes back before Obama, but my point was that literally the president in charge is irrelevant, they should not have this type of power to bypass the other branches of government, neither should other branches.
Nobody remembers Bush doing anything specific the way we all here remember Lavabit. Lavabit and Snowden were very deeply discussed here on HN.
> Did I ever said it was helpful or are you just putting words in my mouth?
No, I think you're misreading. I said it would be helpful instead of distracting.
> Nobody remembers Bush doing anything specific the way we all here remember Lavabit
Yes, that's what I'm saying: you're extremely biased and it shows. In one stroke, you simultaneously say that unchecked intelligence apparatus is too powerful (true) and that Obama, specifically, did a bad thing that the goverment (hand wavey deflection) is merely taking advantage of now with no criticism of the current admin. It comes across like you're just a partisan hack who wants to dunk on Obama. There's no substance here. At least this time you mentioned Bush who started all of this, but still no mention of he who shall not be named.
> When I was 18 I emptied my bank account to fly my cousins to the US from Venezuela
What does that have to do with anything we're talking about now?
You're freeing this administration from any blame. No system of governance can resist a sufficiently powerful authoritarian push. If the Democratic Party is to share part of the blame, it's in the fact that it is completely bought by special interests and thus unwilling to push pack against the Republicans. But don't be mistaken, this is entirely on Republicans, both their corrupt politicians and stupid voter base who cheer on their rights being trodden upon, as long as the other side suffers more.
You are putting words in my mouth and taking away from my point. I equally blame the previous administration for leaving a privacy invasive apparatus, as stated by others here this goes back to the Patriot Act.
You should review actual history if you are trying to pin the Patriot Act on Obama.
> I equally blame the previous administration for leaving a privacy invasive apparatus, as stated by others here this goes back to the Patriot Act.
I was talking about Bush administration. I don't know a lot about that time period since I was just a teenager during that administration and didn't care about politics back then, but I vividly remember Obama because I've always been passionate about not having the government spying on citizens, and a free and open web. Everything wrong with social media we set ourselves up for.
Didn't Obama call Snowden a traitor, too?
They're all pro-spying.
He had 8 years to dismantle it, but didn't--I think that was the point.
Trump, the supposed outsider in 2016, also had ample opportunity to do so and does again this term. Why has he not done it?
Probably the same reason Obama didn't?
Edward Snowden had stolen the most sensitive classified secrets from The United States Intelligence Community and Donald Trump is looking to squash dissent of his attempts to nullify the Constitution and establish a dictatorship.
I get what you're saying, but please have some perspective. the two things are not even remotely similar.
To be fair, those sensitive secrets included secret, unconstitutional, dragnet surveillance programs targeting american citizens, and the fact that the director of national intelligence had perjured himself during congressional hearings on those programs.
Less than 1% of what Snowden took and leaked pertained to domestic surveillance programs, The rest was intelligence capabilities and sources and methods.
But that's besides the point. There is a real argument that the U.S. government, in trying to catch Snowden, was protecting national security. There is no such argument with Trump.
> was protecting national security
No, it was retribution. The info was already out there when they were going after him. Even if he stayed in the US and was captured, it still wouldn't have "stopped" anything.
> The info was already out there when they were going after him.
This was of course not known at the time. The only thing that was known is that a single individual was responsible for the greatest breach of classified secrets in the nation's history, and that individual was still at large.
> was protecting national security
So yes, it was.
The federal government was found violating the constitution, and yet he's the bad guy.
Nonsense.
> The federal government was found violating the constitution
This was of course not known at the time.
Sure, but it took multi court cases and years to prove that "legally".
How does that change or affect the point I'm making?
> This was of course not known at the time. The only thing that was known is that a single individual was responsible for the greatest breach of classified secrets in the nation's history, and that individual was still at large.
If Snowden hasn't moved quickly, he wouldn't have been able to leak any of it.
What he did, grab it all, then give it to reputable journalists, was the correct option to be able to inform the public of massive intelligence dragnets targeting civilians that the government was lying about.
> If Snowden hasn't moved quickly, he wouldn't have been able to leak any of it.
How does stealings sensitive materials not related to domestic surveillance improve his odds of successfully leaking information and fleeing the country?
And please be specific.
What they did to snowden was illegitimate but at least they had the cover that he was an insider that had signed a contract with the government. They are going after random ass people expressing a 1A opinion now. Legally very different ballgames even though both dissenters are correct to voice their opinions and knowledge and should not have been pursued for objecting to extravagant government wrongdoing.
> I get what you're saying, but please have some perspective. the two things are not even remotely similar.
Snowden sacrificed a comfortable life, his friends, and family to tell the American people they were being lied to. He exposed things that people SHOULD HAVE gone to prison for. Snowden is a hero, period.
> Snowden sacrificed a comfortable life
Yes and all he had to gain was international celebrity.
Please understand the role that ego plays in actions such as this.
Friend, if you followed Snowden's saga at all, you would know that those events don't need to be similar to be relevant to the discussion at hand. In other words, just because you have a problem with Trump, does not mean the two issues are not connected.
Who was imprisoned for their speech against the US president by Obama and how did Snowden stop that?
Because that is exactly what we're talking about here. And if you don't have a like-for-like comparison, then we have nothing to discuss.
If you think for a moment of arguing that throwing people in jail is the only way to impede someone's liberty, you are in for a world of a surprise.
It's the standard we're discussing. It's what Donald Trump's DHS is doing right now and the Snowden comparisons are irrelevant and imo a bad faith attempt at trying to muddy the waters.
Stop both sides-ing everything the Trump administration does to give them more oxygen to operate.
These are uniquely awful times.
<< Stop both sides-ing everything the Trump administration does to give them more oxygen to operate.
Friendo,the sooner you recognize it is both sides, the sooner you can step off the merry go round.
One more try, what did Obama in terms of abusing his police state targeting American citizens that even approached what we are seeing with ICE, the FBI, etc. right now.
Hmm. You are putting me in quite a pickle, but I can't tell if you are being serious or not. Obama was almost literally Bush 2.0, but with better PR and media coverage.
Fuck man. Here is a short list of how he explictly expanded police state that impacted actual American citizens ( and not random criminal aliens ICE picks up ):
- Targetted killing of US citizen without a trial via drone strike ( Anwar al-Awlaki ) - Signed 2012 NDAA with 'indefinite detention' provisions - Extended Patriot ACT in 2011 - Re-authorized FISA in 2012 - Defended post-Snowden NSA metadata collection - Seized reporter's property in leak investigation edit: - 'fast and furious' which effectively created a problem, which at best can be considered reckless if not planned and pretty evil if actually intended to work the way it did
Seriously man, unless you literally just started observing politics, you may want to reconsider your high horse stance.
> Targetted killing of US citizen without a trial via drone strike ( Anwar al-Awlaki )
This was in a literal war zone against a man who literally declared war on the United States.
> Signed 2012 NDAA with 'indefinite detention' provisions
Didn't answer my question. This law targeted terrorists, not mothers of two, driving home from dropping their kids off at school.
> Extended Patriot ACT in 2011 - Re-authorized FISA in 2012
Didn't answer my question.
> Defended post-Snowden NSA metadata collection
Didn't answer my question.
> Seized reporter's property in leak investigation
This appears to be an actual leak investigation done by the DOJ. I don't recall these journalists being arrested, denied a lawyer, etc. I can't find any evidence that this was a legitimate leak investigation done in accordance with the law.
> 'fast and furious'
Reminder, we are talking about domestic surveillance and illegal detainment for political purposes.
Donald Trump has over 6,000 habeas corpus violations working their way through the court system in America right now. Obama had < 10 in 8 years. He is detaining U.S. citizens without cause, without explanation, and subjecting them to torturous conditions.
Your attempt to say both sides are the same is clearly an attempt to sound intelligent like you're above the discourse. You're not.
See... this is kinda how I know you have a political axe to grind. You are not arguing principles, which makes your outrage.. shall we say less potent. You are arguing your favorite outcome.
Allow me a quick rewrite of your breathless response in a more reasonable language.
<< This was in a literal war zone against a man who literally declared war on the United States.
Was he targeted? Was he targeted willfully? Was he target ted willfully, while administration knew he was an American citizen? When did they know it? Did they stop their plans once they did?
And that is before we get into: do you stop being a citizen when president says so? Seems pretty apt given how we are about to cover Good.
<< Didn't answer my question. This law targeted terrorists, not mothers of two, driving home from dropping their kids off at school.
You are apparently cool with president determining, who the terrorists are. If so, ICE shooting a mother of two ( who was clearly not watching those two kids m ind you ) is just an expansion of powers Obama gave himself. Thanks Obama!
<< Didn't answer my question (x2).
You can barely answer yours. (x2)
<< I can't find any evidence that this was a legitimate leak investigation done in accordance with the law.
I literally laughed. Try harder. Maybe consult an llm? Maybe all those arguments about AI effectively being here already because the floor is so low are not that far fetched.
<< Reminder, we are talking about domestic surveillance and illegal detainment for political purposes.
Sigh, we are talking about what we are talking about. It is cute that you think you can control this conversation though. In a way, it is almost like watching a toddler walking for the first time. Don't get me wrong, it is adorable, but it doesn't change much.
> See... this is kinda how I know you have a political axe to grind.
> Allow me a quick rewrite of your breathless response in a more reasonable language.
The fact that you won't just reply point by point and want to spin up a self-important narrative tells me everything I need to know about this interaction.
> Was he targeted? Was he targeted willfully? Was he target ted willfully, while administration knew he was an American citizen? When did they know it? Did they stop their plans once they did?
I was pointing out how Trump is targeting and killing US citizens in America for peacefully protesting and your "both both sides do it!" attempt was a U.S. citizen literally fighting against the U.S. in a warzone.
>If so, ICE shooting a mother of two ( who was clearly not watching those two kids m ind you ) is just an expansion of powers Obama gave himself. Thanks Obama!
ICE had a specific mandate under Obama (and every other President) to go after only criminals. Trump perverted this mandate to form a militarized police force to attack democratic cities, killing protesters with no accountability.
We get it. You are above all this. You are too smart to think that either party is better than the other.
We get it. You can stop now.
<< I was pointing out how Trump is targeting and killing US citizens in America for peacefully protesting and your "both both sides do it!" attempt was a U.S. citizen literally fighting against the U.S. in a warzone.
Huh? ICE is targeting illegal aliens. Protesters try to interfere ICE targeting illegal aliens.. you know their mandated duties and you are surprised at the results? For comparison, if I were to block FBI/DEA from conducting their operations by using a car, would that be acceptable from your perspective?
Naturally, the whole conversation is kinda silly, because if you know anything about this issue, then you know part of the reason 'sanctuary cities' are called that way is because local police is expected not to coordinate with ICE, which is kinda how the shitshow that you saw in twin cities is not a real issue in jurisdictions that follow federal law..
<< ICE had a specific mandate under Obama (and every other President) to go after only criminals.
And they did. Now, it certainly was something of a surprise how many are willing to protect criminals ( I am sorry, 'protect the community'. If Good actually stayed home and tended to her kids maybe she would have been alive today. But she chose badly. She should have chosen taking care of HER kids. ICE didn't do great, but I can't really fault them here.
<< You are too smart to think that either party is better than the other.
I am smart enough to distance myself. If you have any survival skills left in you, you should consider doing the same. I can't tell if you really believe the tripe you wrote, but it does not really matter. I said it before. The mood has shifted in ways you may have not noticed.
> Huh? ICE is targeting illegal aliens.
Overstaying your visa is a civil offense. Kidnapping and assaulting people who haven't even committed a misdemeanor is illegal and unconstitutional.
> Protesters try to interfere ICE targeting illegal aliens
Well in that case you could declare all protests as "interfering with police operations" thereby making illegal all protests and ohhhhh ok I get it.
You're not a "both sides" guy. You actively support this admin attacking the constitution and you're trying to make it look better by creating false equivalences instead of just owning what you support.
I'd have at least a little respect for you if you just owned it.
We're done here.
<< We're done here.
Whether you realize it or not, we have barely even started. Honestly, I will be amused if you can resist the temptation.
<< I'd have at least a little respect for you if you just owned it.
Pass, I have seen what your respect is worth.
<< You're not a "both sides" guy.
In a sense, I am worse. I a guy in the middle, who is starting to see you as a bigger problem than the illegal alien. Illegal alien can be deported, but I am not sure what can be done with that kind of world model.
<< Well in that case you could declare all protests
Do you get to protest DEA operation of disrupting local dealers? No? Then stop being silly with that weak counter.
<< Overstaying your visa is a civil offense.
And here we are. The siren song of the left. It is has the benefit of being true, but completely meaningless in context.
I had a longer argument, but I won't waste it on you, because you are giving me bumper stickers.
If it helps, I will leave you with one little nugget though. I am not sure what you think exactly, and I sure hope you are just a dumb kid, who simply didn't have a chance to see what real world looks like. Still, even if you are just a kid, whether you realize it or not, your stance does have consequences in real world and your immediate environment. If you do opt to champion those illegal aliens, who only committed civil offense, then you take responsibility for them. All of them. And don't worry, people, who don't will be sure to remind you of your commitments.
gl out there
> In a sense, I am worse. I a guy in the middle
> And here we are. The siren song of the left.
There's something particular sad about people that won't even admit to what they are in public. You know your right wing brand is toxic but you don't want to just be another cult member, so you pretend to be something else so your words will have more (or some) weight.
It's not working.
Have fun being the reason why the rest of your family hates Thanksgiving for the 10th year in a row.
<< There's something particular sad about people that won't even admit to what they are in public.
I don't want to beat the dead horse too much, but have you ever turned that inspection mechanism upon yourself? What did it see? Did it have to look away gasping at the impossible perfection of a celestial being? No? Odd.
You make me chuckle, which is the reason I am continuing in this fashion. Still, I am not even certain you understand what kind of conversation we are having now.
<< It's not working.
Oh, I don't know. Some seeds have clearly taken root.
<< Have fun being the reason why the rest of your family hates Thanksgiving for the 10th year in a row.
A lot of assumptions for such a short sentence. I will ignore it.
> I don't want to beat the dead horse too much, but have you ever turned that inspection mechanism upon yourself? What did it see?
Desperately trying to change the subject is not an argumentation tactic. It's at best, stalling. At worst, trolling.
Basically they are issuing (administrative) subpoenas. When they go to court (at the expense of the account holder) they back down so they don't get ruled against / told to stop issuing these subpoenas.
Noted in the article, when this happened in 2017 twitter denied the governments request. Now Meta, etc are rolling over for the government.
I hope courts find a way and the spine to tell them they're not valid. The government usually has a strong presumption of regularity but more and more courts are recognizing they're no longer a fair participant and will abuse the courts to get their way and are dropping that presumption.
> I hope courts find a way and the spine to tell them they're not valid.
I hope courts go further and find them in contempt, or engaging in something akin to barratry, or otherwise abusing the legal system.
I mean more is better here for sure.
Good faith by the federal government can no longer be assumed.
Donald Trump's real legacy is not any single action, but a complete inversion of trust of the US government by its citizens.
And the world.
When Europeans wonder why the U.S. is so backwards and barbaric about not implementing a National ID scheme. Look no further, ladies and gents, because at least once every 200 years, the population has a day of supreme brain off and puts someone like Trump in office. Once that happens, you too will appreciate why it should be hard for the government to do things.
I'm American. I'm not against national ID.
The issue is with the US is that ID is not free. I just had to pay 50 bucks to renew my driver's license. renewing a passport was 150 dollars the last time I checked (which was 2021). So any more costs just to function in society is a major impact to quite a few rights. The most hot topic being voter eligibility.
this is foreign to EU because, to my knowledge, getting an ID is free.
Sadly, a National ID scheme is by far not the only way the U.S. is backwards and barbaric.
europeans are well versed in the consequences of autocratic takeover of their governments, why they pretend to not know even recent history of the 20th century, I'll never understand.
> Now Meta, etc are rolling over for the government.
It is, after all, currently the best way to improve the bottom line.
I just recently played “The Last of Us” for the first time, and I feel like the US is going full steam ahead towards establishing that FEDRA service they had. Or at least, turn ICE/DHS into the same damn thing.
I played Deus Ex and the FEMA camps are now ICE camps.
Empires do not fall with dignity or grace I suppose.
The ACLU released a report on these camps in August of 2024 called "Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention".
Here's some of the issues it highlighted:
- forced labor in order to afford to eat. The $1/day "Voluntary Work Program" is the only way you're gonna get enough food to live. And if you refuse to work or try to protest, ICE doesn't have to give an excuse to send you into solitary confinement. CoreCivic sells this labor to companies
- extensive use of solitary confinement often for "minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints"
- dozens of documented deaths from forced labor and medical neglect
No doubt these issues have only gotten worse since the publication of this report.
https://www.aclunorcal.org/publications/resistance-retaliati...
This went from #2 on the front page to the bottom of page 2 very quickly. It's unfortunate.
twitter, Tiktok, threads, facebook, instagram -> they're all maga now. it's more of a policy directive than a request.
What is not owned/subjugated to the current admin? reddit, bluesky, lemmy, mastodon. People use reddit quite a bit but nowhere near as much as the maga ones.
I don't even know which is worse: if these people control social media and influence society to their nefarious ends, or if they don't and america starts resisting and real conflicts arise from that. No good ends left.
The good old choice between plague or cholera.
During the past months I have written enough online and now I am sure I will be unwanted at the US borders. I wait for the Dem POTUS to revert the situation and welcome the now "criminals" as heroes. I will miss the coming Olympic Games though.
Extraordinarily troubling. This recent case was especially dystopian.
https://newrepublic.com/post/206088/homeland-security-67-yea...
The letter written by Jon was about as benign and constructive as possible. There was not even the possibility of pretense in this case, but nonetheless his gmail got subpoenaed. The privacy community seems extraordinarily bad at dealing with nuance, so I want to lay this out specifically. This is a new threshold which has been crossed. No matter what angry commenters online will tell you, it was never previously so easy to to subpoena this sort of information.
If you have not already started cleaning up your online presence and thinking critically about your online OPSEC, the hour is getting very late.
I'm in EU and I'm 100% okay with being blacklisted from ever entering US. Just as I'd be okay with being blacklisted by 1933 Germany. To be honest I don't even think it's ethical to work for a US company anymore. (This is admittedly easy for me to say because I left Google some time ago for unrelated reasons. Call this "virtue signalling" if you want - I still believe it is good to discuss virtues and vices).
Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (eg welfare, healthcare, unionization, redistribution etc) is usually low among Americans.
I would counter that a majority of Americans are actually in favor of these things, but our supreme court has been corrupted by billionaires and is stymying any real progress along these lines. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/10/most-amer...
Similar to plantation owners convincing poor white Southerners that the North was threatening their "way of life", billionaires used media to manufacture consent of a large subset of Americans that [insert scapegoats] are "the problem". Separating church and state and wealth and media are essential to having a functioning democratic flavor of government.
Apparently something like 30% of Democrats (voters, not representatives) now identify as "Democratic Socialists." I assume this is because it's what Bernie and Mamdani call themselves while advocating for the above mentioned measures. The establishment Democrats will fight like hell to stem the tide, but there does seem to be increasing support for these populist policies among liberals.
I think it's because the Democratic Party has moved away from socialist policies, e.g., Medicare For All.
It makes one wonder how long until dang is forced to turn over logs of who responds in certain ways to certain messages on HN, and who upvotes prohibited thought.
I'll need to look this up, but IIRC HN is one of the sources included in a fairly popular LEO market "online media presence" aggregation tool.
You should assume that the IP address used for any online service (which for most people maps with timestamp to their home address and credit card for the cable bill) is not secret.
I use a VPN router that sends all of my traffic to a public VPN; if you don’t want HN having your location and identity, stop giving it to them.
You know this is all public and almost every person here has zero opsec, right? There's no point even asking YC for the data, unless you want to target that one very specific person.
Hmmm, how many of our past account email-settings are kept?
1st and 4th amendment are just wallpaper I guess.
The bigger issue is their purpose; how do they intend to use the names they are collecting.
This is such an entirely predictable outcome that people were warning about ever since the Patriot Act days and the creation of DHS.
Unfortunate, but the inevitable consequence of granting the kinds of powers that DHS was given.
just to be clear trump administration is not using Patriot Act era standards. They're going far beyond what any previous administration has done and openly breaking the law.
I have a feeling they would have gotten here even if Obama didn't expand the surveillance state.
The Trump administration has demanded fealty to Trump, the man, not the office holder. Any Executive Branch employee who refuses to issue a subpoena that the Trump administration wants issued will lose their job in seconds.
The subpoenas are intended as part of the database the Trump administration is building identifying American citizens with anti-Trump views.
There can be only one reason for such a database: to punish and terrorize the citizenry of this county.
Some further context: NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants
A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”
Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents...
Joinmastodon.org
Imagine organizing an anti-government movement on the platform of a guy who sponsored said government.
What are the alternatives for organizing large groups of regular (non-tech savvy) people? Carrier pigeon?
Word of mouth, independent websites, newsletters, blogs, community organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, amateur radio broadcasts/transmissions, neighborhood meetings, festivals, conferences, meetups, cultural traditions, leaflets, town criers.
Many of these (word of mouth, community organizations, religious organizations, meetups, neighborhood meetings) don't work beyond the local area.
Many of these (radio broadcast, independent websites) aren't accessible to non-technical people.
Many of these (cultural traditions, town criers) are obviously unserious.
Every single one of these has been effectively used to organize at geographic scale within this most recent century before "non-technical" even existed as a possible descriptor of a human being.
Many of them necessitate going outside, which may present an imaginative hurdle.
Imagine electicity in the home is made availiable but the deal is you can have it only if you don't use said electricity to exercise freedom of speech against the government, e.g. use a lamp to help you write the speech. And they have a way to track you if you do. And the alternative is no electrcity.
Online services like email and social media even are utilities.
Wild things can happen when you leave your house - you can actually meet and have conversations with your neighbors! Crazy, I know.
This is the point where most of the public would probably acknowledge that digital privacy is worth seeking. If you're in a fascist or communist state, announcing your political opinions online without anonymity is generally not advisable.
The interesting thing is that the time to oppose it these encroachments was somewhere between 2001 and say.. 2015 ( some events, but nothing in particular other than general acceptance by general populace ). And now the masses are crying foul? Now is absolutely not the time to try to get online invisibility cloak.
Some couldn't vote then broskie. In particular because of things like age, and school, and parents being spoonfed propaganda and having the desire for vengeance stoked for dat Middle East invasion and things. So since that couldn't happen, it seems the next best time to address the issue is now.
Here is a thing. I am not sure anyone really can at this point. I am not being hyperbolic.
Not with the assholes we have running the tech industry right now trying to groom every nation state into letting them help them morph into a technocratic hellhole, no.
FWIW, I don't mean to extinguish your fire. It is useful, but I do want you to see the sheer enormity of the issue.
7 deckchairs on the left, 456 on the right, that might help right the ship.
MAGA should oppose this, for their own sake. When Democrats sweep the floor in the midterms and then the presidency in 2028, because Trump wanted to pretend that the Epstein Files were "fake news", this will be precedent for them to send MAGA to gulags for being pro-Nazi.
Far too many criminals are being protected from prosecution by the Donald. He now has literal armies of criminals in whose best interests it is to keep him in office. Will they scoff at committing more crimes to make sure their protection doesn’t evaporate due to an election?
Assuming Trump lets us have elections at the midterms. It's public knowledge he's been talking about stopping them or re-writing the rules so only his lackeys can win.
> this will be precedent for them to send MAGA to gulags for being pro-Nazi.
I don’t get that vibe honestly but I might be in my own bubble.
How long before they come for Hacker News ?
Folks, it is now time to delete anything you posted here that might be construed as remotely critical of ICE or Trump.
A court order will not help you if ICE have already shot you dead.
Or, adjust your priorities and resist more. Authoritarians win when people let them.
Plus in Nov or 2026, get out and vote, no matter how hard it is to get to the polls. This happened because people sat on their behinds and did nothing in Nov 2024,
And, try to talk to people who don't agree with you. Have an open mind, listen, avoid being judgmental and critical. It's not easy, but you can change minds.
Won't matter. Donny put the epstein files out, redacted, to remind every single influential person in the blast radius that unless he keeps holding the redaction pen, all their lives will be over.
One thing to consider: it’s clear he was very widely connected in American elite circles. It’s likely that almost all prominent people (in finance, business, the arts, science, government, etc) all came across him. We know he worked pretty hard to get intertwined with everyone he could.
And yet, although the list of his connections is large, it’s very far from most of these people. It seems plenty of people saw him for who he was and steered clear.
Nah. People who sit on social media would rather stand on street corners and yell at people.
If someone is motivated enough to attend protests, they're motivated enough to go vote.
Many of the people who go to protests have lost their right to vote.
Not sure what that means. Mostly ordinary citizens go to protests. Not aware of any group paying felons to protest. Speaking of, is Trump allowed to vote?
Attending public (peaceful) protest is valuable. It shows that people with that view point (whatever it is) are not alone. It encourages more people to get involved.
I think it's prudent to both resist and to protect yourself.
Indeed. We're not too far from "I am Spartacus."
Let ‘em come. Even if I could delete my posts (you can’t, BTW), I’m not deleting shit. And I’m sure not obeying in advance.
I don’t think we should preemptively surrender our free speech to the authoritarians.
I hope that this is hyperbolic satire and not a genuine viewpoint because it is incredibly unrealistic to the point of being almost fantastical. The US government aren't going to "go after" or interfere with Hacker News at any time in the future unless it suddenly, inexplicably becomes a popular hotbed of political activism (which it shouldn't become anyway).
Why do you think these folks operate in a rational and proportional manner?
All it takes is one "wrong" thing to go viral and anybody goes in the retribution list.
Wrong. They are kidnapping American citizens and exiling them. They’re imprisoning people that criticize the government.
It’s a totalitarian regime. With enough time, will come after all dissenters.
> popular hotbed of political activism
First, it is unbelievably illegal for the government to do this.
Second, pain is their objective. Republicans have had no principles since they elected Trump in 2016. Their only objective is to hurt whomever they consider the enemy.
And everyone that isn’t screaming “I love the orange dictator!” is an enemy.
It is highly illegal - unconstitutional - for them to go after HN, even if it becomes a popular hotbed of political activism.
/me waves hands around wildly
This admin is constantly doing illegal things and when challenged in court has over a 70% loss rate.
unless it suddenly, inexplicably becomes a popular hotbed of political activism
That's the thing about AI and scale. You don't have to only target the big fish. You can cast a wide net and scoop up data on people in every nook and cranny of the internet.
The concentration camps were loaded with people who thought their town was too small for the Nazis to bother with.
You don’t even need AI, just data brokers. And no warrant needed, only cash.
I want the government to know how i feel. I want them to see my posts and comments. If this anonymous surveilance without warrants is the only way to be acknowledged then thats a form of protest to me and it has made me want to be more outspoken knowing we are all being watched. Fuck ice.
To all the replies herein:
Dang - I haven't read that kind of hacker attitude anywhere, even here, in a long time ya'll. I ain't kiddin', I got a little weepy.
I don't know what the rally cry of hackers would be, but Atari 800, assembly code, and solder smoke for all!
This is known as a "chilling effect".
I swear many years ago you could delete old posts but not any longer. About all you can do now is do something so egregious that they delete your account.
Even if you could delete comments, in this day and age it's not a real deletion. They'd just put a "deleted" flag on the comment in the DB.
There's likely many iterations of HN comment datasets out there from "show hn: I scraped everyone's comments for my comp sci/big data class" over the years.
And there's a bunch of full scrapes of HN around anyway.
That’s actually how I got my Facebook deleted in 2015, and it appears I am still banned. I posted a picture, from behind, of a cowboy wearing only chaps. I tried to join again around 2022 to sell some stuff and they rejected me.
Probably the best move I made for my mental health tbh.
You've always been able to delete for 2 hours and then the post becomes effectively permanent, modulo emailing dang to get it deleted by an admin.
Have they stated the justification for this anywhere? You'd think a site that brands itself as being for hackers would value its users having control over their comments/privacy.
There's value in editing for clarity within a window of a live discussion. After the live discussion is less active, it's important to be able to reference things or see a coherent view of the discussion and what people were responding to.
Yes, it's because the comments create a discussion thread that then becomes impossible to follow (or worse, misleading) if certain comments within it are either deleted or edited to say something different. The idea is that what you write becomes communal property once it's been responded to, because it's part of a community discussion that loses meaning if people start deleting individual comments.
I believe that, even within that two hour window, you cannot delete if anyone has replied to it.
You can still edit it to say "[deleted]" or something, though.
You can do it just you have to email dang directly about it. Pretty stupid system.
Pretty sure they only change the username to something anonymous though, and remove any PII in comments you've written, right? They won't delete the comments themselves AFAIK.
The HN email address takes personal requests for comment deletion.
Archive.org probably already has it anyway.
Let them come for us. If it comes to that, trolling social media to arrest american citizens en masse, people are going to be forming militias and I'll join up the local outfit. I don't care anymore. I'm ready to take a stand if it comes to it and take back our country and I'm sure I'm not alone on that either.
I feel like this is the inevitable end result. Ironic that we’ll finally get well-regulated militias.
ICE and CBP are building a lot of concentration camps. Clearly, they are planning to fill them.
They have a limited amount of power to suppress opinion even with their powerful tools and thugs. Their method is to go after big platforms and prominent individuals. If you keep speaking up anyway, it will overwhelm them.
Okay you go ahead and give in I'm gonna not though
The HN owners have virtually unlimited funds to pay tribute to dear leader and zero morals, so this is not a real possibility.
> Folks, it is now time to delete anything you posted here
It's too late. Multiple copies of all the posts exist already.
Man, they can fucking blow me.
If you start censoring yourself because of potential consequences, you’re complicit.
Sooner a dead lion than some kind of shabby boot-donkey.
Fearing the consequences doesn't make you a complicit but a victim. Sure there will be people who will take a more brave/difficult stance, but can't blame others for not doing so, we don't know they'd put at stake.
You can be both complicit and a victim.
For the record: FUCK ICE, bunch of pseudo-fascist thugs, or paid off mercenaries. Wankers, the lot of em.
You can't delete comments here. It's why I've only ever made anonymous throwaway posts or comments.
But in this specific case I do not agree with complying with this bullshit in advance.
If Trump's going to throw me in his El Salvador gulag for being a deep state Soros-backed neoliberal globalist shill on HN, I'm going to make sure somebody in his regime at least has to read my bullshit first.
Preach comrade. And I want them to reflect on how they're protecting the Epstein Class while going after free speech.
Sorry. No. I'm not going to get pushed around by a bunch of bootlickers.
One day redhat is going to grease Trump's pole with enough cash, and King Donald is going to send a member of his tribal-tattooed, part-time MAGA influencer burgerwaffen to pull-up the black van and take you under cover of night for posting wrongthink about wayland & systemd.
oh boy, ICE will mess up with the mid-term selection and make sure Trump get another 4 years.
It's the NYT, so I'm sure their general attitude is "good corporate citizens will do it", but how is the proper response not "fuck you, make me"?
And don't kid yourself about deleting stuff preemptively. It's all backed up in the NSA's Bumblehive data center, Cedar Valley, Utah. All that has to happen is to tie some "handle" to a real person, and said real person will end up in a FEMA camp in an old KMart outside of a small town in the midwest.