469 分 | 作者 root-parent 22小时前
30 条评论
- baddash 20小时前My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:
1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.
2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.
3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.
4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?
Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.
- pyrale 11小时前> The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem?
Any government body with no oversight program indicates that rule of law is optional.
- Predaxia 6小时前[dead]
- remarkEon 9小时前The rule of law is and always has been based on a monopoly of violence. That monopoly is increasingly tenuous, frankly. Even the word "oversight" implies that, if said entity being overseen ventures out of the bounds of the overseer, violence is the mechanism by which compliance is attained.
- pyrale 9小时前> The rule of law is and always has been based on a monopoly of violence.
There is no such thing as a monopoly of violence. Weber's work, which you reference, talks about states claiming a monopoly of legitimate violence.
However, legitimacy and law are two different things: while every state claims they are the only ones allowed to use violence legitimately, not every state codifies their functioning in laws ; and fewer structure themselves in such a way that these laws are sovereign.
My point is that merely codifying the state's actions in laws isn't enough to get functioning rule of law. You also need functioning government oversight (and a few other things, but that's not the current topic). When government's action is not overseen, respect of the law happens at the whim of government agents.
- ChiMan 5小时前The rule of law isn’t based on the state’s monopoly on violence. Its entire purpose is to protect citizens from state violence by subordinating it to law adjudicated in courts.
- watwut 9小时前What is supposed to be the point of this comment? Poor cops have terrible violence unleashed them by having civilian oversight? Or that we should ditch rule of law and structures and instead go with what the most violent local warlord wants?
- pocksuppet 5小时前I think they're trying to say infinite force is needed to defend the city from the subhuman immigrants overrunning it. That's how I understood the comment.
- stuaxo 9小时前I can't work out whether the grandfather post is more American Libertarian or a modern feudalal stan or something else.
- pyrale 9小时前I sometimes struggle to establish a difference between your two propositions.
- josh2600 20小时前The thing is... under the laws as they're written today, if US Gov wants to take a peek at your stuff on FB and friends servers, FB can be barred from informing you that such a request has come in under the National Security Letter (NSL) guidelines.
It's a very complicated thing :/.
- baddash 20小时前I don't mean to be some annoying contrarian or something, but couldn't it be the case that if the govt was investing someone who was planning a terrorist attack, then notifying the person being investigated could work against stopping them?
Not saying it wouldn't get abused though, which seems like the primary concern of most people in these discussions..
- therealpygon 19小时前You mean like those Minnesota soccer mom “terrorists”? It’s hard to assume good faith after repeated bad faith behaviors, hence the reason our justice system is supposed to operate on evidence and a presumption of innocence, rather than “treat everyone like they aren’t a terrorist…yet..but will be if i decide they are”.
- balls187 11小时前No. Our justice system has never actually been based on evidence.
It’s based on the doctrine of judicial discretion in the name of preserving order.
- therealpygon 4小时前“Is” and “supposed to be” are not the same thing, but your perspective appreciated.
- trinsic2 11小时前> It’s based on the doctrine of judicial discretion in the name of preserving order.
Yep for public order reasons alone. Not saying thats a good think. IMHO its the main reason actual justice is lacking.
- remarkEon 9小时前This is hysterical nonsense.
When these things come up people tend to venture into hyperbole. Probably because it's an incentives issue (it gets clicks and upvotes). If "preserving order" was the number everyone in the judiciary optimized for all of violent riots and protests against any cause you can imagine wouldn't have happened. But they did, so therefore this concept of "no evidence" is not true.
It's fine to be skeptical about private companies sharing "intelligence" (I would challenge the use of that word) with what are state-sanctioned entities (the police), and there's a long list of reasons to be skeptical. So obviously there is no reason to invent things that are not true.
- pocksuppet 5小时前They could arrest everyone and have perfect order. Short of that, they can only arrest people at the first small sign that person might ever not preserve order. Which is what they are currently doing. Things like loitering, expressing political opinions online, or being LGBT, are signs that a person might in the future not be completely orderly, and they arrest for that.
- balls187 3小时前> So obviously there is no reason to invent things that are not true.
Because everyone who has ever been convicted of a crime actually committed the crime.
- ClarityJones 20小时前If the target were being investigated for terrorism, then the govt could inform the company of that and - if the company tipped the terrorist off - prosecute the company for being an accessory / aid to the terrorist.
However, if the govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith... they could tip off the victim.
The NSLs only really help in the latter scenario. As long as the govt has a plausible story, there will be a 50% chance that the target is a criminal and the company will not risk notifying the target. With NSLs they can prosecute the company even though there was no legitimate basis for the investigation and everyone knew it.
- idle_zealot 20小时前> govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith...
This is the thing tearing at the seams of our justice system in general. Our rules are based around an ostensible checks-and-balances arrangement, but this relies on the assumption of good faith from the parties involved. Implicit in this is the idea that if any body isn't acting in good faith, it will be so repugnant to voters that the state of affairs will quickly come to an end. This assumption is false.
Now we're talking about granting Facebook the right to assume bad faith on the part of the FBI!? Like granting the power to ignore the government to private companies will solve this, or help at all? That bandaid solution is almost certainly worse than the disease.
That's not to say that I agree with secret spying provisions. They clearly violate the Constitution and undermine trust in democracy. I just don't think "if you're a big enough company you get to ignore orders and drag things out in court" is a solution to government overreach. It's individual rights that need protecting, not corporate ones.
- choo-t 18小时前Oh yes, the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.
Better to wiretap everyone just in case. Why stop there ? After all there a chance any privacy could be used to conceal some terrorist plot, better to record every meat-space conversations too, let's not take any risk.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 15小时前We could even recruit people to turn their neighbors in for all sorts if terrible acts, like offensive FB posts, or not wearing masks, or having too many people over, or hanging out on the beach by themselves during a pandemic, or...
The party in power always wants control. Whether this is bad or not usually depends on if you align with the party in control or not.
- trinsic2 11小时前See this is the thing. Im not aligned with any party. If anyone does this stuff, they should be held accountable.
- gessha 19小时前Isn’t it better for all parties if the user is informed that they’re being investigated?
This way they might stop from doing the act for which they’re investigated instead of actually carrying it out.
- yamillove 13小时前No. We want to catch and send you to the slammer. Criminals and terrorists usually NEVER STOP trying.
- pocksuppet 5小时前Thank you for exemplifying this point. The justice system isn't about stopping crimes. It's about inflicting punishment. In some cases, the justice system even encourages or creates crimes, so it can punish someone.
- cindyllm 13小时前[dead]
- dylan604 19小时前Or they stop using the means of communication that has become compromised and find a new way starting the cat&mouse over again.
This is like saying that an undercover agent must answer "yes" when asked by anyone if they are part of a law enforcement agency. What would be the point of being undercover?
The problem is the abuse of the invasive searching. If the evidence is compelling enough, then present that evidence to a judge and have a legit signed warrant. Unfortunately, there will be judges with a rubber stamp.
- skinfaxi 17小时前This is a bit different from flashing your headlights to warn oncoming traffic to a cop.
- michaelmrose 14小时前The actuality is that there is reason to believe it has been virtually nothing but outrageous abuse from inception to now.
In general the need for secrecy is liable to be inversely related to the time required for it to be secret from what we do know and this is under comparatively sane regimes. Our current regime wants to build concentration camps and imprison journalists for reporting on their foibles.
What you SHOULD do is have sane limits with truly independent oversight by parties accountable to congress and the people. After a comparatively short duration virtually everything should become public and any misuse of said systems should result in prison. It's not like we couldn't build a system that with appropriate checks and balances but we certainly don't have one now.
- wat10000 19小时前Literally anything that protects people from the law will protect criminals and terrorists too.
Fourth amendment? A terrorist might have a bomb in their trunk that the police aren't allowed to search.
Jury trial? A psychopathic murder might charm the jury into thinking they're not guilty and get released.
Prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? What if the person is actually a horrible criminal but there's reasonable doubt?
We have these protections not because they save ordinary people while still letting the government do everything possible to catch criminals, but because we think it's worth reducing the government's ability to catch criminals in exchange for fewer abuses of non-criminals.
- idiotsecant 4小时前Won't someone please think of the children?!?!
Oh, sorry I thought we were pretending we cared about nonproblems in order to destroy individual privacy.
- mulmen 18小时前I think what gets lost in these conversations is that the government is using very lazy methods to catch low hanging fruit. Instead of extrajudicial spying they should be creating undercover identities and infiltrating criminal organizations. If law enforcement was competent Facebook wouldn’t even know it was happening.
- cucumber3732842 18小时前I'm not sure if that's better. The feds have a long history of goading "probably harmless" people into parking SUVs full of half-ass explosives in NYC or kidnapping governors or whatever.
- mulmen 11小时前It’s possible for law enforcement to misbehave in more than one way. In fact while they were manufacturing these cases they were also conducting dragnet surveillance. It’s not a competition, or a choice.
Manufacturing cases doesn’t mean undercover investigations are illegal or even unreasonable. It’s just another example of unethical LEO behavior that should be destroyed.
On the other hand dragnet surveillance of US citizens is NEVER ok.
- cindyllm 17小时前[dead]
- gopher_space 17小时前The panopticon reflects the trust I have in society.
It seems like an incredibly bad idea right now, but I can imagine machines of loving grace that would do only good with such a powerful tool.
- jqmccleary 20小时前Unfortunate but true, I feel we could rise up and stop things like this but most people these days are either unaware or are too busy struggling to do so
- dakolli 20小时前I don't want any secretive surveillance, I don't care if you can prove whether its malicious or not.
- baddash 20小时前[flagged]
- john_strinlai 20小时前ok. explain why we should care about your thoughts as "someone who doesnt know much about these types of things", then?
its a message board. people post their opinions. its how they function.
- baddash 20小时前You don't have to care, and I'm not really sure why you thought I think that.
And yeah, people post their opinions on message boards. He posted his opinion, and I posted what I thought about it. What's the issue exactly? I'm not saying he shouldn't have posted it or something..
- whatshisface 20小时前If not knowing who somebody is weighs into your consensual model of interactions with them, just wait until you hear about surveillance! :-)
- austinthetaco 20小时前This isn't reddit man, no need for this kind of reply. They were speaking in-context of the article in this post.
- zombot 6小时前> Secret + surveillance + no oversight : Is that a problem?
You've gotta be shitting me.
- lstodd 20小时前It's like you never heard of Snowden.
You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.
- pocksuppet 5小时前A significant chunk of today's HN readership were less than 10 years old when Snowden leaked.
- BeetleB 20小时前Your comment doesn't address any of the issues in the comment, and isn't adding to the conversation.
- fsflover 6小时前The Snowden revelations explain very well why we need the oversight and much more. They are relevant here.
- aliasxneo 22小时前> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
- giancarlostoro 22小时前4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.
- errendgame 21小时前For people like me who had no idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
- j-bos 20小时前In a similar but distinct vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
- Slow_Hand 17小时前That’s wild. I had no idea.
- picsao 21小时前That article has no mentioning of the tiktok speedruns?
- giancarlostoro 20小时前Those are not tied directly to this. This was in 2008, any modern protests against Scientology today have just spawned into their own thing.
- skrebbel 21小时前That was amazing. I once witnessed a protest like that, in Hannover Germany I think. The idea of 4chan people actually going up the stairs and out of the house into the open air and talking to people, like with molecules and sound waves and all that stuff, it still blows my mind.
- giancarlostoro 20小时前They do that all the time. They're not redditors.
- marcosdumay 22小时前At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
- psychoslave 21小时前Such a low level of expectation of ethical level for non human beings is not fair.
- reaperducer 21小时前At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
- coliveira 22小时前Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
- colechristensen 22小时前Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
- CGMthrowaway 21小时前That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
- colechristensen 21小时前No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
- saghm 20小时前From reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons yesterday after someone posted a link to it in the comments for another thread, I came away with the impression that Hubbard seemed to be into some pretty weird stuff long before scientology.
- sysguest 22小时前damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
- sidewndr46 21小时前people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
- loeg 20小时前You get or used to get true believers working in hellish conditions[1] on the boats, paid ~nothing. It might be a quid pro quo convenience for the Tom Cruises, but there are also some suckers.
- saghm 20小时前Having a few famous Tom Cruises claiming it helped them is almost certainly part of the strategy for hooking in the dubious.
- sidewndr46 20小时前Cruise's contribution is influence due to his status and likely money given his income. Other's contribution is going to be much simpler, as you pointed out.
- loeg 20小时前I'm saying, Cruise gets more out of it. Others get nothing. They're in it as believers, not a "literature club."
- hydrogen7800 21小时前This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
- opo 20小时前This is sometimes referred to as Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
- psychoslave 21小时前Religion is all about social function, at least from social science perceptives I guess.
- sidewndr46 20小时前sure, but that is reductive. From a theological perspective it's entirely about salvation if you're Christian. Judaism, isn't so clear.
- psychoslave 9小时前Reducing theological perspectives to judeo-christian views is also very narrow.
That said, focusing on some narrow topic is also totally legitimate, as human being we can’t encompass everything and the rest in our tight attention window.
- sysguest 18小时前well even if it's "social function", do want to be labeled as retarded?
I just can't imagine tainting my name by joining those scientology retards...
- modo_mario 7小时前Religion is ultimately for a great part a matter of identity and they sure don't think of themselves as retards.
People think it's doctrine, scripture and proseltysing that sustains it and anyone looking into those first 2 at least would think they're idiots but mostly it's things like CREDs (credibility enhancing displays) and group ties that contribute to believers selfidentity which calcifies the belief.
Looking at their or a different religion for what it is would challenge their sense of self and as humans we really don't like that kind of cognitive dissonance.
- QuercusMax 22小时前Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.
- futuraperdita 22小时前Infiltration of government institutions has been doctrine for the group since the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
- Deprogrammer9 21小时前Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs
- stronglikedan 21小时前Man, I wish something like this would have happened to me when I was younger and spunkier. For years, I've had so many scenarios planned in my head for how something like that would play out! Even today, I might not just ignore it even though my propensity to give fucks has waned over the years.
- retardkiller 20小时前[dead]
- joe_the_user 21小时前It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).
- QuercusMax 21小时前Now I want to play Steve Jackson's Illuminati...
- acidhousemcnab 22小时前Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.
- red-iron-pine 20小时前the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example
- whimsicalism 21小时前Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing
> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”
- jedahan 21小时前That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.
- whimsicalism 21小时前I encourage people imagining this as some high-scale surveillance dragnet to look at the Seattle Shield website and form their opinions https://seattleshield.org/default.aspx?MenuItemID=53&MenuGro...
- john_strinlai 20小时前ah, yes, the little 8-line explanation there by the entity in question absolutely clears them of all suspicion, really.
i am sure that information obtained by seattle shield is not shared to anyone outside of seattle borders. police departments and the FBI are not known to share information, after all. police are especially cagey about sharing with other agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism.
- therealdrag0 10小时前People post cctv footage on YouTube all the time. Is this that different?
- john_strinlai 3小时前yep
- whimsicalism 20小时前I'm just encouraging people to look at the website itself, not actually the particular blurb I linked
- john_strinlai 20小时前the 8 line blurb is the entire website, minus the membership signup and login. am i missing something?
- saghm 20小时前There's also the contact form! I'm sure if I send them a nice message they'll clear everything up
- whimsicalism 19小时前i'm just saying that the structure of this aspx website doesn't pass the sniff test as being part of some large-scale data trawl in partnership with tech companies
- jedahan 21小时前Not sure if you meant to reply here?
- saghm 20小时前Good thing that ICE has such a stellar reputation of not pushing the agenda of the national government into local affairs!
- shevy-java 21小时前[flagged]
- whimsicalism 21小时前Interesting. You should write an article about this and post it on HN. This article is about an unfunded website run by someone at the Seattle PD.
- sailfast 20小时前I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.
Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?
- saghm 20小时前I don't know what neighborhood you live in, but there aren't many billion-dollar corporations hanging out on my block. Given how much shady stuff has come out about some of these companies, I don't think it's really that terrible a presumption that pretty much anything they've invested time and effort into that isn't already public knowledge might have been used for some stuff that we'd be unhappy to find out about.
- wesleychen 17小时前The density of these offices in downtown Seattle is super high and it's also an area that has a lot of crime so this implementation makes sense. Probably low ROI in other areas like your neighborhood that don't fit this profile.
- saghm 16小时前My point is that if you start with the premise of something rife with frivolous fear-mongering like Nextdoor, swap out "random individuals with no real clout" with "some of the most powerful companies in the world", and then move everything behind a login that only established business and law enforcement can view, there's plenty reason to think that maybe this might not end up being a healthy thing for society at large.
There are already established ways for crimes to be reported to law enforcement, and arguably even in those ways that are ostensibly open to the public, it's already a well-known thing that the amount of help someone gets is proportionate to their wealth/power/social/influence/etc. There's absolutely no need to have a special extra channel for them that's not visible to the public if there's truly nothing to hide because the justice system already is tilted widely in their favor in the normal way things work.
- baddash 20小时前It might be a purposefully sensationalist framing in order to increase KPIs. It works because a lot of people have strong opinions things without thinking much.
- tinix 21小时前> All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.
the number of times I've been harassed by police for taking photos... even in small towns in the middle of nowhere people are paranoid.- neoCrimeLabs 21小时前I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/chronic...
- Terr_ 7小时前A fictional public service announcement from the classic game Deus Ex (2000), also involving photographs...
> [Be Safe: Be Suspicious] How can you tell who might be a terrorist? Look for the following characteristics:
> * A stranger or foreigner.
> * Argumentative, especially about politics or philosophy.
> * Probing questions about your work, particularly high-tech.
> * Spends a greater than average amount of time on the Net.
> * Interests in chemistry, electronics, or computers.
> * Large numbers of mail-order deliveries.
> * Taking photographs of major landmarks.
> And those are just a few. If you're suspicious, then turn them in to your local law enforcement for a thorough background check. Better safe than sorry. You and your neighbors will sleep more securely knowing that you're watching each other's back.
- conductr 20小时前Unfortunately we have to live in the reality that any unusual thing is a suspicious thing. There’s a whole entire concept that has been popularized around the concept of “see something, say something” and it would be expected that such vague concepts generate paranoia. I am not in a touristy or scenic area so seeing people out taking photos is unusual here and I could see how at least talking to the photographer isn’t a bad idea from a security standpoint.
Might help to mention I’m American so, you know, random joes blowing stuff/people up is part of my reality.
- matheusmoreira 19小时前> suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos
What is the logic behind this? Why is it suspicious?
Everybody's got a camera now. People taking puctures is the most normal thing in the world now.
- ensen 22小时前archive that won't hijack your back button https://archive.is/Td9AR
- andrybak 21小时前archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog. This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
- ninjagoo 19小时前> archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog.
Please provide evidence for your claim. The wiki rfc [5] that you linked doesn't provide any DDOS evidence at all, which is odd for wikipedia.
> This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting
This appears to be a concerted effort to blacklist archive.today by unknown actors. There were at least 3 attempts with odd efforts to sway the vote [1][2][3] (the notes in the sidebars at those Wiki RFCs document these actions by bots and others), and a successful attempt to undo the blacklist [4], and then yet another attempt [5].
I'm curious as to why you did not include this very relevant background information in your comment?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
- nubinetwork 11小时前
- arcanemachiner 20小时前Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.
- saghm 19小时前The link they did include seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of alternatives. Complaining can be fun, but it doesn't really make sense to penalize them for not being prescriptive about alternatives when the exact point they're trying to make is specific resources for this sort of thing can be prone to abuse.
- BeetleB 20小时前Just like complaining about Amazon (be it as an employer or as a service provider), without providing an alternative, is siphoning people into a soapbox?
I, for one, found out about the archive.* situation recently, and am totally glad someone like the commenter pointed it out. My wanting to bypass paywalls to read content doesn't justify supporting the owner's behavior - not even close.
- Cider9986 21小时前Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.
- PcChip 22小时前Why do our browsers even allow that?
- herpdyderp 21小时前When done properly you don't even notice! It is very beneficial when needed. But, as we know, very awful when done improperly.
- nofunsir 20小时前> When done properly you don't even notice!
This lame argument should be added to the List of Fallacies. It's used everywhere as a "wild card" argument.
> Makeup
> MLB Pitch Framing by catchers
> Surveillance States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies?useskin=vect...
- lazyasciiart 10小时前When it’s used properly you don’t even notice it. Like plumbing.
- sheept 22小时前For websites like Gmail when you open an email
- hkt 21小时前To enable JavaScript crapware
- codezero 22小时前Have a look at your local branch here: https://globalshieldnetwork.com/programs-2/
- gmerc 10小时前The thing with screaming FIRE as an overreaction is that it’s not an overreaction when everyone is doused in kerosine.
- jedahan 21小时前Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
- Manuel_D 21小时前Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
- saghm 20小时前Depends on what they consider "destructive", and it's not like there isn't already a way for contacting law enforcement when the circumstances warrant it.
The Nextdoor analogy is even more apt because it's kind of notorious for being used by people to complain about all sorts of ridiculous things that don't deserve attention
- Manuel_D 19小时前Sure, but nobody tries to portray NextDoor as an "intelligence sharing network operation" and a "nationwide surveillance apparatus".
- saghm 16小时前Yes, because Amazon, etc. are not the ones using Nextdoor. My point is that if you think this is just "Nextdoor but for Seattle companies", consider what you think the equivalent of a frivolous and out-of-touch comment like "oh no there's a person who isn't the same race as me walking down my street" is for a billion dollar company and what type of effects setting up a place for them to funnel things like that to law enforcement outside of the normal public channels might have on society.
- Manuel_D 16小时前Put yourself in the shoes of the police here:
A store keeper emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into my store and engaged in disruptive behavior."
An Amazon security personnel emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into our office and engaged in disruptive behavior."
What makes one of these so much more impactful than the other?
- saghm 16小时前I'm saying that the alternative is "An Amazon security personnel or store keeper reports a crime via the normal public channels and there's the usual paper trail for it". Your premise that this is only ever used for anything benign is what I'm disagreeing with here; obviously if you assume it, then nothing sketchy is going on, but at that point the argument is circular.
- Manuel_D 14小时前It sure sounds like the contents of this channel are retained and subject to public records requests. From the article:
> Through public records requests, Prism obtained the Seattle Shield bulletins, as well as a full list of Seattle Shield members who had access to the program as of 2020
- KennyBlanken 20小时前> Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
- Manuel_D 20小时前Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the government. Again, say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
The irony is that curbing this "private intelligence network" would require infringing on the free speech of private people.
- saghm 19小时前> say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
When the "shopkeepers" are billion dollar corporations, and several levels of law enforcement (including national ones like immigration officials) are also on the network, I think it makes sense for the level of scrutiny to be a bit higher than your hypothetical
- Manuel_D 19小时前As per the article, this isn't just used by Amazon and Meta, local non profits are also use this resource.
- saghm 15小时前I'd be interested in details about how visible reports from a given organization are to the others on the platform. People seem to be making comparisons to Nextdoor, but one of the fundamental parts of it is the public feed. If this is essentially a special way to DM law enforcement, it's not really comparable.
- Manuel_D 14小时前You realize that you can contact law enforcement through means that are not immediately publicly visible like on Next Door? Like, if you call 911, that's not immediately public for the world to see?
A 911 call might be subject to public records requests, but so is this Shield bulletin.
- 6thbit 21小时前If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
- pamcake 21小时前Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?
- saghm 20小时前> If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
That's a pretty strange conflation. It's pretty commonly discussed exactly how rare it is for people to make open source to get compensated by companies that use their projects. I find it hard to imagine that you genuinely think that there isn't an obvious distinction that most observers would draw between that and direct employment.
- Barbing 21小时前> Are there really ways out?
Not with that attitude
- jedahan 20小时前Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
- keybored 17小时前Yes.
- croes 21小时前No
Yes
Maybe
- stronglikedan 21小时前If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
- jedahan 20小时前This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
- ozozozd 20小时前So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
- ishouldstayaway 20小时前> ...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine
- red-iron-pine 20小时前this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
- honzaik 18小时前this is like arguing that laws are useless because theyre not bulletproof. please stop with this pseudological thinking
- saghm 19小时前"There are lots of bad things" does not imply "all bad things are equally bad and therefore it's not worthwhile to try to prevent any of them"
- keybored 17小时前“Software is eating the world”, but also “not working on antisocial tech is too difficult aaah”.
Is it though? Finding some ethically neutral Crud gig?
- KennyBlanken 20小时前[flagged]
- BeetleB 20小时前Do you feel the same way about the warehouse workers?
- dfbdbdffgn 13小时前Didn't stop me from nearly getting attacked by a homeless junkie hearing voices a few weeks ago on Capitol Hill.
- shermantanktop 22小时前Looks like a nothingburger? It's unfunded. An email describes a protest without giving a framing that the site would prefer. Then it turns out that nobody knows what it does, but it might do something bad.
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
- Shalomboy 22小时前My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.
- kube-system 20小时前Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
- lacewing 21小时前Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
- whimsicalism 21小时前Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well
- erxam 22小时前I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.
- nikhilpareek13 22小时前[dead]
- LoganDark 22小时前Do you mean unfounded?
- 1234letshaveatw 21小时前Unfunded. It's in the article
- acidhousemcnab 22小时前There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?
- pc86 20小时前Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?
- acidhousemcnab 19小时前No I'm just not from the United States (or a solipsist).
- shermantanktop 21小时前The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
- dakolli 20小时前Random Idea:
Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.
Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.
- Freedumbs 17小时前Self censored headline to avoid flagging? "Amazon, Facebook, ICE, and the FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network operated by Seattle police"
- jazz9k 20小时前With gun rights and the right to defend yourself in many US cities, surveillance is the next step to stop crime.
In places like the UK, where guns are nearly banned, this is the norm.
If I can't stop you from robbing me, I should have the ability to record you and identify you later.
I'm fine if we reduce surveillance, if gun/defense rights are added.
- booleandilemma 22小时前Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.
- verdverm 21小时前No one is going to save us. I've recently been moved to direct action and started participating in a local indivisible.org group. It's had untold positive impacts on my personal mental state being with people trying to make things better, or at least slow the damage for now. Much of that is from going out and talking to random people on the street, handing out information and having conversations. Also quitting social media at the same time, save one exception for HN.
- pc86 20小时前This just seems like a progressive PAC. Which, okay that's fine, but not exactly giving "weaker government" vibes, just "we want our team in charge for a bit" vibes. Happy to be proven wrong, though.
- verdverm 19小时前Yea, I hear you on that, I hold reservations from the "same thing, other side" vibes. But it is also not a PAC in the sense of being primarily about donations and political funding (in my experience thus far). It's more a grassroots coalition and the IRL vibes are way different than the online ones. Different chapters could have different vibes, I'm hanging with retired ladies who've been protesting since the 60s but also have ai curiosity and excitement (most of them anyhow). The broad labelling goes away when you meet people face2face.
My hope is also the more that people show up IRL the more representative the organization will be of us, or we the people will make a new one that can choose right from wrong instead of left vs right. The political middle has been diminished much like the middle class. :/
- yamillove 13小时前[dead]
- travisgriggs 20小时前People are never going to quit doing this. I'm surprised we still get "incensed" by being "watched without consent". There is
No. Way. It's. Going. To. Ever. Get. Stopped.
The only way to level the effects are to radically increase the surveillance so that everyone ends up in a Dark Forest "I know shit about you too" deterrence stand off. And/or flood the sensors with so much input/noise that meaningful signal is tough to suss out.
- ethagnawl 21小时前Please tell me they're using Workplace.
- kittikitti 22小时前As an American, I genuinely trust my data with China more than I do with the United States.
- organsnyder 21小时前That's actually a very logical stance: China is much less interested in what you're doing as an individual citizen—and much less able to act on what they know—than the United States is. For the same reason, Chinese citizens should trust the United States with their data more than China.
- shevy-java 21小时前Not so surprising - we kind of suspected this. Anyone remembers Snowden or Assange?
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
- pc86 20小时前Authoritarianism didn't work in the past because it was too hard to control that many people. You simply didn't have the scale unless you were willing to roll tanks down city streets, and even then all it did was buy you an extra couple years, maybe a decade or two. Eventually, someone always got close enough to end you and then it started falling apart.
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.
- Ember_Wipe 13小时前[flagged]
- indianbunghole 17小时前[flagged]
- Zhenya 21小时前[flagged]
- lorecore 21小时前Why would an attack on Israel warrant spying on US citizens? We are not Israel and our government should not be working for Israeli interests.
- red-iron-pine 20小时前you're not gonna believe this
- Zhenya 19小时前It doesn’t. That’s not what I wrote.
I asking what does warning about attacks on Jews have to do with not saying something about Muslims.
- lorecore 18小时前They are pointing out the same thing I am: we are spying on Americans for Israel. Israel’s enemies get surveillance but not the so called “protection” this program uses as a veil for said surveillance.
- sidcool 22小时前I'm convinced Meta is a cult with Total control. It will go to any lengths to make money.
- rc_kas 21小时前Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.
:(
- jp_sc 21小时前Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?
- 1234letshaveatw 21小时前established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"
- root-parent 22小时前
- acidhousemcnab 22小时前What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?
- mrobot 21小时前Interesting they have not contacted me about how they are going to be paying their subscription fee
I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free
- zuzululu 21小时前How bad are things in Seattle that they are resorting to this? What the hell happened to my hometown?
- pocksuppet 49分钟前BLM protestors set it on fire and it's gone now, just like Portland.
No but really, probably nothing special happened. It's just another case of surveillanceists gonna surveil.
- bigbuppo 22小时前So what you're saying is that everyone that works at Amazon and Facebook are now at grave risk because the bad guys now think they're informants?
- erxam 22小时前You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.
- zombot 6小时前They are the bad guys.
- GolfPopper 22小时前Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.
- kgwxd 22小时前It's bad guys all the way down.
- markus_zhang 22小时前Ah the new dark pool. Does anyone remember those from the trading? I still remember ARCA (good rebate back in the day), ECN (very fluid and very cheap), and a few dark pools that I used to get out of a trade quickly.