FBI Is Building a Watchlist That Gives Companies Real Time Updates on Employees
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
However, this is a bit scary. Corporations have become the brownshirts and we are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems.
Unfortunately the divide and conquer strategy of the two party system in the US makes people honor party over country and this is a problem. The only solution is to be more independent.
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." -- Thomas Jefferson
This is a really interesting observation. I don't think there's a direct analog between brownshirts and corporations because the former were just thugs who Hitler discarded when they were no longer useful. Currently I think the corporations are in charge, at least of the "centrist" core of each party.
We've had a huge, laudable improvement in the rights of marginalized people in the past few decades. This has been happening substantially because many corporations and corporate elite have been supporters.
But I can't help but see this support as at least partially self serving, because improvements in social justice help keep the "culture wars" alive, dividing the population up almost 50/50 into red team and blue team along social rather than economic or class lines.
Right now we have a president who won his election by campaigning against the corporate establishment, but who is also a fully paid up member of that establishment.
He's now picking fights with the very federal bureaucracy he's supposed to lead, as well as the judiciary and many well connected corporations. How it all plays out is something I can't even begin to guess but it's not something the establishment planned for or wanted.
But getting back to your original statement about brownshirts. I think that absolutely we are increasingly developing a system where corporations and the government work together to monitor dissent and then corporations form the enforcement arm of this apparatus (to the extent that dissenters can't be brought up on charges) by denying their economic livelihood.
Isn't this is a list of all arrests, not merely protesters?
Probably also group by citizen id and sort by count. :-)
I don't understand why there's so much fascination with the idea that this is some protester-busting tool. The article merely posits the hypothetical scenario that some people could be punished by their employer, because their employer might get a rap back and they wouldn't be able to tell it was First Amendment activity as opposed to some actual serious crime, because the FBI and local law enforcement is bad at data entry. Somehow people read that and think that the point of the whole system is "corporate fascism stopping the patriotic protesting democracy" when none of the employers actually care about that. Or in other words, an emergent problem in the system that might occur is being assumed to be the central planned feature of it.
Knowing this absolutely has a chilling effect.
1. You're going to miss work because you're in jail.
2. You were arrested for a crime that's related to your work. Like, money laundering or fraud if you work at a bank. Or having sex with a minor if you're a teacher.
3. You work in a field that requires lawful behavior from employees at all times preserve the integrity of the organization. Like, say, law enforcement.
There's a word for those that use random violence to effect change in society -- terrorists.
Except of course you wouldn't use that word for all those planning and fighting in US wars of aggression, correct? Is it just because they're not so "random" or are there other factors, too?
> It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-- Voltaire
(I'm also curious what instances of protests-turned-riot you're referring to. The US hasn't had many riots, in any meaningful sense, recently. Do you mean someone smashing a window?)
There's the riot at NYU where more violent agitators showed up to prevent Gavin McInnes from speaking, where he was attacked with pepper spray.
On the night at Berkeley, a woman wearing a Trump hat was pepper sprayed while giving an interview for a news network.
These are the facts.
Call it what you want, but this is violence and destruction with the intent to silence people with an opposing point of view. It's not civil disobedience or protesting and more like terrorism.
As for your other question about whether or not I've heard of kettling, I have. The fact that it exists does not convince me that innocent bystanders need to fear that. In instances where you may have seen that, such as the inauguration of the president, charges were brought against some of those individuals. Which suggests the goal wasn't to arrest bystanders.
By the way, I don't know if you watched that one live or after it took place but there was a ton of chaos. People were throwing objects like glass bottles at the police in riot gear. Again, many of the people were dressed in all black with masks on. If you want a very real problem to attack, that's one to focus on.
Terrorism is quite a word for a situation in which nobody was seriously injured, as far as I know. And terrorism of the variety that involves killing people is already less likely to kill someone in the U.S. than a lightning strike. Picking the black bloc as the "very real problem... to focus on", in that context and with everything else going on in the world--including the serious damage done to many thousands of people by cruel and violent policies justified by reference to the threat of terrorism--strikes me as a very poor choice of priorities.
http://q13fox.com/2017/01/24/shooter-sent-facebook-message-t...
Hopefully you noticed that I didn't try to make my feelings on Mr Yiannopoulos obvious.
It's not about free speech. He incites harassment.
Yes, but people are allowed to do that. I don't think "free speech" means what you think it means. It's a comforting idea that other people are too immature/emotional/dumb to consciously think about an opposing belief, but that wasn't the case here. There's no obligation to hear out a side that would do you harm given the choice. w/r/t letting people say unpopular things, the university did decide to host him in the first place, which represents the university's commitment to some form of free speech. Individual people should not be subject to scrutiny for protesting something they disagree with.
Calling me names (or other people) doesn't make what you're saying valid. It wasn't an effective tactic for the left during the election and it's not an effective tactic in this conversation.
At any rate, I don't think you're arguing against points that I've actually made. This sounds more like a response to some hypothetical response that you were anticipating before I responded.
Is your intent here to justify the existence of this watch list?
The first amendment lists a specific purpose for free speech - for the public to redress grievances to the government.
Do you not think that this watch list will curtail free speech infinitely more than what you're complaining about? By monitoring protests and reporting legal political action to employees, you can implicit discourage political protest - which IS a legally protected form of free speech.
We are all patriots, but we're not all terrorists that use random violence to effect change.
> "People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this."
Interesting that he mentions "daycare," which seems to me like the Congressional-testimony-equivalent of clickbait. It's always easier to justify stopping bad people when you can tie it back to innocents somehow ("children, elderly, and the disabled", as the article mentions).
He also uses the word "clean," evoking images of drug addicts - the opposite of clean - and implying that these daycare providers might turn into drug-addicted crazies without their employer ever finding out.
But the scarier implication here is that what you do outside work affects your employment. Not just in the sense that posting drunken pictures to Facebook or bitching about your boss on Medium might do, but that the government will actively tell your employer about arrests that may have no bearing on your ability to do your job.
What about someone who gets arrested for protesting, or excessive speeding, or being party to a bar fight? Do those things necessarily affect their ability to watch over children, or work at a nursing home, or pilot an airplane? I can only imagine that employers will see the arrest report as an immediate cause for firing, regardless of what the arrest was for. "We can't have people like that working here."
It's a scary path to be headed down.
Rinse and repeat.
Welcome Absolute Fascism.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-ch... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=92toXdu2KR0
Although, in some ways, we've been here for a while. Maybe less-so for individuals but for corporations, whom the law generally treats with a degree of "individual" rights (IANAL), it's long been that an indictment is worse than a conviction. After an indictment, clients turn away -> revenue flees -> shutters.
What's scary is an indictment is, in theory (under fair application of the principles of law), is more severe than a simple arrest. If we're living in a system (US) where a simple arrest results in a database entry which can result in the end of your productive life, we're living in a... [up to the reader to determine the severity]
Ultimately, the power of gov't to drop charges after such a consequence (firing) is powerful and unfair to the individual. Indeed.
It's not, under the law, of course. But since businesses can (generally) freely choose who to hire or fire, it is legal for them to ask employees about arrests and make decisions based on the answer.
This is different, though, in that the federal government itself (the FBI) is assisting companies in doing this. The FBI is reporting arrests to businesses, in full knowledge of the negative consequences for employees in doing so. Indeed, the negative consequences are the entire point of the program.
The federal government is held to different standards. If an employee could prove that they were fired because of an arrest that never led to a conviction, reported through Rap Back, I think they would have a pretty good test case for the ACLU to go to town on.
The whole point of our system of justice is to ensure that the government only punishes citizens when there is beyond reasonable doubt that an actual crime was committed. Here, the federal government is delivering punishment entirely outside that framework.
The government will argue that they're just supplying information, not punishment, but they don't get to just pretend they have no idea what happens next. Everything the FBI has ever said about this program will be reviewed and will show that the whole point is to fire people.
> It's not, under the law, of course.
It is under some circumstances. For example, the US visa waiver program:
> We do not recommend that travelers who have been arrested, even if the arrest did not result in a criminal conviction, attempt to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program.
(From https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/visa-waiver-program/additiona...)
Doesn't even take an arrest these days - just ask any college aged male accused of rape.
source on that?
That makes me wonder whether you were being sincere in your response, and if not, what you thought you were contributing.
How did what I say imply otherwise? I completely agree with that statement.
That employer will get an active notification of any arrest (not indictment) for every impacted employee's life, even after separation from service. Worse, the employer can administratively decide that an arrest is of concern and can basically void your appointment to a position.
Charges get dropped
Later, the charges were dropped or the police perjured themselves in court to try and secure a conviction. If the defendant was lucky, the arrest (or surrounding events) was caught on camera and the police were shown to be lying. Otherwise, police testimony is usually enough to convict a protester. From what I read, the situation isn't any better in the US.
There is for a conviction.
Lets be honest here, nobody is getting arrested for protesting Trump, they are getting arrested for property destruction, assault, blocking public throughfares (hows the ambulance or firetruck supposed to get through?)
There are so many legitimate reasons to arrest these people, this comment is is just pure fear mongering.
Yes, it's concerning. But the headline "FBI is building a watchlist that gives companies real time updates on employees" is out of date. Now it should be "FBI built the watchlist five years ago that snitches on teachers and bank employees and nobody complained."
And there are certainly implications specifically wrt the Trump administration, and protests against it.
1. Every Bank in the United States of America 2. Every NMLS licensed mortgage lender in USA 3. Every FINRA licensed investment advisor, broker, or trader 4. Eventually, every public school system in the USA.
All of these organizations participate because they're required to by law, or through "self-regulation" that's effectively the same as government coercion. And, they do have good reasons for wanting to; cases 1-3 are attempts to stop financial fraudsters from finding employment at their firm. The excuse for case 4 is to stop pedophiles or something (that one I'm actually less familiar with than the other three).
Now that you have this list, what are you going to do with it? Moralize at Bank of America until they relax their hiring standards? Wait for the market to produce a bank that doesn't do background checks on employees, and then do all of your business there? Call you Congressman and demand they do something about this terrible injustice (even though this mess was created by people calling their Congressman and demanding they do something about the fraudsters on Wall Street that destroyed the economy in 2008)?
I've worked for, owned and sold broker-dealers. There is nothing stopping you from hiring someone with an unconvicted arrest record.
> what are you going to do with it?
Depends on the size and composition of the list. To make decisions, first one needs the data.
What is the solution?
There is good and bad to all of this, of course, and some of it won't be fixed without better attuned labor protection laws and things of that nature.
1. Local police in the pocket of local business arrest protestors
2. RAP BACK arrest record notification and thus grounds for termination
3. Termination
4. Charges dropped
How can any responsible citizen let their own country do this to other countries, allow a surveillance state to be built in the first place inspite of all the revelations at great personal cost and allow the unencumbered growth of a war mongering military industrial complex at home?
The business as usual tones of these discussions in the media and the constant judging of others like China or Russia for authoritarianism reflects a troubling dissonance and denial about the real consequences of our actions both at home and abroad. We are not just destroying these countries, we are killing hundreds of thousands of people, disrupting millions of families for generations, decimating their infrastruture and way of life and putting them back decades. These is the definition of crimes against humanity. Can we really afford to be blase and unconcerned anymore.
Anyone can guess the inevitable consequence of trillions of dollars of spend and adding millions of employees co-opted into the surveillance state. Responsible citizens and anyone who believes in freedom, democracy and peace cannot let this slide any longer.
I'm not sure what is, but I am sure that secret arrests and secret trials are not the answer. My first thought was to argue due process but typing it out made this contradiction inescapable.
Is blocking streets a First Amendment right? I heard protestors blocking an exit to a hospital sometime ago. I would think that puts lives in danger.
Just wonder what does the law state there. Say a patient in an ambulance dies on the way because of a protest blocking the street. Is there a precedent, what happens then?
But if what you're really after is to prohibit protesting and the thing being protested is near a hospital so you just go around arresting every protester you can find in the street for blocking an ambulance, that's a different situation.
It would seem it would be a good idea to just not organize a protest close to a hospital? Or have a more organized protest that would allow an ambulance to pass...
That would be fine if there was exactly one law that could be used in this way, but there are a hundred thousand.
Yes, it's a clickbaity title, but essentially sort of correct.
edit: Okay racism did not get fixed, but it's a definite improvement on Jim Crow Laws. And we obviously we need more activism to fight the institutionalized racism that exists today such as the drug war.
Don't forget you're lucky you can say such a thing. Many people are desperate for a job.
All the more reason to protest of course!
I.e. Doing the right thing.
> it should start with a list of companies that publicly state that their employees are allowed to protest, even if the company disagrees with them.
The part that is objectionable is the expectation that my company would need to register on a list stating that I respect the rights of my employees. Doing things within your legal rights is the _default_; I reject the act of playing into someone's political "are you with us?" game.
Not everyone who dislikes this behavior is alt right, or rightwing at all. Stop focusing on the scape goat that's easy to dislike.
Gotta hand it to these scumbags, they built a nice tight system.
Mozilla forced Brendan Eich to resign for his off-hours activism. I assume they would be in the database.
The PR crisis was caused by his off-hours activism, but that's only material insofar as its focus on him made it clear that removing him would likely be an effective way to deal with it, and he hadn't found any other.
Asserting your speculations based on outgroup antipathy as facts is a working definition of bigotry. Also a kind of lying in my book. Ta!
Did I miss a memo?
There are more black men under state custody or supervision in the United States today for acts that no sensible person regards as criminal (drugs) than were enslaved in 1850.
I support no special drug regulations or crimes at all (i.e. nothing outside fraud liability), but I am in the tiny minority.
edit: to be clear, I would prefer to eliminate the whole prescription system and FDA regulatory apparatus. I am not just talking about marijuana.
Btw as surprising as it may be to people here, Hillary Clinton was a choice candidate for PIC. They gave her at least $250k in lobbying just last year. Lately she claimed she will refund it, but it was a token gesture so far and she donate about $10k to a women's prison charity. She was also a big proponent of the infamous "three strikes law" is which filled the prisons with various repeat offenders no matter how minor their crimes.
So one hand we have proven active lobbying, proven "tough on crime" stance and strong support for "three strikes" law, on the other hand, stocks generally shoot up after election.
But even looking at stocks, GEO is up a bit higher than what it was last year. CXW is just back to where it was last year this time. Did you see other stocks there? Those are the two I know about.
US Steel for example went from 7-9 range to 30. Now that's a solid difference. Google was 650 now in 800s. Is Google also supporting Trump... who knows, fire up the presses (really doubt it).
When she made these comments, prison stocks fell nearly 40%.
How does it look when you adjust for other factors, namely poverty?
More reading on the astonishing and completely demoralising statistics on "missing" black men in society: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missin...
13th on Netflix also lays out a persuasive point about free labour in prisons benefiting from racism in arrests means we literally still have slavery.
I really like how 13th on Netflix repeated a simple but devastating stat: the US has 5% of the world's population, but it imprisons 25% of the world's prisoners, with 40% of them being black men.
With most of those black prisoners doing free labour while having their wealth, power, and freedom stripped due to their imprisonment, it really doesn't feel any different than it's ever been. It's just hidden from the public now.
Probably not; slaves weren't legally treated as persons and weren't generally incarcerated for crimes as such, and while there was certainly racism against non-slave blacks, I've seen no account of massive disproportionate imprisonment.
Now, slavery itself was a bigger problem than the current disproportionate imprisonment, but also different in kind, not merely degree.
My comment was about black men (ie, adult males) under correctional custody or supervision (ie, probation or parole). I think it's likely that the ratio is close to the 1850 number - by 1850 there were quite a lot of free black men.
But that's not really the issue - I'm more inclined to take issue with
> trying to paint our present situation as almost as bad as where we were just 150 years ago doesn't really make sense
I think the prison system is very, very bad. A horrifically ugly mark on our history. As bad as slavery, and as impactful on black families in many places. Life as a black family in a radically abolitionist state - say, Kansas - was almost surely less disrupted by slavery in 1850 than it is by the prison state today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
What's unfortunate now is how many people believe our incredibly segregated neighbourhood and work environments are the way they are either by choice or circumstance rather than by deliberate planning and design to oppress and mitigate political and economic power.
If no sensible person regards them as criminal, they would not be crimes.
Your assertion is that the sentencing/laws are racist. I would assert that crime, itself, is racist. For whatever reason some minorities commit more crimes. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that they do it BECAUSE they are a minority. I am not saying black people are inherently more criminal because they are black, merely that based on demographics a black person is more likely to be a criminal. I do not know why that is (nor do you) and do not make any attempt at explaining it.
I think the real message is even more troubling. "Don't protest because it probably won't do anything". Since the late 60's when did protests work as a an effective tactic in US? We've had anti-war protests for Iraq and Afghanistan. We've had Occupy Wall Street, we've had protests against Trump. Have they advanced the cause? I am afraid not.
I think as a tactic to effect social or other change protesting in US has lost its efficiency. That's very troubling indeed.
Occupy didn't result in direct action or changes. However, it popularized the notion of the One Percent vs. Ninety-Nine Percent, and got people to think about class in a nation very averse to even acknowledging the existence of economic classes. Probably had a positive impact in terms of helping Obama get re-elected, since Obama was lucky enough to get a seemingly clueless one-percenter as an opponent. Occupy had laid the groundwork which helped attacks against Romney.
The Trump protests have already had an effect. First of all, it's motivated normally non-politically active people into action. The sheer size of the crowds at the first protest, the Women's March, has had a galvanizing effect. People at the marches were encouraged to sign up to various groups. Those groups, like Indivisible or Planned Parenthood, keep things going by organizing at the local level and by giving them easy things to do each day or each week. There's a direct line between the protests and the fact almost every congressperson has an overwhelming volume of calls. And the seeds are planted not only for future protests but also for future direct action.
The administration has already backed down on some issues due to the protests. I think it's arguable the anti-LGBT executive order was scrapped at the last minute because of the sheer size of the instant protests over the immigration ban. If that many people would show up over an immigration order which didn't affect anyone they knew, then it would be reasonable to predict the streets would be absolutely flooded at any attempt to renew persecution of LGBT people.
As an added bonus, the protests are clearly unnerving Trump. I have no idea what the long term effect will be, but at the moment it's causing his team to make some errors.
That was my point. It had as goals to limit the influence of corporations on politics, more balanced distribution of income, more and better jobs, bank reforms.
I can see maybe the secondary effects of electing Obama, so agree with that. Interestingly did Obama do much in regard to those issues. There was student dept forgiveness thing, that might be a claim. ACA might be another one. But what about others...can't think of any right off the bat.
> The sheer size of the crowds at the first protest, the Women's March, has had a galvanizing effect.
It was a beautiful thing indeed. It was nice to see others and have that solidarity. If it gets people more involved politically that's even better.
> I think it's arguable the anti-LGBT executive order was scrapped at the last minute because of the sheer size of the instant protests over the immigration ban.
I am behind on my news, what was that anti-LGBT executive order? This is the first time I heard about it.
More than anything you must fight apathy. Most people are busy and don't have time to pay attention to politics or get involved. Humans are also social creatures; knowing that you aren't the only one - that you aren't some oddball - makes a huge difference.
At some point people start to question their pre-conceived narrative. They stop wanting the status quo. The revolution begins when people's minds are changed. Visible action comes later. Sometimes that "later" is a decade or two when a new generation takes power and decides to do things differently than the generation before. Sometimes that "later" is next week and involves a literal revolution as we think of it.
But you can't say protest doesn't matter. It is the first step in changing hearts and minds.
Well I was trying to say that it doesn't work as it used to compared to the Civil Right Movement, Vietnam War, Women's Liberation. Something is off. Maybe it is just my perception. We saw what happened in Ukraine, Arab Spring and other countries. There it seems to work. Here it seems less so.
> Humans are also social creatures; knowing that you aren't the only one - that you aren't some oddball - makes a huge difference.
That's a good point. I hadn't considered it enough. Just knowing you are not alone is great motivator.
> They stop wanting the status quo.
Interestingly, I think that is what changed the election completely. Both Sanders and Trump supporters, especially their energy and enthusiasm, despite the media blackouts and lack of support from major donors like banks and even whole countries, have shown that people stopped wanting the status quo. Sadly the DNC never stopped to re-evaluate how come a relatively unknown old white male, seemed to have gotten so many votes.
> The revolution begins when people's minds are changed. Visible action comes later.
Well voting produces a visible change not that much later, in historic terms it is rather instantaneous.
> Sometimes that "later" is a decade or two when a new generation takes power and decides to do things differently than the generation before.
Wonder if there is a chance now to form a new party. What happened to Sander's supporters. They were all mostly young, very enthusiastic, it seems like now should be the time to give them a voice and harness that energy.
Also, I think it planted the seed in a way. There were huge protests around the start of the Iraq War, but those failed in part because they were mostly ignored by the media. Occupy found a way to get the media to pay attention, and used social media outlets as a way to engage people whether or not they showed up in person. The Women's March probably would have been a success if Occupy hadn't occurred, but I think Occupy did a lot in terms of making people in the US think protesting was viable in terms of getting attention, and thus the Women's March, and all the following protests, had a leg up because of it.
Tahrir Square / Arab Spring should also get some credit too, since they created the framework Occupy followed.
Here's a quick link about the LGBT executive order and how it failed:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/ivanka-trump-jared-kus...
I can't prove it, but I suspect the rapid response of protesters played a factor in shelving the order, based on the large numbers who hit the streets and airports shortly after the immigration ban was announced. The LGBT EO would have produced an even larger response.
At any rate, if you haven't already looked at the Women's March or Indivisible's or Planned Parenthood's sites or Facebook pages, I highly recommend you do. I'm quite impressed and heartened at the ways they're keeping people engaged. Little daily actions that anyone can do such as calling your Senator. Turning the protest highs into concrete action.
The Women's March was just more of the poison posing as a cure. Yes, they had a big showing, but like Occupy before it, it's entirely coopted by progressive side issues and the professional rabble rousers who need them to persist for their meal ticket. Just look at what's happening to the science march.
Indeed, people are already barred from work opportunities by the virtue of having any criminal background, including arrest records. This is acknowledged as a growing problem in our society.
Aren't arrest records for dismissed charges sealed? Innocent until proven guilty makes punishing an employee for charges unseemly. Punishing for convictions, however, strikes me as fine.
I do get the reason people think this way.
However, making it impossible to find a job after doing your time isn't a good thing for society. It just encourages more crime.
I am just saying that I think there is a reasonable discussion to be had around businesses discriminating based on conviction (or outstanding warrants). I find it highly offensive to my democratic principles for the government to encourage businesses to pursue those tending to their charges or warrants prior to (potential) conviction.
(And, yes, I'm saying that both of these things are a bad idea since tone tends to be lost particularly in online political discussion.)
There have been numerous incidents of assault, arson, vandalism, looting, and such during protests for at least a couple years now, starting with BLM protests long before Trump and the election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest
Some prominent activists have even defended these acts. For example, Deeray McKesson called In Defense of Looting "absolute required reading".
Second -- 'Ferguson' was a community reacting to a state sponsored murder -- not a 'BLM protest'. They weren't out there for BLM, they were out there because Ferguson cops enacted violence on their community.
Finally, calling 'in defense of looting' required reading is not endorsing or defending looting. You aren't a Nazi because you read Mein Kampf. It's an interesting take and I'm sure Deray has a nuanced opinion on the issue -- but nah you're just going to keep mischaracterizing people and movements to fit your world view.
The grand jury did not find enough evidence to charge the officer and even CNN said "Some [witnesses] admitted lying. Others changed their stories under questioning."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/14/justice/ferguson-witnesses-cre...
You've clearly decided the facts of the case based not on evidence but on your own world view so kindly spare me spurious accusations of doing so.
Second, I'm not characterizing an entire movement, I'm merely referencing the events.
I'm not merely referring to Ferguson, that's simply one example of many, so I used a general term. You may prefer other terms but I suspect that you know what I'm referring to when I use the term "BLM protests".
Third, while Mein Kampf may be required reading for its historical importance, do tell, why would In Defense of Looting be required reading if not for the position it advocates?
...
So this is being downvoted without response - why?
Isn't this an interesting idea worth thinking about? "Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the lethal force of the state."
I don't think looting is a good idea, but I do think reading that essay is. Possibly Deeray McKesson felt the same way.
"It is in solidarity with these latter protesters–along with those who loot–and against politicians and de-escalators everywhere that I offer this critique"
As someone who would like to see de-escalation before this all ends in civil war, the author has declared (correctly, I think) themselves against me.
It is, more than a mere defense of looting, an attack on capitalism and "white supremacy" (by which the author means American society in general, not extremist Neo-Nazis).
I'm as aware as anyone of the failures and injustices of capitalism, but merely taking what one wants isn't a sustainable solution.
Right. Those are some of the reasons it's plausible that someone would recommend it with a more complex intention than "yay, looting."
Perhaps one could even find sources that present a fair criticism of the flaws of other economic systems and the injustices perpetrated by other societies alongside the critique of capitalism and American history.
When a prominent activist like DeRay Mckesson recommends an article like In Defense of Looting, it's likely to encourage looting by some of his followers.
The comment you replied to didn't mention anything about the inauguration, the Women's March, Trump, or the election.
I'd say the Women's March was the first kind, and, for example, the recent Berkeley-Milo protest was the second.
And I think the question in the quote is appropriate. Surely we don't intend the First Amendment to protect people the UC Chancellor reportedly described as: "more than 100 armed people in masks and dark uniforms who used paramilitary tactics to engage in violent destructive behavior intended to shut the event down."
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/opinion/violence-at-be...
> If you get to conflate the handful of anarchists breaking windows and setting fires the night before with the 3m of us who marched peacefully during the Women's March, then we get to conflate all Trump voters with the literal nazis - as in "Sieg Heil", nazi salute, call themselves "nazis" - that voted for him and celebrated his victory. It's only fair.
Hmm, did the op call the Women's March violent? I didn't see them doing it. So how did "Sieg Heil" even enter into this conversation?
I see people playing too fast and too loose with those terms. Both of my grandfathers drove the real "Nazis" all the way to Berlin and witnessed unimaginable horrors done by them. One was wounded had a part of his lung blow off by them. My mom told me stories of what happened with Jewish children in the village (for example daughter of the village school teacher) who was raped then had her arms cut off and buried in the back of their garden by "Nazis". You calling Trump voters "Nazis" is slap in the face to anyone who experienced the "Nazis".
You should be more careful about using those terms. You are also not advancing the cause you seem to advance because every time you write or say those words in reference to Trump voters you are probably end making more future Trump voters.
Yes, nazis did vote for Trump in the form of the American Nazi Party and others... literal "Sieg Heil", white power, "cleanse" others, nazi salute awful types. They were a very small fraction of his supporters. It's just as dumb to conflate those horrible excuses for humanity with the other millions who voted for Trump (and would be horrified by those nazi saluters) as it is to conflate the anarchists breaking windows and setting fires with the other millions who peacefully protested (and are horrified by the anarchists).
Domestic terrorism is being normalized by a fifth column.
You'll get far more arrests when you have someone win the Super Bowl. As such, it's a slippery slope, and people should not be permitted to win the Super Bowl.
Note that there is a huge difference between protestors and anarchists wearing all black with black face masks breaking windows, setting fires, and pepper spraying people. Those people are not protestors. They go with a very specific intention and it's definitely not to further the cause of the protestors.
If anyone shows me an example of the US government in action, I'll show how the people, laws, policies, or circumstances involved were responsible for government-caused violence, oppression, and lies. I really don't understand how you're more willing to condemn activists for the bits of random acts of violence without a word toward our government that promotes and legalises the violence they use on people all over the world. Already in the last month Trump and Obama tag teamed to kill nearly an entire innocent family, including children: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-o...
As for your challenge, here's Portland Oregon police confirming one of the largest marches in the history of the most liberal city in America was "100% peaceful": https://twitter.com/PortlandPolice/status/822958708980260864
i know from experience and talking directly with the arresting officers, and my assigned defense attorney, and the judge that dropped mine and a number of other identical charges in the room
> A protester at the NC General Assembly invites her arresting officer to Christmas dinner. She was one of several arrested while protesting a power grab by Republican legislators during a surprise special session.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-p...
https://www.google.com/search?&q=non+violent+protestors+arre...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/amy-goodman-...
Cops arrest and assault people engaging in peaceful, legal, constitutionally protected protest all the fucking time.
What is really interesting to see is political cartoons from the days of the MLK led Civil Rights protests. The arguments against the civil rights movement are exactly the same as the ones against BLM now. People thought the protesters were "too violent" and were a bunch of thugs destroying their own neighborhoods and holding back the more respectable black people and their agenda. The same arguments are used today to discredit the work of Black Lives Matter.
After all, didn't MLK say that a riot is the language of the unheard?
Shrink the state.
Until people stop believing that any effort to do so will result in everyone literally dying in the street, the state will grow. Until people's first impulse towards someone doing something they don't like ceases to be "there ought to be a law", the state will grow. Until people stop demanding that laws must affect the entirety of the country instead of just their state, the state will grow.
What sort of government did we start with? "A republic, if you can keep it." according to Ben Franklin.
We didn't keep it.
Keep it small, keep it close, and recognize that there are limits to the problems a bureaucracy can solve. Be suspicious of all power. Be suspicious of all taxation. A massive government can, and does, wield incredible fortune like a weapon against the population.
Shrink the state until politicians are no longer worth buying and it barely matters who holds the reins. Trust your neighbor a lot more and your government a lot less.
Or do none of this, but don't ask why nobody told you this could happen. Because we did, and you laughed at us and told us we were juvenile, loathsome, heartless people.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13570278 and marked it off-topic.
Linking me to some comments that essentially say "your opinions are not valid, stop calling bias on the moderator" is in no way a persuasive argument. That's just getting other people to say the same thing you're saying, and the popularity of a claim does not make it true.
By your own values then, either calling people fascists/brownshirts/nazis is "partisan passion" or it is not. I contend that those are extremely inflammatory words. They are intended to provoke, not debate or inform.
Ask yourself where I attacked anyone for their beliefs. HN is just another site where politics are allowed to be discussed (with a wink and a nudge) as long as they include a technology buzzword, but only if you don't say anything that is wrongthink to those left of center. I've seen you do this precise thing many times over the years and never bothered to create an account here or speak. That creates a chilling effect: only voices who agree with Dang almighty's political views are welcome.
When it's all said and done, you won't win so you may as well drop it or leave HN. Dang considers himself the adult, with people like you as the children. He'll chide you, but he won't give any credence whatsoever to anything you say, so don't bother.
And while I don't necessarily agree with your initial posting, it didn't need moderator attention.
Just as an FYI, Dang will also harass you in an effort get you to either escalate into a bannable offense or to get you to leave the site.
I've seen it happen, so my advice to you is to decide if putting up with Dang's bullshit is worth being a part of HN.
If you don't want people to laugh at your principles, maybe don't immediately turn a conversation about the security state to an argument that you should pay less taxes.
Well, I think that's not true.
There's certainly room on the ideological spectrum for a kind of "liberal minarchism", for the lack of better term. If you think about it, conventional minarchist right-wing libertarianism is often defined by "state as small as it needs to be protect its citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud". But this formula has two parts, each of which can be adjusted independently.
If you take the second part - the list of goals - and add "..., to provide for a basic standard of living, and to constrain economic inequality within reasonable levels", then you basically have a liberal minarchist credo. With libertarianism, it shares the central idea that state is a necessary evil, and it must be only as big as it needs to be, and no bigger. With mainstream liberalism, it shares the desired goals.
In practice, the difference is how you approach the expansion of government. Mainstream liberals often see any expansion that tries to solve some social problem as good, regardless of how important that problem is, and whether non-government solutions exist. A minarchist approach is to start with the premise that any expansion is unnecessary, and require clear justification, with evidence, as to why it is actually necessary.
Would it result in lower taxes? Probably, but that's not the point. The point is to ensure that the government doesn't become a juggernaut that can be easily repurposed for oppression.
Or maybe it's code for "I don't want the kind of totalitarian programs mentioned in the OP".
Or Cuba or Venezuela?
Cuba was economically starved by the US and its allies and unable to interact with the global economy. This paired with its early history of horrific human rights abuses led to a rough state that continues to this day. But, and this does not excuse how violent the state was in its early days, Cuba does have no unemployment or homelessness which is something remarkable.
Those are edge cases though. Look at the northern european countries, canada, or germany
Mostly because it's 10 million people vs 320 million for the US.
Letting the US states handle everything the federal government doesn't have to manage would leave all Americans in a much shrunken state, with just as generous social security, healthcare etc as now.
I think it ultimately boils down to civic engagement, or lack thereof. Democracy is not a state of being, it is a system that requires perpetual participation to maintain.
Casting a vote every 4, 2, or even every year is not engagement. Participating in the primaries is minimum engagement.
Yet for the past 20 years American voter turnout for Presidential elections has held steady at roughly 50%. Dismal. The primary participation numbers are much worse.
America struggles with a massive burden of "civic debt" - disengaged citizens that are not actively participating in the democratic system. People that don't read current events, don't follow the news, don't talk to their representatives, and ultimately embody the polar opposite of an "informed electorate"... these people contribute taxes and tacitly grant the system power, but they do not hold it accountable for improving their lives.
When people engage, our representatives are held accountable for delivering results in accordance with our values. Perhaps some inefficiency is acceptable, perhaps not... but the decision lies with those that engage in the system. It's up to the people to drive change.
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That said, I agree there are merits to reducing the levels of government to their minimum responsibilities, but I just don't believe that fewer levels of governance helps with the issue of uninformed electorate. A Republic is just as vulnerable to apathy as any other form of governance.
No one's going to wave a magic wand and fix America. It took decades of apathy to get here, it's going to take years of work to clean up this mess and regain control.
We have to start with this year's local elections, and next year's midterms.
The American Revolution was, in no small part, sparked by one man's widely circulated pamphlet. As radio and TV with extremely high production values became dominant and the accepted standard, the relative credibility of a pamphlet from some guy you've never heard of before plummeted. People could still self-publish and make small runs, but when contrasted with the professional output from a slick media company, there's no contest as to which report your average person would be more likely to accept.
Media has been in corporate control for the last 100 years or so. Why is the draconian extent of our intellectual property regime widely despised and mocked by those lucky enough to be clued in to its absurdity, yet almost never discussed in the news? Because the small handful of companies with a TV studio and an FCC license have a vested interest in keeping the curtain drawn on the Great and Powerful Oz. They don't risk attempting a propaganda backfire on the topics they're really worried about; they just refuse to discuss them, and for the last 100 years, that's been enough to make counter-corporate effectively silent.
As mass media and telecommunication via phones made it feasible to communicate with people across the country in a matter of minutes, people sort of stopped seeing why they needed to go to a local authority (who could easily be overruled by other competing local authorities) when they could go straight to the highest authority. Combine this with the fact that the highest production values and most recognizable faces were covering the national beats, and that local news outlets can't go more finite than the state and sometimes county level for practical reasons, and you have a recipe for a populace that knows nothing about their immediate political leaders.
The internet has democratized mass media and given a credible voice back to the little, non-corporate guy, after 100 years lost in the darkness. And that really makes the corporate propagandists mad.
A lot of problems today flow out from struggling with and trying to learn how to handle the closeness that has been afforded by things like instant telecommunications and fast, reliable interstate transportation across the sky and the nation's highways. One non-political example: neighborliness is going away (as is socialization in general).
In former times, people relied on their neighbors and neighborhood because they had to. You couldn't exist in a physical space without having a moral responsibility to it and the people around it. Now that everyone's friends and families live in their pockets, "neighborly" relations, in the classical sense, are disappearing. My family and I have lived in half-a-dozen different places over our marriage so far, and in each case, we've never had a nextdoor neighbor come introduce themselves or welcome us to the neighborhood. And to be fair, we've never done this as neighbors have moved in and out around us either.
tl;dr Mass media, shipping, and telephones made it so people only needed to care about federal level anymore.
That said, I never said "right". I was quite clear about what facets of government I value (civil rights, transportation and social infrastructure) and what I don't like (war machine, fascist law enforcement). Oddly enough, there are political parties in line with that, so your unsubstantiated assertion that I don't get that choice is pretty ridiculous.
However, that's just more reason to aggressively ensure that free markets are functioning well, that state dependence is low, and that the government's functions are kept trim. The Founders left us a great system, but it needs adaptation that keeps its true principles enshrined and safeguarded in light of the unparalleled technological revolution that's occurred over the last +/- 180 years.
The notion that shrinking the state will make it too small to surveil the people just seems naive to me, in the light of private firms' ability to surveil the population for commercial ends. If the state is so small as not to be an effective political actor (qua the 'deep state' permanent bureaucracy), then what is to stop those private entities leveraging their existing knowledge to wield power unchecked? The courts function as arbiters within the private sector only insofar as their judgments are backed up by the power of the state; absent a capable state actor that can be politically delegated to the security of public goods, what restraints exist upon private actors to conduct themselves peaceably?
I'm not really up for a philosophical debate on the broader role of government today, but in general I feel that the belief that less government will bring about increased self-reliance and we'll return tot he ways of our forefathers is a mistaken one, and really suffers from the same faulty utopianism as the idea of an all-encompassing state. If there were some optimal public:private sector ratio, or some magic formula for defining the appropriate scope of government, wouldn't you expect to see societies that stumbled across it racing ahead of their less nimble competitors?
Maybe there should be readings of the 2nd amendment more like "the ability to form militias/bear arms" ~ "the ability to create governments within government". Like less dystopic versions of burbclaves from Snow Crash, although that spells out some problems from the get-go, I guess.
edit: I mean, we could reconfigure the military to be a peace/engineer's/etc. corps type of merito/techno/plutocratic institution, by the people for the people, composed of ordinary people but with a true pledge for the protection of individuals' life and with an efficient structure for the innovation of ordinary life, outside of wasteful stockholder-politics/investor corporatism.
That is the salient piece of this message. If you don't trust your neighbors, why is putting them in powerful positions of government a good idea? If you do trust your neighbors, then we don't need a huge powerful government.
And what group is that exactly? It sure as hell isn't either of the two major US parties and their assorted enablers.
You want to replace kind of power that you got influence on and some expectations about public information access with totally "private" power that you got no control about.
That is special kind of stupid.
Thank you but no thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-TydNlj7d0
"The state" is the one thing people in a democracy at least own on paper. That's not to be trifled with.
Besides, just about anything is "bigger than it's ever been", one might as well say there have never been so many people working in non-profits for justice and whatnot, so that must be causing inequality.
Last but not least, "big" doesn't mean anything. It's like only looking at lines of code, and not content at all. Even reducing it to "bigger versus smaller government", regardless of where you fall on that, is nonsense.
This is also a meaningless claim without looking at life for the average person: was it really better when the state let your house run a company town, pollute around your home, punish you for disagreeing in public, etc?
What you should be looking at is quality of life and personal freedom. Assuming the quality of government is fixed is a classic libertarian cognitive vice, and its prevalence does a lot to keep adherents marginalized.
The concentration of power, public or private, is the cause of evil and suffering in the world.
It can be micro, or macro. It could be a kidnapping victim, or someone stronger than you physically, or it could be corporate influence in legislature biasing the markets against competition, or it could be simple and just be a tyrant dictator demanding compliance in the behavior of the peasantry at threat of death, or the systemic enabling of international enslavement under globalization.
The answer is to shrink the state. There is no sustainable model where you have a top heavy powerful government and somehow preserve liberty. You made the state too strong, and that power will attract the worst of humanity and invite endless efforts to usurp it for personal lust of dominance. It will only be a matter of time until it happens, and it happens faster the larger the carrot.
But that is only an answer when you are also dissolving private power by correcting for millennia of violent power accumulation. By families, corporations, individuals, dynasties, societies, ethnic groups. You cannot reach that libertarian / anarchist utopia without starting everyone off without any violence and without any disadvantage, or else your system has failed before it begins and you just forfeited the only power the poor have ever accumulated, no matter how paltry or flawed, in their vote.
Which then becomes self contradicting. You can never actually dissolve the state and equalize power, because to wield the capability to reset the world economy to equality and absolve the history of suffering behind all wealth accumulated, you must wield absolute power, which means you will always be absolutely corrupt. All roads to that chair are paved with falsehoods about greater goods and coincidental personal benefit by crushing your rivals and billions of human lives in collateral.
That is probably why politics is always cyclic. There is actually no answer for anyone seeking to eliminate the suffering and maximize the liberty, while there are infinite answers for those seeking to create suffering to maximize their own influence at the sacrifice of others.
In the end, power is evil, or at least always eventually leads to it. The more of it, the faster and worse it gets. But it is impossible to consistently dissolve power - it takes extraordinary circumstances and people to ever reverse the centralization and exploitation of power, because by its nature altering power requires having it. There is no mathematical method to guaranteeing liberty - it just requires the right people in the right place at the right time with a ton of luck to reverse the status quo of more centralization of power and more suffering as a consequence of it, in all its forms.
One of the most important insights that YC and friends have given me is that a massive heavyweight isn't necessarily better than a small and nimble competitor.
Ah, of course, 40% of GDP is a necessary expenditure to keep Scrooge McDuck from taking over. A penny less and we'd all be lifelong indentured servants.
This belief only causes the state to grow. It inflates politicians to the point where they are worth buying, so they are bought. They then make laws that hurt their competition and help their corporation. They make laws that make it extremely difficult to ever start a business to compete to begin with. So the corporations get bigger, and have more to buy the politicians with. And the scope of what the politicians control grows, so it costs more to buy them. So access to your government shrinks to the point where only the most wealthy have any real say in it.
And what does that look like? That looks like what we have. Congratulations for being a part of the problem through the unwarranted fear of your fellow man.
Because so many of you only want to see simple cause and effect, not the multitudinous unintended consequences that every law and regulation creates. You are controlled by your fears. If the state fails to do something, grow it. If it succeeds at anything, grow it.
This is all I will say on this subject. I have spilled a lifetime of digital ink over this, as have countless others, but to no avail. When the civil war comes because everyone finally decides that everyone else is the enemy, don't ask me for help. I'll be looking after myself and mine. I want with all my heart for that not to happen, but you're going to start wanting it with all your heads first.
The growth of government is a direct response to constant abuses at the hands of smaller local government, corporations, and wealthy individuals.
I have never heard a proposal for "shrink the state" that manages to address that underlying truth. If there isn't an existing avenue to achieve power then power-hungry people will create one. We had the closest thing to a libertopia ever in the 1870-1929 USA. It was a disaster, resulting in multiple financial panics, thousands of deaths from tainted food, huge private interventions to seize control of entire countries, etc. Small towns were often run like a personal fiefdom with disregard for the law; if you were the target the sheriff would just lock you up and the judge might hand down a sentence with barely a show trial. In many ways the growth of the federal government has been a huge boon to cleaning up local politics and did-entangling wealthy influence.
Not to mention that scale matters. No pollution regulation only works when there are relatively few factories doing the polluting. Without the EPA we'd have the poisoned waters and dangerous air that China has.
Or maybe it's a direct response to the fact that the people who have the power to grow the government also work for the government and are therefore incentivized to grow the government.
Which idiot is going around saying "wow, this one level of government sucks, I'd better give more money and power to a slightly different level of government"?
I think you're also wrong that local governments are frequently committing abuses; the federal government seems to do that much more frequently (possibly by nature of its tremendous scope), and has an approval rating to match.
I think I read a study not too long ago that indicated state and local governments actually had much higher corruption than the federal government. I tried to find it now; the best I could come up with was an article from nymag [1]. It's an interesting read, and one of the interesting tidbits it notes is that state house elections track US house elections with a correlation of 0.96, in other words, much less accountability at that level. Perhaps one of the reasons why the federal government seems more abusive than local governments is that it gets more media attention.
[1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/ferguson-worst-...
But that still happens anyways...?
I think you will find that claiming something is obviously ridiculous to someone who actually needs convincing is one of the worst approaches possible.
Very thoughtful and well reasoned. Take that trash elsewhere.
This simply means "get rid of the departments and programs I disagree with, while giving massive amounts of power to rich people and corporations."
Corporations have their power by means of the state.
This isn't surprising.
The FBI came in early 20th century as a need to address more conventional crime that crossed state lines and made it difficult for states to investigate/prosecute (organized crime, kidnapping, bootlegging). While you could say it had a valid reason to exist, J. Edgar Hoover morphed it into something entirely different.
Edit: To clarify my hastily typed up message from my phone, the Pinkertons were government contractors and precursor to the Secret Service, but not the same entity. Secret Service did not officially protect the president until the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.
The Secret Service was initially chartered solely as an anti-counterfeiting task force. The Pinkertons never became part of the government; they were just a handy private army to be deployed by people who'd obtained the good will of the government.
Didn't mean to say they were the same thing, just the precursor of the Secret Service and did much of the same work in a contractual role.