Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

What the Constitution says is not how the system actually works. The magic phrase "national security" means they can compel you to do as they please, and find you guilty without due process if you don't. Hell, the FBI is one of the largest CSAM distribution rings in the world, and they can simply "discover" CSAM on your computer if you don't knuckle under. Then you will be legit found guilty and morally discredited for the rest of your life.

If the Feds really want to nail you -- to teach you a lesson and/or make an example out of you -- you're nailed.

View on HN

> they can compel you to do as they please, and find you guilty without due process if you don't

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled on compelled speech [1], most colourfully on the pledge of allegiance [2]. It’s the theory Apple ran with in the San Bernardino case to avoid creating a decryption key [3]. A theory that was so successful the FBI pulled their case rather than risk a precedent for encryption.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compelled_speech

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

"...the state system which has emerged in the United States is a constitutional deformation which menaces the freedom and well being of its citizenry, and Which poses a danger to world civilization. What is hanging in the balance in the last twenty-five years of this century is whether the people, scholars, lawyers and judges, and members of the government, can so organize their understanding and their political actions as to avert fascism or Bonapartism, a debilitating arms race that could end in the kind of horror from which there will be no redemption, and a decaying economic system which impoverishes Americans as well as people elsewhere."

"Democracy Versus The National Security State" by Marcus Raskin, 1976

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol40/iss3/7/

This is true. Prominent conspiracy theorist Chuck Schumer warned people about this when he blew the whistle about the intelligence agencies having six ways from Sunday to get back at anybody who crosses them, even the president.

They CP'd Paddock of Vegas

You think they planted evidence? What makes you believe that?

It's convenient for their particular brand of conspiracy theory.

That's a lot of assumption. Why not let them answer for themselves?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com