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Nearly two years before the U.S. government's first known inquiry into the activities of Reddit co-founder and famed digital activist Aaron Swartz, the FBI swept up his email data in a counterterrorism investigation that also ensnared students at an American university, according to a once-secret document first published by Gizmodo.
The email data belonging to Swartz, who was likely not the target of the counterterrorism investigation, was cataloged by the FBI and accessed more than a year later as it weighed potential charges against him for something wholly unrelated. The legal practice of storing data on Americans who are not suspected of crimes, so that it may be used against them later on, has long been denounced by civil liberties experts, who've called on courts and lawmakers to curtail the FBI's "radically" expansive search procedures.
The government does store information indefinitely that can be used against you later at a more convenient time.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:48AM (21 children)
> The government does store information indefinitely that can be used against you later at a more convenient time.
When people behave such that the FBI spends time on them, having a track record of those past investigations can occasionally lead to finding patterns of behavior before they go postal, or explanations if it's too late.
As long as those are kept properly secret until the next investigation, that's pretty normal policing practice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 15 2018, @01:07AM (12 children)
The FBI are the ones who try to goad people into going postal so they can justify bigger budgets and further violations of civil rights (as are described in the summary). Mass-shootings are rather convenient for them. Hell, look at all the shit that's going on with McCabe and Strzok and all the other shit percolating behind the scenes. Hell, watch the Strzok interview, pure sociopath, absolutely demonic. I thought his head was going to start spinning around over and over again on his forward-facing body.
Looks like the FBI are going full J. Edgar again, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that they were involved in the Vegas and San Bernardino shootings, amongst others.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @02:11AM
The FBI is 'Manufacturing Terrorism Cases' [soylentnews.org]
Man Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison Over Mobile X-Ray Weapon [soylentnews.org]
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-244905/ [rollingstone.com]
https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/ [theintercept.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots [theguardian.com]
the usual reminder
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(Score: 4, Informative) by epitaxial on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:38AM (10 children)
Like most government agencies the FBI is nearly incompetent. Remember the kid in Florida who shot up the school on Valentine's day? The running joke at the school was he would be the one to shoot the place up. Someone reported him to the FBI that he was a threat. The FBI took that tip and threw it right in the trash. They could have taken two minutes to call up the school and ask if the kid really was crazy. He also made some threatening comments to YouTube and once again the FBI looked at it and claimed they had no way of knowing who wrote the comments. Really?
Any time you hear about them catching potential terrorists its always the not so bright ones who were never a threat. They go to these guys and ask if they're interested in blowing something up and then set up a sting. These guys the FBI catch aren't smart enough to come up with these schemes on their own. Now the FBI has saved the day from the terror masterminds who were simply asked to push a button on a remote control.
Oh and a tip from Ice-T for everyone out there. If you do get questioned by the FBI, keep this in mind. They will already know the answer to every question they ask you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:59AM (8 children)
So we want them throwing kids in the slammer for making some edgy comments online?
The school shooter joke is a product of the times. Probably tens of thousands of kids in the U.S. fit the profile, with some of them being jokingly called (bullied as) potential school shooters.
The FBI doesn't have the resources to follow up on all of these leads, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to intervene much. Maybe give the kid a pamphlet saying "Hey, don't be the next Klebold." Or throw the book at them, put them in juvie or prison, setting them up on a path that will ruin their life anyway, turning them into lifelong criminals.
We'd probably have to repeal the 2nd to maybe slow down the rate of mass murders, but doing so would trigger some kind of a civil war, or at least cause a wave of attacks with Americans violating the law and distributing guns en masse, using the latest fun technologies like 3D metal printing. If we want to address school shootings, we should be doing it by figuring out stuff like how to keep people alive for longer after they've been shot in the head. Because mass murder is status quo and won't be going away anytime soon.
Incompetent or not, predicting the future is difficult, and we don't want to give the FBI more power to ruin people's lives. So they will continue to do what is easy: manufacture terrorists and "catch" them.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:01AM (2 children)
Yet they seem to have the resources to take someone without the wherewithal to actually do anything and groom him into a homegrown terrorist just so they can take him down.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:54PM (1 child)
Predicting that someone with "risk factors" will commit a major crime: not impossible, but improbable.
Enticing someone with "risk factors" to accept delivery of guns, explosives, or whatever from an undercover officer or confidential informant: much easier. If it requires the FBI to further radicalize the person, so be it. If they get suspicious or it doesn't work, you just move on to the next person on the list until you get a hit.
Predicting the future is a fool's errand. Making the future is where it's at.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:50PM
It looks good on their statistics, but it is contrary to anything they are supposed to be doing. It pits them in the same class as the crooked mechanics along the highway that put holes in people's tires then overcharge to fix them.
Of course, they're much worse than those "50 percenters" because they destroy lives rather than just take some petty cash.
Meanwhile, the family of the kid that shot up the school in Fla. begged for any sort of mental health services they could get for the kid and they got nothing. That's a lot of kids dead because the feds were too busy subsidizing roadside hucksters to actually do something that might make a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @07:20PM (2 children)
Mass murder is not the status quo. It's a statistical abberation that's hyped up by the media to get eyeballs.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @07:25PM
These incidents are rare, but they are becoming more frequent. The media may even be to blame for causing that.
But yes, if we switched to driverless cars, started opening up supervised injection sites, or cured cancer, a lot more avoidable deaths would be prevented than if we somehow eliminated all mass murders.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday December 17 2018, @07:38AM
Mass shooting happen most days.
Mass murders do not.
We're just lucky most assholes are terrible marksmen.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday December 17 2018, @02:48AM (1 child)
These were more than edgy comments. This kid was not allowed to have a backpack on school property because of his previous behavior. One teacher even said to alert him if the kid showed up with one. The school knew he was a threat.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 17 2018, @03:24AM
I was talking generally. But as for that specific kid, clearly he wasn't expelled or imprisoned. Was there enough info for the FBI to surveil the kid or search his home for mass murder plans in diaries?
It's easy to say in retrospect that the kid was going to shoot up a school. But we don't have the Stasi required to catch them all. And I'm OK with that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @08:21AM
And then there are the times when a spy/mafia/terrorist organization wants to get rid of an uncontrollable moron in their ranks so they feed him to the FBI and so the FBI considers the spy/mafia/terrorist organization to be helpful informants from then on.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 15 2018, @02:34AM (3 children)
Agree with Ethanol's post. Multiple times now, we've read that someone was reported to the FBI. The FBI "investigated", and declined to do anything meaningful. The subject of the investigation later shoots up a school - or whatever.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @02:58AM (2 children)
To be fair, short of locking everyone up, they can't stop such attacks.
Some of these people start spouting threats and make it on the FBI's radar. Did they commit a serious crime? Probably not.
Others are known to local authorities for petty incidents, or are reported to school administrators, just known in general to be creepy/edgy individuals, etc. Still no good way to stop them.
Then you have people like Stephen Paddock. No criminal history, fairly affluent, looks and acts completely normal.
Predicting the future is hard. Making the future, by handing out toy guns, toy old-timey dynamite, bags of literal shit, or play-doh C4 to stupid would-be terrorists or the mentally handicapped, is much easier. The FBI gets to report that the scary terrorists were caught, and pad their numbers. The money keeps rolling in. Security theater ain't just for the TSA.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:08PM (1 child)
"Then you have people like Stephen Paddock. No criminal history, fairly affluent, looks and acts completely normal."
except that he has been involved with the fbi for years. his dad was a bank robber. you know shit all about the fbi and all these bootlickers modding you insightful are fucking pitiful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:47PM
"his dad was a bank robber" != "criminal history"
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday December 15 2018, @05:06AM (2 children)
This is just came in. Boeing's brand new 737MAX made emergency landing in Iran https://www.businessinsider.com/norwegian-air-boeing-737max-diverted-to-iran-with-mechanical-trouble-2018-12 [businessinsider.com]
Poor folks on board will forever ever be put on the list. They will be checked every time they buy tickets or cross borders or try to get responsible jobs or whatever. They will be refused for unknown reasons simply because "FBI was interested in them"; and CIA, and all the 16 US and countless foreign secret services.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday December 15 2018, @11:11AM (1 child)
Those unfortunate people were flying to Norway. From Dubai. Otherwise known as the home of @TrumpGolfDubai [twitter.com]. The home of desert links style golf. We love Norway. And we love Dubai. And frankly, I'd like to see more folks from places like that coming to our Country.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @03:19AM
Dubai is a common airline transfer hub when travelling to Europe or Asia.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:27PM
As noted several times, FBI has a habit of manufacturing criminals. This data is necessary for that normal policing practice. You don't know who you can con into becoming the latest catch of the day, if you don't know that they exist and have the necessary vulnerabilities.