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You know the drill, right? The FBI keeps insisting that it has a "going dark" problem due to encryption making it impossible to access key evidence of supposedly criminal behavior, in theory allowing crime to happen without recourse. The problem, though, is that nearly every single bit of this claim is false. It's kind of stunning.
- It appears that, in practice, the FBI almost never runs into encryption.
- In the rare cases where it has (and we don't know how many because since the FBI admitted it over exaggerated how many "locked" devices it had, and then has since refused to provide an updated count), there do appear to be ways to get into those devices anyway.
- But the key issue, by far, is that the opposite of going dark is happening. Thanks to our increasingly electronic lives, the government actually has way more access to information than ever before.
Two recent articles highlight this in practice, with regards to the FBI trying to track down the rare cases of criminal activity happening around some of the protests.
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FBI Using Social Media, E-Commerce Sites to Track Down Suspects (Including Non-Lawbreakers)
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Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday June 23 2020, @03:16PM (3 children)
There ought to be nothing special about the police when it comes to investigation. Private investigators are already more effective anyway.
We don't need government agents with special powers. We need laws that require public transparency. If it's not safe for the public to access, it's not safe for the beat cop to access either.
We should stop thinking of the police as heroes that enforce law and order and start thinking of them as providing two distinct jobs: executing judicial orders, and investigating crimes. Those two jobs don't need to be done by the same organization. A better system would treat detectives as private investigators that can file claims to the government, like some combination of public defense attorneys and Medicare. Then boost the funding, now that these people are subject to normal laws instead of special kill-what-you-want cop laws, and they are actually on the side of the victims that hired them.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @04:37PM (2 children)
Sorry bro.
If cops can't make quick decisions in the street and act on them, you will have a lot more theft and deaths. We have seen this happen in the experiment of CHAZ/CHOP and other cities when you remove the police. You need police presence to provide security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @06:53PM (1 child)
Then how do you explain the looting happening everywhere else? There's plenty of police there. They're armed to the gills. They're out in force. We're still seeing broken windows.
We don't have security. We don't have law and order. What we have is a big gang that's good at threatening poor people and not much else. What we have is the largest prison population in the world - not despite the aggressiveness of the police, but BECAUSE OF THEIR AGGRESSION.
This idea that cops are out there to "protect" anybody completely flies in the face of the evidence. Cops are out there to intimidate black teenagers so that when they see a crime, there's no way in hell they're calling 911. Cops are out there to take black dads from their kids so that there's nobody to keep them on the straight and narrow. Cops are out there to kill people and start race riots.
We can do better. We must.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @07:13PM
Mayors of leftist dumps instructed the police to not aggressively engage and disperse the protest-rioters.
Do you read the news? Police chiefs say the mayors tied their hands. Those mayors refused to call in the National Guard.
As for black people being hurt by cops: far, far more black people are killed by black criminals. If they don't have cops patrolling the neighborhood, innocent black people die. Just like happened in CHAZ/CHOP which is why the mayor finally disbanded it. She could gave done that many days ago, but no. People have to die first.
I also don't know how old you are, but the major American cities were war zones of crime in sections, run by gangs. Then in the 1990s the Democrats decided to get tough on crime along with the Republicans. Result? Less deaths for everybody, blacks included. Now people are talking about going back to the same soft on crime policies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You will bring back the bad old days if that happens.