A few sites are starting to get a story about how the "Domestic Terror Task Force" is being ressurected. '"But now, as the nature of the threat we face evolves to including the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet, it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home," Holder said in the video broadcast.'
Related Stories
Asking Permission: Running piWik To Get An Idea About Our Usage 83 comments
So, right now, I'm currently sitting with mrcoolbp and martyb in meatspace working out the finer points of incorporation, and the future needs of SoylentNews. One thing that has come up is we really don't have a great idea of our actual usage numbers are. Slashcode has decent internal numbers which give us some rough numbers, but they're only really valid for logged-in users (which bypass the varnish cache), and we're not 100% sure they're accurate anyway. According to slash, we're averaging approximately 50-60k page views per day (I've included the statistics email below), but it doesn't help us in knowing what AC usage look like. According to varnish, we average roughly 400-500k connections per day, but that number is inflated since we're not using keep-alive or HTTP pipelining as of yet.
Furthermore, since we don't log IP addresses in access.log, and IP's run through Slash are turned into IPIDs, its hard to get an idea of where our userbase is (the general feeling is the vast majority of us are based in the United States, but even then, that's more because our peak hours of traffic are between 4 and 10 PM EST). We've wanted to get a better idea of what our traffic and userbase are, so we're asking permission from the community to install piWik, and embed its javascript tag in the footer of each page, which will give us a wide berth of solid information to work from.
Furthermore, since we don't log IP addresses in access.log, and IP's run through Slash are turned into IPIDs, its hard to get an idea of where our userbase is (the general feeling is the vast majority of us are based in the United States, but even then, that's more because our peak hours of traffic are between 4 and 10 PM EST). We've wanted to get a better idea of what our traffic and userbase are, so we're asking permission from the community to install piWik, and embed its javascript tag in the footer of each page, which will give us a wide berth of solid information to work from.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Domestic Terror Task Force is Back!
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 52 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by warcques on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:28PM
No tangible facts about the Policy whatsoever.
10/10
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:35PM
The only fact you need to know is "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:36PM
Enforcement branch of the Ministry of Truth?
Got one person or a group that believes in the Constitution, Freedom and Justice etc? No problem, just label them a terrorist and disappear them into the system? Paranoia? Remains to be seen.
The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance -- Thomas Jefferson
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:39PM
> The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance -- Thomas Jefferson
I suspect that all events points to that. Let's not let it slip until we get a repeat of WW2 shall we?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:08PM
They can just disappear them the way they did in Argentina back in the 1980s: take people up in airplanes, fly over the open ocean, and drop them out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Wednesday June 04 2014, @08:07PM
For a moment I thought the article quoted Hitler instead of Holder !!
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @02:26AM
There's a difference?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @05:10AM
Yes, your statement is paranoid. Neither the government nor the made-up ministry you mentioned is out to disappear everyone who believes in the constitution and/or freedom.
There's a grey area when it comes to maintaining peace and order and the government doesn't always get it right but you are a dangerous fool to think that we live in anything like an Orwellian distopia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @07:49AM
A "Dangerous Fool"? [dangerousfool.com] Definitely not me. No way would I use Windows Media files for my material. Besides, I am certainly not a comedian or even a performer.
I just asked a few questions. You didn't think I had delusions of being Socrates did you? Sorry no, could never envision myself as a teacher either.
Curious, if by chance you work for any of the agencies that are building blocks for a potential future Orwellian Dystopia or are you one of the people that has blind faith that their government would never become that way? In either case, you might well be far more of a "dangerous fool" then I.
Its a shame the education system is so lacking in Common Sense. [ushistory.org]
Good Government is just another oxymoron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @11:39AM
Just asking questions? Who are you, Glenn Beck?
I'm not One of Them. You, however, are sounding even more paranoid than before.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:37PM
Great, what could possibly go wrong.
Hearing this on NPR yesterday sent shivers down my spine. Dissent will be a forgotten word as more individuals get labeled as "domestic terrorist" for making statements contrary to the current black holes in power.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:04PM
It's not like we haven't been here before. In the 1790's, it was the "Alien and Sedition Acts". In the 1890's, the police openly beat and killed trade unionists, socialists, anarchists, and anyone else deemed dangerous by the Powers That Be. Several decades ago, this was called the "Counter-Intelligence Program", or "COINTELPRO", and was directed at such dangerous people as Martin Luther King, John Lennon, and Abbie Hoffman.
The idea that the US is or has ever been a truly free society is simply a fairy tale told to people to make them shut up and accept what's happening without questioning it. There's a range of opinion that is deemed "acceptable", and anything outside of that range marks you as a dangerous kook of some kind. And you will be treated accordingly if you express that opinion in a way that can be traced back to you.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:20PM
And NSA provides that trace..
By pure coincidence.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:11PM
Well, people wanted this, and got it when they voted for Bush, Obama, McCain, and Romney.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:22PM
Don't leave out Bill Clinton, George H W Bush (a CIA man), Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and quite a few others who are absolutely complicit in creating the current state of things.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:08PM
Sorry, but you're wrong about Gerald Ford. You're right about all the others: the people voted for them, but the people did not vote for Ford, not really. He just inherited Nixon's spot when Nixon resigned. Worse, he wasn't even elected Vice-President (like LBJ was when he inherited JFK's position after his assassination): he was appointed to that spot after Spiro Agnew resigned. Ford has the dubious distinction of being the only President never elected by anyone, not the people and not the Electoral College.
Interestingly, Ford seems to have been one of our better Presidents in modern times. He finally got us out of Vietnam, and had an amnesty program for draft dodgers. He seems to have been much less corrupt and inept than any other modern President I can think of. Maybe we should pick all our Presidents the way he was chosen, because our current method doesn't seem to be working very well, and instead giving us horrible presidents like Bush and Obama.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:26PM
I think we should just draw names out of a really, really big hat.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 04 2014, @10:12PM
That would be far better than our current system of selecting the best liar.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:18PM
I blame Ford for pardoning Richard Nixon, thus codifying the idea that, as Tricky Dick said, "when the president does it, it is not illegal".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:27PM
From Wikipedia:
"After Ford left the White House in 1977, the former President privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision which stated that a pardon indicated a presumption of guilt, and that acceptance of a pardon was tantamount to a confession of that guilt. In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award to Ford for his pardon of Nixon. In presenting the award to Ford, Senator Ted Kennedy said that he had initially been opposed to the pardon of Nixon, but later stated that history had proved Ford to have made the correct decision."
It was obviously very controversial, and you could argue it both ways. It does appear that it may partly have been done as a way to get Nixon to leave office quickly so the country could move on, rather than having him stick around and go through an impeachment process that would take a lot of time and cripple the country for a period of time, just like what happened when Clinton was impeached for the Lewinsky scandal: that took a whole year as I recall, a year during which almost nothing got done. Ford was probably trying to avoid that, and it worked; he moved on to other matters right away during his short Presidency. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but Nixon now has a legacy of one word: "Watergate".
(Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday June 04 2014, @11:41PM
Yeah, I've come to see it more like that wallstreet bailout than protecting the guilty. He had to choose between punishing the guilty plus a whole lot of collateral damage or letting the guilty go in order to save everyone else.
In the case of the bailout thought, I think now that the crisis is past and the risk of collateral damage is greatly reduced, we ought to be going after those guys with any legal options still available to us.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 05 2014, @02:42PM
The problem with the bailout, as I see it, is that it was a terribly way to do it. They gave the banks bailouts on the banks' terms. They should have had huge strings attached, a requirement that executives step down, something. Or they could have had the government seize control of the banks temporarily, and then break them up; I'm pretty sure that's been done before, if not here then in some other western nations. It wasn't a binary option. The Democrats instead just did what the banks told them to.
And you're right, they haven't bothered even exercising the remaining legal options in going after those guys. Another Democrat failure. And liberals keep telling me I should vote for these guys, as if that's going to change things.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday June 05 2014, @04:17PM
Geithner argues that it was politically infeasible to put more strings on the bailout -- putting the blame on congress. I don't know if it is true, but he seems pretty aware of how unfair the bailout was.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @09:28PM
Well, that would be the Fox so-called News version (lamestream media).
The Howard Zinn version would note that the USA got its ass kicked by some little pajama-wearing dudes who wanted the latest batch of imperialists out of their country.
The writing was on the wall starting in 1968. [wikipedia.org]
In the end, there was such a mad scramble to get out of there that very expensive stuff [baltimorepostexaminer.com] was getting shoved into the ocean. [e-torch.org]
Events in 1970 showed that the US imperialists had no qualms about murdering American children inside the borders of USA. [wikipedia.org]
...and it didn't matter to the Military-Industrial Complex that many of the dead and wounded children weren't even part of the protest and were just "collateral damage".
Real people, however, were extremely pissed.
The zeal for an illegal military occupation on the other side of the globe had waned years before.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday June 05 2014, @02:24PM
That's not entirely true: Richard Nixon did send an apology to the family of Bill Schroeder, a ROTC cadet killed by the National Guard on his way to class that day. Which in some ways is even more telling, because nobody apologized to the families of anyone else hit in that protest. They apparently felt bad for him because he was soon going to be a part of the Military-Industrial complex, so killing him was reducing their war readiness a bit.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 05 2014, @02:47PM
That's all well and good, but Ford wasn't President (or VP) in 1970 when Kent State happened, and it was under his watch that the war finally ended. The previous Presidents refused to pull out.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:17PM
Perhaps we have to protect ourself from the voting cattle ..?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:42PM
Gotta say, this seems a lot like President Clark's time as ruler of the Earth Alliance. Next comes the Ministry of Peace and the Nightwatch,
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:38PM
In B5, beside Captain Sherdon and the breakway Earthforces, there were also internal movements to weaken and dethrone Sherdan (as seen when Clark's office is stormed, and again dealing with the aftermath just before Sherdon becomes President of the Interstellar Alliance). Furthermore, Clark brought things very very quickly after Santiago's assassination; in our world, this has been building up over the last decade and more, and each individual thing together has not been enough to cause total outrage. Collectively though ...
If things ever get to the point of a civil war, such a war would be so devistating that I fear to even imagine it ...
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Thursday June 05 2014, @04:56PM
In the show, both big steps (breaking away from EA, and then taking an active offensive against Clark's forces) were predicated on something that's gone rather unremarked in the real world: Openly using military force against civilian targets. For us, it's used as an occasional Obama-bash rather than what it is: the sign that the US Gov't crossed the Moral Event Horizon [orain.org] (TVTropes (fork) warning)
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday June 05 2014, @05:30PM
More specifically, use of EA military against EA targets. With the exception of the downing of the Blackstar, Earth never really won a battle in Earth-Mibarai War. (we were doomed to loose the Battle of the Line until the Mimbari surrendered which is the entire plot of "The Sky, Full of Stars" in season 1). We do see the Centuari use mass drivers against Narn civilian targets, and the Shadow and Vorlons glass worlds that the other touched (the Vorlons were about to scorch Centuari Prime before the alliance started the battle between the Shadows and the Vorlon)
We never see the Diglar war itself, so its not clear if civilians were ever targeted by the EA, though given the end result of that war lead to (almost) Dilgar extinction ...
If the US military ever hit a US civilian target, then that would probably be significant cataylist to cause states and factions to try and breakaway in RL.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Thursday June 05 2014, @06:20PM
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday June 06 2014, @01:29AM
You mean something like bombing our own cities [democracynow.org]?
(Yeah, that wasn't technically the *military*, but a government bomb is a government bomb in my book...)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @03:50PM
Our narrow minded and group thinking overlords have decided that groups or people that are unlike them must be plotting against them. And of course anyone getting quality of life raped by corporate bought laws, biased courts or just plain poisoned by Monsanto and clones must be evil, if they resist. In the meantime some buggy algorithm from the all-listening-sensor will decide if you should have your life ruined.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:15PM
> Our narrow minded and group thinking overlords have decided that groups or people that are unlike them must be plotting against them.
I don't think it is anywhere near that deliberate. I think it is more of a combination of "we have all these toys, we have to use them for something" and "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:13PM
Some things doesn't have to be intentional. They just converge into such function.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:25PM
Yeah, I was going to compare it to institutional racism. I think they work pretty much the same way.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 04 2014, @09:42PM
What are you going to do about it? It doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you don't put your money where your mouth is. Write some software that directly messes with the NSA or the Powers-that-Be (as in, it turns their powers of surveillance around on them). Find a way to identify all NSA employees and out them to their friends, neighbors, and families. Let them each feel the direct and daily scorn of the people they're spying on. Let them be shunned. Deprive the .01% of every last scrap of privacy they have. When they step out on their wife with a mistress in Bermuda, make sure everyone in their social circle gets the video of the dirty deed shot in nightvision. Track down all their hidden accounts in the Caymans and let the American people know exactly how much of their wealth has been extracted by these parasites and salted away to keep them in coke and hookers in perpetuity. Let every crime they commit, white collar and otherwise, be recorded for posterity, or perhaps more appropriately, the firing squad that does await them in the near future.
If all that gives you pause, then perhaps you can simply refrain from playing their game anymore. If you could take public transportation or bike to work instead of driving, do. If you can grow your own vegetable garden instead of relying on those Monsanto veggies, do. If you can generate your own electricity through solar and wind, do. If you can read a book or build something or play an instrument to entertain yourself instead of zoning out in front of your cable TV, do. In short, stop giving them your dollars. Just stop. People and life went very merrily along before any of that crap came along, and they could do so again. In fact, the average person's quality of life would probably go up.
And yeah, if none of those actions and options appeal to you, then probably better get to practicing your shooting because if you can't bring yourself to do the former two classes of things, you will have no choice but resort to the latter.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:06PM
The government is trying to achieve "eternal vigilance" of all via computer. The quote could also very well foretell our complete loss of liberty both to the success of the governments attempts at eternal vigilance and our failures at eternal vigilance. Couch potatoes like lobsters in the slowly heating water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:15PM
Not sure how this happened, the parent was supposed to be a reply to kaszz [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:33PM
"Domestic Terror Task Force"
Its a pity this "news" didn't come out a month (or two) earlier.
I think it would have made an excellent domain name for our little corner of the internet.
(Score: 1) by rancid on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:20PM
On the subject of timing, does anyone else think this is related to Cliven Bundy and his friends? Next time something like him crops up send in the terror squad and the MRAPs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:59PM
Absolutely not. While Cliven Bundy is a good indicator of rising anti-government sentiment, the real reason this is being addressed now by Holder is because there are and will be a lot of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, [washingtontimes.com] who will be very pissed-off indeed. Sheesh, all these comments at the time of this posting and nobody has yet made that connection?
Pissed off about the bullshit reasons for their being sent to some God-forsaken hell-hole, guarding poppy fields, being sent to their deaths to rescue traitors, watching their best friends being turned into hamburger before their very eyes, losing arms, losing legs, losing their families due to the stress and distance, and finally returning home to it all to enter into the death-sentence lottery known as the VA waiting queue.
Almost all of these people will have extensive combat and firearms training. U.S. Government, prepare your anus. The happening approacheth! This is why the "mental-illness-as-newest-reason-to-bar-people-from-firearm-ownership" is indirectly being pushed onto the American people, and why you all should support gun rights despite the fearmongering bullshit you're being fed by the media.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:53PM
As in the past the government will use any violent protest as an excuse to investigate, accuse and persecute targeted non-violent protests or even the possibility there of. Even perhaps to the point of initiating and/or instigating the violence etc. Wonder who fancies themselves to be Shakespeare with the rest of us as but actors?
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances," --Merchant of Venice
"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
--Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
Though it fits all in a fashion, lets certainly do not let them turn us too dramatically into the latter, sounds too much like a mind programmed shooter or suicide bomber. It is not like the government hasn't researched mind control efforts before. But they stopped, right?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @09:18PM
> the real reason this is being addressed now by Holder is because there are and will be a lot of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans,
Bullsheet.
As of 2011 there were already 1.3M veterans Iraq and Afghanistan that had mustered out. [go.com] As of Jan 1st this year there were only 38,000 still in Afghanistan. At roughly 6 months in the field at a time and conservatively assuming no repeats, and conservatively assuming that everybody who served in the field also left the service, that makes for ~140,000 since 2011.
If returning vets were a threat we would have been seeing tons of problems. So far, just one guy, which seems kind of low.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:24PM
Domestic Force Tasked with Terror? ;)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NeoNormal on Wednesday June 04 2014, @05:53PM
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:34PM
I didn't know it had died, though apparently the spellchecker has.
Come to think it, I don't even know what it was.
And Holder is who when he's at home?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday June 04 2014, @07:53PM
It's time to ditch my mobile phone, make sure I write my seditious and "terroristic" material with a typewriter, and go find my own cabin in Montana and disappear. Incidentally, I *do* own a manual typewriter and I'm even a pretty fast typist with it. I even know where I can get ribbons for it.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05 2014, @12:08AM
ALERT! Sarcasm not detected. Alert da DTTF!! ALERT!
(Score: 1) by bart9h on Wednesday June 04 2014, @09:05PM
Death to all the extremists!
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday June 05 2014, @08:05AM
Awesome. I love that show. They should never have cancelled it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk