How Do You Debate Section 230 When One Side Constantly Lies About It?

from the this-is-not-a-both-sides-issue dept

The Federalist Society this week released an interesting and well-produced video all about the Section 230 debate. Whatever you might think about the Federalist Society, the video is worth watching. The video does not take a position on 230 but basically presents it as if there are two equally competing visions of 230 -- one in which it's good and one in which it's a problem. And if you just watch the video, you might think that this is because there are just disagreements about how 230 works and the impact it has on speech online. But that's only because one side of the debate is completely making shit up and the other is being accurate.

In this case, the person making up shit about 230 is... Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz has been lying about Section 230 for years. Indeed, I think we can trace most of the blatant falsehoods about 230 that seem to come from Republicans to Ted Cruz. It seems like 3 years ago, Cruz decided that it would be a fun culture war thing to "attack big tech" and lying about 230 seemed like the easiest way to do so. Other politicians (most notably Josh Hawley) have since followed him down that path, but it's Cruz who seems to be patient zero of the GOP's "making shit up about 230." Of course, what's perhaps most ironic is that everything that Cruz has been falsely saying about 230 conflicts directly with the other stuff he made up about net neutrality back when that fight was on.

Back in 2014, when the FCC finally put in place reasonable net neutrality rules, Cruz flipped out and insisted that simple rules against throttling or blocking access to websites was the government taking over the internet. Now, with 230, he insists (falsely) that 230 had some built in neutrality requirement, and he's mad that it's no longer there. He's wrong on... all of this.

Let's dig in:

Who in their right mind would want all of political discourse in America governed by a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires? With unfettered power to silence anyone. That's what we have now and I think it threatens our elections, it threatens our democracy, and it threatens free speech in a way we've never seen before in our democracy.

Oh come on. First of all, pre-internet, the vast majority of people had no outlet for them to speak to the vast majority of other Americans (or people around the globe). They could only speak to people around them, and that was an extremely limited audience. Today, the internet has enabled people to speak to tons of people across a wide variety of platforms or -- even better, to set up your own website and communicate to whatever audience you can attract. The idea that a few popular sites have "unfettered power to silence anyone" is ridiculous. First of all, they can't silence people. They can only refuse them service on their platforms. And the internet is much bigger than those platforms.

Second, they have strong incentives not to just randomly silence people and really are not doing so. While they sometimes make mistakes, it's not like they're suddenly deciding that idiots like Ted Cruz can't lie to the American public and create bogus culture wars. Hell, this video is... hosted on YouTube. Are there cases where these sites have over moderated content that they probably should not have? Sure, absolutely. But there remain many other options out there, and the idea that a few sites having moderation policies Ted Cruz doesn't like is in no way a "threat to free speech." And, it most certainly is not a historic threat the way Cruz presents it.

Again, compare this to what we had before. Before people had no significant tools to get their speech out there. If you wanted to speak to a wide audience, you were immediately limited by a bunch of giant gatekeepers who suppressed way more speech than any internet platform ever has. You needed to get a newspaper publisher, book publisher, or TV or radio station to agree to allow you to speak, and they rejected nearly all such efforts. They only allowed through a tiny fraction of those who wished to be published or put on the air.

The change today is massive. But if we're talking about the power of big companies to silence speech, we're in a fundamentally different world today where the primary purpose of many of these companies is enabling the vast majority of people to be able to speak to wider audiences. The old systems were focused on just allowing through a tiny minority of people to speak. We're currently in amazing times for freedom of speech, and the fact that a few platforms don't want assholes and disinformation merchants is not an attack on free speech.

Later Cruz does this misleading garbage thing where he says that the big tech companies have refused to tell him how many Republican candidates for office have had their content "blocked, shadowbanned, or restricted." He insists that there is a clear number "an integer" that these companies know and refuse to tell him and "that unchecked power is dangerous."

Except that entire statement is garbage. First of all, "shadowbanning" is not a defined thing, and most companies don't do anything that can be reasonably defined as "shadowbanning" or "throttling." But all of these platforms do have algorithms that suggest content to users, and they may rank certain content higher than others, because the algorithms believe users are more likely to want to see some content, and less likely to see other content. Is having the algorithm decide that one politician's content is less interesting than another's... is that "shadowbanning"? Is that "throttling"? Who the fuck knows? That's why Cruz's question is so disingenuous. He's asking an unanswerable question, and then pretending that when companies don't answer a question that can't be answered that they're dodging the issue.

And, no, that power is not "unchecked." Remember when Ted Cruz was a Republican who pretended to believe in the market? If these companies were really terrible at all of this, then that's an opportunity for alternatives to spring up. Or it's a reason for users to stop using the platforms. Or for advertisers to go elsewhere. There are all sorts of market incentives for these companies to be better. Cruz is just making shit up again.

Right now, Section 230 is part of how Congress continues to protect these monopolies that are abusing their power and trying to silence you.

Oh come on. Section 230 protects everyone online. It's got nothing to do with "monopolies" (and just the fact he is referring to multiple companies as monopolies should make you question if he knows what the word monopoly means). And, no, they're not trying to "silence you." They're trying to balance a ton of competing interests, including stopping spam, harassment, abuse, and disinformation that is creating larger societal problems that cynical opportunist politicians like Ted Cruz want to brush under the rug or deny.

The question of what to do about big tech censorship is a difficult question. I will readily concede that as a policy matter, that is not easy to solve. Nobody in their right mind wants to see a federal government speech police.

And here he is trying to have it both ways, because everything else he says is demanding exactly that. Having the federal government force websites to host some speech while removing some other speech. But Cruz wants to have it both ways. Because he's lying.

But it's no longer the case that tech companies are these tiny little startups. It's no longer the case that they're a couple of kids starting something in their college dorm room.

Uh, there are still tons of startups, including started by kids in their dorm rooms that are protected by 230.

So it then becomes a thorny problem. How do you solve this blatant censorship and bias coming from Silicon Valley. First, which we're talking about right now, is repealing or modifying Section 230. Eliminating the special immunity from liability that big tech gets that was based on the belief that they would be neutral public forum. They've abandoned that promise. They've decided that they're not neutral. They're partisan, they will silence your views if they disagree with them.

Everything he says here is hogwash. First, the small lie: Section 230 is not about "big tech." It protects small sites and users as well. It protects Ted Cruz when he retweets something or when he forwards an email.

Then the big lie: the idea that 230 was premised on "neutrality." While the video later does show Chris Cox -- who wrote Section 230 -- debunking this myth, it's much later in the video and people watching it might not even realize that he's basically calling out Cruz as a blatant liar. Section 230 was never based on the idea of any website being "a neutral public forum." As Cox says later, how would that even make any sense? No one would expect, say, the Republican National Committee to have to host speech promoting Democrats.

The entire point of Section 230 was to allow websites to moderate how they saw fit for the community they wanted to have on their website. It's why we see so many different websites with so many different approaches. Because no one wants or needs a one-size-fits-all approach. So, if websites wanted to be biased, that's exactly what 230 was designed to support. So no site "broke" any promise, because no promise was made.

And finally, it's bullshit that any of the big companies are "partisan" in their moderation. They're not banning people for their political views. They're banning them when they're spewing disinformation or harassment in a way that makes it difficult for others using the site as well. The only site I've seen admit to being "partisan" was Parler, whose former CEO bragged to reporters about banning "leftists." I didn't see Cruz complain about that.

I think there should be strong incentive in federal law for the big companies to go back to being neutral public fora. They know how to do that. They did that for years. Because if they silence anyone who disagrees with the leftwing orthodoxy we'll only hear one view.

Oh come on. Again, they were never "neutral public fora." They have always had content moderation policies, removing spam and harassment -- and things they were legally required to remove, such as copyright infringement and child sexual abuse material.

And, again, remember that the one regulation we did have about making a part of the internet "neutral" resulted in Cruz himself screaming about how it was "Obamacare for the internet" and "the government takeover of the internet." Ted Cruz is a lying fucking hypocrite.

Oh, and there is no site out there that is silencing "anyone who disagrees with leftwing orthodoxy." Again, Ted Cruz -- who clearly disagrees with leftwing orthodoxy -- is still on all these platforms. This video is hosted by YouTube. Cruz is just culture warrioring, by lying to you.

That's the world of big tech, but it's even worse because it's 3 or 4 billionaires in Silicon Valley deciding what you get to hear, what you get to say, what you get to know. That is an incredible danger to our Constitution, to our Bill of Rights, and to our democracy.

Again, no. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution are mostly about limiting what Congress can do. Private companies exercising editorial discretion on their platforms is actually protected by the Bill of Rights.

I'm not sure there was a single thing in this entire video that came out of Ted Cruz's mouth that was anywhere near truth. It was all cynical bullshit that was not only ridiculous and wrong, but was designed to mislead people. I know the Federalist Society wants to present "both sides" of this issue, but how do you do that when the people you choose have no compunction about just flat out lying?

Filed Under: content moderation, lies, neutrality, section 230, ted cruz

Cop's Lies About A Traffic Stop Are Exposed By A Home Security Camera Located Across The Street

from the golden-age-of-surveillance-of-public-officials dept

Cops lie.

This is undeniable. But why do cops lie? There seems to be little reason for it. Qualified immunity protects them against all but their most egregious rights violations. Internal investigations routinely clear them for all but their most egregious acts of misconduct. And police union contracts make it almost impossible to fire bad cops, no matter what they've done.

So, why do they lie? If I had to guess, it's because they've been granted so much deference by those adjudicating their behavior that "my word against theirs" has pretty much become the standard for legal proceedings. If a cop can push a narrative without more pushback than the opposing party's sworn statements, the cop is probably going to win.

This reliance on unreliable narrators has been threatened by the ubiquity of recording devices. Some devices -- body cameras, dashcams -- are owned by cops. And, no surprise, they often "fail" to activate these devices when some shady shit is going down.

But there are tons of cameras cops don't control. Every smartphone has a camera. And nearly every person encountering cops has a smartphone. Then there's the plethora of home security cameras whose price point has dropped so precipitously they're now considered as accessible as tap water.

The cops can control their own footage. And they do. But they can't control everyone else's. And that's where they slip up. A narrative is only as good as its supporting evidence. Cops refuse to bring their own, especially when it contradicts their narrative. But they can't stop citizens from recording their actions. This is a fact that has yet to achieve critical mass in the law enforcement community. A cop's word is only as good as its supporting facts. Going to court with alternative facts -- especially ones contradicted by nearby recording devices is a bad idea. (h/t TheUrbanDragon)

But that still doesn't stop cops from lying to courts. Cops in Lake Wales, Florida tried to claim a driver attacked them during a traffic stop -- something that could have resulted in a conviction on multiple felony charges. But camera footage obtained from a home security camera across the street from the traffic stop undermined the officers' sworn perjury:

A Lake Wales man, who could have been sent to prison for years based on the claims in a police report, was saved by a home surveillance camera. It showed he didn’t attack an officer, as claimed in the report.

[...]

Officer [Colt] Black’s report said, “Cordero immediately exited the driver door and began to charge towards my patrol vehicle.”

It also indicated Cordero approached the officer with closed fists.

Sounds like an attempted assault on police officers -- an assault only negated by the swift (and brutal) acts of officers on the scene. But here's what really happened, according to an unblinking eye located across the street.

Cordero stood by his car for more than 20 seconds.

[...]

Black approached Cordero about 30 seconds later.

“He sucker-punched me from the back, right here, cracked a piece of my tooth out. I landed on the ground,” Cordero said.

Despite this being an assault of a citizen by Officer Black (with an assist by Officer Travis Worley), Officer Black claimed he "delivered an elbow strike" because he thought Cordero was reaching for a weapon. This lie was added to the lie that Cordero had "approached" the officers with "closed fists." The security camera recorded the whole thing, which showed officers attacked Cordero as he stood motionless by his car.

So, what was the excuse given after security cam footage showed Officer Black had lied? Officer Black lied again. He claimed he was unable to accurately recall the traffic stop because it was so "stressful."

After Cordero shared the footage with police, Officer Black wrote in another report, "I believe my perception was altered due to the high stress of the incident.”

If a regular traffic stop is so stressful it alters officers' recollection of events, no officer -- or at least not this officer -- should be considered trustworthy when it comes to testifying about traffic stops or any other unrecorded interactions with citizens. Presumably most interactions are stressful. But that's the job. And if the stress makes you make shit up about incidents that implicate a host of constitutional rights and people's actual physical freedom, you probably shouldn't be a cop.

Filed Under: colt black, evidence, florida, lake wales, lies, police, security camera

T-Mobile Promised Major Job Growth Post Sprint Merger. SEC Filings Show The Exact Opposite Happened

from the Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-Football dept

When T-Mobile was selling its $26 billion Sprint merger to regulators, it told anybody who'd listen that the deal would create a parade of new jobs. In a 2019 blog post that still hasn't been deleted (amateur move, guys), ex-T-Mobile CEO John Legere didn't mince words in his predictions:

"So, let me be really clear on this increasingly important topic. This merger is all about creating new, high-quality, high-paying jobs, and the New T-Mobile will be jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter. That’s not just a promise. That’s not just a commitment. It’s a fact."

"...These combined efforts will create nearly 5,600 new American customer care jobs by 2021."

2021 is here, and a recent SEC filing shows that the company has actually lost about 5,000 jobs in a little under a year and a half. That number could potentially be even higher. As noted last April, T-Mobile quickly set about immediately shuttering its Metro prepaid division (a decision that had nothing to do with COVID), resulting in an estimated 6,000 layoffs (something T-Mobile said wouldn't happen). Last June, the company fired hundreds of additional Sprint employees during a conference call that lasted all of six minutes.

There's likely more where that came from, as the company is still operating dual headquarters in both the Pacific Northwest and Overland Park, Kansas. In most mergers like this, the acquiring company tries to keep things the same for about a year to keep folks calm before the hatchets are unveiled.

Of course, this is all something that consumer groups, antitrust experts, unions, and even Wall Street stock jocks predicted. Most of those folks predicted that, even though it would take time, the deal would eliminate anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs. That's in addition to their complaints that the deal effectively reduced US wireless competition by 25% via 4-3 carrier consolidation, something that historically always, sooner or later, results in higher prices for consumers (see: Canada, Ireland, Germany).

Granted in his original blog post, Legere made fun of those critics and insisted they were simply making shit up:

"I guess if the real numbers don’t tell the story you want, you can just make up new ones? It’s actually offensive."

Yes, accurate predictions are so offensive. Granted John Legere, who successfully built T-Mobile from an also-ran into a major competitor (thanks in part to regulators blocking AT&T's 2011 merger with T-Mobile), was quick to leave the company shortly after the deal, offloading his Central Park West Penthouse to Giorgio Armani for $17.5 million (how many employee jobs is that?). And as Light Reading notes, T-Mobile's revenues continue to soar as it continues job cuts it promised wouldn't happen:

"In 2015, T-Mobile was making about $650,000 per employee. Last year, it generated almost $912,000. For workers at the company, that is not a source of comfort."

Granted this happens absolutely every time there's a major telecom merger. Companies throw out bullshit job growth claims, knowing full well such consolidation inevitably will result in massive job cuts a year or two later as redundant positions are eliminated. The press hypes the false merger "synergy" claims, then (usually) can't be bothered to follow up with reports highlighting how the promises were empty. It's a massive ouroboros of dysfunction, and no matter how many times we live through the exact same experience (AT&T's countless mergers, Verizon's countless mergers, Comcast's repeated mergers), America has a severe allergy to learning absolutely anything from experience.

Mindless consolidation and "growth for growth's sake" hurts employees, markets, and consumers. Full stop. Regulators could have forced Sprint to find another suitor, preferably one that didn't result in a loss of overall competitors (Dish, Comcast, Charter, Google, Amazon). Instead we signed off on another massive deal, based on a parade of false promises. Then, in two or three years when US wireless prices (already some of the highest in the developed world) are even higher, everybody will stand around with a dumb look on their faces wondering how exactly we got this point. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Filed Under: competition, hiring, jobs, john legere, lies, merger, mobile service
Companies: sprint, t-mobile

FCC Accused Of Falsely Inflating U.S. Gigabit Broadband Availability

from the rose-colored-glasses dept

However spotty and uncompetitive U.S. broadband is, it's particularly bad when it comes to faster speeds. Why? Because in many areas regional telcos simply refused to upgrade their aging DSL lines since doing so wasn't profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. As a result we've literally let these networks fall apart with no regulatory attention. That, in turn, has given cable giants like Comcast massive monopolies that cover huge swaths of the U.S., resulting in spotty coverage, higher prices, slower speeds, and routinely poor customer service.

Granted, the Ajit Pai and Trump FCC haven't been a big fan of data that accurately measures this problem. The agency has been caught time and time again leaning on data it knows isn't accurate to paint a rosy picture of U.S. broadband, which is designed to justify repeatedly kissing the ass of U.S. telecom monopolies.

Last week, the agency was again caught aggressively overinflating the availability of gigabit-speed broadband in the U.S. According to the official FCC tallies, gigabit broadband speeds are available to roughly 84% of the U.S. public, up from just 4 percent in 2016. This, the FCC will be quick to tell you, is thanks to its decision to kill net neutrality and neuter its consumer protection authority over giant broadband providers.

But when researchers at BroadbandNow did their own independent research to verify that data, they found that time and time again, the FCC's data was not just inaccurate, but immensely incorrect. Places the FCC claimed had gigabit broadband service consistently did not:

"We manually checked 75 addresses in zip codes where the FCC shows gigabit coverage, but BroadbandNow data shows that there is not an internet plan sold at that speed. We checked these addresses by calling internet service providers and asking if gigabit service was available. In all 75 cases, none of them had a gigabit service available."

In reality, somewhere around 56% of Americans may have an active gigabit connection, but even that estimate is considered optimistic given that the FCC's form 477 data collected from ISPs routinely isn't confirmed to be accurate. This creates inaccurate broadband availability maps (including the FCC's $300 million public facing one), which in turn prop up the agency's false claims that U.S. broadband is largely wonderful thanks to mindless deregulation of the sector. Worse, despite repeated criticism, the FCC's methodology remains comically bad, also resulting in an overestimate of both speed and availability:

"Chief among them is the caveat that a provider can mark a given census block – the level of granularity used within the form – as “covered” if so little as one home within the block has service in reality. This has led to widespread issues of over-reporting when it comes to where plans are actually available at the neighborhood level."

There's the added irony that a lot of the growth the U.S. did actually see during this period is thanks to things the Trump FCC either had nothing to do with, like the 2015 AT&T/DirecTV merger conditions requiring additional fiber deployment, or the hundreds of community-run municipal broadband networks agency commissioners have repeatedly demonized and have supported banning outright. This FCC then, in Trumpian fashion, claims that improvements it had nothing to do with, and those that succeeded despite it, justify deregulating Comcast and AT&T.

There's a reason that folks like Ajit Pai, hand in hand with industry, aren't fans of hard, clear data showing U.S. broadband is uncompetitive and overly expensive: somebody might just get the crazy idea to try and do something about it.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, data, fcc, fiber, gigabit, lies, mapping

Mississippi Says AT&T Took $283 Million For A Network It Never Fully Deployed

from the Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-Football dept

We've noted for years that the U.S. simply adores throwing billions in tax breaks and subsidies at telecom monopolies in exchange for broadband networks that somehow, mysteriously, only wind up half deployed. AT&T's particularly gifted at this particular grift, routinely promising a massive boost in network investment if it gets merger approval, deregulation, or subsidization. Like most recently when it nabbed a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration in exchange for not only network investment that never happened -- but 41,000 layoffs.

Because AT&T's so politically powerful -- and of course all but bone grafted to the intelligence and law enforcement communities -- the company never faces more than a wrist slap for its empty promises, if that. This month it's the state of Mississippi that's pissed off, accusing AT&T of taking $283 million from the FCC's Connect America Fund to deploy broadband to 133,000 locations in Mississippi, then once again failing to deliver. More specifically, AT&T promised it would use the money to expand fixed wireless service to these locations, then falsely reported the locations served when they weren't.

The Mississippi Public Service didn't really mince words in a letter (pdf) spotted by Ars Technica sent to the FCC:

"Our investigation has found concrete, specific examples that show AT&T Mississippi has reported location addresses... as being served when, in fact, the addresses are without service under their [Connect America Fund] obligations," said a letter to the FCC sent Tuesday by all three Mississippi PSC commissioners. "This pattern of submitting false data to the USAC [the Universal Service Administrative Company, which administers the program on the FCC's behalf] merits a full compliance audit by the FCC, USAC, or whichever appropriate agency. We feel it is our duty to alert you to this issue."

This is far from the first time AT&T has misrepresented its broadband availability. The company back in April was forced to admit to the FCC it misrepresented broadband availability across 20 states in its territories. AT&T's also fighting efforts to improve broadband map accuracy on several fronts. In a news release, Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley urged the FCC to investigate what it called a history of inconsistencies and falsehoods:

"Our investigation has revealed a wide array of inconsistencies in what AT&T advertises as available and what actually exists when consumers try to get Internet service," Presley said. "All the while, AT&T has submitted data saying that they have used federal funds to bring Internet service to these specific homes. AT&T knows, for a fact, that information that they have provided regarding where their Internet service exists is false. They know that through their own, internal records. It's imperative that the FCC and other appropriate federal agencies work with us to hold them accountable."

Of course this is where an independent federal regulator would investigate AT&T more deeply, especially given more than two decades of similar complaints. But that of course isn't going to happen at Ajit Pai's FCC, which is not only a glorified rubber stamp for the industry it's supposed to be holding accountable to the public, but routinely participates in the industry's willful misrepresentation of broadband availability to try and hide the patchy coverage and muted competition that is the hallmark of the U.S. telecom industry.

Understand this: the FCC actively and routinely helps telecom monopolies misrepresent broadband availability and downplay high prices to try and obfuscate market failure. Regulatory capture remains a massive problem, no matter how many telecom-funded consultants, think tankers, and politicians try to convince you that U.S. broadband is a miracle of free market innovation.

Filed Under: connect america fund, digital divide, fcc, lies, mississippi, unkept promises
Companies: at&t

FBI Lawyer Criminally Charged For Lying To The FISA Court

from the thousands-of-lies;-one-(1)-guilty-plea dept

Earlier this year, the DOJ Inspector General released a report that -- surprise, surprise -- showed the FBI abusing its FISA privileges. The FBI had placed former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page under surveillance, suspecting (but only momentarily) that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power. (Guess which one.)

The report said the first wiretap request might have been valid, but subsequent requests for extensions weren't. The Inspector General said the agency cherry-picked info to keep the wiretap alive, discarding any evidence it had come across that would have ended the surveillance.

Even more damning, it found that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email from another federal agency to hide Carter Page's involvement with that agency from the FISA court. The FISA court demanded the DOJ hand over information on any other cases before it that Clinesmith might have had a hand in. But that wasn't the end of it. Clinesmith was also referred to the DOJ for criminal charges.

The criminal charge has arrived. The criminal complaint [PDF] was filed in the DC federal district court. It details the email Clinesmith altered and submitted with the Carter Page surveillance extension request to the FISA court in 2017.

The original email -- sent to Clinesmith by an unnamed government agency -- said that Page was an "operational source" for this agency. The "Other Government Agency" (OGA) stated this in the email to Clinesmith:

[M]y recollection is that [Individual #1] was or is… [digraph] (two-letter designation for operational contacts) but the [documents] will explain the details. If you need a formal definition for the FISA, please let me know…

Here's how the email was submitted by Clinesmith to the FISA court (alteration in bold):

My recollection is that [Individual #1] was or is [digraph] and not a "source" but the [documents] will explain the details.

Clinesmith made some other false statements about Page's source status to the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of the case as well, but those aren't criminal offenses… just regular ol' intradepartmental lying.

During a series of instant messages between the defendant and the SSA, the defendant indicated that Individual #1 was "subsource" and "was never a source." The defendant further stated "[the OGA] confirmed explicitly he was never a source." The SSA subsequently asked "Do we have that in writing?"

We do. Falsified writing, but writing nonetheless. See above.

So, what's up next for the FBI liar lawyer? Looks like a felony conviction:

The former FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, will plead to a single felony count of making a false statement, though his lawyer said it was not his intent to mislead the court that approved the original warrant in 2016 and three renewals in 2017.

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate,” Clinesmith’s lawyer Justin Shur said in a statement. “But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility.”

I would hope Clinesmith understood what he did wrong while he was doing it -- not just after being hit with a criminal complaint.

Some will argue Clinesmith's lying was due to his hatred of Trump. After all, special counsel Robert Mueller booted him (along with agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page) after uncovering anti-Trump text messages sent by the lawyer, including one calling Vice President Mike Pence "stupid" and referring to the current GOP as "tea party on steroids."

But to assume that is to forget the FBI's long history of surveillance/wiretap abuses, its habitual lying to courts, and a penchant for voyeurism that goes far beyond what's necessary to close an investigation. Deep state conspiracies may be fun to construct, but the reality is the FBI has far more power than it has ever been able to wield responsibly.

Filed Under: carter page, fbi, fisa, fisa court, fisc, kevin clinesmith, lies, surveillance

DHS Obtained Protesters' Encrypted Messages, Used Them To Craft 'Intelligence' Reports

from the and-lied-to-oversight-about-them dept

The more the DHS inserts itself into the ongoing civil unrest, the more unrestful it gets. President Trump sent his federal forces to Portland, Oregon -- the first of many "democrat" cities the president feels are too violent/unrestful -- to protect federal buildings from violent graffiti outbursts or whatever. When the DHS arrived -- represented by the CBP, ICE, US Marshals, and other federal law enforcement -- it announced its arrival with secret police tactics straight out of the Gestapo playbook.

Since that wasn't martial state enough, the federal officers turned things up, opening fire on journalists and legal observers. Literally. Local journalists were tear gassed, hit with pepper spray/pepper balls, and shot with "non-lethal" projectiles. The journalists and observers sued the federal government, securing a restraining order forbidding federal officers from continuing to violate the Constitution. Federal officers refused to stop (their) rioting and now may face sanctions for their actions. They will definitely be facing additional lawsuits since the restraining order made it clear willful violators would not be granted qualified immunity.

As if all of this wasn't enough, news leaked out that DHS was compiling "intelligence reports" on local journalists, as well as journalists located elsewhere in the nation who had published leaked DHS documents. One day after breaking the news about the journalist-targeting "intelligence reports," the Washington Post broke more news -- again with the aid of a leaked DHS document. This one shows the DHS is (still) on the wrong side of the First Amendment. It also appears to show the agency lying to its oversight.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official told a Senate committee earlier this month that the department had not collected, exploited or analyzed information from the electronic devices or accounts of protesters in Portland, Ore.

But an internal DHS document obtained by The Washington Post shows the department did have access to protesters’ electronic messages and that their conversations were written up in an “intelligence report” that was disseminated to federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, as well as state and local governments.

This news broke on July 31. On July 23, acting DHS undersecretary Brian Murphy told the Senate Intelligence Committee the agency's Intelligence and Analysis division had "neither collected nor exploited or analyzed information" obtained from "accounts" belonging to protesters or detainees.

Murphy had to have known his statements to the Intelligence Committee were false.

A DHS Open Source Intelligence Report dated six days before Murphy’s briefing to the committee shows that the I & A office analyzed messages that protesters exchanged on the Telegram messaging app. They discussed which routes to take during marches and how to avoid the police.

The messages quoted in the so-called "Open Source" report don't detail any planned wrongdoing. (Also: Telegram's encrypted messaging system cannot honestly be called "open source." It's not like viewing public accounts on social media, which is what "open source" usually means in this context.) Instead, the "analyzed" messages show protesters pointing out the obvious to each other. Walking towards or through residential neighborhoods draws less federal law enforcement attention. This makes sense because the feds are only there to defend the federal buildings located in downtown Portland. They're not in Portland to conduct normal law enforcement work Here's a representative quote:

“Seems they’re less inclined to go into residential neighborhoods which makes sense.”

And here's how those communications -- possibly obtained from an informant or undercover officer with access to the Telegram group -- were portrayed by DHS I&A.

[d]iscussing [...] TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] to evade law enforcement when being pursued…

The DHS has no business infiltrating groups participating in protected speech, just like it has no business compiling dossiers on journalists. Whatever pressure it may be feeling from an administration seemingly hellbent on portraying organic anti-police protests as organized antifa riots doesn't excuse these actions. The DHS may want to please its boss by bringing him some evidence of paid protesting, but it can't just ignore the Constitution until agents find what they're looking for.

Filed Under: dhs, encryption, intelligence reports, lies, protests, secret police, surveillance
Companies: telegram

Bill Barr Celebrates New DOJ 'Surge' Targeting Violent Crime By Touting 199 Arrests That Occurred Pre-Surge

from the who-needs-accuracy-when-you-have-a-megaphone dept

Earlier this month, the DOJ announced the launch of "Operation Legend." The operation -- named after four-year-old homicide victim LeGend Taliferro -- targeted cities experiencing spikes in violent crimes, including Kansas City, Missouri, where Taliferro was killed.

Cities may not have been asking for federal interference in their law enforcement efforts, but "help" was on the way, nonetheless.

“President Trump has made clear: the federal government stands ready and willing to assist any of our state and local law enforcement partners across the nation responding to violent crime. Operation Legend will combine federal and local resources to combat the disturbing uptick in violence by surging federal agents and other federal assets into cities like Kansas City, a city currently experiencing its worst homicide rate in its history,” said Attorney General Barr.

The first recipient of the "surge" was Kansas City. And the operation has been more successful than anyone could have imagined.

Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that 200 arrests had been made in a new federal operation launched in Kansas City.

“Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,” Barr said of the operation, which is sending more than 200 federal agents into the metro area.

Truly remarkable numbers. According to the DOJ, 225 federal agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, and US Marshals Service had been added to the mix in Kansas City. In just four days, the feds are well on the way to ending violent crime in the city. And they weren't even stepping on local toes to do it:

“These agents won’t be patrolling the streets,” [US Attorney Tim Garrison] said. “They won’t replace or usurp the authority of local officers.”

So, how were the feds racking up 50 federal arrests per day? The answer is: they weren't. In fact, Operation Legend has only resulted in one arrest in four days. A DOJ official cleared up Barr's self-congratulatory statement after no one could find any evidence these 200 arrests had taken place.

The official said Barr was referring to the number of arrests made in the city since the launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit, a precursor effort to Operation Legend that surged federal agents in U.S. cities facing crime waves, including Kansas City.

“We have made since December 2019 200 arrests in Kansas City,” the senior official said, referring to the launch of that initial operation. “Legend is essentially a continuation of that.”

Ah. "Essentially a continuation." I see. Whatever it takes to make sure the top man doesn't sound like a fuck up.

But all schadenfreude aside, there's a problem here. The DOJ's new task forces -- blends of federal officers and agents inserted into cities to make street-level busts -- just isn't a good idea.

The DOJ's response to ongoing protests has been, for the most part, horrifying. It's been officers in camo -- looking for all the world like a branch of the military -- rolling out of unmarked vehicles to grab citizens and haul them away to unknown destinations for questioning. And this scary shit is being deployed for the limited purpose of protecting federal property. Like courthouses. And… um… statues.

This surge may be targeting criminal activity occurring nowhere near the sites of ongoing protests, but that won't make the disappearing of suspects any more acceptable if these agencies continue to operate from unmarked vehicles and roll up on citizens wearing fatigues that don't make it clear who they are or what agency they represent. Even separated from the First Amendment context of the protests, tactics like these aren't what we want from our federal government. Suspected criminals still have rights and a "surge" of officers who appear to feel those are privileges is only going to make the current antipathy towards law enforcement even worse.

Filed Under: dhs, doj, donald trump, kansas city, liar, lies, operation legend, william barr