> The records also showed undercover agents surveilling a virtual meeting at Hunter College in New York [...] ; a meeting at a labor center in Minneapolis
> The documents indicate that agents made audio recordings of the events.
For anyone else wondering (particularly if you're accustomed to it) it looks like neither NY nor MN are two-party consent ones for recording things.
Agreed, too many people are willing to thought-terminate when the messenger doesn't fit their ideal. It's why propaganda groups signal boost bad faith or poor arguments (and argumentors), to inflict this sort of self-righteous ennui.
I went shopping at Spirit Halloween in the Gaslamp Quarter, but they were sold out of the Sexy Demagogue and Sexy Valedictorian costumes. So I had to settle for Sexy Construction Worker with a NERF Drill. I think it’s a knockoff of Bob the Builder, actually.
If the meetings are open to the public then anyone can attend (i.e., "spy") on them. Labeling that as "mass spying" is idiocy the Guardian (and other illiterate Brit tabloids) do to piss off their readers and sell subscriptions.
One investigative record showed DHS used administrative subpoenas to obtain “wire transfers from various financial institutions to and from” SEIU, one of the largest unions in the US. Investigators also requested that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provide financial data from the Communications Workers of America, an international union, the records showed.
That doesn't sound at all like what you are describing.
The attendance was clandestine and performed by actors that misrepresented themselves to gain an intelligence advantage. I'm not sure what else you would call it.
> If the meetings are open to the public then anyone can attend (i.e., "spy") on them.
It’s the systematic, motivated, and targeted collection of data that makes it spying. When the KGB takes photos of licence plates of people leaving a military base, we call it “spying”. Replace this with Homeland Security and a neighborhood organizing meeting.
Vet /screen everyone. Cross check personal references, have an onboarding period before introducing new members to anything sensitive, do background checks if you’re concerned about it. There are already experienced community leaders and activists in your network; ask them how they establish trust. Teach people to think more critically about how and why they trust information and people. Make vetting part of recruitment and onboarding processes, and make recruitment work a self sustaining perpetual process with a team of people to support it. After you establish trust, use it. Ask around for feedback about new members.
Accept that you aren't going to always outsmart infiltrators and guard your information silos accordingly. Have processes for auditing threats, removing members. Avoid creating large group chats or exposing names/ contacts without consent. Keep working groups small, and don’t include people who aren’t actively participating. Use encryption, use pseudonyms. Use the basic tools available (Signal, GrapheneOS, Tails, Tor, etc). Don’t retain things like chat history or files you don't need. Give people basic training on social engineering techniques, cyber security (or honestly just how to use a computer 101), operational security, and how to recruit.
Ultimately, retain a good legal defense. You probably aren't doing anything illegal anyway, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good lawyer and a plan… legal ground is shifting, and you will never have more resources than a motivated agency task force. Get a dash camera, and non-evil doorbell camera. Have a group of friends who will check in on you regularly. If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability.
> IANAL but is CircuitSeuss not committing a crime here by giving the advice
> "If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability."
> Or is it legal to discuss "illegal shit"?
The answer to that question is extremely jurisdiction-dependent. That being said, in the US the statement you quote is almost certainly not illegal under current 1st Amendment jurisprudence. The main case of interest is Brandenberg v. Ohio [0], which held:
> Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The US has surveilled political factions that they've considered potentially subversive or corrupt machine politics - right and left wing - for ages. RICO prosecutions against politically motivated corruption are long overdue, and should definitely land on both parties because the grift seems to be the order of the day. But that doesn't happen without actual investigation of the political machine - and incidental local low level conspirators are mostly patsies for the people calling the shots. I applaud the protestors for wanting to change things, but shake my head at the naivete of thinking that being a martyr for the Instagram cameras is the way to do it.
Unconstitutional domestic spying in the US is a tale as old as time. Time and time again, the "patriots" can't help themselves. Gotta "protect the nation" by...uh...completely throwing out core constitutional rights. And they're surrounded by people who also have no problem with it.
I think most people don't remember that US postal inspectors used to primarily concern themselves with the distribution of erotica. And most people probably still don't wonder "gee, why is the USPS able to email me a picture of whatever I'm about to get in my mailbox?" Answer: the USPS stores a high resolution, high-dynamic-range image of every single piece of mail that passes through a high-speed sorting machine. And let's just say that you should try opening up some of those images in an image editor and mess with the curves/levels...
Hoover's FBI was spying on damn near anyone who had a remotely liberal viewpoint. If your parents are dead, submit a records request to the FBI to find out if they had an FBI file. Decent chance that if they were liberal, the FBI has something on them. Here's another fun fact: a huge number of FBI agents are Mormons. Our FBI is infested with Christian religious cultists. The idiots who show up on your doorstep to try and preach their religious values. Those people. They become FBI agents.
During the "occupy wallstreet" era state cops posted a photo on social media from inside the state's "command bunker", of a projector screen showing the output from a laptop displaying some sort of live status map or the like. I don't remember what the event was. It was a web page. In the browser bookmark bar was the facebook page for the city's "Occupy Wallstreet" facebook group along with another group that was clearly a liberal/progressive FB group. The state has a surprising number of violent white supremacists and curiously, none of those were in the browser bar...
Many years later, right around the time of the George Floyd protests - someone near a college campus snapped photos of university cops loading one of their patrol vehicles - a pickup truck - with bricks - in a back alley.
They came up with some laughable excuse that their sharp-eyed officers spotted a bunch of loose bricks in a sidewalk a full block from University property and decided to scoop them all up to do a favor for the city. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight....
Actually one of these stories I found super amusing, apparently back in the day the Australian government got it into their head that all they really needed to break up the communist Indonesian government under Sukarno was a cunningly deployed pamphlet pointing out the contradictions in their philosophy.
So they made the pamphlet, had agents distribute it at a communism convention, and uh nothing came of it. Because everyone else there had similar pamphlets.
No wonder, the uncontested first place in the communist-killing contest belongs to communists. The only problem is that the breed of commies that gets to the top are absolutely ferocious, and don't only kill communists.
We need to make it unappealing to act upon the intelligence gathered through means that weren't a part of legitimate criminal investigations. Introduce consequences for those who do the collection at the local, state, and federal level. Require these findings be destroyed. In other words, all of the stuff we didn't do when COINTELPRO was uncovered.
The more we do in the next two-to-three years, the less we'll have to worry about in the long run.
"We" did do all of that when COINTELPRO was uncovered, at least ostensibly. We had committees, we changed laws, we established judicial ovesight, we "reformed" the system.
As Snowden demonstrated later, none of it mattered. This government has engineered itself to be for all intents and purposes immune from the will of the people. And that was back when the government at least pretended to care about the rules, and "checks and balances" and the like.
> The records also showed undercover agents surveilling a virtual meeting at Hunter College in New York [...] ; a meeting at a labor center in Minneapolis
> The documents indicate that agents made audio recordings of the events.
For anyone else wondering (particularly if you're accustomed to it) it looks like neither NY nor MN are two-party consent ones for recording things.
Hey Junior Woodchuck Law Expert: one-party consent rules doesn't allow law enforcement to spy on people (ie conduct surveillance without a warrant.)
Also, one party consent doesn't necessarily authorize you to secretly record a meeting just because you're present.
Americans have zero muscle to stand up for the people who actually care for this country.
Not my first thought when I see Redditors who hate their parents playing ninja dress-up.
See? This comment is precisely what building a state around voters who care more about aesthetics than semantics looks like.
The cosplaying demagogues are also terrible orators with abhorrent messaging.
Thanks for reminding me I left that part out.
Count Binface has a Classics degree and a Real Job as a scriptwriter and speechwriter.
Cringe is too powerful of an anti-motivator.
Reminds me of when people wouldn’t listen to others because they had tattoos.
Agreed, too many people are willing to thought-terminate when the messenger doesn't fit their ideal. It's why propaganda groups signal boost bad faith or poor arguments (and argumentors), to inflict this sort of self-righteous ennui.
If my doctor walked in with tattoos, I'm buying cough syrup and using WebMD.
Why? They went to medical school and passed all the exams. Maybe they just like art.
People with tattoos have bad taste and poor judgement.
I went shopping at Spirit Halloween in the Gaslamp Quarter, but they were sold out of the Sexy Demagogue and Sexy Valedictorian costumes. So I had to settle for Sexy Construction Worker with a NERF Drill. I think it’s a knockoff of Bob the Builder, actually.
A significant portion probably support it.
If the meetings are open to the public then anyone can attend (i.e., "spy") on them. Labeling that as "mass spying" is idiocy the Guardian (and other illiterate Brit tabloids) do to piss off their readers and sell subscriptions.
The attendance was clandestine and performed by actors that misrepresented themselves to gain an intelligence advantage. I'm not sure what else you would call it.
[delayed]
Of course it was clandestine.
It's like legal advice from a hooker that says "you have to tell me if you're a cop." No they don't.
> If the meetings are open to the public then anyone can attend (i.e., "spy") on them.
It’s the systematic, motivated, and targeted collection of data that makes it spying. When the KGB takes photos of licence plates of people leaving a military base, we call it “spying”. Replace this with Homeland Security and a neighborhood organizing meeting.
What measures can protesters take against this? With agents actively infiltrating groups, it seems impossible to prevent this level of spying.
Vet /screen everyone. Cross check personal references, have an onboarding period before introducing new members to anything sensitive, do background checks if you’re concerned about it. There are already experienced community leaders and activists in your network; ask them how they establish trust. Teach people to think more critically about how and why they trust information and people. Make vetting part of recruitment and onboarding processes, and make recruitment work a self sustaining perpetual process with a team of people to support it. After you establish trust, use it. Ask around for feedback about new members.
Accept that you aren't going to always outsmart infiltrators and guard your information silos accordingly. Have processes for auditing threats, removing members. Avoid creating large group chats or exposing names/ contacts without consent. Keep working groups small, and don’t include people who aren’t actively participating. Use encryption, use pseudonyms. Use the basic tools available (Signal, GrapheneOS, Tails, Tor, etc). Don’t retain things like chat history or files you don't need. Give people basic training on social engineering techniques, cyber security (or honestly just how to use a computer 101), operational security, and how to recruit.
Ultimately, retain a good legal defense. You probably aren't doing anything illegal anyway, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good lawyer and a plan… legal ground is shifting, and you will never have more resources than a motivated agency task force. Get a dash camera, and non-evil doorbell camera. Have a group of friends who will check in on you regularly. If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability.
IANAL but is CircuitSeuss not committing a crime here by giving the advice:
"If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability."
Or is it legal to discuss "illegal shit"? Maybe with a lawyer? Maybe with a lawyer present? Maybe "illegal shit" is legal jargon I'm unfamiliar with?
> IANAL but is CircuitSeuss not committing a crime here by giving the advice
> "If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability."
> Or is it legal to discuss "illegal shit"?
The answer to that question is extremely jurisdiction-dependent. That being said, in the US the statement you quote is almost certainly not illegal under current 1st Amendment jurisprudence. The main case of interest is Brandenberg v. Ohio [0], which held:
> Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
[0]: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
So compartmentalization, limiting blast radius... that sounds oddly familiar.
Irl network security has its similarities
Know what is and isn't legal protest and keep a sharp eye on anybody offering a hookup to explosives / rocket launchers, etc.
( probably a three letter agency plant )
Especially since it isn't spying.
The US has surveilled political factions that they've considered potentially subversive or corrupt machine politics - right and left wing - for ages. RICO prosecutions against politically motivated corruption are long overdue, and should definitely land on both parties because the grift seems to be the order of the day. But that doesn't happen without actual investigation of the political machine - and incidental local low level conspirators are mostly patsies for the people calling the shots. I applaud the protestors for wanting to change things, but shake my head at the naivete of thinking that being a martyr for the Instagram cameras is the way to do it.
I'm no lawyer, but sure sounds a lot like entrapment as much as spying
Freedom.
Small wonder.
Unconstitutional domestic spying in the US is a tale as old as time. Time and time again, the "patriots" can't help themselves. Gotta "protect the nation" by...uh...completely throwing out core constitutional rights. And they're surrounded by people who also have no problem with it.
I think most people don't remember that US postal inspectors used to primarily concern themselves with the distribution of erotica. And most people probably still don't wonder "gee, why is the USPS able to email me a picture of whatever I'm about to get in my mailbox?" Answer: the USPS stores a high resolution, high-dynamic-range image of every single piece of mail that passes through a high-speed sorting machine. And let's just say that you should try opening up some of those images in an image editor and mess with the curves/levels...
Hoover's FBI was spying on damn near anyone who had a remotely liberal viewpoint. If your parents are dead, submit a records request to the FBI to find out if they had an FBI file. Decent chance that if they were liberal, the FBI has something on them. Here's another fun fact: a huge number of FBI agents are Mormons. Our FBI is infested with Christian religious cultists. The idiots who show up on your doorstep to try and preach their religious values. Those people. They become FBI agents.
During the "occupy wallstreet" era state cops posted a photo on social media from inside the state's "command bunker", of a projector screen showing the output from a laptop displaying some sort of live status map or the like. I don't remember what the event was. It was a web page. In the browser bookmark bar was the facebook page for the city's "Occupy Wallstreet" facebook group along with another group that was clearly a liberal/progressive FB group. The state has a surprising number of violent white supremacists and curiously, none of those were in the browser bar...
Many years later, right around the time of the George Floyd protests - someone near a college campus snapped photos of university cops loading one of their patrol vehicles - a pickup truck - with bricks - in a back alley.
They came up with some laughable excuse that their sharp-eyed officers spotted a bunch of loose bricks in a sidewalk a full block from University property and decided to scoop them all up to do a favor for the city. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight....
Imagine being so hungry for power that you justify this.
Imagine being such a sucker that you think it's remotely justified.
The War Department even released a film about it in the 40s titled "Don't be a Sucker".
https://youtu.be/iB663aZJBjo
Not really a new phenomenon.
Actually one of these stories I found super amusing, apparently back in the day the Australian government got it into their head that all they really needed to break up the communist Indonesian government under Sukarno was a cunningly deployed pamphlet pointing out the contradictions in their philosophy.
So they made the pamphlet, had agents distribute it at a communism convention, and uh nothing came of it. Because everyone else there had similar pamphlets.
Not remotely new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
Not even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
No wonder, the uncontested first place in the communist-killing contest belongs to communists. The only problem is that the breed of commies that gets to the top are absolutely ferocious, and don't only kill communists.
Imagine using the term "commies" in 2026 and expecting to be taken seriously.
Imagine being incensed by use a pejorative term used towards a movement that almost always killed more people in peacetime than even fascists.
Remove outliers like Hitler and Pol Pot and you can drop "almost".
Oh no... Anyway let's feed, house, and heal our population like the Bible says.
COINTELPRO, part two.
We need to make it unappealing to act upon the intelligence gathered through means that weren't a part of legitimate criminal investigations. Introduce consequences for those who do the collection at the local, state, and federal level. Require these findings be destroyed. In other words, all of the stuff we didn't do when COINTELPRO was uncovered.
The more we do in the next two-to-three years, the less we'll have to worry about in the long run.
"We" did do all of that when COINTELPRO was uncovered, at least ostensibly. We had committees, we changed laws, we established judicial ovesight, we "reformed" the system.
As Snowden demonstrated later, none of it mattered. This government has engineered itself to be for all intents and purposes immune from the will of the people. And that was back when the government at least pretended to care about the rules, and "checks and balances" and the like.