Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines

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• Hacker News
• Don’t forget shipping people to foreign concentration camps for having tattoos.
  by secretsatan
• Even though I am commited to resisting "fascism" in all it's forms,the people convicted were definitly working themselves up to do something even worse. For me there crime was to be undisaplined and they did not understand there responsibilitys while armed, which is unexcusable. If they realy wanted to engage in armed struggle against fascists, then there are plenty of places where they could voulenteer to fight irregular mercenary forces hired and equiped by companys and governments to destroy populations that have the missfortune to live on top of some oil or other extractable resource, but what they did was cosplay bieng a revolutionary in a suberban environment, and no doubt had plans to hook up for a few drinks at the club later. These people made the classic, fascist, mistake of thinking in terms of a hiarchical relationship of rights, and forgot , that everybody has rights, even a dumb ass junior cop who goes where he's told, while for all anyone knows is fielding texts from his wife ,promising that he will take the van in and get the brakes checked.
  by metalman
• > Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds. One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation). I would never condone that kind of activity.

  This is the crux of the issue - from the perspective of the government, this was a group of people who lead an armed terrorist attack on a government facility in order to disrupt the functioning of that facility because they held an ideological belief that the facility was immoral; and it's irrelevant that not every member of the group personally shot a cop with an AR-15, just as it wasn't relevant that Osama bin Laden didn't personally hijack any planes and crash them into buildings when the US government sent special forces to break into his compound and kill him.

  > Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause:

  > “[…] including their decision to communicate and auto-delete messages on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform widely used among activists, journalists and other citizens wary of government surveillance.”

  Given that the other evidence that they planned violence was that they set off fireworks outside the facility, vandalized it, and then shot a cop in the neck when the cop came to investigate the vandalism, I don't really care that the government prosecutors also considered their use of Signal as evidence that they planned violence. Frankly, if you're part of a group that is planning violence, it is a good idea to use an encrypted messaging platform like Signal that has an auto-delete feature to do that planning, the prosecutors are correct to note this.

  by JuniperMesos
• > One fired an AR-15 at the police

  This is what makes this different. There’s lots of gun clubs all over the place. But if a member shoots at the police (or anyone, really) they are going to get the book thrown at them and everyone associated with them who helped them, etc.

  Because that changes your club from something normal to something that tried to shoot cops.

  There’s a group in my town called the NFA club or something. They get their rifles out and march around neighborhoods. They stop cars. Quite scary. But they no the law and never brandish, directly threaten, etc. But if one of them ever shoots at a cop, I expext the whole group is going to jail.

  by prepend
• The sentences are pretty crazy but what’s with the strange understatement.

  > One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)

  The accurate statement is that he shot and wounded a police officer who he intentionally targeted according to his own testimony (where he claims he did so because he thought the cop was going to shoot his guys).

  > Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines

  The accurate statement is: “hiding zines that could be considered evidence of affiliation at the request of your arrested wife”.

  Listen, the sentences seem politically motivated. They’re quite long. But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.

  This is pretty out there stuff. And I’m not going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who yells “get to the rifles” then gets to the rifles and shoots a policeman that he could have been ‘potentially inciting violence’ by shooting. He committed violence. And hiding the facts here does not make me sympathetic.

  https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/sentencing-for-8-accused-o...

  by arjie
• In Poland during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989) people were beaten and jailed for having a copier that would be used for copying magazines and brochures
  by p0w3n3d
• This is hardly a new approach or development.

  A decade ago, reading Linux Journal would get you flagged as being an extremist : https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4rp5l6/nsa_classifie...

  by 8fingerlouie
• Nobody's talking about how "terrorism" has expanded to mean, in law, armed opposition the the government. Throw in terrorism and the sentence goes up dramatically.

  Is it possible to oppose the government with arms yet not be a terrorist? I'd say, yes. But I never expect to see a prosecution acknowledge that. They're even making drug smugglers into terrorists and murdering them extrajudicially.

  by hughw