My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:
1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.
2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.
3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.
4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?
Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.
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The thing is... under the laws as they're written today, if US Gov wants to take a peek at your stuff on FB and friends servers, FB can be barred from informing you that such a request has come in under the National Security Letter (NSL) guidelines.
It's a very complicated thing :/.
I don't mean to be some annoying contrarian or something, but couldn't it be the case that if the govt was investing someone who was planning a terrorist attack, then notifying the person being investigated could work against stopping them?
Not saying it wouldn't get abused though, which seems like the primary concern of most people in these discussions..
You mean like those Minnesota soccer mom “terrorists”? It’s hard to assume good faith after repeated bad faith behaviors, hence the reason our justice system is supposed to operate on evidence and a presumption of innocence, rather than “treat everyone like they aren’t a terrorist…yet..but will be if i decide they are”.
If the target were being investigated for terrorism, then the govt could inform the company of that and - if the company tipped the terrorist off - prosecute the company for being an accessory / aid to the terrorist.
However, if the govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith... they could tip off the victim.
The NSLs only really help in the latter scenario. As long as the govt has a plausible story, there will be a 50% chance that the target is a criminal and the company will not risk notifying the target. With NSLs they can prosecute the company even though there was no legitimate basis for the investigation and everyone knew it.
> govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith...
This is the thing tearing at the seams of our justice system in general. Our rules are based around an ostensible checks-and-balances arrangement, but this relies on the assumption of good faith from the parties involved. Implicit in this is the idea that if any body isn't acting in good faith, it will be so repugnant to voters that the state of affairs will quickly come to an end. This assumption is false.
Now we're talking about granting Facebook the right to assume bad faith on the part of the FBI!? Like granting the power to ignore the government to private companies will solve this, or help at all? That bandaid solution is almost certainly worse than the disease.
That's not to say that I agree with secret spying provisions. They clearly violate the Constitution and undermine trust in democracy. I just don't think "if you're a big enough company you get to ignore orders and drag things out in court" is a solution to government overreach. It's individual rights that need protecting, not corporate ones.
Oh yes, the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.
Better to wiretap everyone just in case.
Why stop there ? After all there a chance any privacy could be used to conceal some terrorist plot, better to record every meat-space conversations too, let's not take any risk.
We could even recruit people to turn their neighbors in for all sorts if terrible acts, like offensive FB posts, or not wearing masks, or having too many people over, or hanging out on the beach by themselves during a pandemic, or...
The party in power always wants control. Whether this is bad or not usually depends on if you align with the party in control or not.
The panopticon reflects the trust I have in society.
It seems like an incredibly bad idea right now, but I can imagine machines of loving grace that would do only good with such a powerful tool.
Isn’t it better for all parties if the user is informed that they’re being investigated?
This way they might stop from doing the act for which they’re investigated instead of actually carrying it out.
This is a bit different from flashing your headlights to warn oncoming traffic to a cop.
Or they stop using the means of communication that has become compromised and find a new way starting the cat&mouse over again.
This is like saying that an undercover agent must answer "yes" when asked by anyone if they are part of a law enforcement agency. What would be the point of being undercover?
The problem is the abuse of the invasive searching. If the evidence is compelling enough, then present that evidence to a judge and have a legit signed warrant. Unfortunately, there will be judges with a rubber stamp.
The actuality is that there is reason to believe it has been virtually nothing but outrageous abuse from inception to now.
In general the need for secrecy is liable to be inversely related to the time required for it to be secret from what we do know and this is under comparatively sane regimes. Our current regime wants to build concentration camps and imprison journalists for reporting on their foibles.
What you SHOULD do is have sane limits with truly independent oversight by parties accountable to congress and the people. After a comparatively short duration virtually everything should become public and any misuse of said systems should result in prison. It's not like we couldn't build a system that with appropriate checks and balances but we certainly don't have one now.
Literally anything that protects people from the law will protect criminals and terrorists too.
Fourth amendment? A terrorist might have a bomb in their trunk that the police aren't allowed to search.
Jury trial? A psychopathic murder might charm the jury into thinking they're not guilty and get released.
Prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? What if the person is actually a horrible criminal but there's reasonable doubt?
We have these protections not because they save ordinary people while still letting the government do everything possible to catch criminals, but because we think it's worth reducing the government's ability to catch criminals in exchange for fewer abuses of non-criminals.
I think what gets lost in these conversations is that the government is using very lazy methods to catch low hanging fruit. Instead of extrajudicial spying they should be creating undercover identities and infiltrating criminal organizations. If law enforcement was competent Facebook wouldn’t even know it was happening.
I'm not sure if that's better. The feds have a long history of goading "probably harmless" people into parking SUVs full of half-ass explosives in NYC or kidnapping governors or whatever.
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Unfortunate but true, I feel we could rise up and stop things like this but most people these days are either unaware or are too busy struggling to do so
It's like you never heard of Snowden.
You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.
Your comment doesn't address any of the issues in the comment, and isn't adding to the conversation.
I don't want any secretive surveillance, I don't care if you can prove whether its malicious or not.
ok. I don't know who you are and I don't really care what your surveillance preferences are.
ok. explain why we should care about your thoughts as "someone who doesnt know much about these types of things", then?
its a message board. people post their opinions. its how they function.
You don't have to care, and I'm not really sure why you thought I think that.
And yeah, people post their opinions on message boards. He posted his opinion, and I posted what I thought about it. What's the issue exactly? I'm not saying he shouldn't have posted it or something..
If not knowing who somebody is weighs into your consensual model of interactions with them, just wait until you hear about surveillance! :-)
This isn't reddit man, no need for this kind of reply. They were speaking in-context of the article in this post.
> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.
That was amazing. I once witnessed a protest like that, in Hannover Germany I think. The idea of 4chan people actually going up the stairs and out of the house into the open air and talking to people, like with molecules and sound waves and all that stuff, it still blows my mind.
They do that all the time. They're not redditors.
That article has no mentioning of the tiktok speedruns?
Those are not tied directly to this. This was in 2008, any modern protests against Scientology today have just spawned into their own thing.
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
Such a low level of expectation of ethical level for non human beings is not fair.
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
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Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
From reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons yesterday after someone posted a link to it in the comments for another thread, I came away with the impression that Hubbard seemed to be into some pretty weird stuff long before scientology.
That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
You get or used to get true believers working in hellish conditions[1] on the boats, paid ~nothing. It might be a quid pro quo convenience for the Tom Cruises, but there are also some suckers.
Having a few famous Tom Cruises claiming it helped them is almost certainly part of the strategy for hooking in the dubious.
Cruise's contribution is influence due to his status and likely money given his income. Other's contribution is going to be much simpler, as you pointed out.
I'm saying, Cruise gets more out of it. Others get nothing. They're in it as believers, not a "literature club."
This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
This is sometimes referred to as Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs
Man, I wish something like this would have happened to me when I was younger and spunkier. For years, I've had so many scenarios planned in my head for how something like that would play out! Even today, I might not just ignore it even though my propensity to give fucks has waned over the years.
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Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.
the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example
It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).
Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing
> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”
That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.
ah, yes, the little 8-line explanation there by the entity in question absolutely clears them of all suspicion, really.
i am sure that information obtained by seattle shield is not shared to anyone outside of seattle borders. police departments and the FBI are not known to share information, after all. police are especially cagey about sharing with other agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism.
I'm just encouraging people to look at the website itself, not actually the particular blurb I linked
the 8 line blurb is the entire website, minus the membership signup and login. am i missing something?
There's also the contact form! I'm sure if I send them a nice message they'll clear everything up
i'm just saying that the structure of this aspx website doesn't pass the sniff test as being part of some large-scale data trawl in partnership with tech companies
Not sure if you meant to reply here?
Good thing that ICE has such a stellar reputation of not pushing the agenda of the national government into local affairs!
You have Trump. You see how he is surrounded by the superrich.
You have Palantir.
You still think this is "sensationalist"? I don't think so. The assumption
here is that you wish to isolate this onto Seattle only. I think this is global
instead. By focusing only on Seattle we lose the wider picture. Anyone remembers
how people were surprised that Facebook connects offline-data to accounts? It's
why they are more accurately called Spybook.
Interesting. You should write an article about this and post it on HN. This article is about an unfunded website run by someone at the Seattle PD.
I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.
Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?
I don't know what neighborhood you live in, but there aren't many billion-dollar corporations hanging out on my block. Given how much shady stuff has come out about some of these companies, I don't think it's really that terrible a presumption that pretty much anything they've invested time and effort into that isn't already public knowledge might have been used for some stuff that we'd be unhappy to find out about.
The density of these offices in downtown Seattle is super high and it's also an area that has a lot of crime so this implementation makes sense. Probably low ROI in other areas like your neighborhood that don't fit this profile.
My point is that if you start with the premise of something rife with frivolous fear-mongering like Nextdoor, swap out "random individuals with no real clout" with "some of the most powerful companies in the world", and then move everything behind a login that only established business and law enforcement can view, there's plenty reason to think that maybe this might not end up being a healthy thing for society at large.
There are already established ways for crimes to be reported to law enforcement, and arguably even in those ways that are ostensibly open to the public, it's already a well-known thing that the amount of help someone gets is proportionate to their wealth/power/social/influence/etc. There's absolutely no need to have a special extra channel for them that's not visible to the public if there's truly nothing to hide because the justice system already is tilted widely in their favor in the normal way things work.
It might be a purposefully sensationalist framing in order to increase KPIs. It works because a lot of people have strong opinions things without thinking much.
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
Depends on what they consider "destructive", and it's not like there isn't already a way for contacting law enforcement when the circumstances warrant it.
The Nextdoor analogy is even more apt because it's kind of notorious for being used by people to complain about all sorts of ridiculous things that don't deserve attention
Sure, but nobody tries to portray NextDoor as an "intelligence sharing network operation" and a "nationwide surveillance apparatus".
Yes, because Amazon, etc. are not the ones using Nextdoor. My point is that if you think this is just "Nextdoor but for Seattle companies", consider what you think the equivalent of a frivolous and out-of-touch comment like "oh no there's a person who isn't the same race as me walking down my street" is for a billion dollar company and what type of effects setting up a place for them to funnel things like that to law enforcement outside of the normal public channels might have on society.
Put yourself in the shoes of the police here:
A store keeper emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into my store and engaged in disruptive behavior."
An Amazon security personnel emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into our office and engaged in disruptive behavior."
What makes one of these so much more impactful than the other?
I'm saying that the alternative is "An Amazon security personnel or store keeper reports a crime via the normal public channels and there's the usual paper trail for it". Your premise that this is only ever used for anything benign is what I'm disagreeing with here; obviously if you assume it, then nothing sketchy is going on, but at that point the argument is circular.
It sure sounds like the contents of this channel are retained and subject to public records requests. From the article:
> Through public records requests, Prism obtained the Seattle Shield bulletins, as well as a full list of Seattle Shield members who had access to the program as of 2020
> Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the government. Again, say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
The irony is that curbing this "private intelligence network" would require infringing on the free speech of private people.
> say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
When the "shopkeepers" are billion dollar corporations, and several levels of law enforcement (including national ones like immigration officials) are also on the network, I think it makes sense for the level of scrutiny to be a bit higher than your hypothetical
As per the article, this isn't just used by Amazon and Meta, local non profits are also use this resource.
I'd be interested in details about how visible reports from a given organization are to the others on the platform. People seem to be making comparisons to Nextdoor, but one of the fundamental parts of it is the public feed. If this is essentially a special way to DM law enforcement, it's not really comparable.
You realize that you can email law enforcement and contact them through means that are not immediately publicly visible like on Next Door?
Not to mention, this bulletin is subject to public records requests, as I explained in my other reply.
If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?
> If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
That's a pretty strange conflation. It's pretty commonly discussed exactly how rare it is for people to make open source to get compensated by companies that use their projects. I find it hard to imagine that you genuinely think that there isn't an obvious distinction that most observers would draw between that and direct employment.
> Are there really ways out?
Not with that attitude
Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
Yes.
No
Yes
Maybe
Do you feel the same way about the warehouse workers?
If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
this is like arguing that laws are useless because theyre not bulletproof. please stop with this pseudological thinking
> ...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine
this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
“Software is eating the world”, but also “not working on antisocial tech is too difficult aaah”.
Is it though? Finding some ethically neutral Crud gig?
"There are lots of bad things" does not imply "all bad things are equally bad and therefore it's not worthwhile to try to prevent any of them"
Holy false equivalency / whataboutism, Batman.
> All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.
the number of times I've been harassed by police for taking photos... even in small towns in the middle of nowhere people are paranoid.
I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.
Unfortunately we have to live in the reality that any unusual thing is a suspicious thing. There’s a whole entire concept that has been popularized around the concept of “see something, say something” and it would be expected that such vague concepts generate paranoia. I am not in a touristy or scenic area so seeing people out taking photos is unusual here and I could see how at least talking to the photographer isn’t a bad idea from a security standpoint.
Might help to mention I’m American so, you know, random joes blowing stuff/people up is part of my reality.
> suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos
What is the logic behind this? Why is it suspicious?
Everybody's got a camera now. People taking puctures is the most normal thing in the world now.
> archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog.
Please provide evidence for your claim. The wiki rfc [5] that you linked doesn't provide any DDOS evidence at all, which is odd for wikipedia.
> This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting
This appears to be a concerted effort to blacklist archive.today by unknown actors. There were at least 3 attempts with odd efforts to sway the vote [1][2][3] (the notes in the sidebars at those Wiki RFCs document these actions by bots and others), and a successful attempt to undo the blacklist [4], and then yet another attempt [5].
I'm curious as to why you did not include this very relevant background information in your comment?
Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.
The link they did include seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of alternatives. Complaining can be fun, but it doesn't really make sense to penalize them for not being prescriptive about alternatives when the exact point they're trying to make is specific resources for this sort of thing can be prone to abuse.
Just like complaining about Amazon (be it as an employer or as a service provider), without providing an alternative, is siphoning people into a soapbox?
I, for one, found out about the archive.* situation recently, and am totally glad someone like the commenter pointed it out. My wanting to bypass paywalls to read content doesn't justify supporting the owner's behavior - not even close.
Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.
Why do our browsers even allow that?
When done properly you don't even notice! It is very beneficial when needed. But, as we know, very awful when done improperly.
> When done properly you don't even notice!
This lame argument should be added to the List of Fallacies. It's used everywhere as a "wild card" argument.
Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.
Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.
Self censored headline to avoid flagging?
"Amazon, Facebook, ICE, and the FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network operated by Seattle police"
Looks like a nothingburger? It's unfunded. An email describes a protest without giving a framing that the site would prefer. Then it turns out that nobody knows what it does, but it might do something bad.
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.
Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well
Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.
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Do you mean unfounded?
Unfunded. It's in the article
There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?
Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?
No I'm just not from the United States (or a solipsist).
The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
With gun rights and the right to defend yourself in many US cities, surveillance is the next step to stop crime.
In places like the UK, where guns are nearly banned, this is the norm.
If I can't stop you from robbing me, I should have the ability to record you and identify you later.
I'm fine if we reduce surveillance, if gun/defense rights are added.
People are never going to quit doing this. I'm surprised we still get "incensed" by being "watched without consent". There is
No. Way. It's. Going. To. Ever. Get. Stopped.
The only way to level the effects are to radically increase the surveillance so that everyone ends up in a Dark Forest "I know shit about you too" deterrence stand off. And/or flood the sensors with so much input/noise that meaningful signal is tough to suss out.
Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.
No one is going to save us. I've recently been moved to direct action and started participating in a local indivisible.org group. It's had untold positive impacts on my personal mental state being with people trying to make things better, or at least slow the damage for now. Much of that is from going out and talking to random people on the street, handing out information and having conversations. Also quitting social media at the same time, save one exception for HN.
This just seems like a progressive PAC. Which, okay that's fine, but not exactly giving "weaker government" vibes, just "we want our team in charge for a bit" vibes. Happy to be proven wrong, though.
Yea, I hear you on that, I hold reservations from the "same thing, other side" vibes. But it is also not a PAC in the sense of being primarily about donations and political funding (in my experience thus far). It's more a grassroots coalition and the IRL vibes are way different than the online ones. Different chapters could have different vibes, I'm hanging with retired ladies who've been protesting since the 60s but also have ai curiosity and excitement (most of them anyhow). The broad labelling goes away when you meet people face2face.
My hope is also the more that people show up IRL the more representative the organization will be of us, or we the people will make a new one that can choose right from wrong instead of left vs right. The political middle has been diminished much like the middle class. :/
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Please tell me they're using Workplace.
As an American, I genuinely trust my data with China more than I do with the United States.
That's actually a very logical stance: China is much less interested in what you're doing as an individual citizen—and much less able to act on what they know—than the United States is. For the same reason, Chinese citizens should trust the United States with their data more than China.
Not so surprising - we kind of suspected this. Anyone remembers Snowden or Assange?
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
Authoritarianism didn't work in the past because it was too hard to control that many people. You simply didn't have the scale unless you were willing to roll tanks down city streets, and even then all it did was buy you an extra couple years, maybe a decade or two. Eventually, someone always got close enough to end you and then it started falling apart.
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.
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Why would an attack on Israel warrant spying on US citizens? We are not Israel and our government should not be working for Israeli interests.
It doesn’t. That’s not what I wrote.
I asking what does warning about attacks on Jews have to do with not saying something about Muslims.
They are pointing out the same thing I am: we are spying on Americans for Israel. Israel’s enemies get surveillance but not the so called “protection” this program uses as a veil for said surveillance.
you're not gonna believe this
I'm convinced Meta is a cult with Total control. It will go to any lengths to make money.
What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?
Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.
:(
Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?
established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"
Interesting they have not contacted me about how they are going to be paying their subscription fee
I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free
How bad are things in Seattle that they are resorting to this? What the hell happened to my hometown?
So what you're saying is that everyone that works at Amazon and Facebook are now at grave risk because the bad guys now think they're informants?
You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.
Come to think about it, the one person I know that works at Meta is the absolute worst person I know.
I love this comment, I just couldn't ever frame it so well :)
Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.
It's bad guys all the way down.
Ah the new dark pool. Does anyone remember those from the trading? I still remember ARCA (good rebate back in the day), ECN (very fluid and very cheap), and a few dark pools that I used to get out of a trade quickly.
My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:
1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.
2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.
3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.
4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?
Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.
The thing is... under the laws as they're written today, if US Gov wants to take a peek at your stuff on FB and friends servers, FB can be barred from informing you that such a request has come in under the National Security Letter (NSL) guidelines.
It's a very complicated thing :/.
I don't mean to be some annoying contrarian or something, but couldn't it be the case that if the govt was investing someone who was planning a terrorist attack, then notifying the person being investigated could work against stopping them?
Not saying it wouldn't get abused though, which seems like the primary concern of most people in these discussions..
You mean like those Minnesota soccer mom “terrorists”? It’s hard to assume good faith after repeated bad faith behaviors, hence the reason our justice system is supposed to operate on evidence and a presumption of innocence, rather than “treat everyone like they aren’t a terrorist…yet..but will be if i decide they are”.
If the target were being investigated for terrorism, then the govt could inform the company of that and - if the company tipped the terrorist off - prosecute the company for being an accessory / aid to the terrorist.
However, if the govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith... they could tip off the victim.
The NSLs only really help in the latter scenario. As long as the govt has a plausible story, there will be a 50% chance that the target is a criminal and the company will not risk notifying the target. With NSLs they can prosecute the company even though there was no legitimate basis for the investigation and everyone knew it.
> govt claimed that the person was a terrorist and the company knew for 100% fact that the person was innocent and the investigation was in bad faith...
This is the thing tearing at the seams of our justice system in general. Our rules are based around an ostensible checks-and-balances arrangement, but this relies on the assumption of good faith from the parties involved. Implicit in this is the idea that if any body isn't acting in good faith, it will be so repugnant to voters that the state of affairs will quickly come to an end. This assumption is false.
Now we're talking about granting Facebook the right to assume bad faith on the part of the FBI!? Like granting the power to ignore the government to private companies will solve this, or help at all? That bandaid solution is almost certainly worse than the disease.
That's not to say that I agree with secret spying provisions. They clearly violate the Constitution and undermine trust in democracy. I just don't think "if you're a big enough company you get to ignore orders and drag things out in court" is a solution to government overreach. It's individual rights that need protecting, not corporate ones.
Oh yes, the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.
Better to wiretap everyone just in case. Why stop there ? After all there a chance any privacy could be used to conceal some terrorist plot, better to record every meat-space conversations too, let's not take any risk.
We could even recruit people to turn their neighbors in for all sorts if terrible acts, like offensive FB posts, or not wearing masks, or having too many people over, or hanging out on the beach by themselves during a pandemic, or...
The party in power always wants control. Whether this is bad or not usually depends on if you align with the party in control or not.
The panopticon reflects the trust I have in society.
It seems like an incredibly bad idea right now, but I can imagine machines of loving grace that would do only good with such a powerful tool.
Isn’t it better for all parties if the user is informed that they’re being investigated?
This way they might stop from doing the act for which they’re investigated instead of actually carrying it out.
This is a bit different from flashing your headlights to warn oncoming traffic to a cop.
Or they stop using the means of communication that has become compromised and find a new way starting the cat&mouse over again.
This is like saying that an undercover agent must answer "yes" when asked by anyone if they are part of a law enforcement agency. What would be the point of being undercover?
The problem is the abuse of the invasive searching. If the evidence is compelling enough, then present that evidence to a judge and have a legit signed warrant. Unfortunately, there will be judges with a rubber stamp.
The actuality is that there is reason to believe it has been virtually nothing but outrageous abuse from inception to now.
In general the need for secrecy is liable to be inversely related to the time required for it to be secret from what we do know and this is under comparatively sane regimes. Our current regime wants to build concentration camps and imprison journalists for reporting on their foibles.
What you SHOULD do is have sane limits with truly independent oversight by parties accountable to congress and the people. After a comparatively short duration virtually everything should become public and any misuse of said systems should result in prison. It's not like we couldn't build a system that with appropriate checks and balances but we certainly don't have one now.
Literally anything that protects people from the law will protect criminals and terrorists too.
Fourth amendment? A terrorist might have a bomb in their trunk that the police aren't allowed to search.
Jury trial? A psychopathic murder might charm the jury into thinking they're not guilty and get released.
Prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? What if the person is actually a horrible criminal but there's reasonable doubt?
We have these protections not because they save ordinary people while still letting the government do everything possible to catch criminals, but because we think it's worth reducing the government's ability to catch criminals in exchange for fewer abuses of non-criminals.
I think what gets lost in these conversations is that the government is using very lazy methods to catch low hanging fruit. Instead of extrajudicial spying they should be creating undercover identities and infiltrating criminal organizations. If law enforcement was competent Facebook wouldn’t even know it was happening.
I'm not sure if that's better. The feds have a long history of goading "probably harmless" people into parking SUVs full of half-ass explosives in NYC or kidnapping governors or whatever.
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Unfortunate but true, I feel we could rise up and stop things like this but most people these days are either unaware or are too busy struggling to do so
It's like you never heard of Snowden.
You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.
Your comment doesn't address any of the issues in the comment, and isn't adding to the conversation.
I don't want any secretive surveillance, I don't care if you can prove whether its malicious or not.
ok. I don't know who you are and I don't really care what your surveillance preferences are.
ok. explain why we should care about your thoughts as "someone who doesnt know much about these types of things", then?
its a message board. people post their opinions. its how they function.
You don't have to care, and I'm not really sure why you thought I think that.
And yeah, people post their opinions on message boards. He posted his opinion, and I posted what I thought about it. What's the issue exactly? I'm not saying he shouldn't have posted it or something..
If not knowing who somebody is weighs into your consensual model of interactions with them, just wait until you hear about surveillance! :-)
This isn't reddit man, no need for this kind of reply. They were speaking in-context of the article in this post.
> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.
For people like me who had no idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
In a similar but distinct vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
That’s wild. I had no idea.
That was amazing. I once witnessed a protest like that, in Hannover Germany I think. The idea of 4chan people actually going up the stairs and out of the house into the open air and talking to people, like with molecules and sound waves and all that stuff, it still blows my mind.
They do that all the time. They're not redditors.
That article has no mentioning of the tiktok speedruns?
Those are not tied directly to this. This was in 2008, any modern protests against Scientology today have just spawned into their own thing.
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
Such a low level of expectation of ethical level for non human beings is not fair.
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
From reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons yesterday after someone posted a link to it in the comments for another thread, I came away with the impression that Hubbard seemed to be into some pretty weird stuff long before scientology.
That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
You get or used to get true believers working in hellish conditions[1] on the boats, paid ~nothing. It might be a quid pro quo convenience for the Tom Cruises, but there are also some suckers.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org#Lawsuits
Having a few famous Tom Cruises claiming it helped them is almost certainly part of the strategy for hooking in the dubious.
Cruise's contribution is influence due to his status and likely money given his income. Other's contribution is going to be much simpler, as you pointed out.
I'm saying, Cruise gets more out of it. Others get nothing. They're in it as believers, not a "literature club."
This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
This is sometimes referred to as Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Religion is all about social function, at least from social science perceptives I guess.
sure, but that is reductive. From a theological perspective it's entirely about salvation if you're Christian. Judaism, isn't so clear.
well even if it's "social function", do want to be labeled as retarded?
I just can't imagine tainting my name by joining those scientology retards...
Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.
Infiltration of government institutions has been doctrine for the group since the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs
Man, I wish something like this would have happened to me when I was younger and spunkier. For years, I've had so many scenarios planned in my head for how something like that would play out! Even today, I might not just ignore it even though my propensity to give fucks has waned over the years.
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Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.
the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example
It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).
Now I want to play Steve Jackson's Illuminati...
https://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/
Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing
> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”
That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.
I encourage people imagining this as some high-scale surveillance dragnet to look at the Seattle Shield website and form their opinions https://seattleshield.org/default.aspx?MenuItemID=53&MenuGro...
ah, yes, the little 8-line explanation there by the entity in question absolutely clears them of all suspicion, really.
i am sure that information obtained by seattle shield is not shared to anyone outside of seattle borders. police departments and the FBI are not known to share information, after all. police are especially cagey about sharing with other agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism.
I'm just encouraging people to look at the website itself, not actually the particular blurb I linked
the 8 line blurb is the entire website, minus the membership signup and login. am i missing something?
There's also the contact form! I'm sure if I send them a nice message they'll clear everything up
i'm just saying that the structure of this aspx website doesn't pass the sniff test as being part of some large-scale data trawl in partnership with tech companies
Not sure if you meant to reply here?
Good thing that ICE has such a stellar reputation of not pushing the agenda of the national government into local affairs!
You have Trump. You see how he is surrounded by the superrich.
You have Palantir.
You still think this is "sensationalist"? I don't think so. The assumption here is that you wish to isolate this onto Seattle only. I think this is global instead. By focusing only on Seattle we lose the wider picture. Anyone remembers how people were surprised that Facebook connects offline-data to accounts? It's why they are more accurately called Spybook.
Interesting. You should write an article about this and post it on HN. This article is about an unfunded website run by someone at the Seattle PD.
I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.
Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?
I don't know what neighborhood you live in, but there aren't many billion-dollar corporations hanging out on my block. Given how much shady stuff has come out about some of these companies, I don't think it's really that terrible a presumption that pretty much anything they've invested time and effort into that isn't already public knowledge might have been used for some stuff that we'd be unhappy to find out about.
The density of these offices in downtown Seattle is super high and it's also an area that has a lot of crime so this implementation makes sense. Probably low ROI in other areas like your neighborhood that don't fit this profile.
My point is that if you start with the premise of something rife with frivolous fear-mongering like Nextdoor, swap out "random individuals with no real clout" with "some of the most powerful companies in the world", and then move everything behind a login that only established business and law enforcement can view, there's plenty reason to think that maybe this might not end up being a healthy thing for society at large.
There are already established ways for crimes to be reported to law enforcement, and arguably even in those ways that are ostensibly open to the public, it's already a well-known thing that the amount of help someone gets is proportionate to their wealth/power/social/influence/etc. There's absolutely no need to have a special extra channel for them that's not visible to the public if there's truly nothing to hide because the justice system already is tilted widely in their favor in the normal way things work.
It might be a purposefully sensationalist framing in order to increase KPIs. It works because a lot of people have strong opinions things without thinking much.
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
Depends on what they consider "destructive", and it's not like there isn't already a way for contacting law enforcement when the circumstances warrant it.
The Nextdoor analogy is even more apt because it's kind of notorious for being used by people to complain about all sorts of ridiculous things that don't deserve attention
Sure, but nobody tries to portray NextDoor as an "intelligence sharing network operation" and a "nationwide surveillance apparatus".
Yes, because Amazon, etc. are not the ones using Nextdoor. My point is that if you think this is just "Nextdoor but for Seattle companies", consider what you think the equivalent of a frivolous and out-of-touch comment like "oh no there's a person who isn't the same race as me walking down my street" is for a billion dollar company and what type of effects setting up a place for them to funnel things like that to law enforcement outside of the normal public channels might have on society.
Put yourself in the shoes of the police here:
A store keeper emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into my store and engaged in disruptive behavior."
An Amazon security personnel emails this shield group and says "hey this person came into our office and engaged in disruptive behavior."
What makes one of these so much more impactful than the other?
I'm saying that the alternative is "An Amazon security personnel or store keeper reports a crime via the normal public channels and there's the usual paper trail for it". Your premise that this is only ever used for anything benign is what I'm disagreeing with here; obviously if you assume it, then nothing sketchy is going on, but at that point the argument is circular.
It sure sounds like the contents of this channel are retained and subject to public records requests. From the article:
> Through public records requests, Prism obtained the Seattle Shield bulletins, as well as a full list of Seattle Shield members who had access to the program as of 2020
> Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the government. Again, say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
The irony is that curbing this "private intelligence network" would require infringing on the free speech of private people.
> say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
When the "shopkeepers" are billion dollar corporations, and several levels of law enforcement (including national ones like immigration officials) are also on the network, I think it makes sense for the level of scrutiny to be a bit higher than your hypothetical
As per the article, this isn't just used by Amazon and Meta, local non profits are also use this resource.
I'd be interested in details about how visible reports from a given organization are to the others on the platform. People seem to be making comparisons to Nextdoor, but one of the fundamental parts of it is the public feed. If this is essentially a special way to DM law enforcement, it's not really comparable.
You realize that you can email law enforcement and contact them through means that are not immediately publicly visible like on Next Door?
Not to mention, this bulletin is subject to public records requests, as I explained in my other reply.
If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?
> If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
That's a pretty strange conflation. It's pretty commonly discussed exactly how rare it is for people to make open source to get compensated by companies that use their projects. I find it hard to imagine that you genuinely think that there isn't an obvious distinction that most observers would draw between that and direct employment.
> Are there really ways out?
Not with that attitude
Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
Yes.
No
Yes
Maybe
Do you feel the same way about the warehouse workers?
If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
this is like arguing that laws are useless because theyre not bulletproof. please stop with this pseudological thinking
> ...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine
this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
“Software is eating the world”, but also “not working on antisocial tech is too difficult aaah”.
Is it though? Finding some ethically neutral Crud gig?
"There are lots of bad things" does not imply "all bad things are equally bad and therefore it's not worthwhile to try to prevent any of them"
Holy false equivalency / whataboutism, Batman.
> All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.
I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/chronic...
Unfortunately we have to live in the reality that any unusual thing is a suspicious thing. There’s a whole entire concept that has been popularized around the concept of “see something, say something” and it would be expected that such vague concepts generate paranoia. I am not in a touristy or scenic area so seeing people out taking photos is unusual here and I could see how at least talking to the photographer isn’t a bad idea from a security standpoint.
Might help to mention I’m American so, you know, random joes blowing stuff/people up is part of my reality.
> suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos
What is the logic behind this? Why is it suspicious?
Everybody's got a camera now. People taking puctures is the most normal thing in the world now.
archive that won't hijack your back button https://archive.is/Td9AR
archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog. This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
> archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog.
Please provide evidence for your claim. The wiki rfc [5] that you linked doesn't provide any DDOS evidence at all, which is odd for wikipedia.
> This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting
This appears to be a concerted effort to blacklist archive.today by unknown actors. There were at least 3 attempts with odd efforts to sway the vote [1][2][3] (the notes in the sidebars at those Wiki RFCs document these actions by bots and others), and a successful attempt to undo the blacklist [4], and then yet another attempt [5].
I'm curious as to why you did not include this very relevant background information in your comment?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.
The link they did include seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of alternatives. Complaining can be fun, but it doesn't really make sense to penalize them for not being prescriptive about alternatives when the exact point they're trying to make is specific resources for this sort of thing can be prone to abuse.
Just like complaining about Amazon (be it as an employer or as a service provider), without providing an alternative, is siphoning people into a soapbox?
I, for one, found out about the archive.* situation recently, and am totally glad someone like the commenter pointed it out. My wanting to bypass paywalls to read content doesn't justify supporting the owner's behavior - not even close.
Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.
Why do our browsers even allow that?
When done properly you don't even notice! It is very beneficial when needed. But, as we know, very awful when done improperly.
> When done properly you don't even notice!
This lame argument should be added to the List of Fallacies. It's used everywhere as a "wild card" argument.
> Makeup
> MLB Pitch Framing by catchers
> Surveillance States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies?useskin=vect...
For websites like Gmail when you open an email
To enable JavaScript crapware
Have a look at your local branch here: https://globalshieldnetwork.com/programs-2/
Random Idea:
Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.
Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.
Self censored headline to avoid flagging? "Amazon, Facebook, ICE, and the FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network operated by Seattle police"
Looks like a nothingburger? It's unfunded. An email describes a protest without giving a framing that the site would prefer. Then it turns out that nobody knows what it does, but it might do something bad.
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.
Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well
Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.
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Do you mean unfounded?
Unfunded. It's in the article
There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?
Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?
No I'm just not from the United States (or a solipsist).
The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
With gun rights and the right to defend yourself in many US cities, surveillance is the next step to stop crime.
In places like the UK, where guns are nearly banned, this is the norm.
If I can't stop you from robbing me, I should have the ability to record you and identify you later.
I'm fine if we reduce surveillance, if gun/defense rights are added.
People are never going to quit doing this. I'm surprised we still get "incensed" by being "watched without consent". There is
No. Way. It's. Going. To. Ever. Get. Stopped.
The only way to level the effects are to radically increase the surveillance so that everyone ends up in a Dark Forest "I know shit about you too" deterrence stand off. And/or flood the sensors with so much input/noise that meaningful signal is tough to suss out.
Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.
No one is going to save us. I've recently been moved to direct action and started participating in a local indivisible.org group. It's had untold positive impacts on my personal mental state being with people trying to make things better, or at least slow the damage for now. Much of that is from going out and talking to random people on the street, handing out information and having conversations. Also quitting social media at the same time, save one exception for HN.
https://indivisible.org/get-involved/find-a-group/
This just seems like a progressive PAC. Which, okay that's fine, but not exactly giving "weaker government" vibes, just "we want our team in charge for a bit" vibes. Happy to be proven wrong, though.
Yea, I hear you on that, I hold reservations from the "same thing, other side" vibes. But it is also not a PAC in the sense of being primarily about donations and political funding (in my experience thus far). It's more a grassroots coalition and the IRL vibes are way different than the online ones. Different chapters could have different vibes, I'm hanging with retired ladies who've been protesting since the 60s but also have ai curiosity and excitement (most of them anyhow). The broad labelling goes away when you meet people face2face.
My hope is also the more that people show up IRL the more representative the organization will be of us, or we the people will make a new one that can choose right from wrong instead of left vs right. The political middle has been diminished much like the middle class. :/
Please tell me they're using Workplace.
As an American, I genuinely trust my data with China more than I do with the United States.
That's actually a very logical stance: China is much less interested in what you're doing as an individual citizen—and much less able to act on what they know—than the United States is. For the same reason, Chinese citizens should trust the United States with their data more than China.
Not so surprising - we kind of suspected this. Anyone remembers Snowden or Assange?
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
Authoritarianism didn't work in the past because it was too hard to control that many people. You simply didn't have the scale unless you were willing to roll tanks down city streets, and even then all it did was buy you an extra couple years, maybe a decade or two. Eventually, someone always got close enough to end you and then it started falling apart.
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.
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Why would an attack on Israel warrant spying on US citizens? We are not Israel and our government should not be working for Israeli interests.
It doesn’t. That’s not what I wrote.
I asking what does warning about attacks on Jews have to do with not saying something about Muslims.
They are pointing out the same thing I am: we are spying on Americans for Israel. Israel’s enemies get surveillance but not the so called “protection” this program uses as a veil for said surveillance.
you're not gonna believe this
I'm convinced Meta is a cult with Total control. It will go to any lengths to make money.
https://globalshieldnetwork.com/team/erin-nicholson/
What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?
Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.
:(
Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?
established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"
Interesting they have not contacted me about how they are going to be paying their subscription fee
I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free
How bad are things in Seattle that they are resorting to this? What the hell happened to my hometown?
So what you're saying is that everyone that works at Amazon and Facebook are now at grave risk because the bad guys now think they're informants?
You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.
Come to think about it, the one person I know that works at Meta is the absolute worst person I know.
I love this comment, I just couldn't ever frame it so well :)
Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.
It's bad guys all the way down.
Ah the new dark pool. Does anyone remember those from the trading? I still remember ARCA (good rebate back in the day), ECN (very fluid and very cheap), and a few dark pools that I used to get out of a trade quickly.