Also, were there other people in the station? Were you the only one asked to leave, or were they clearing the whole platform?
I ask because I was in DC for the inauguration and the women's march, and there were thousands and thousands of protesters with costumes and signs of all sorts. It seems weird that they would single you out.
But it's possible that they thought you were carrying the protest on into the train station or some other place which they had safety concerns about.
There are multiple ways to handle a safety concern, one of which is just by talking to the individual and observing. Someone with a sign acting like all the other passengers isn't much of a worry, I think.
To paraphrase the famous saying, evil succeeds when good men and women do nothing. I have seen this happen in my own country. Don't want to see it happen in the USA as well.
You can check out my twitter feed if you think I don't care about politics, but there are a ton of places where we can 'talk about these issues openly'. Just maybe spare this one site from all the politics? It tends to, uh, eclipse, everything else, as it is far more important.
Even in an otherwise smart, rational and measured community, in this thread we're seeing appeals to emotion, partisan "outrage" and downvoted being used as a tool of disagreement.
The government is not investigating those who hurt Trump's feelings (does he have any? sorry :) ). It is the law enforcement that is going after violent rioters whatever their political views are. I hope it does and keeps doing it every time there is a violent riot.
To me, the problem is in trying to grab a lot of private information in the hopes of easily finding leads. Instead they should focus on other sources: I suspect DC has all sorts of video monitors and was swarming with agents during the inauguration. Cannot this serve as the source of leads? Maybe cops can walk around some more and talk to people? I doubt a crowd can riot without leaving traces to the identities of a number of rioters. My 2c.
There have been threats (or "wish-deaths") made against our president's life. By members of the media, congress, and plenty more. Even that most extreme act, in my view, has received only a tepid response. Many are vocal in their support of it. And shows still go on with the president's likeness being shot, riots still continue against the president and all of his supporters, and go to nearly any major media outlet and you'll find the usual slant of derision, with all of the behavior that follows. Commentators even stoop so low as to use the latest narrative propped up by major media players to patronize the president's own daughter and tell her to "sit shiva" for her father.
All of this continues today, and it will still continue. From everything that I've seen of the president's behavior and heard first-hand from his speeches, he will do very little about the words that the media uses to describe him and how they frame him. He will take those punches, and it's obvious he's been willing to take even more.
This article is only meant to stoke the flames of the "never-Trumpers" once more. To inject more fear into the population and convince them that they're the victims, that they're being attacked. A strategy that is played time and time again and one that is destroying our cohesion ("You attack one of "us", you attack all of "us"." Where "us" is usually decided by some superficial property.)
Look at the language of the lawyers, as highlighted by the Washington Post: “This action will cause Web users to worry that the government will be monitoring every site they visit.” “This is a case about a website that is engaged in political speech.”
Please. "Speech", or planning riots? This is a court case seeking some justice for riots that "left six police officers injured and caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage when downtown D.C. businesses were vandalized just blocks from where President Trump and his family paraded following the swearing-in ceremony." This is not an attack on innocent Americans who had nothing to do with those peaceful riots.
Don't fall for the trap.
See: The bulk phone data collection programs instituted by the Patriot Act, the vast expansion of NSA data collection (of us all) under the Obama administration, the straight-to-the-wire tapping of critical internet infrastructure and providers such as Google, Microsoft etc. enabled by the establishment of the secret FISA court which has never denied a warrant, and so much more.
Let's also not forget the persecution endured by the whistleblowers for the above institutions by the Obama regime.
Set your partisan, hyperbolic "outrage" aside.
"Yes Mr. Bar Owner, a few of your patrons stole a car a few weeks back. We'll need the names and addresses of all the people who visited this place for the last year please."
I'm not sure the fact pattern you're providing really illustrates the concern.
Rather, I think the concern is that the prosecutors have what appears to be a very diffuse criminal inquiry, and that the specific information they're looking for has a clear side-effect of intimidating lawful protesters. The concern is that the "investigation" is a pretense for intimidation.
You can't say that about the police investigating bar patrons for a specific car theft or whatever.
It does, and that's bad. Hopefully more people start realizing this.
> The concern is that the "investigation" is a pretense for intimidation.
Absolutely, and that's the toxic cherry on this poisoned cake.
We must build a decentralised web. Now.
Whether I agree or not, here is another example of sensationalism which has made me distrustful of news media. How many of those "1.3m users" were actually unique?
You can't hand over what you don't have.
>Prosecutors earlier this week scaled back their request and changed it to seek emails associated with Disruptj20.org and email addresses of third parties associated with the website, such as individuals who volunteered to help provide supplies or support to rioters.
>As part of his ruling, Morin ordered prosecutors to tell him who was going to review the data DreamHost provides and, once that information is found, explain to him why prosecutors deem the information “critical” to their case.
>Under Morin’s ruling, any information prosecutors find unrelated to the rioting would be sealed and could not be shared by prosecutors with anyone else or any other government authority.
May as well be unsealed because of parallel construction.
In general the logic in the article doesn't follow. It says 200 people have been charged, so why not request information relating only to those 200 people? Regardless, internet messages can't prove participation in a violent riot, so I would assume the prosecutors have other, harder, evidence. if not they're just wasting everyone's time.
If there is nothing specific, then why is this allowable at all?
And if there is something specific, then why can't they request those specific messages?
Nope, I still feel the same. It's going too far.
There have been no judicial orders requiring the Daily Stormer to turn over any records relating to Charlottesville. Instead, quite the apposite, various private companies have decided that having anything to do with the Daily Stormer was beyond the pale.
We have a shared fact set called reality. Argue that.
Was the Daily Stormer's visitor logs up for grabs at any point? Did GoDaddy/Google hand over data to the government as a matter of public record? No.
What about visitor data for any alt-right or white supremacist sites being requested by the government? Maybe in association with a possible hate crime investigation, but nothing I've heard about recently.
What kind of muddying logic are you trying to communicate here, or is this just trolling?
If you have individual user accounts that you want more info on, and have evidence that they used the forum to plan a serious crime, sure that passes muster.
Giving the Committee for Public Safety the names and addresses of every single user that registered or posted there, hell no.
For people who think this is wrong, assuming you accept the premise that they should be investigating rioters, what alternative is there to find out who they are?
Whether there is an answer to that or not is irrelevant to the fact the warrant lacks specificity.
Same bullshit was used in the Kim dotcom debacle irrc.
"We're not sure what he's done wrong, but we know hes a bad guy so get every computer and we'll build a case based on what we find."
To give you an example of how stupid this warrant is, and funnily enough answer your question: it's akin to the police confiscating every computer and phone within a 10 mile radius of the riots to check the internet history.
This is like saying a house got broken into in Los Angeles so let's pull the world's Facebook history to get to the bottom of it.
However, there is still something lacking.
Setting a precedent here is important, and if the past is a guide, the precedent would be abused.
The only thing I can think of to discourage future wide-reaching warrants of this kind, is compensation.
For every individual who has their rights violated, in the pursuit of others, compensation is usually able to be granted, in most cases.
So, tie it to this case.
Such a wide-reaching warrant may be granted in difficult circumstances, if every individual whose privacy is ignored, and has no guilt in the investigated matter, are immediately granted compensation.
It doesn't even have to be much, because the cost of such a warrant would scale with the number of people they are ignoring.
Disclaimer: No longer a lawyer. No experience in US law.
Maybe they can do like the rest of the world investigate rioters (that commits crimes) by analyzing camera footage? I find it hard to believe that countries - with less possibilities - can do it, but in the US suddenly it's impossible.
I must be careful for Godswin law but in a country where Lügenpresse is also suddenly a thing, I'm very skeptical of the fact that this is needed because its the only way to identify "rioters". It reminds me of certainly historic events where they also needed to identify opponents of X and Y for "crimes".
Btw how the hell are you going to find a couple of individuals in 1.3 million visitor records if that is the only lead?
Even accepting that premise, which I don't, there doesn't always need to be an alternative. The 4th Amendment appears to require far more specificity than this request allows. Political assembly and protests are obviously protected by the Constitution, and these 200 rioters are considered innocent until proven guilty.
If law enforcement can't get a valid warrant then they should lose. They can go home and polish their batons.
/IANAL
I think technology has made data very easy to transport, and modern day governments have taken advantage of this sort of fishing expedition.
Not only that, but I think the transparency is one sided. Good luck getting anything significant from FOIA without waiting years and piecing details together from [REDACTED] pages.
>what alternative is there to find out who they are?
That's not the question you should be asking. The question you should be asking yourself is "why am I OK with violating the 4th amendment rights of millions of citizens"
More to the point: the question he SHOULD he asking is "Does the government actually have a legitimate and constitutionally-sound need for this information?" If "yes", then his question follows ("What alternatives exist for getting this info?")
Your question, on the other hand, presupposes that it's indeed a violation of 4th amendment. Which it may well and likely is (sure seems like it!)... but the first question that has to be answered is whether this is a violation or not.
"They must do X, because it's the only way to catch the bad guy" is a catastrophically bad argument.
