> The rule of law is and always has been based on a monopoly of violence.

There is no such thing as a monopoly of violence. Weber's work, which you reference, talks about states claiming a monopoly of legitimate violence.

However, legitimacy and law are two different things: while every state claims they are the only ones allowed to use violence legitimately, not every state codifies their functioning in laws ; and fewer structure themselves in such a way that these laws are sovereign.

My point is that merely codifying the state's actions in laws isn't enough to get functioning rule of law. You also need functioning government oversight (and a few other things, but that's not the current topic). When government's action is not overseen, respect of the law happens at the whim of government agents.

The rule of law isn’t based on the state’s monopoly on violence. Its entire purpose is to protect citizens from state violence by subordinating it to law adjudicated in courts.

What is supposed to be the point of this comment? Poor cops have terrible violence unleashed them by having civilian oversight? Or that we should ditch rule of law and structures and instead go with what the most violent local warlord wants?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Snowden revelations explain very well why we need the oversight and much more. They are relevant here.

In a similar but distinct vein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

That article has no mentioning of the tiktok speedruns?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Now I want to play Steve Jackson's Illuminati...

https://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/

the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example

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.

Not sure if you meant to reply here?

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805

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.

> 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...

Sure, but nobody tries to portray NextDoor as an "intelligence sharing network operation" and a "nationwide surveillance apparatus".

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.

No I'm just not from the United States (or a solipsist).

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. :/