Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[pecunium]

We do, each and every one of us. Jefferson said the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed, from time to time with blood. The blood it takes is that of patriots and tyrants.

Ben Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had delivered said, "A republic madam, if you can keep it."

Abraham Lincoln, in the course of a struggle which we are still, in some ways, struggling, said Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are engaged today in just such a struggle. The powers of reaction, and authoritarianism will use whatever tools they can get away with.

One of the questions about the unrest in St. Paul is about the role of those who are instigating the reactions. Police forces, and others, have used agents provacateur in the past. There really is no reason to think the idea is part of the dim and dusty past.

We know, from the reports of the raids, that informants were inserted into the groups. What we don't know (and probably won't) is how many of the alleged plots were the result of those agents saying, "what if" and so sparking discussion.

For those who care... I have a link to the RNC Welcoming Committee Search Warrant

Read it, and think about your kitchen, your laundry room, your garage, your shed.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I might have some hollowed-out puppets.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Is there actually anyone who doesn't have stuff like that in his house (aside from the hollowed-out puppets)?

Why is it that the first action of police in any search is to steal people's primary tool of communication and livelyhood (i.e. the computer)? Sure, we should all have off-site backups, but that doesn't really help when we can't afford to replace our computers.

[momwolf.livejournal.com]

Well said, Sir, well said!

[speakertomgrs.livejournal.com]

porysski,

Remember that the purpose of these raids isn't to find incriminating evidence; that can always be manufactured, or discovered in innocent items looked at in the light of fear and hyperbole (hollowed out puppets, forsooth!). The purpose of these raids is to silence dissent. In the 1920's, the Red Squad often raided small printing shops owned and/or operated by "dissidents". To stop the spread of dissenting speech, the letter presses would sometimes be destroyed as "instruments of sedition"; since there was no low-cost alternative for printing at the time, destroying the press removed the most effective means of mass communication the dissenters had. Today the most effective means of communication is the computer: press, radio and television station, and record storage all in one. Remove it and you severely curtail the ability to speak freely to more than a few people at a time, and especially to present the sounds and images which document the authoritarians' action.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, that seems to be the idea. It's trivially easy, and cheap, to download a copy of the entire contents of a computer, and examine these at leisure for any indications of malfeasance, without retaining the computer itself and thus crippling the owner, but that isn't the way the Authorities work -- perhaps because they're more interested in punishing people (who must deserve punishment, because they're obviously guilty of something or they wouldn't be the subject of investigation and accusation, right?) than in establishing facts or Truth (or even truth). *sigh*

[sharon-masters.livejournal.com]

That of course, is the whole POINT. They *could* just take the data. They want to cripple the target.

[sharon-masters.livejournal.com]

Yes, looking at that list- and the reasons for allegedly conducting the raid-got scary.
Hollowed out puppets-- that's a riot.
Everything else (except maybe horded feces) seems to be standard in most homes.
Oh yeah, gotta watch out for those cardboard box guys.
i used to be in law enforcement. The average mentality is that EVERYONE that isn't screaming for more crime laws and longer jail sentences and advocating transparency rather than privacy must be up to something and must be stopped.
The GOP has taken that a step further by introducing fear and paranoia on a scale not seen since H.S.T. downed the entire contents of his satchel bag on an inbound US plane from Jamaica.
Up until about 15 years ago we had the judiciary as our oversight to the fanatics in system. No court is perfect (i'm a Californian, and Rose Bird's decisions still piss me off), but the blatant need to constantly see "moderation' between the status quo and the every moving far right means that we have moved DRASTICALLY more conservative/police state than anyone can imagine.
When looking for the middle, one needs to have 2 moderate poles for balance.
Fear, that is what they are trying to create, that is what makes people vote against their own best interests, and that is what generates the most response from the American public.
"Make people sufficiently afraid, and they will drink the Kool-Aid" (possible arbitrary quote from the Late Rev. Jim Jones, somewhere in Ghiana with a packet of Wild Cherry in one hand and a bottle of strychnine in the other).
Thank you for the ongoing political commentary.
Someone needs to do it.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Either way, they won't get the data. They can have my encryption keys when they pry them from my cold, dead brain.

[thevirtualjim.livejournal.com]

When I was talking to my brother about this stuff yesterday, he said "well what they are doing is still technically legal, so its ok" I fear that many in the US may think the same way.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You gonna strip the data to a remote drive, reformat and then move the files back very carefully?

Because the odds are every encrypted machine (and did you encrypt the whole thing?, or at least make the encrypted partition exempt from VM usage, so the encrypted data doesn't end up in oddball caches (this is something TrueCrypt warns me about) comes back with a keylogger; and the owner gets a follow-on warrant.

If you don't have anything to hide, you wouldn't be hiding it, would you?

[porysski.livejournal.com]

You gonna strip the data to a remote drive, reformat and then move the files back very carefully?

No, but the external drives to which I back up are also encrypted, as is my swap space.

As for having nothing to hide, I think Professor James Duane covers that pretty well in his lecture on why you should never talk to the police:

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Good lord, what judge gave them that warrant? And when is he/she coming up for re-election?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You miss my point. I don't think hiding things is wrong.

But the other point... unless you do a clean wipe of the drives they took (or, better) just destroy them, never remounting them, the external drives will be vulnerable to the next search warrant.

Because they will install keyloggers, backdoors and lord know what all else. When they come back, and remove all your drives (again?), they will have access because they won't need you to tell them the passwords. They will have them, right there.

I don't know if they can intall a physical memory keylogger. I know there are such. It's why I never do any banking from internet cafe machines, but the ones I know of are all between external keyboards and the machine.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

This is where the unnecessarily long time that the police hold "evidence" like that would work in the citizen's favor -- how many of us who could possibly afford to replace our computers could possibly afford not to? By the time it got back with a keylogger, it would all be going into the parts closet anyway.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If they really wanted to, a keylogger (even on an encrypted machine) can be done in ten minutes.

Because a rootkit on a flashdrive will let them in, and put it on.

Then the next warrant is all they need. DHS has the ability to do covert warrants. Evidence from RICO trials of mobsters shows that such things (sneek and peek warrants) have been used to place such subterfuges.

Most people can't afford to replace/reconstruct all their data. Activists least among us (Food not Bombs, and RNC Welcoming Committee don't pay all that much. Most people are giving them money, not the other way round).

The long time isn't uneccessary. It's a specific tactic, meant to see to it the people affected can't do anything during the time the machines are gone. Unless they have a backup, which wasn't with the parent machine, they've lost the ability to use all the information they've collected/been using.

And they are out of easy communication with friends/allies.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that it's impossible, I'm saying that it's our duty to make it as close to impossible as we can. We should always encrypt everything, so that the encrypted machines and communications don't stand out as targets. We should never, under any circumstances talk to the police.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

The name of the judge does not appear on the warrant, at least not on the part of the warrant that is visible.

I join the question - who *did* give them the warrant?

st-paul-cop-dragging-protester-jumped-sprays-crowd

[royeh.livejournal.com]

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/03/st-paul-cop-dragging-protester-jumped-sprays-crowd/

On one forum I was reading, a poster claiming to be Irish,
was calling the American Left cowards for not fighting back.

Re: st-paul-cop-dragging-protester-jumped-sprays-crowd

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

He wrong, and he's right.

It may come to a point where fighting is needful, God forbid.

Right now standing still and taking the abuse is the braver, and harder course of action.