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FBI: Retweeting a Terrorist's Tweet Could Land You In Trouble
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has become a valuable tool for U.S. law enforcement agencies in their fight against terrorism. It's been used as evidence in trials, it's provided useful intelligence, and it has helped them figure out who is involved with these groups. But ACLU lawyer Lee Rowland is trying to make sure they don't take it too far. In April, a 30-year-old man was charged with providing "material support" to the Islamic State. The FBI's probably cause? He retweeted some of the group's tweets. FBI director James Comey says a person's intent is the heart of the issue: "Knowing it was wrong, you provided material support for a terrorist organization or some other offense. That is the bulwark against prosecuting someone for having an idea or having an interest. You have to manifest a criminal intent to further the aims prohibited by the statute." Rowland points out the obvious First Amendment concerns. He adds, "... there's also the question of intent there: repeating speech is not automatically an endorsement. ... So a RT alone is certainly not an endorsement and in many situations may be a criticism of the original speaker, and that's particularly true with terrorism, because I believe many people may believe terrorism is self-evidently immoral."
How do we know if someone is a terrorist?
They could be just pretending...
Don't talk to cops.
Seriously, the scary thing here is that you could quite innocently find yourself the subject of an investigation, and have your whole life spiral out of control from there. The FBI has manufactured "terrorists" by leveraging their criminal informants, and innocent people have gotten caught up in the agency's overzealous and amoral crusade to "catch bad guys."
But, don't take my word for it:
What I would like to see is someone give it the old college try and write up a "compare and contrast" essay: The FBI vs. the Stasi, KGB, et cetera. I worry things are getting that bad in this country. Now we have to worry about what we might re-tweet!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I should be able to stand on the corner and proclaim support for ISIS all day long without having to face government prosecution. This is how free speech works in US. As such, this is "with computers" type of a case.
This is not substantively different from the behavior of the STASI in the DDR ( East Germany ) or
the ruling party in 1930s Germany. The idea is to scare the general public such that they all fall into
line and quit even questioning authority.
The FBI is not the friend of the average citizen in the US. The FBI serves its masters, who are those
who have power and / or lots of money. If you are a member of the small minority which has the
money and power, that's nice for you, but 99% of the US is merely a bunch of chattel and is along for the ride.
The FBI is not an honest organization. It has perpetrated many awful things in order to ensure that those in power
remained in power. If you believe otherwise you need to do some research on the history of the FBI. No, I'm not going to
provide you with a link, if you are too lazy to do your own search then you are too lazy to think in the first place.
Everybody who ever holds it seems to be a really scary fucker with no concept of what they're supposed to be protecting.
Actually it is YOU who is confused. The FBI director has a very clear understanding of
his duties.
The FBI knows exactly what it is supposed to protect. Your problem is that you don't ...sowing the seeds of fear"
understand what the job of the FBI really is. Read the post "
above and you will begin to get an understanding of what the FBI really does.
I hate to admit it, but the more we as citizens begin to fear our own guardians, the more they have won. It's disgusting to say the least, but Eden didn't last forever either.
Isn't it funny how "material support" applies here but not for Senator King who helped out with funding when a terrorist group needed some money to explode some bombs in England.
Poorly crafted laws create nightmares as they can easily be misused and sometimes are deliberately misused. The same is true for sloppy enforcement. for example cops often find it easier to write traffic tickets late at night. There is little if any traffic to deal with and pulling someone over is easier. Also it is easier to get back up so we often see two or three squad cars dedicated to a simple traffic stop. But here is the catch. The traffic stop is easy to abuse as it is really an attempt to catch people who are doing worse things than driving infractions. The end result is that a driver may get a ticket for no reason at all simply because the cops want to know who is out late and why they are out late. We see cops inserting themselves into situations when the real intention may be to investigate and the people being interfered with are not always a direct path to the target. It is sort of like a guy who wants to date a pretty girl who hits on her dumpy looking roomie in order to be around the pretty girl a bit more and have a chance at getting to know her. Another similar tactic is for a cop to get friendly with your mail man so he can find out what bills come your way and perhaps just how you pay those bills.
Isn't Twitter itself providing "material support" to terrorists?
Twitter has a long track record of allowing or encouraging violence, threats, predictions of terrorism, etc. of all kinds, but seems to have a pretty strong anti-western and anti-lawful establishment to it.
It's not OK to say "n@@@er" at all, but somehow spike lee and thousands of re-tweeters can post direct threats and addresses people supposedly George Zimmerman's relatives all over twitter.
As "do no evil" goes, twitter completely fails. The government shouldn't NEED to be involved because Twitter is taking care of it.
Hint hint, Feds, just shut ALL of twitter down until they can behave.
"You have to manifest a criminal intent to further the aims prohibited by the statute."
So the authorities decide if you are thinking correctly: "... there's also the question of intent there: repeating speech is not automatically an endorsement. ..." and "... I believe many people may believe terrorism is self-evidently immoral."
So as soon as an authority figure accuses you of having "intent" you are guilty because it is "self-evidently immoral."
Now consider how the TSA operates. We obviously have nothing to fear from a gang of unaccountable self selected guardians who need to prove that they are doing something to justify their existence. And the FBI has never engaged in illegal activity by spying on legitimate political activity (MLK), tried to blackmail leaders to influence their activities (MLK), engaged in black ops including violence in order to discredit political movements and individuals (COINTELPRO) or conspired with criminals (Whitey Bulger) and then covered up illegal acts, including drug dealing and murder.
We have nothing to fear. They never lie and they are always right.
Why is Snark Required?
Stop talking to federal officials. Don't say a word to them. Remain silent. Communicate in writing if it's required. Talking to the federal government is a one-way-street where they lie with impunity, and you get prosecuted for making even a minor factual error. The only way to win is to not play.
Quite ironic since the above poster was referring to Osama Bin Laden - his family has very close connections with the Bush family, among many others in the oil and several other industries. The "wipe out the family" is clearly an utterly stupid idea with the biggest name in terrorism so why would it work elsewhere? When two degrees of separation is the President of the United States how do you go about wiping out his business associates that were not involved with the terrorist act at all apart from being related to the terrorist?
Why does the barbaric stupidity need to be pointed out at all?
If you provide actual money - a generic value source that can be converted into anything, not just TV ads - to a politician, THAT is "free speech".
But if you pass along information provided by those designated by the executive alone (other two branches not req'd) as a "terrorist", and the information transmission involves any effort or the smallest sum of money changing hands somewhere, then THAT is "material support".
There was this guy in Brooklyn selling cable packages, mostly ethnically-based, TV from other-language nations. One channel in the package is partially-owned by Hamas, who undoubtedly got nearly a dollar per month from every package purchase. Cable guy convicted of "material support", now in jail.
So: Passing along info from bad people = material,
Passing $100M to "good people" = speech.
Just keep clear on that, and you'll be fine.