Slashdot Mirror
Feds Crack Trump Protesters' Phones To Charge Them With Felony Rioting (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: Officials seized Trump protesters' cell phones, cracked their passwords, and are now attempting to use the contents to convict them of conspiracy to riot at the presidential inauguration. Prosecutors have indicted over 200 people on felony riot charges for protests in Washington, D.C. on January 20 that broke windows and damaged vehicles. Some defendants face up to 75 years in prison, despite little evidence against them. But a new court filing reveals that investigators have been able to crack into at least eight defendants' locked cell phones. Now prosecutors want to use the internet history, communications, and pictures they extracted from the phones as evidence against the defendants in court. [A] July 21 court document shows that investigators were successful in opening the locked phones. The July 21 filing moved to enter evidence from eight seized phones, six of which were "encrypted" and two of which were not encrypted. A Department of Justice representative confirmed that "encrypted" meant additional privacy settings beyond a lock screen. For the six encrypted phones, investigators were able to compile "a short data report which identifies the phone number associated with the cell phone and limited other information about the phone itself," the filing says. But investigators appear to have bypassed the lock on the two remaining phones to access the entirety of their contents.
Worked for this guy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When the violence took place (those involved in the violence should be caught and prosecuted) the FBI closed of an entire city block without warning and arrested EVERYONE within the block (this included people going to work, journalists covering the protest, people legitimately protesting and others but not rioting) and charged every single person with rioting whether or not they have any evidence of rioting. They are trying to charge them all as a group and use the evidence against the handful they have evidence of to convict the rest. This is a massive violation of rights.
I pray to god a Judge throws this whole case out and lets the guilty get away with it because of the tactics the FBI and Justice are using to convict innocent people of felonies they did not commit by being on a street when a riot they weren't involved with took place. Make no mistake if Justice is allowed to do this, the next time there is something they can call a riot they will be out there arresting every single person again and YOU might be the one caught up in it by being on a block where something happened.
Actually, the smart and well organized protest groups have their own security and will warn violent people to behave and, if they cannot be persuaded, forcibly eject them from the group. There are a huge number of benefits:
(1) By nipping violence early, the (literal) 'mob mentality' doesn't get a chance to catalyze
(2) By doing it it from within the protesting group itself, there is less reactionary violence against police intervention
(3) It demonstrates to those watching that the protesters are serious about non-violence and not tacitly condoning vandalism
(4) It demonstrates to the police that they can keep a safe distance and focus on separating protesters/counter-protesters
(5) It discourages opportunists that will join any protest as a cover for their pre-existing desire to smash shit (whether for political or just anger issues)
(6) It encourages people that might not feel safe or welcome in a violent protest to join in. A lot of people won't go out in the streets if people are smashing windows or if they fear being tear gassed by overreacting cops
So yeah, I don't advocate giving up and prosecuting everyone. Or shutting down the right to protest. But I also don't advocate allowing a very small percentage of the protesters to steal the spotlight and tar the entire thing as violent. Those folks ruin your public image, they ruin your relationship with the city, the police and the mainstream members of the group and they have no right to do so.
likely, false flaggers. folks who wanted this to 'look bad' and make the protesters sorry they voiced their opinions.
You mean like those peaceful antifa people who beat people over the head with bikelocks, and throw bottles and bricks at people? Yeah it wasn't false flagged, it was deliberate. The same way it was in berkeley, seattle, chicago and so on.
Om, nomnomnom...
"If you are opposed to a president who is committed to roll back every single socialist policy since 1901 and a president who declares America First, and you resort to violence to express that opposition, you deserve to be ploughed under."
FTFY.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Group beatings at large protests don't generally get described as "truss them up".
Let's compare shall we? Can we find a tea party protest where that happened...nope. Can we find it where a antifa/leftist/etc group did that...yep. We can even find the cases where those antifa/leftist/anti-trump protestors have assaulted people for wearing hats that look like MAGA hats.
Om, nomnomnom...
I was at the protest of the FCC in 2014 for net neutrality. There were probably 30 of us standing outside the FCC building in Duluth Georgia doing nothing more than holding up signs. One person showed up with a bull horn shouting and screaming at every person that walked in or out of the building. He then proceeded to yell and scream at the women in our protest group.
Homeland security was off in the distance and they were keeping an eye on us. We knocked the bullhorn out of the guys hand for putting it the face of one of us and escorted him down to Homeland Security where 10 of us professed that he was not one of us.
It turned out that the 5 o'clock news that day found out that he was paid to be there to incite violence in the group.... Who would have though???