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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.
"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."
"protests ... that broke windows and damaged vehicles."
So... a riot. Not a protest, a riot.
Worked for this guy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, it didn't.. What got the Man's attention is when he got folks to boycott the buses. He hit them in the pocket book.
Protests - marching in the street do nothing. When King protested, the authorities gave him the permits, let him protest, and the protestors cleared out and life went on - unchanged.
And as far as the Trump protestors are concerned, just what did they think they'd accomplish? Really, what?
The folks who voted for him dug their heels in - and many still have no doubts.
The folks who hate him felt good seeing the protests or participated in them.
The folks who became violent were jerks and hurt their cause. The black hoody folks who smashed shit are just assholes and deserve to have their faces bashed in by the cops.
And sorry, Trump won according to our laws. Like it or not, he did. We are country of the rule of law and if we start applying them to what is popular only, we will be headed for some serious upheaval and unrest.
Don't like the situation? Well, voter turnout is still only a fraction of the eligible voters. And if those folks spent the time voting and doing the leg work that the Tea Party Republicans are so good at, maybe they too can make changes.
But it will be slow and tedious.
See, those protestor people want a revolution - they want their way to happen overnight. But if they grew up and took their lesson from the Tea Party, they'd see how to do it.
And now, the Fourth Amendment is yet being shredded even more. All thanks to assholes who don't know how our system works and refuse to work in 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.
>> Officials seized (rioters) cell phones, cracked their passwords, and are now attempting to use the contents to convict them
If you're dumb enough to wear your tracking device to the scene of the crime, then what do you really expect? Cops have been using location, texts and social media posts to pin perps for at least a decade now.
You keep telling yourself that.
... you know, the ones who denied her the electoral college.
But Hillary's lack of being crowned as she demanded and expected was just the latest in a series of events that cost the Democrats nearly a thousand legislative seats, both houses of congress, most of the governorships, and millions of two-time Obama voters who were disgusted by Clinton/DNC overt behavior, never mind reading their obnoxious internal communications. Comey didn't cause Hillary to call millions of the people over whom she wanted to preside irredeemably deplorable racists. Neither Comey nor the Russians used mind control rays to cause Hillary to somehow forget to even set foot in Wisconsin to try to tell the people there something vaguely coherent about why she and her husband should once again get the executive power they craved and with which they enriched themselves.
But please, keep blaming it all on everything except the Democrats' years of snark, sneering condescension and their hatred for the people in flyover country
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Maybe good.
Did the investigators get proper warrants? Did they present accurate probable cause statements to magistrates? Did they follow the rules and procedures of law, and ensure the rights of the individuals were protected during the process?
If so then I agree: Good. The people were accused of some severe vandalism and destruction of property, and people who smash windows and damage vehicles deserve suitable legal consequences.
However, if the investigators did not follow the rule of law, did not follow the rules protecting individual rights, or otherwise violated the rights of citizens, then the investigators deserve to not only have their entire investigation dumped by the courts but to be fired from their jobs for incompetence. They have had over six full months to ensure they took the relatively simple steps to follow the law, and if they didn't do them they deserve to be blocked from the profession.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
You totally forgot to mention how her DNC cohorts stabbed Bernie in the back and colluded with her, which is what was shown in those DNC emails. And then when DWS stepped down, Hillary doubled-down on her and hired her to a high position in her campaign, effectively thumbing her nose at all the Bernie supporters.
As a result, Dem turnout was low, especially among the Bernie-voting demographic. Many of them who did bother to vote instead voted for a 3rd party (which both saw HUGE gains over the last presidential election), or even for Trump out of spite. According to my recollection, if Hillary had gotten most of those 3rd-party votes, she would have won.
She ran an incredibly condescending campaign, and her supporters were especially smug and condescending. Honestly, I think I'd rather be associated with moronic Trump voters than with the condescending assholes who were vocal Hillary supporters.
Personally, I voted for Stein. Hillary's supporters specifically told me that they didn't need my vote to win, so I didn't give it to her.
This is precisely the kind of distorted nonsense that erodes trust when it comes from "professional journalists".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
At least the Trump voters had good reason to be angry: they were doing poorly economically. They didn't pick very well in their search for someone to alleviate their problems, but to be fair, the mainstream Democratic party (Hillary and friends) really offered them nothing at all. Bernie's camp was the one talking about income inequality, but Hillary's camp was clearly all in favor of it, since the mainstream Dems are so cozy with wealthy elitist donors and of course the financial sector. It wouldn't have made any sense for the rural conservative voters to vote for Hillary; at least if Bernie were on the ticket we would have spoken to them and offered them something (remember, he's quite popular in rural Vermont).
Hillary's supporters were just plain smug and condescending. Who the hell wants to hang around assholes like that? I'd rather hang around a bunch of dumb, uneducated, but well-meaning hicks than pretentious, smug assholes any time.
There's a good reason almost no one had a Hillary 2016 bumper sticker on their car, even in the very blue areas I frequent. By contrast, I saw tons of 4- and 8-year old Obama campaign stickers, but very very few Hillary ones. That really says something. I'm sure I'm not the only one totally turned off by Hillary's nasty supporters (just like the AC asshole who also replied to me here: he's a perfect example of those condescending shitheads).
Your house-burning analogy makes no sense. I'm talking about people and social dynamics here, not house colors. You can repaint an ugly house easily. You can't turn pretentious, smug dickheads into decent human beings.
So these guys face up to 75 years in prison for trashing a poor guy's car.
In other news this week, they report that drunk girl who live-streamed wrecking her car and killing her little sister is facing up to *thirteen* whole years in prison.
Civil disobedience is refusing to sit at the back of the bus, or chaining oneself to a tree. Such an act puts the person engaged in it at risk, but that makes it a noble effort. Rioting, burning and destroying property puts others at risk and is the act of a selfish coward, particularly when done while wearing a mask. Antifa and KKK, same difference. Rioting is not civil disobedience.
the 'right' has had a grudge ever since 'that black guy' got into office.
I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 but I remember distinctly the day after the election that CNN and other news talking heads generalize the election to racism. "What we learned last night is that there are not enough racists to defeat Obama.". Any time I disagreed with Obama for any reason during the last 8 years I was called a racist.
Maybe that grudge is because a lot of people are tired of being called a racist because they vote for the other guy. What is the point in trying to have a discussion if you will call me racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic when we disagree?
I know more people that are fed up being called *ist because they have different needs and wants from the federal government then actual *ists.