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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.
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.
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.
It's worth noting that Dr. King wasn't really after "peaceful protests". To think he was looking for everything to be peaceful diminishes both how smart and tough the civil rights protesters were.
The story you were probably told was that MLK and other protesters just wanted to have a nice, peaceful sit-in, and then the police came in and ruined it by getting violent. That's not quite right. It's sort of true, but not quite. They went looking for venues of protest where they'd elicit a violent reaction. Having things turn violent was kind of the point. They wanted the public to see white supremacists beating up innocent black people. They were relying on the idea that there were a large number of Americans who would tolerate smaller injustices against black people (e.g. not being allowed to use a specific water fountain), but who would not tolerate larger injustices (e.g. being viciously beaten by police without any defensible reason).
So to achieve that goal, it was incredibly important that the protesters weren't violent. Any violence on their part would allow people to excuse the violence against them. If people see the police beating up or even killing violent rioters, most won't be too upset with the police, or feel too much sympathy for the rioters. However, if people see police beating up a nice, respectful, non-violent protester who doesn't even defend himself, then many of them will be upset with the police and sympathetic to the protester. The latter was the scenario that the protesters were trying to create.
So MLK demanded that his protesters be completely non-violent, but that's not the same as saying he wanted a non-violent protest. If he hadn't wanted violence, he could have had protests in safer ways and in safer areas. He could have protested among people who already agreed with his cause. instead, he protested among the KKK.