
FBI Is Building a Watchlist That Gives Companies Real Time Updates on Employees - grey-area
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/04/the-fbi-is-building-a-national-watchlist-that-gives-companies-real-time-updates-on-employees/
======
drawkbox
Protesting peacefully is an American right, this will be a list of real
patriots.

However, this is a bit scary. Corporations have become the brownshirts and we
are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems.

Unfortunately the divide and conquer strategy of the two party system in the
US makes people honor party over country and this is a problem. The only
solution is to be more independent.

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in
philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." \-- Thomas Jefferson

~~~
ihsw
Protesting peacefully != destroying private property and committing unprovoked
acts of violence to innocents

There's a word for those that use random violence to effect change in society
-- terrorists.

~~~
pyre
Not every protester is doing that though. If you go to a peaceful protest that
turns into a riot, you may be arrested even if you did not commit any acts of
vandalism or violence. Basically just because you were there. Is this the
world you want to live in?

~~~
coderdude
I've watched a lot of these protests-turned-riot and you don't see innocent
people on the sidelines being hauled away. You hardly see any of the violent
and destructive agitators being hauled away. I don't think the scenario you're
describing is realistic whatsoever.

~~~
kalkin
You've watched a lot of them, but you've never seen or heard of "kettling"?
Odd. I have seen it and experienced it.

(I'm also curious what instances of protests-turned-riot you're referring to.
The US hasn't had many riots, in any meaningful sense, recently. Do you mean
someone smashing a window?)

~~~
coderdude
There was one a couple of days ago at Berkeley where 150 or so masked people
smashed windows and set things on fire in an attempt to block a conservative
from speaking there. Causing $100k in damage to private property in order to
curtail other's free speech isn't something that should be glossed over or
minimized by calling it protesting.

There's the riot at NYU where more violent agitators showed up to prevent
Gavin McInnes from speaking, where he was attacked with pepper spray.

On the night at Berkeley, a woman wearing a Trump hat was pepper sprayed while
giving an interview for a news network.

These are the facts.

Call it what you want, but this is violence and destruction with the intent to
silence people with an opposing point of view. It's not civil disobedience or
protesting and more like terrorism.

As for your other question about whether or not I've heard of kettling, I
have. The fact that it exists does not convince me that innocent bystanders
need to fear that. In instances where you may have seen that, such as the
inauguration of the president, charges were brought against some of those
individuals. Which suggests the goal wasn't to arrest bystanders.

By the way, I don't know if you watched that one live or after it took place
but there was a ton of chaos. People were throwing objects like glass bottles
at the police in riot gear. Again, many of the people were dressed in all
black with masks on. If you want a very real problem to attack, that's one to
focus on.

~~~
kalkin
Kettling is very typically used for mass arrests, even if charges are not
filed against everyone arrested. This has happened in Oakland, where I live,
multiple times in the last five years. And the fact that an arrest without a
conviction can be reported to employers under this FBI program is one of the
problems noted in the article.

Terrorism is quite a word for a situation in which nobody was seriously
injured, as far as I know. And terrorism of the variety that involves killing
people is already less likely to kill someone in the U.S. than a lightning
strike. Picking the black bloc as the "very real problem... to focus on", in
that context and with everything else going on in the world--including the
serious damage done to many thousands of people by cruel and violent policies
justified by reference to the threat of terrorism--strikes me as a very poor
choice of priorities.

------
dceddia
This quote stuck out:

> "People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years
> down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this."

Interesting that he mentions "daycare," which seems to me like the
Congressional-testimony-equivalent of clickbait. It's always easier to justify
stopping bad people when you can tie it back to innocents somehow ("children,
elderly, and the disabled", as the article mentions).

He also uses the word "clean," evoking images of drug addicts - the opposite
of clean - and implying that these daycare providers might turn into drug-
addicted crazies without their employer ever finding out.

But the scarier implication here is that what you do outside work affects your
employment. Not just in the sense that posting drunken pictures to Facebook or
bitching about your boss on Medium might do, but that the government will
actively tell your employer about arrests that may have no bearing on your
ability to do your job.

What about someone who gets arrested for protesting, or excessive speeding, or
being party to a bar fight? Do those things necessarily affect their ability
to watch over children, or work at a nursing home, or pilot an airplane? I can
only imagine that employers will see the arrest report as an immediate cause
for firing, regardless of what the arrest was for. "We can't have _people like
that_ working here."

It's a scary path to be headed down.

------
suprgeek
Beautiful - Go to protest against Trump (or even to document it [1]) - get
arrested and charged with "Rioting", "Disturbing the Peace" or my most
favorite "Resisting Arrest[2]" \- get an Arrest Record - Get fired immediately
thanks to RAP BACK - Charges get dropped.

Rinse and repeat.

Welcome Absolute Fascism.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-
ch...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/24/journalists-charged-
felonies-trump-inauguration-unrest) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=92toXdu2KR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=92toXdu2KR0)

~~~
randywaterhouse
We've already lost when an arrest is equivalent to a conviction.

Although, in some ways, we've been here for a while. Maybe less-so for
individuals but for corporations, whom the law generally treats with a degree
of "individual" rights (IANAL), it's long been that an indictment is worse
than a conviction. After an indictment, clients turn away -> revenue flees ->
shutters.

What's scary is an indictment is, in theory (under fair application of the
principles of law), is more severe than a simple arrest. If we're living in a
system (US) where a simple arrest results in a database entry which can result
in the end of your productive life, we're living in a... [up to the reader to
determine the severity]

Ultimately, the power of gov't to drop charges after such a consequence
(firing) is powerful and unfair to the individual. Indeed.

~~~
snowwrestler
> We've already lost when an arrest is equivalent to a conviction.

It's not, under the law, of course. But since businesses can (generally)
freely choose who to hire or fire, it is legal for them to ask employees about
arrests and make decisions based on the answer.

This is different, though, in that the federal government itself (the FBI) is
assisting companies in doing this. The FBI is reporting arrests to businesses,
in full knowledge of the negative consequences for employees in doing so.
Indeed, the negative consequences are the entire point of the program.

The federal government is held to different standards. If an employee could
prove that they were fired because of an arrest that never led to a
conviction, reported through Rap Back, I think they would have a pretty good
test case for the ACLU to go to town on.

The whole point of our system of justice is to ensure that the government only
punishes citizens when there is beyond reasonable doubt that an actual crime
was committed. Here, the federal government is delivering punishment entirely
outside that framework.

The government will argue that they're just supplying information, not
punishment, but they don't get to just pretend they have no idea what happens
next. Everything the FBI has ever said about this program will be reviewed and
will show that the whole point is to fire people.

~~~
mrlyc
>> We've already lost when an arrest is equivalent to a conviction.

> It's not, under the law, of course.

It is under some circumstances. For example, the US visa waiver program:

> We do not recommend that travelers who have been arrested, even if the
> arrest did not result in a criminal conviction, attempt to travel visa free
> under the Visa Waiver Program.

(From [https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/visa-waiver-
program/additiona...](https://uk.usembassy.gov/visas/visa-waiver-
program/additional-requirements/))

------
thehardsphere
Maybe it's because I work in biometrics, but I don't understand what is
newsworthy about this. The Rap Back program has been around for years now. The
article gratuitously mentions the name "Trump" as an extra scare factor, even
though NGI and its various depredations were planned since the Dubya
administration (not that it matters whose administration it is; this kind of
power expansion happens independently of what party holds power).

Yes, it's concerning. But the headline "FBI is building a watchlist that gives
companies real time updates on employees" is out of date. Now it should be
"FBI built the watchlist five years ago that snitches on teachers and bank
employees and nobody complained."

~~~
int_19h
The headline is baity, but the article makes a point that this thing is
expanding rapidly in terms of number of participating employers. That part is
news.

And there are certainly implications specifically wrt the Trump
administration, and protests against it.

~~~
thehardsphere
The implications with the Trump administration are no different than those
under the Obama administration, when all of this expanding actually began
accelerating as the NGI system was implemented.

~~~
int_19h
The _potential_ for abuse is the same, yes. The way this is likely to actually
be abused is a whole different ballpark.

~~~
thehardsphere
How? The same people are still running the FBI who were running it before the
election.

~~~
int_19h
Different people are giving orders to people who are running the FBI.

------
JumpCrisscross
We need a public watch list of companies who fire, or in any way discipline,
employees on this watch list.

~~~
thehardsphere
Here's one off of the top of my head; it may be very imprecise:

1\. Every Bank in the United States of America 2\. Every NMLS licensed
mortgage lender in USA 3\. Every FINRA licensed investment advisor, broker, or
trader 4\. Eventually, every public school system in the USA.

All of these organizations participate because they're required to by law, or
through "self-regulation" that's effectively the same as government coercion.
And, they do have good reasons for wanting to; cases 1-3 are attempts to stop
financial fraudsters from finding employment at their firm. The excuse for
case 4 is to stop pedophiles or something (that one I'm actually less familiar
with than the other three).

Now that you have this list, what are you going to do with it? Moralize at
Bank of America until they relax their hiring standards? Wait for the market
to produce a bank that doesn't do background checks on employees, and then do
all of your business there? Call you Congressman and demand they do something
about this terrible injustice (even though this mess was created by people
calling their Congressman and demanding they do something about the fraudsters
on Wall Street that destroyed the economy in 2008)?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Every FINRA licensed investment advisor, broker, or trader_

I've worked for, owned and sold broker-dealers. There is nothing stopping you
from hiring someone with an unconvicted arrest record.

> _what are you going to do with it?_

Depends on the size and composition of the list. To make decisions, first one
needs the data.

------
devoply
The message here is clear: Don't protest or you might lose your job. I will
say it again, despite being down-voted last time, these are chilling effects
on activism in the United States. They prevent democracy from happening. This
means democracy is broken and needs fixing. Activism is the only way that
egregious problems like racism in the United States got fixed, without
activism black people would still be under Jim Crow laws.

edit: Okay racism did not get fixed, but it's a definite improvement on Jim
Crow Laws. And we obviously we need more activism to fight the
institutionalized racism that exists today such as the drug war.

~~~
analogmemory
If I lose my job for protesting or activism then fuck that employer. There
should be a database of companies that fire people for their off hours
activism.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
it should start with a list of companies that publicly state that their
employees are allowed to protest, even if the company disagrees with them.

~~~
mjolk
You're suggesting a left-wing form of McCarthyism. I don't care if my
employees/reports protest as long as they do their job and don't attempt
political intimidation, but I am not willing to put my company on a list to
satisfy a virtue-signaling busybody.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Are you kidding? Promoting the recognition of an employee's first amendment
rights now falls under "virtue signaling" and "McCarthyism"?

~~~
mjolk
Please re-read the parent comment:

> it should start with a list of companies that publicly state that their
> employees are allowed to protest, even if the company disagrees with them.

The part that is objectionable is the expectation that my company would need
to register on a list stating that I respect the rights of my employees. Doing
things within your legal rights is the _default_; I reject the act of playing
into someone's political "are you with us?" game.

------
dsfyu404ed
If this kind of crap actually becomes popular I give it 10yr before people
realize that police arrest tons of people for tons of things and a
disturbingly large amount if it is just them "mildly" abusing their power and
whatever it is eventually gets dropped. This will be especially true when all
the (rich, white) college kids who's only brush with the law is being in the
wrong place at the wrong time start hitting the job market. Eventually people
will hopefully demand that the cops stop acting that way.

~~~
porsupah
And yet, the magnificently curated Do Not Fly list still exists..

------
marcoperaza
All other issues aside, I really don't like that arrest records show up on
people's background checks. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for
the public to know who the government is arresting and why. How else would the
public know that the government is abusing its authority?

What is the solution?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
The best thing I can come up with is a system that protects the arrested's
name until after a conviction. Anything released before that should include
statistical data - description, race (since that is an issue), location,
crime, and so on. I disagree with publishing mugshots for folks that have been
found not guilty as well.

There is good and bad to all of this, of course, and some of it won't be fixed
without better attuned labor protection laws and things of that nature.

------
iamthepieman
This is why I've always kept up my trade skills and wanted my kids to know a
trade they could play without relying on corporate jobs.

~~~
dongslol
Does programming count? :)

~~~
kakarot
Absolutely.

------
ibejoeb
well, I'm starting a company, and everyone who is interested is hired. It's a
pretty boring job; there's nothing to do. But you get compensated in real-time
rap sheet filings on yourself.

------
linkmotif
Good use case for Kafka

~~~
lr4444lr
I see what you did there. ;-)

------
bookmarkacc
I wonder how effective this will be at strike busting.

1\. Local police in the pocket of local business arrest protestors

2\. RAP BACK arrest record notification and thus grounds for termination

3\. Termination

4\. Charges dropped

------
throw2016
We have watched this country destroy other countries one after the other, prop
up the main global ideological and financial sponsors of terrorism and then
diabolically spend billions of dollars building a surveillance state at home
in response while pretending to be the good guy.

How can any responsible citizen let their own country do this to other
countries, allow a surveillance state to be built in the first place inspite
of all the revelations at great personal cost and allow the unencumbered
growth of a war mongering military industrial complex at home?

The business as usual tones of these discussions in the media and the constant
judging of others like China or Russia for authoritarianism reflects a
troubling dissonance and denial about the real consequences of our actions
both at home and abroad. We are not just destroying these countries, we are
killing hundreds of thousands of people, disrupting millions of families for
generations, decimating their infrastruture and way of life and putting them
back decades. These is the definition of crimes against humanity. Can we
really afford to be blase and unconcerned anymore.

Anyone can guess the inevitable consequence of trillions of dollars of spend
and adding millions of employees co-opted into the surveillance state.
Responsible citizens and anyone who believes in freedom, democracy and peace
cannot let this slide any longer.

------
Fifer82
At the end of the day. American citizens will be the judge. With a booming
demographic, you are watching the train pass, soon, you will be on, and then
drive that train. Don't fight age, or fear. One day, someone reading this on
HackerNews will take control. Our parents sent us to University, but, good
lucking fooling them.

------
throwwit
It all boils down to money. Departments got a revenue stream from the churn of
job applicant pool background checks. Now they're going with the SAAS model.
It's a pretty bad ethical conflict of interest; that unfortunately someone
without a job will never be able to afford to bring before the courts.

------
aarontyree
We need sweeping data rights legislation and soon. And as long as democracy
hijacking government agencies insist on compiling without cause or consent, a
publicly maintained list of the developers that build these tools for
government needs to be publicly available. A Hague for the digital age.

------
emptybits
I suppose the self-employed will have a new level of privilege -- an arrest
event will remain exactly what it always was and not a loss of livelihood.

------
zorpner
It's disappointing, but not surprising, to see this plummeting off the front
page. Tech is welcoming fascism with closed eyes and open arms.

------
jakeogh
"including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions"

I'm not sure what is, but I am sure that secret arrests and secret trials are
not the answer. My first thought was to argue due process but typing it out
made this contradiction inescapable.

------
kakarot
2018: FBI is Building a Watchlist That Gives Companies Real Time Updates on
Employee's Social Media and Forum Accounts

------
rdtsc
> First Amendment rights: filming public officials, attending protests,
> blocking streets.

Is blocking streets a First Amendment right? I heard protestors blocking an
exit to a hospital sometime ago. I would think that puts lives in danger.

Just wonder what does the law state there. Say a patient in an ambulance dies
on the way because of a protest blocking the street. Is there a precedent,
what happens then?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem with a lot of this is that it's just a pretext. You have laws
against blocking an ambulance, and there are legitimate reasons for that.

But if what you're really after is to prohibit protesting and the thing being
protested is near a hospital so you just go around arresting every protester
you can find in the street for blocking an ambulance, that's a different
situation.

~~~
rdtsc
> But if what you're really after is to prohibit protesting and the thing
> being protested is near a hospital

It would seem it would be a good idea to just not organize a protest close to
a hospital? Or have a more organized protest that would allow an ambulance to
pass...

~~~
itsjohncena
Can you show examples? This is feeling like a hypothetical you're using to
dismiss political speech rather than a genuine concern. I don't doubt it's
happened (I can think of a couple of anecdotal examples I've seen in person,
as well as plenty of times we let cops through even though we were fully
against them), but I also don't think you may have a respect for just how many
peaceful protests block roads or buildings in this country every single day
without major incidents. As someone else pointed out in this topic: the
revolution isn't televised.

~~~
dang
I appreciate (really, a lot) that you've been commenting civilly. But HN isn't
a forum to be used primarily for political or ideological battle. It is for
stories and conversations that gratify intellectual curiosity. Those things
don't sit well together, because the more powerful forces (political battle)
eventually overwhelm the more delicate ones (intellectual curiosity).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

------
dkarapetyan
This is great. Background checks now have webhooks. What could go wrong?

------
anorphirith
am I the only one who doesn't get people who write stupid titles ? let's read
this again: "FBI Is Building a Watchlist" ok they're spending time and money
to make a surveillance system. "That Gives Companies Real Time Updates on
Employees." and they give that system to "companies" so they can track their
own employees ?! ?! WTF

~~~
thehardsphere
They don't "give the system" to employers. The system is part of the FBI's
main biometric database. Basically, a small set of employers who have been
using this database (which is the same database that all fingerprinted
criminals are entered into) for background checks, now can subscribe to get
notifications from it if you're arrested sometime after your background check
was done.

Yes, it's a clickbaity title, but essentially sort of correct.

------
sjg007
Law would have to change.

------
pizza
Jean Valjean weeps

------
DictumExNihilo
There is a group who have proposed a solution to this problem for decades:

Shrink the state.

Until people stop believing that any effort to do so will result in everyone
literally dying in the street, the state will grow. Until people's first
impulse towards someone doing something they don't like ceases to be "there
ought to be a law", the state will grow. Until people stop demanding that laws
must affect the entirety of the country instead of just their state, the state
will grow.

What sort of government did we start with? "A republic, if you can keep it."
according to Ben Franklin.

We didn't keep it.

Keep it small, keep it close, and recognize that there are limits to the
problems a bureaucracy can solve. Be suspicious of all power. Be suspicious of
all taxation. A massive government can, and does, wield incredible fortune
like a weapon against the population.

Shrink the state until politicians are no longer worth buying and it barely
matters who holds the reins. Trust your neighbor a lot more and your
government a lot less.

Or do none of this, but don't ask why nobody told you this could happen.
Because we did, and you laughed at us and told us we were juvenile, loathsome,
heartless people.

~~~
llukas
Shrink the state = let rich & corporations get loose.

You want to replace kind of power that you got influence on and some
expectations about public information access with totally "private" power that
you got no control about.

That is special kind of stupid.

Thank you but no thank you.

~~~
DictumExNihilo
> let rich & corporations get loose

This belief only causes the state to grow. It inflates politicians to the
point where they are worth buying, so they are bought. They then make laws
that hurt their competition and help their corporation. They make laws that
make it extremely difficult to ever start a business to compete to begin with.
So the corporations get bigger, and have more to buy the politicians with. And
the scope of what the politicians control grows, so it costs more to buy them.
So access to your government shrinks to the point where only the most wealthy
have any real say in it.

And what does that look like? That looks like what we have. Congratulations
for being a part of the problem through the unwarranted fear of your fellow
man.

Because so many of you only want to see simple cause and effect, not the
multitudinous unintended consequences that every law and regulation creates.
You are controlled by your fears. If the state fails to do something, grow it.
If it succeeds at anything, grow it.

This is all I will say on this subject. I have spilled a lifetime of digital
ink over this, as have countless others, but to no avail. When the civil war
comes because everyone finally decides that everyone else is the enemy, don't
ask me for help. I'll be looking after myself and mine. I want with all my
heart for that not to happen, but you're going to start wanting it with all
your heads first.

~~~
azinman2
So instead Koch brothers are just completely unchecked? No thanks. What we
have is broken, but to remove the state is to allow the US to become a 3rd
world country where the mega rich get richer, federal parks land is auctioned
off, and pollution remains unchecked. We have enough examples of failed states
world wide to understand that rivers turning pink is what happens when you
don't have laws for the people.

~~~
Trundle
Are the Koch brothers abnormally strong or something? The state is what gives
anyone the ability to control that ridiculous amount of wealth. The idea that
them being unchecked without state backing is a problem is laughable.

------
jeffrey-sean
If you use social media, I would recommend using an app like Rep'nUp to find
any unprofessional Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram posts. Clean up anything
you don't want representing you!

[https://www.repnup.com/](https://www.repnup.com/)

------
darpa_escapee
FBI started out as the Pinkerton agency. They identified and
intimidated/killed strikers, workers planning to unionize and anyone that got
in the way of business.

This isn't surprising.

~~~
yareally
I think you mean the Secret Service started out as the Pinkerton Detective
Agency. They became part of the government due in part of protecting the
president and investigation into monetary related crime.

The FBI came in early 20th century as a need to address more conventional
crime that crossed state lines and made it difficult for states to
investigate/prosecute (organized crime, kidnapping, bootlegging). While you
could say it had a valid reason to exist, J. Edgar Hoover morphed it into
something entirely different.

Edit: To clarify my hastily typed up message from my phone, the Pinkertons
were government contractors and precursor to the Secret Service, but not the
same entity. Secret Service did not officially protect the president until the
assassination of President McKinley in 1901.

~~~
ubernostrum
Neither one is true.

The Secret Service was initially chartered solely as an anti-counterfeiting
task force. The Pinkertons never became part of the government; they were just
a handy private army to be deployed by people who'd obtained the good will of
the government.

~~~
yareally
Mea Culpa. Should have double checked before typing that out :)

Didn't mean to say they were the same thing, just the precursor of the Secret
Service and did much of the same work in a contractual role.

