
John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an FBI Break-In, Dies - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/obituaries/john-raines-84-who-evaded-capture-in-an-fbi-break-in-dies.html
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math_and_stuff
It's worth noting that the leader of the break in, William Davidon [1], was an
Argonne researcher who invented the precursor to BFGS (though it took the
community a long time to publish his quasi-Newton method).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Davidon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Davidon)

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cdubb
The stolen documents served to illustrate that there's a big difference
between what the public thinks the FBI does and what they actually do:

"According to its analysis of the documents in this FBI office, 1 percent were
devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine
forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political
surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups,
ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14
percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military
without government permission." The remainder concerned bank robberies,
murder, rape, and interstate theft."

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harry8
Friendly reminder the FBI still have their HQ named "The J. Edgar Hoover
Building"

They still celebrate their proven criminality.

How about renaming it the "John Raines" building to show they don't think
being criminal was or is a good idea? How about just having the building
nameless rather than celebrating their own evil?

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yuchi
Can someone explain this in simple-english? It’s pretty difficult to
understand good-doers from evil-doers here…

Edit/clarification: non native english speaker here…

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ImSkeptical
Seems like in the 70's this guy, his wife, and six other people pulled off a
daring robbery of an FBI office. They broke in by picking the lock, then stole
a bunch of files. They relied on the people in the office being distracted by
a boxing match, and they were.

The burglars then went over their files, and found what seem to me to be
pretty silly things, like FBI agents being instructed to create the perception
that the organizations they were investigating had many FBI informers and
agents in them.

They passed on the files to a reporter anonymously. Reporters and later
investigations by Congress revealed more details about the FBI's cointelpro
project, wherein the FBI committed illegal sabotage against groups they were
investigating.

Who are the good and bad people? Well, the FBI is bad for committing illegal
sabotage. The burglars are good for getting important information, but bad for
doing it by stealing random boxes of files - which might've hindered
legitimate investigations. The reporter is good for publishing her story.
Congress is good for investigating further but bad for doing nothing effective
to curtail abuses by American federal intelligence agencies.

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stuffedBelly
This event is so comical that makes me wonder why there isn't already a movie
about it.

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njharman
> He excused himself to shower.

Who gets to go take a shower while FBI agents wait for you downstairs!?

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ryanlol
Anyone I guess, it doesn't sound like they had a warrant.

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vanderZwan
> The burglary, on March 8, 1971, at the F.B.I. office in an apartment
> building across from the county courthouse in Media, Pa., prompted a debate
> over whether the perpetrators were traitors who wantonly exposed official
> secrets or heroic whistle-blowers who preserved civil liberties.

I do hope that this debate is considered thoroughly settled in favour of the
whistle-blowers by now?

~~~
pwinnski
It's impossible to look at 46 years ago without seeing through the lens of
four years ago, so I imagine people's opinions on Raines closely mirror their
opinions on Snowden.

Which is fine by me, as I think both Raines and Snowden should be viewed
closer to the "heroic whistle-blowers" end of the spectrum. But I suspect
there are many who see both Raines and Snowden as traitors.

I'd be very interested in hearing the reasoning of someone who had different
opinions on the two.

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Bartweiss
It seems likely that anyone with split opinions would support Raines over
Snowden; the obvious difference between the two cases is J. Edgar Hoover.

Snowden exposed a mass surveillance program, some of which appears to have
been illegal. Raines did likewise, but also exposed a serious campaign of
harassment against activists - one prosecuted by an FBI director who was
apparently viewed as beyond the control of even the President.

I think some of the more technocratic types I know might say Snowden's leaks
were about "agencies doing what they should", while Raines' was a necessary
reaction to an out-of-control administrator.

If there are people who support Snowden but oppose Raines, I'd be fascinated
to hear what rationale that uses - nothing comes to mind.

~~~
gtcode
-

~~~
Bartweiss
...?

I see this sort of comment every time Snowden comes up on HN. Someone alludes
to secret knowledge about him, then makes a dramatic statement that doesn't
have any actually-testable component. It's true, the extent of the damage
Snowden caused may never be known - even if there wasn't any!

Could you perhaps clarify any of this?

I'm particularly interested by "the Honolulu hackerspace that he later used
for his politics". To my knowledge, the only involvement he ever had was to
throw a single crypto party there, which none of the attendees have described
as being especially political or unusual. Hosting crypto parties at
hackerspaces is a pretty standard practice from what I've seen.

Did Snowden do something else political or detrimental at HiCapacity? And does
that somehow tie into knowing "a thing or two" about him, given that no one at
HiCapacity (or anywhere) seems to have known about the leaks until they were
national news?

edit: Seeing as the parent was deleted, I should say that there wasn't
anything interesting there. A weird allusion to Snowden screwing up a
hackerspace, but no actual substance to justify the mystery.

