
‘BlueLeaks’ Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments - itcrowd
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/06/blueleaks-exposes-files-from-hundreds-of-police-departments/
======
voiper1
>“Netsential confirmed that this compromise was likely the result of a threat
actor who leveraged a compromised Netsential customer user account and the web
platform’s upload feature to introduce malicious content, allowing for the
exfiltration of other Netsential customer data.”

So they are spinning it as a user's fault? Not the fault of Netsential for
allowing malicious content to be a problem...

~~~
joekrill
That's the first thing I thought, too - sounds like they are trying to spin it
as some malicious user "broke in". If a "customer user account" is able to
upload a malicious payload and exfiltrate huge amounts of other customers'
data, there's a much larger, underlying problem here. Hard to see how
Netsential could get through this fiasco and still have any business.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Legally speaking, if you find a bug and abuse it (to e.g. extract data),
you're breaking the law; I know people don't want to hear it and want to
protect whistleblowers, but it's factually illegal to steal data like this.

That's what whistleblowing is all about though; purposefully breaking the law
or a contract (like an NDA) to expose shit. Some countries will protect
whistleblowers, others have to flee and seek asylum abroad.

So don't deny whether or not law and/or contract was broken, instead focus on
whether the action was justified. Yes the system was broken and open for
exploitation, but the attack was not accidental: they intentionally uploaded a
malicious payload, intentionally extracted data, and intentionally uploaded it
to the internets.

~~~
tridentlead
Actually this is not whistleblowing. Technically, you need to have legal
access to the data to whistleblow. If you have to acquire access to the data
illegally to then release it its just illegal.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Worked for the Pentagon papers.

------
hypewatch
I’m disappointed that U.S. police departments would use such low a quality
service with no focus on security. Looking at Netsential’s website, their
services look very basic and inexpensive. There’s not even a mention of
security on its site. It was only a matter of time before they were hacked.

[https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=280](https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=280)

~~~
onion2k
That website is _ancient_. The layout is done with tables and there are bits
of code in there specifically for IE7.

That means it'll work on anything. The old desktop PCs that sit around in
public offices for decades will display it with no problems. Compare that to a
beautiful, modern website from a rival that plain won't load let alone render
on that ancient computer.

The one with the working website wins the contract.

~~~
dmix
What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible
websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic .

~~~
onion2k
_What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible
websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic._

Lots of things.

\- Screen readers expect HTML tables to _be_ tables. If there aren't things
like a caption the screen reader can inform the user of a problem.

\- In a lot of cases the table won't inline in to a logical structure for
reading out. A screen reader will read cells out from left to right, which
interleaves content from one column with content from another when that isn't
the intent. CSS layout will _usually_ read better.

\- Table-based layouts use a lot more code than CSS layouts, which is more to
download and more to parse.

\- In the case of that website in particular, there's a _ton_ of inline
styling which is more unnecessary data to download.

\- Using tables for layout makes it much harder to develop truly responsive
layouts for mobile; doing things like hiding download/battery intensive page
elements is much harder (especially if those things span several cells). That
site does have some media queries for controlling styles, but it could be
doing more.

~~~
dmix
That missed the point of my comment. Wasn't arguing 'for' table designs.

------
larrydag
If what the article says is true and PPI is indeed in these documents than
these documents are ripe for fraud, criminal use and identity theft. This is
worse than a password leak.

~~~
aj3
If previous incidents have taught us anything, it's that taxpayers should buy
free credit monitoring to everyone affected by the leak and be done with it.
Maybe throw in $10 to anyone that can prove they suffered losses as a direct
result of the leak.

~~~
aerostable_slug
Monitoring sucks. Freeze your credit (don't just lock it) until it's
absolutely needed, then refreeze it. This will choke off much of the business
of credit bureaus, but too bad so sad. There are a number of interesting
approaches to solving the same problems as credit bureaus (risk assessment,
identity verification, etc.) that don't carry as much consumer risk as the big
three bureaus do every single day.

~~~
thephyber
I'm pretty sure your parent comment was oozing sarcasm.

------
walrus01
tweet with the bittorrent magnet URL and trackers:
[https://twitter.com/eldstal1/status/1274660276508545025](https://twitter.com/eldstal1/status/1274660276508545025)

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I got meta parser error for the torrent. Did anyone else had issues?

~~~
walrus01
try with transmission, a number of less capable bittorrent clients don't like
single-file 290GB torrents.

------
jml7c5
This is quite wild. Is there any finer-grained summary of the sort of data
leaked, and how extensive it is? Even a million documents could be anything
from mundane to incredibly sensitive, depending on the sort of content.

~~~
thephyber
The leak is still too new and too large for a very detailed analysis, but
BleepingComputer has an article[1] on it.

[1] [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/blueleaks-
dat...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/blueleaks-data-dump-
exposes-over-24-years-of-police-records/)

------
CiPHPerCoder
> Stewart Baker, an attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of Steptoe &
> Johnson LLP and a former assistant secretary of policy at the U.S.
> Department of Homeland Security, said the BlueLeaks data is unlikely to shed
> much light on police misconduct, but could expose sensitive law enforcement
> investigations and even endanger lives.

But then there was this:
[https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1273329710576152581](https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1273329710576152581)

~~~
walrus01
far-right extremist terrorism greatly outranked radical wahabbi/salafists and
similar in 2018/2019, domestically, in the USA:

[https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-
unite...](https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-united-
states)

[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/201...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/03/07/467022/confronting-
domestic-right-wing-terrorist-threat/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-e...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-
extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-
terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/)

~~~
gadders
I see that first link kind of buried the lede in footnote 2: " The number of
casualties from attacks by Islamic extremists has been greater than by right-
wing extremists, largely because of a few cases like Omar Mateen’s Pulse
nightclub attack that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others."

So right wing terrorism is a greater threat, unless you are worried about
being killed.

~~~
Swenrekcah
If you are killed it doesn't matter how many others died with you. I
personally tend to be more worried about things that happen often and are
widespread, than things that happen seldom and are more localized.

But if asked "Are you more worried about right wing or islamist extremists?",
my answer is "Yes".

~~~
cm2187
From a number point of view, you should be more worried about common crime
than terrorism from any side.

~~~
walrus01
From a pure numbers/statistics point of view a great deal more people die from
slipping and falling or drowning in their bathtub every year than are killed
by either form of terrorism in the USA.

But we still should take efforts to reduce that, whether it's by building
showers with textured floors and efforts to counteract terrorism...

[https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-
in...](https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-in-a-tub-
nearly-every-day-in-1201018.php)

~~~
save_ferris
However, falling in the bathtub isn’t ideologically driven or at risk of
increasing dramatically based on political shifts.

We don’t take terrorism or white supremacy seriously because it poses an
imminent threat to everyone right now, we take it seriously because it has the
potential to put hundreds of thousands to millions of lives at risk in the
future if left unaddressed.

~~~
thomquaid
I am sorry to say this but white supremecy does not have the potential to kill
millions. It's like saying gang violence has the potential to kill millions.

~~~
walrus01
Except that within the memory of people still alive to witness it, it killed
approximately 6 million people in concentration camps...?

------
bluedays
Stop messing with people, and this won't happen. I don't feel bad for the
police.

~~~
banads
I too dislike hyper aggressive militarized police who act above the law. But
anyone who makes facile generalizations about entire groups of people is
merely mirroring the problem, not helping it.

Edit: "populations" -> "groups of people"

~~~
enraged_camel
Normally I agree, but this is one of those situations where the problem goes
_far_ beyond "a few bad apples". The entire police culture in the United
States is built on the "good" cops not reporting, fiercely defending, or even
lying to provide cover for the bad ones. And at that point, every person who
tolerates the bad behaviors ends up enabling them, and therefore become
complicit in them.

~~~
banads
>not reporting, fiercely defending, or even lying to provide cover for the bad
ones. And at that point, every person who tolerates the bad behaviors ends up
enabling them, and therefore become complicit in them.

Precisely the same mentality is present in many of the most crime ridden
neighborhoods in the US.[1]

Are you able to think objectively for a moment, and see how your reaction to
police doing that, is similar the police's reaction to criminals doing that?

[1][https://youtu.be/nFhWpTKvD8E](https://youtu.be/nFhWpTKvD8E)

~~~
teddyh
Classic whataboutism.

EDIT: The commented post was edited after I wrote my original above comment.
Now it’s more like victim-blaming.

~~~
banads
When two things are directly interrelated (attitudes among police and
attitudes among criminals), are we not allowed to discuss them both? Why not?
Seems like you're trying to purposefully shun context, which isn't a practical
way of understanding reality.

~~~
Apocryphon
For one thing, LEOs receive governmental and societal sanction, are armed with
lethal force, and receive legal immunity, and so clearly should be held to a
higher standard.

~~~
banads
Agreed! That still doesn't mean Collective Punishment is ethical

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment)

~~~
guerrilla
Stopping all of agroup from doing something terrible is a far cry frol
collective punishment. In fact there's no need to punish at all here, simple
eliminate the problem.

~~~
banads
That's not what were talking about here. Were talking about indiscriminate
hacking/doxing of police, and the people who are cheering that on. How is that
going to effectively address the root causes of police militarization?

------
rmrfstar
The only remarkable fact about this leak is that us plebes get to see the
other side of the one-way mirror.

~~~
macspoofing
You get to see how the sausage is made in a developed country which is, by
far, an outlier in its crime-rate. I'm all for increasing police de-escalation
training and policing standards in-general, I just don't think it will solve
the problems that the protestors want to be solved when the crime rate is as
high as it is. Ultimately, the cops are going to get jaded and stressed in
ways that cops in other nations would not, and they will always prioritize
their life and well-being over that of the perpetrator.

I was travelling a few years ago, and hanging out in the hotel bar in
Portland, Maine, and I listened in on a heated conversation between some guy
and a lady whose husband is a cop. They were discussing police brutality and
the protests at the time (Baltimore maybe?), and the lady's point was
basically "do whatever you want with regulating police behaviour, but I will
take my husband coming home at the end of the night over anything else"

It's possible with the falling rates of crime, this may just solve itself
(though increasing police training and standards is a good thing regardless).

~~~
halostatue
The crime rate in America is relatively low according to official data:

\- [https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/30/new-fbi-
data-v...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/30/new-fbi-data-violent-
crime-still-falling) \- [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2019/10/17/facts-about...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/)

The latter indicates that, depending on which data you use, the violent crime
rate dropped 50–75% between 1993 and 2018 (the larger drop is from BJS, which
has some methodology for estimating unreported crimes). The property crime
rate dropped at 50–70% over the same time period.

Various actors in society—police gangs (sorry, “unions”), public prosecutors,
for-profit prison operators, and straight up fascists—have been stoking fears
of Americans for decades such that there are people who genuinely believe that
America (as a whole) has more crime even when the numbers completely put a lie
to that.

I’m certain that the leaks from this will reinforce what we should already
know: America is increasingly a surveillance state of its police against its
people, that the police rarely end up doing the jobs that they are nominally
hired for (solving crimes), and that there has been an overall reduction in
crime but an increase in policing outsized compared to the value police forces
provide.

Don’t believe the bollocks.

~~~
macspoofing
>The crime rate in America is relatively low according to official data:

Come on. And those are aggregate numbers. There is variability between
different states, and rural vs urban crime. For example, I just looked up the
homicide rate in Atlanta Georgia (17 per 100k), vs Oslo, Norway (0.5 per
100k). That's crazy big.

>have been stoking fears of Americans for decades such that there are people
who genuinely believe that America (as a whole) has more crime even when the
numbers completely put a lie to that.

Things were really bad in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The downtown cores of most
major cities were dangerous. Don't pretend it was OK before. Things like the
90s 'crime bill' didn't just come out of nowhere. It was bad. Things only
started changing the late 90s and early 2000s when cities went through
resistance and yes, crime started falling.

~~~
halostatue
America has a very easy answer to reducing the death rate, but that it cannot
or will not take: get rid of the guns. Get them out of the criminal hands, get
them out of non-criminal hands, and get them out of cop hands.

You’re right that the 90s `crime bills` didn’t come out of nowhere. But they
didn’t come out of a “we need to make our communities safer” perspective (that
was merely the sales pitch)—because they increased criminal penalties on acts
that generally affect low-income and minority “criminals”. They _built_ the
problems we have today. The whole idea of a “super predator” was as much a
racist invention as Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens in Cadillacs”.

Civil Forfeiture and RICO sounded like a great idea when it was to be used
against white-collar beneficiaries of criminal enterprises. Except that’s not
how it got used, and so cops in all jurisdictions started rolling up money
from regular citizens just like a regular protection racket, except without
the protection. It was _meant_ to be used against the cartels, but instead it
got used as an income booster.

What made communities safer? It _wasn’t_ giving cops and prosecutors more
powers. Reinvestment in those communities. Education. Treatment for trauma.
Those things _all_ made far more difference in making communities safer than
any single power given to cops since the 90s. Those things just destroyed some
of the communities even more. Cities are _safer_ when you have people spending
money in them and living there. Suburbs and exurbs and white flight made
downtowns more dangerous by taking all of the money out of the cities and
leaving people in desperate straits. Reurbanization and gentrification
reversed the trends (although gentrification has its own problems).

Related to the use of aggregate numbers, read the Pew link. It talks about the
rural/urban variability and about local perception of crime (people believe
that there’s more crime across America, but most do not believe that there’s
more crime in _their_ area).

~~~
macspoofing
>America has a very easy answer to reducing the death rate, but that it cannot
or will not take: get rid of the guns.

Color me skeptical. Does banning certain drugs prevent drug-related crime?
These kinds of indirect proposals (e.g. ban guns), that purport to solve
complicated social problems (e.g. crime-rate) never pan out, but they are
attractive because it FEELS like they are the answer - especially if you
already have an ideology that underpins that belief.

> But they didn’t come out of a “we need to make our communities safer”
> perspective (that was merely the sales pitch)

Of course it did. That's exactly why that bill was passed.

>because they increased criminal penalties on acts that generally affect low-
income and minority “criminals”.

Because those companies are the most impacted by crime, petty or otherwise.
Gated rich communities were perfectly fine.

>Reinvestment in those communities. Education. Treatment for trauma. Those
things _all_ made far more difference in making communities safer than any
single power given to cops since the 90s. Those things just destroyed some of
the communities even more.

None of the things you present as explanations are actually supported by
anything. You're putting out explanations that you FEEL are correct based on
your own ideology and biases. City, State and Federal governments spend an
inordinate amount of money already. Maybe they should spend more, but I don't
see evidence that that will lead to outcomes you think it will.

>It talks about the rural/urban variability and about local perception of
crime (people believe that there’s more crime across America, but most do not
believe that there’s more crime in _their_ area).

Don't gas-light. Pull up the crime and homicide rates of a few American cities
and compare to Europe. Clearly, America is an outlier.

~~~
halostatue
Banning guns _absolutely does work_. Ask the people of Australia or Scotland
whether gun bans work. It doesn’t eliminate violent crime, but it has an
_absolute_ effect on both the terror and spread of same. (Yes, some people
switch to knives or bats, but such people are going to find their ways to be
violent just as people who want to pretend that gun bans don’t work will
conveniently ignore the majority of countries who have gun bans and lower
violent crime rates.)

Your assertion that the reason crime bills were passed is “we need to make our
communities safer” is nonsense. It’s the reason that was sold to terrified
Americans—and most of the terror was provided by the news, not the reality.
(IIRC, the crime rates were _already dropping_.) The reasons that they were
passed is a) racism, b) profit, c) power, and d) racism.

And yes, America’s an outlier. But mostly because it also has the widest
wealth gap in the developed world (_mostly_ predicated on race, but not
exclusively).

I’m not gaslighting anyone—I’m telling you straight up that America’s crime
problems—such as they exist are:

1\. Incorrect, usually radicalized, reporting in a way that supports the
_fear_ that there is more crime than there is; 2\. Overpolicing and
overprosecution, especially of minority persons; 3\. the effects of extended
systemic racism and the casual acceptance of white supremacy in policing; and
4\. poverty and the criminalization of being poor or otherwise disadvantaged.

If people have no hope, what do you expect?

~~~
macspoofing
You just assert things as facts. You assert that American gun rights are the
cause of levels of crime. You assert the wealth gap is responsible for levels
of crime. You assert the intent of the crime bill was "a) racism, b) profit,
c) power, and d) racism". That is not true. The 90s were not Jim Crow 1890s.
People did actually care about crime and impact of crime and it was really
bad. Did people just forget that during the 70s, 80s and 90s crime destroyed
inner-cities? That the urban renaissance of the 2000s didn't actually occur
until AFTER crime-rates started to fall? Also, it is a well known fact (though
conveniently ignored) that the crime bill had the support of minority
communities and minority leaders, because it's not pleasant to live and raise
children in a neighborhood with gang violence, crime and open drug use.

You have no basis for anything of those things.

>2\. Overpolicing and overprosecution

America has an over-sentencing problem. American prison sentences are higher
than anywhere in the world. The people who are actually in prison, are guilty
of the crimes they are accused of being guilty, the difference is that in
Europe a rapist may get probation, while here (e.g. Weinstein) gets 23 years.

------
jdright
Source: [https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets](https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets)

Their server seems to be dead right now.

------
siruncledrew
Are there data descriptors somewhere or a sample of what’s in these files?

------
zionic
Wow, so many [flagged] and [dead] comments!

~~~
r1508982927
that's the culture war playing out, with bad agents all around. somebody posts
a tweet linking outlaw motorcycle gangs to riots, gets flagged, i post a
rebuttal in the same thread, also get flagged. it's a site full of narcissist
"oh no, somebody has a different opinion from mine!"

~~~
anigbrowl
Does it feel like things have really gone downhill since you joined?

------
Havoc
So how many watchlists do I get put on if I download this?

------
ourya
Years ago a fusion center in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential
domestic terrorists. There were so many controversial aspect to these fusion
centers.

[https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-09-12/ron-
pa...](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-09-12/ron-paul-a-
domestic-terrorist/)

~~~
newacct583
This is the kind of pseudofact that tends to trigger my BS detector (tl;dr:
it's BS), so I followed your link. It mentions Ron Paul in only one sentence
beyond the headline: where it appears in one clause, a semicolon-separated
member of a list of "disturbing incidents": " _a Missouri-based center 's
report that support for Ron Paul's presidential bid was a sign of membership
in a domestic terrorist group_".

But if you did, there's a link at the bottom to the report they're citing, so
let's check that:
[http://www.austinchronicle.com/documents/fusioncenterreport....](http://www.austinchronicle.com/documents/fusioncenterreport.pdf)
This one isn't original reporting either. It's a 38-page think tank whitepaper
from "The Constitution Project" on the subject of Fusion Centers in general.

And _IT_ only mentions Ron Paul in one sentence too, where it mixes it in with
two other items in the same bullet point: " _A Missouri-based fusion center
issued a February 2009 report describing support for the presidential
campaigns of Ron Paul or third party candidates, possession of the iconic
“Don’t Tread on Me” "ag and anti-abortion activism as signs of membership in
domestic terrorist groups_" So now we've gone from your 8 year old link to a
point three years farther in the past. And the source for that attention
grabbing headling is still nowhere to be found.

But that bullet point was footnoted, so let's check that. It's... another news
story! Actually the URL in the footnote is stale and broken, but I found the
story by headline using Google:
[https://www.columbiatribune.com/article/20090314/News/303149...](https://www.columbiatribune.com/article/20090314/News/303149835)

So this tells us all about the Ron Paul thing, right? Nope. It, too, mentions
Ron Paul in only one sentence: " _Red flags outlined in the document include
political bumper stickers such as those for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, talk of
conspiracy theories such as the plan for a mega-highway from Canada to Mexico
and possession of subversive literature._ ". So that's dilluted _STILL
FURTHER_ in a bunch of other items, most of which sound... not too terribly
off to me.

And the source for this report? They have a link, but not to the report:
[https://www.infowars.com/secret-state-police-report-ron-
paul...](https://www.infowars.com/secret-state-police-report-ron-paul-bob-
barr-chuck-baldwin-libertarians-are-terrorists/)

Yup, four hops and we're at Infowars. And the report they cite? Not public.
They're apparently the only one who have seen it.

You got fooled by "media laundering" into regurgitating partisan agitprop. I
can't prove your "fact" is wrong, but the support for it is _VERY_ thin.

~~~
ourya
And your pseudo 60 second detective work is an example of another problem: you
speak authoritatively on a topic you just learned about.

The Missouri Highway Patrol retracted the report from the Missouri Information
Analysis Center (MIAC) in 2009. They removed the mentions for Ron Paul and
Campaign for Liberty.

The Highway Patrol launched an investigation into the origin of the report.
The Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder called for the suspension of the Director
of Public Safety “until those responsible have been identified”.

We personally investigated the story in 2009. I have seen the report. I served
as a national Ron Paul campaign person and currently work within the IC and
international law enforcement.

The Fusion of Paranoia and Bad Policy - Center for Democracy and Technology
4/1/2009

[https://cdt.org/insights/the-fusion-of-paranoia-and-bad-
poli...](https://cdt.org/insights/the-fusion-of-paranoia-and-bad-policy/)

~~~
newacct583
I'm not speaking authoritatively on anything. I followed the link you provided
to learn about the subject, and it led me only to Infowars.

[OK, you found an original scan, thanks.] That new link is still broken. Where
is the report? Don't give me partisan think tanks or your personal experience
on the Paul campaign, give me a source.

OK, now can we take this seriously? What's the language in that report that
says that the center was associating Ron Paul support with domestic terrorism
or whatever? All I see is that it says militia membership correlates with
right wing violence (seems reasonable). I STILL can't find anything
significant about Ron Paul. It's certainly not a major point. Please point me
to it.

~~~
ourya
This is the only link I can find. The Lt. Governor was involved in the story —
what in the world are you claiming? You are defending fusion centers who
targeted people with thought crimes?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100108060904/media.kspr.com/do...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100108060904/media.kspr.com/documents/MIAC_report_kspr.pdf)

~~~
newacct583
I'm TRYING to figure out where the support for the statement "a fusion center
in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential domestic terrorists."
comes from!

And I still can't find it. This report isn't about domestic terrorism, it's
about the militia movement (which correlates, but it's not the same thing).
And it's absolutely not about Ron Paul, I can't even find where it mentions
that fact in passing.

You're spinning like crazy here, about a 12 year old report saying
(apparently) unflattering things about a 16 year old presidential campaign. No
one is being called a domestic terrorist anywhere in these links.

~~~
khawkins
OP: "a fusion center in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential
domestic terrorists"

Report, top of page 7: "Militia members most commonly associate with 3rd party
political groups. It is not uncommon for militia members to display
Constitutional Party, Campaign for Liberty, or Libertarian material. These
members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate: Ron Paul,
Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr."

Honestly, I'm sympathetic to many of the ideologies and ideas that are
described in this report, but I actually think the document is important as an
internal document for police. They need to be informed about radicals within
these ideologies, and knowing who they might vote for for president is very
relevant for helping to understand or empathize with them, especially for
conflict deescalation.

Say you're in a hostage negotiation with a sovereign-citizen type who's
worried you're going to disappear them to some black-ops prison. If you knew
enough about the movement to abolish the Fed, about FEMA camps, or about the
NWO, and said you're a Ron Paul supporter, you might be able to establish
trust. Ron Paul isn't strictly someone involved with the latter two
conspiracies, but there is a heavy correlation between the three, and he's the
highest profile figure supporting the first.

These documents aren't political, they're tactical information for real-life
police work. Police have to deal with the radicals, even if they're a fringe
minority.

~~~
asdfasdf12124
The signal to noise ration between Ron Paul supporters and violent criminals
is arguably less than people of a certain skin color and being a violent
criminal. Can someone support political profiling while dismissing racial
profiling?

(this is a mental exercise in principled reasoning. I'm not racist).

~~~
newacct583
There is a difference between noting an association between characteristics
and acting on them.

"Racial profiling" isn't bad because it's based on the (correct, though
specious -- they're poorer) observation that young black men commit more per-
capita crimes, it's bad because it leads to law enforcement _behavior_ that
causes young black men to be stopped, frisked, detained, prosecuted and
incarcerated at rates _MUCH HIGHER_ than their per-capita crime statistics
would indicate.

Basically: the idea that "black kids are criminals" leads police to
disproportionately enforce the laws against black kids while letting "non-
criminal" demographics off the hook.

But no one argues we should censor reports that detail youth crime statistics
by race, which is what's happening here.

------
coding_lobster
I kind of share the sentiment expressed in the final quote of the article.
From the way the dataset is described this could be really helpful to
criminals and really harmful and dangerous for other folks - police and
civilian alike.

~~~
sschueller
I would rather have an extra criminal on the streets than risk ruining
someones live that is innocent because some cop planted evidence.

Just this week a bodycam from NYC officer shows him planting drugs over 2
years ago. The person who's involved took a plea deal because they didn't want
to risk going to jail for many years. The cop still has his job and this
wasn't the first time.

Try getting a job in the US with a criminal record.

~~~
raxxorrax
Not if you are in a witness protection program against a drug mafia. They will
take their opportunity to send a message.

Overall I agree though. This is the same baseless defense used against leaking
of info on war crimes.

I doubt planting evidence is common, but it will nevertheless be interesting
to dig through that. If it is true the cop is still serving, it should be a
huge scandal. These practices need to be stomped out immediately.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> If it is true the cop is still serving, it should be a huge scandal.

Who cares if it’s a huge scandal? I remember reading about the “scandal” years
ago. The cop is still has his job and was never charged with a crime.

The cop broke the law multiple times on video, an innocent person suffered
physical and mental harm. The cop caused harm to all of society by reducing
the trust between members of society. Yet he has a job, one with power over
others where his word matters more than others.

Hence the protests.

