I've been very vocal against mass surveillance, mostly with the argument that the court warrant system is entirely sufficient for police to do their jobs.
One important thing about warrants and subpoenas is that they are often limited to strictly collecting data related to a specific investigation - not a fishing expedition.
> The judge placed some limits on the subpoena. He said police could use the images to identify suspects only in the arson and gun theft investigations. Detectives could not use the photos or video to pursue suspects in vandalism or other lesser crimes — even if police found such evidence.
> The subpoena would also be limited to professional camera equipment and would exclude reporters’ cell phone photos and videos.
This seems to fit the criteria - especially since police firearms were stolen.
The only red flag is that they are asking 5x different news organization to hand over journalist's raw recordings. I'd be highly skeptical of this subpoena if I was a judge - unless they could prove the journalists were likely the only ones at the time recording the incident, that they know were present, and it didn't apply to material involved in any specific reporting. Broad footage taken at a public event is always less concerning and less protected.
But at the same time tons of people are recording protests besides journalists and it might just be laziness on the police's part. Although that said, sometimes rioters intimidate people trying to film crimes being committed (as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/hu9l...). And the police claim "the department was at a dead end in its investigations." So I'm not sure much outrage is warranted here, but I'd still probably lean on the safe side.
Well that and what kind of visibility and process and oversight do we have into this process that the police will truly stay within the judges confinements.
I mean let's be honest. They are going to feed it into facial recognition, identify their targets and then gather whatever additional evidence. They could then potentially present a new case with evidence external to the data collection and construct a narrative around that.
If you trawl in someone's activities and background long enough, you can usually find something to charge them with. It's a favorite tactic of repressive regimes that seek to present veneer of legitimacy.
What happens once they have the footage is anybody's guess. So even if they receive it with restrictions the only thing that matters is whether they receive it or not.
"The judge placed some limits on the subpoena. He said police could use the images to identify suspects only in the arson and gun theft investigations. Detectives could not use the photos or video to pursue suspects in vandalism or other lesser crimes — even if police found such evidence."
Do you, in good faith, honestly believe the police won't attempt to use the evidence for any and all means they deem necessary?
It's like the leaks that came out not too long ago, how even the FBI was querying NSA databases when they suspected someone of being a criminal.... I don't even need to say more to demonstrate how abusive the "law enforcement" (blackmail) system is.
This is true in virtually every country with a system of warrants for evidence collection when investigating a crime. The problem here for many people is the underlying police violence that in part instigated these crimes against the police.
Unfortunately, this order will prevent the police from using any video evidence of crimes perpetrated by a police officer found in the evidence siezed.
> The SPD subpoena seeks media images taken during a 90-minute span in a four-block area between Fourth and Sixth Avenue and Olive Way to Pike Street that day.
For reference, that's a 2 by 2 block centered around Westlake Station.
Journalists withhold evidence all the time, often that's the only reason they can get evidence in the first place. For instance when they interview various forms of criminals.
Setting this precedent will mean that when covering riots in the future they will have to worry about whether or not the rioters will attempt to prevent them from acquiring footage, or even attempting to destroy footage that they have acquired. That's a chilling effect on the freedom of the press that will last decades.
There is also a potential chilling effect on peaceful protestors here, who now know that the police have yet another way of identifying them to retaliate. That's more of a problem in a place like Hong Kong than the US, but the constitution is there to prevent the US from being able to become like Hong Kong.
It's a different matter, yes, but as the parent poster noted, there's a compelling public interest argument in favor of withholding said evidence in order to preserve the ability of the press to do their job.
You can't have everything, so we must compromise. Unfortunately, in this case the judge ruled incorrectly, and freedom of the press will suffer as a result. If this ruling is allowed to stand, any future event a journalist covers where someone happens to commit a crime of opportunity will result in that journalist being at risk of harm should the perpetrators notice that they've been filmed. And that will make journalists think twice about covering such events.
The alternative is allowing criminals to get away with what they were filmed doing, which of course leaves a bad taste in ones mouth. But given the stakes, it's a sacrifice we must make. I'm of course talking about crimes-of-opportunity here (in this case, arson), not planned terrorist attacks or murder, where journalists would be at risk regardless.
> Recording who set a police car on fire and refusing to hand over the recording is a different matter.
That might be true if you know that Journalist X has an actual picture of the person lighting the car on fire and your are asking for that specific picture.
However, that is NOT the case here. The police are on a fishing expedition and are asking for pictures that "might" include the perpetrators.
Those pictures also might include a picture of someone the police might like to identify in order to exert some intimidation. The fact that the judge limited the scope is not terribly useful. Parallel construction is a thing.
Journalists aren't evil. They don't necessarily want criminals to get away with their crimes. Normally you would just politely ask the journalists to go over their pictures and turn over any that they think would be helpful.
However, after the police attacked journalists on camera, you can imagine that most journalists are more inclined to give the police the middle finger rather than cooperate.
Except in the US, there is parallel construction. So it could help with the dragnet for sure. Given that we at this point don't entirely trust the Police either, they could also just find people in the videos and harass them, right?
Lawyers have attorney-client privilege because courts have construed it essential for upholding the 6th Amendment's decree of right to counsel. If the press is seen as a surveillance apparatus for the police, you believe that has no implications on the First Amendment's freedom of press?
Journalists are allowed to keep their sources secret even if the government alleges that a crime has taken place. These rules are not as clear cut as you’re implying.
No such constitutional right exists at the federal level.
> The Supreme Court decided in a five to four decision that the press did not have a Constitutional right of protection from revealing confidential information in court. The court acknowledged, however, that the government must "convincingly show a substantial relation between the information sought and a subject of overriding and compelling state interest."
Yep, and while Washington does have a shield law, the judge in this case has decided that it does not fully apply against this kind of subpoena:
> Lee said the news organizations were not protected by a Washington state shield law that under many circumstances prevents authorities from obtaining reporters’ unpublished materials.
"Given the wildly lax sandwich laws in the United States, I imagine that the folks who took these sandwiches could've just as easily driven over to Wade's in Bellevue and bought themselves something equally lethal. No reason why we should uniquely be having such a freakout over sandwiches disappearing from a Seattle PD car"
I'm a brit so I don't know anything about guns but I'm assuming they're more dangerous than a bread-based food, which may be be the point.
Presumably if you go to Wade's in Bellevue and buy a gun there's some sort of paper trail that can be useful in investigations should the gun be used in a crime.
In general, people who steal guns don't leave their name and address.
This comment blatantly breaks the guidelines and yet nobody flags it. But when I make a benign comment that has a pro-conservative sentiment, it’s instantly flagged and responded to by Dan.
It’s a fact that the guidelines are bendy. It’s a fact that comments that break guidelines but have a liberal sentiment get flagged and danged much, much less often than the same comments with conservative sentiment. That is a fact and I invite everyone who reads this censored and flagged comment to see for themselves.
I'm trying to recall an incident (19th or 20th c.) where a mine or a factory hired strikebreaker snipers to climb into towers and shoot down into the strikers.
The only reason we have days off is because of productivity gains due to investment in capital goods. If we can wean ourselves off of a debt-based economy, then we might be able to whittle that workweek down even further. We seem to have stalled right around 1971 when dollar convertibility was suspended.
Well the distinction usually depends on the observer.
In Israel we have a palamentary system as opposed to a presidential one. PM netanyahu, which is about to be under criminal trial, is trying to pass a law where he will have basically the authority to make any decree without the authorization of the parliament. Making him the defacto.president, minus checks and balances.
Naturally large scale protests are taking place. Israel protests are usually very tame, no looting and practically no violence,atleast when to what you see in French or the US.
The most violent things protesters did was sitting on the road (which was blocked by police) in front of the PM residence.
This did not stop media controlled by Netanyahu to pump the notion that these protesters are all rioters and anarchists. While a lot of them are yound middle class educated family people, Led by 60-70 yo without any political aspiration.
So when the person being protested against calls the protesters rioters, I tend to take it with a grain of salt.
> practically no violence,atleast when to what you see in French or the US.
To be frank, i don't know about the US, but violence in French protest used to be well-contained and limited to a few buildings (often a mcdonald, a bank or two and sometime a Tesla, nothing an assurance wouldn't cover, and free time for a dozen employee during the repairs) until recently when lawkeeping doctrine were changed to avoid making our government looking like they lost.
Violence from protesters used to be limited to black blocks, and black blocks are organized and carefull, attached to symbols. You could predict which batiment could be targeted ahaed of time, take preventive mesure for those batiments. They never put fire in commercial building if there were occupied appartement nearby.
Then, because of a macdonald destruction that looked bad on a camera (despite looking really, really good for anybody aware of what lawkeeping really is about: 3 minor injuries, 90 BB arrested for a quarter of a million of property damage), police were asked to start protecting batiment.
That made mobile brigade and CRS immobile and unable to follow and limit property destruction, so a minister door was fractured.
Easy solution, just had more police. even if the ones we add are not trained in lawkeeping at all and are used to anti-drugs operation and are a bit trigger-happy. And also, change the doctrine, instead of letting black blocks destroying property to scare protesters off and nest BB more easely, meet them earlier. If "normals" protester don't want to be hurt, they shouldn't be near these black blocks!
We are two deaths, three hands, around twenty eyes, battered poicemen and a dropping confidence in the police after those "clever" decisions.
Violence call for violence, and now the protester are really violent. Their rights.
I'm sorry if I came off critical of French or US protesters. I only meant that we are not there yet, I fear that the abuse inflicted by the current netanyahu regime might lead to escalation. I'm agree full heartedly that violence calls for violence. I'm also pretty sure that the outcome the Netanyahu regime hopes for is violent protests.
This way he can instill fear in the more well off people and have the mandate to use more extreme violence against protesters until he breaks them or no one but the actual anarchists are willing to continue.
So yes, violence calls for violence. But, we must break the cycle, I think nonviolent resistant is the only way to go.
Sadly, a lot of the media in Israel is either controlled by netanyahu via a web of corrupt interests or out right fear. Now it's mainly commercial fear, but he has been targeting and enflaming against top tier journalists that won't back down. Anyway, they don't show the peacful side of the protest.
The police minister conversation with the chief of police was just leaked. In it he demands more violence against protesters, and his argument his, that it's not fair the police won't violently suppress these protests with the same level of violence they use against minorities.
So you are suggested that the police get a pass because we already accept that some are bad but protesters shouldn’t because some people don’t realize that rioters like to hang out and cause mayhem at protests?
No sane person can look at the riots and say this is protest it stopped being that long ago.
It stopped being that the moment it turned into riots.
Those still participating are complicit at the very least and I would hazard a guess are well fucking aware of what they're doing.
I should clarify, I am well aware there are still ongoing peaceful protests.
Those are not an issue, and nobody on this side is confusing them or labelling them as rioters.
If you want to see what biased but relatively fair coverage of this, go watch tim pool on youtube. There is a bit of exaggeration but by and large what he speaks is mostly pretty solid reasoning.
The extreme left has taken over this issue and is destroying our chances at finally removing trump. And I'm pissed about this, because the issues these riots started over are real, and need resolution, but these riots don't result in this outcome.
They result in more people falling down the right side of things.
> No sane person can look at the riots and say this is protest it stopped being that long ago.
Plenty of us sane people can still see the protests going on, the actual riots are not that common but are covered disproportionately by the press (but especially by FoxNews who is making out Portland and Seattle as apocalyptic hellscapes). I assume you are either in Portland and just not paying attention or you are getting all your information from the media.
As someone mentioned above, some people are protesting peacefully while others are committing crimes and rioting. The concern is that police, and now federal agents, aren't acting in good faith and aren't interested in distinguishing between the two. It's possible to be concerned about abuse of power by law enforcement - which has been rampantly on display these past few weeks - without supporting anarchist attempting to set fire to buildings.
If we could know for sure the police weren't going to abuse their authority, there would have been neither protests nor riots.
I think that's plenty observed actually. When you look at who's been shot, beaten, and gassed it's largely protesters, not people rioting. Although it's easy for police to make the claim that it's rioters, since they seem to declare every protest a riot.
The cops are nominally after evidence on arson and gun theft. It could be legit, it could be just an excuse. The fact that we can't trust them not to use the data for other purposes once they have it is very much part of the reason these protests exist.
The cops are just looking for evidence of felony crimes, not all your notes to your mom and coworkers – but if you were reluctant to hand over your email credentials, would it seem fair to characterize you as complicit in covering up for felony crimes?
Sorry, I didn’t mean my analogy to be a wholesale dismissal of the subpoena or its justification. I meant to address what seemed like circular reasoning in your reply to this thread.
The thread started out with someone arguing that the "protests" are actually "riots". Someone else replied by pointing out "because there's riots and protests", which are not the same thing.
So then you replied with, "The cops are after evidence on arson and gun theft, not protests, as the headline says." – which I took (perhaps mistakenly) as an argument that the media's footage should not be considered as innocuous "protest footage", because the cops believe that it contains evidence of crimes.
But that seems like begging the question? Ignoring the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept (two suspects have been arrested and charged, but not tried), it seems problematic to argue that the media should handover its riot footage on the basis that the police believe it contains evidence of riotous activity.
Just as it would be problematic to characterize someone's personal email account as being non-innocuous, on the basis of what the police assert they might find if they do a few keyword searches of it.
> would it seem fair to characterize you as complicit in covering up for felony crimes?
The way this part was written in context was hard to parse for me - on first read it seemed that you were arguing that it would be fair to say that you were complicit. This reply shows that you intended this in a more hyperbolic way, or in such a way that you would mock-suggest that “surely this would not be fair,” which is obvious when I already know your meaning, but didn’t seem clear to me on first read.
This is from Jason Stanley’s book, “How Fascism Works”:
Politicians who describe whole categories of persons as “criminals” are imputing to them permanent character traits that are frightening to most people, while simultaneously positioning themselves as our protectors. Such language undermines the democratic process of reasonable decision making, replacing it with fear. Another salient example in the U.S. context is the use of the term “riot” to describe political protests. In the United States in the 1960s, the civil rights movement included black political protests in urban areas against police brutality (most famously in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and the Harlem district of Manhattan). These protests were regularly described in the media as “riots.” As James Baldwin wrote at the time about the media description of these protests, “when white men rise up against oppression, they are heroes: when black men rise, they have reverted to their native savagery. The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was not described as a riot, nor were the participants maligned as hoodlums: the boys and girls in Watts and Harlem are thoroughly aware of this.” 2 Such misrepresentations allowed Richard Nixon to run for office in 1968 on a “law and order” platform. Nixon’s administration is generally viewed as laying the groundwork for the subsequent mass incarceration of black American citizens.
In 2015, widespread protests by largely black crowds against police brutality occurred in Baltimore after the killing of Freddie Gray by police. In an article for Linguistic Pulse in April 2015, Nic Subtirelu compared different media outlets’ use of “protest” versus “riot” to describe the Baltimore protests. Subtirelu found that Fox News, the United States’ far-right media outlet, used “riot” in its coverage of the Baltimore unrest with more than twice the frequency of its use of “protest.” CNN, by contrast, used “riot” with only slightly more frequency than “protest,” and MSNBC used “protest” with only slightly more frequency than “riot” in its coverage of the unrest in Baltimore. 3 The misrepresentation of political protests as riots was a factor in the election campaign of Donald Trump, whose campaign had strong echoes of Nixon’s. Nixon, however, campaigned at a time of rising rates of violent crime. Trump’s successful “law and order” campaign took place under the conditions of some of the lowest rates of violent crime in recorded U.S. history.
Discussion that uses terms like “criminal” to encompass both those who commit multiple homicides for pleasure and those who commit traffic violations, or “riot” to describe a political protest, changes attitudes and shapes policy. A good example of what can result when language that criminalizes an entire group of people distorts debate and leads to unreasonable outcomes is the mass incarceration of American citizens of African descent.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
>Politicians who describe whole categories of persons as “criminals” are imputing to them permanent character traits that are frightening to most people, while simultaneously positioning themselves as our protectors.
What category specifically is the Portland Police describing as "criminals"? They are specifically calling those partaking in a riot "rioters". None of this is race related, and as a matter of fact, the vast majority of these rioters are white.
>Such language undermines the democratic process of reasonable decision making
The decisions have been made. Defacing and burning down buildings and assaulting officers is illegal. Partaking in this illegal behavior in large groups is what rioters do.
>Another salient example in the U.S. context is the use of the term “riot” to describe political protests.
No one is describing the peaceful protests as riots. The riots are described as riots.
The rest of your post is full of illogic and is clearly not describing what we're seeing in Portland. By no legal definition is what's going on in Portland now considered a "peaceful protest".
>Discussion that uses terms like “criminal” to encompass both those who commit multiple homicides for pleasure and those who commit traffic violations
Homicides are criminal, many traffic violations are decidedly NOT CRIMINAL, and instead are civil infractions. Much like riots are criminal and protests are civil. Perfect example actually, thanks for proving my point.
Law enforcement wants to brand protesters as rioters because it helps law enforcement aims and goals, which is to end the protest and the riots. This should be obvious, as they have allowed looting and rioting in instances, as well as curtailing and meaningfully impeding constitutionally protected protest activity. When law enforcement is allowed to designate people or groups as rioters indiscriminately, and then brutalize them, then arrest them, it’s clear that your rights are being impinged. Doubly so if you’re a journalist, though I feel that double standard has outlived its usefulness; the subsequent protections ought to apply to everyone subject to US law, but that’s a different topic entirely. The fact of the matter is anyone posting on this site now has more power and reach than any “journalist” in 1776, and can do as much or more “journalism” on a Twitter account today than William Randolph Hearst could on a good day in 1898.[1][2]
An interesting historical footnote from [1]:
A leader of the Cuban rebels, Gen. Calixto García[3], gave Hearst a Cuban flag that had been riddled with bullets as a gift, in appreciation of Hearst's major role in Cuba's liberation.
>Law enforcement wants to brand protesters as rioters because it helps law enforcement aims and goals, which is to end the protest and the riots.
Categorically false. There were dozens upon dozens of peaceful protests across the country in the past weeks that were decidedly not branded as riots. Very few police departments have declared groupings as riots, fewer than ten. Orders of magnitude less than the amount of protests.
>This should be obvious, as they have allowed looting and rioting in instances, as well as curtailing and meaningfully impeding constitutionally protected protest activity.
This makes little sense and actually disproves your point? City councils and mayors oversee the police departments and tell them to stand down.
>When law enforcement is allowed to designate people or groups as rioters indiscriminately, and then brutalize them, then arrest them, it’s clear that your rights are being impinged.
So you just said they're not able to since in other areas they've been told to stand down and not enforce or designate anything. You can't have it both ways.
>and can do as much or more “journalism” on a Twitter account today than William Randolph Hearst could on a good day in 1898.[1][2]
As for why everyone deserves the same protections that journalists do under the law, the same journalists being subpoenaed in OP are broadcasting citizen journalists’ content as well. We’re all journalists now.
You could also say it's the same reason asylum seekers and immigrants are called illegal aliens. It's still politics, just in a different direction. Framing something as a moral problem is not necessarily bad; it just has to be a real moral problem that justifies the proposed solution. The problem with the Iraq war was that the government lied about the problem so that they could justify a bad solution.
This is why everyone should be raising hell over things like RealID and the requirement for you to allow the Federal government to get a hold of biometrics for you in order to fly.
This is also why Third Party Doctrine is screaming for reassessment in the wake of expanded capabilities for meta information collection, storage and reproduction.
In the past, your recordings/pictures/artifacts of reporting were physical things that cost time, money, and effort to reproduce. No one would want to ask for anymore than is absolutely necessary due to the inconvenience. Nowadays, with terabytes of data being able to be stored in the palm of one's hand, and copied, moved in minutes, there is a much greater risk for old precedents to turn into dangerous overreach based upon the sheer exaggeration of the capability to get blood from the stone of a photograph.
Get a picture with a partial match in a database of a subject? Spin by their residence with a a Stingray and sniff some IMEI's. Take that to a telco, Google, or a data broker, and geofence. Or look at the latest data dump acquired and see if you can match them with some data point in the area.
In this age, the things we can do with data scare the ever loving bajeezus out of me, and it's not that I don't want LE to be unable to do their jobs, but we really need to get a societal handle on how we treat digital footprint. Otherwise, it's not that far to a world nobody wants to see or live.
One important thing about warrants and subpoenas is that they are often limited to strictly collecting data related to a specific investigation - not a fishing expedition.
> The judge placed some limits on the subpoena. He said police could use the images to identify suspects only in the arson and gun theft investigations. Detectives could not use the photos or video to pursue suspects in vandalism or other lesser crimes — even if police found such evidence.
> The subpoena would also be limited to professional camera equipment and would exclude reporters’ cell phone photos and videos.
This seems to fit the criteria - especially since police firearms were stolen.
The only red flag is that they are asking 5x different news organization to hand over journalist's raw recordings. I'd be highly skeptical of this subpoena if I was a judge - unless they could prove the journalists were likely the only ones at the time recording the incident, that they know were present, and it didn't apply to material involved in any specific reporting. Broad footage taken at a public event is always less concerning and less protected.
But at the same time tons of people are recording protests besides journalists and it might just be laziness on the police's part. Although that said, sometimes rioters intimidate people trying to film crimes being committed (as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/hu9l...). And the police claim "the department was at a dead end in its investigations." So I'm not sure much outrage is warranted here, but I'd still probably lean on the safe side.