Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said.

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[–] 119 points 9 months ago (30 children)
  • [–] 23 points 9 months ago (29 children)

    If you think that any nation-state with the money to implement this shit isn't doing it already, I have a bridge to sell you.

    Surveillance is a matter of power and maintaining it, far more than any ideological thing. There are already people being caught by this sort of shit in the UK and Europe as well.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (27 children)

    Those are fascist states too. You can't make use of this kind of technology and still claim to be the good guys. Fascisms not a left or right thing, both sides of the aisle can slide into that kind of behavior.

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  • [–] 30 points 9 months ago (24 children)

    Fascism is in fact a right wing system

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (6 children)

    I did some reading, it seems I had a misunderstanding of some of the finer details. Perhaps authoritarian or totalitarianism are better terms? I'm not sure, but regardless, I fail to see how many of the tactics of fascism couldn't be employed by the political left, which I guess is the point I was originally getting at.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    I fail to see how many of the tactics of fascism

    Leftism overtly opposes the tools of fascism: sexism, racism, imperialism, nationalism, etc.

    Maybe you should more reading before posting about this topic.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago

    Except left-wing nationalism is a thing that exists. And those aren't the only tools of fascism. Fascists are known to control mass media, but thats not inherently a right wing thing. Corruption and cronyism aren't mutually exclusive to the right. Military supremacy isn't inherently right wing. What am I missing here?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    If the left employed fascist tactics then they stop being the left.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    So communist governments that have used media control, militarism, cronyism, violated human rights, etc., aren't left-wing?

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  • [+] -8 points 9 months ago* (14 children)

    No, it's in principle undetermined in ideology. Historical ones, even Stalin or Pol Pot variants, were rather right wing. But the only principles really important for any kind of fascism are violence, anti-rationalism and amorphous ideology.

    EDIT: What I mean is that fascism is that "third way", not left-wing or right-wing. And has made situational alliances with things from both. That was its main difference from old conservatives in the beginning of XX century.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago* (3 children)

    Bruh do some basic research... Here's a 101:

    14 characteristics of fascism

    It's 100% right wing. Even so-called leftists who went fascist are no longer leftists.

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  • [–] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Non-leftist doesn't equal right-wing. Anarcho-capitalism is right-wing, but opposite from fascism.

    Fascism requires no logical structure and no coherence in ideology. It requires the ideology to be bendable all ways each moment for each different situation. Which, well, is natural for an ideology reliant upon violence and emotion above all.

    That leftists try to mix fascism and normal conservatism is a purely leftist sexual problem, that doesn't concern others until leftists pretend it's commonly accepted.

    Then, of course, when most of the "revolutionary" competition is leftist, fascism becomes anti-leftist and allies right-wing forces.

    But also Nazi and Soviet propaganda on the British Empire were amazingly similar in archetypes and emotion. Which would be a rare case of "fascism against right-wing forces".

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (8 children)

    Oh, the historical fascisms such as under Stalin and Pol Pot, right.

    it's in principle undetermined in ideology

    Correct in so far, as it‘s determined by economic system. Which happens to align with left/right ideology.

    But the only principles really important for any kind of fascism are violence, anti-rationalism and amorphous ideology.

    You’re making shit up depending on how your tummy feels, don‘t you?

    Please stop using the internet.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    How to detect a commie idiot without them naming themselves.

    I'm actually using Eco's version, and he's notably leftist.

    Please stop using the internet.

    Smart thoughts were chasing you, but you were always faster.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    I would have been more impressed, if you‘d actually provided argumentative content instead of personal attacks.

    Not sure, what you used Umberto Eco‘s definition for, but it wasn‘t to formulate a coherent thought on the topic.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago

    Not sure, what you used Umberto Eco‘s definition for, but it wasn‘t to formulate a coherent thought on the topic.

    Thank you for your opinion, but for classifying Stalin and Pol Pot as fascist, at the very least. If you have actually read that definition.

    You’re making shit up depending on how your tummy feels, don‘t you?

    vs

    if you‘d actually provided argumentative content instead personal attacks.

    and

    Correct in so far, as it‘s determined by economic system. Which happens to align with left/right ideology.

    , I don't even know, "idiot" doesn't seem a personal attack in such a situation. Commies are the only kind of people claiming that fascism has any economic alignments, as far as I have seen.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Eco's version assumes Stalin's regime is one of primary fascist regimes in the first place. I dunno about that overview, in the original text it's clear from the beginning. Either you haven't read it or you are trying to cheat.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    Stop making stuff up, it's time to bring the receipts. Where exactly does "Eco's version assumes Stalin's regime is one of primary fascist regimes in the first place"?

    Eco treated Stalinism as a seperate, parallel example of totalitarianism, explicitedly not labeling it fascist.

    You gotta leave your confused reactionary, red fascism narrative and anti-communism stance behind, if you actually want to understand the world. Maybe start by not being so dishonest.


    Some passages from Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism:

    If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.

    It was Italian fascism that convinced many European liberal leaders that the new regime was carrying out interesting social reform, and that it was providing a mildly revolutionary alternative to the Communist threat.

    Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    He's providing a list of fascist regimes in that essay, with Stalin's included. Stop lying.

    And read the quotes you've already provided, they are good.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago

    Only that he doesn‘t. And I don‘t.

    Your pattern: Make stuff up > act all incensed for being confronted with your bullshit > use personal attacks and accusations of lying > make stuff up again.

    Either you now provide the sourcing and the quotes of what you keep yapping about or I‘ll consider you a bot, because you‘re acting like one.

    Bring the receipts.

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  • [–] [S] 46 points 9 months ago*

    One of the tools, which was built by Paragon, an Israeli technology company, lets people take control of phones or remotely hack into them to read messages or track locations. The others were built by Penlink, a Nebraska-based software company. They use social media data scraped from the web and information from data brokers to help build dossiers of anyone with a social media account.

    ICE’s use of facial recognition software was documented in videos and photos from local activist groups in Minnesota this month and reviewed by The Times. Two photos captured fatigue-clad agents using cellphones to scan the faces of protesters in Minneapolis, while in one video, agents could be heard telling people that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology and that their faces would be added to a database.

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  • [–] 40 points 9 months ago

    i HaVe NoThInG tO hIdE! 🤡

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  • [–] 29 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Yet another fash-enabling take from the NYTrash. Please don't post this rag of imperial disinformation.

    Here's a better take: Was Alex Pretti the subject of a targeted assassination?

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  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

    Reasons I installed GrapheneOS November 2024 and moved to Lemmy/Mastodon only in July 2023, intensifies.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    That only mitigates. There are still a number of ways to potentially track a hardened phone, and countless ways to breach proper OPSEC on social media that have nothing to do with the platform.

    Don't rely entirely on system choices to keep you safe.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Yep your modem baseband is 100% hackable or already backdoored

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago*

    your modem baseband is 100% hackable or already backdoored

    I hear this mentioned a lot but how exactly is it "backdoored"?

    Like... does LineageOS help? Does GrapheneOS help?

    Is it like IntelME/AMD-PSP?

    (Oh btw LineageOS apparantly breaks the data connection of my carrier so... 🤷‍♂️ there's that...)

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  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago

    Bruce Springstein's protest song : Streets of Minneapolis

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDaPdpwA4Iw

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  • [–] 102 points 9 months ago (19 children)
  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I’m pretty sure the incompetence we see is because there’s a mix of Russia in there too so everything is push pull tug throw.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    I am confused on this.

    They simultaneously get only 47 days of training.

    But somehow they've got Mussad level training.

    Please make it make sense.

    They certainly do not appear to have a high level or training in any video I have ever seen

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  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    They're not being trained to be elite troops the way that people mythologize the IDF who somehow managed to miss all of the warnings about October the 7th and can't tell the difference between a baby and a bomb.

    They're being trained to be the enforcers of apartheid. Racistly motivated government shock troops don't have to be competent or capable they just have to be cruel and follow orders.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    that number has to be propaganda

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    probably goes on a pace like: days 1-3: know your enemy (non-white people). days 4-9: how to hide your face so you cannot be prosecuted for your crimes. days 10-26: lectures on why oct 7 2023 was worse than the holocaust itself. days 27-37: using heavy ordinance at the firing range. days 38-42: how to steal property, particularly women's undergarments. days 43-47: final racism seminar

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  • [–] -3 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Yeah even with your sources you're making some VERY grand claims there.

    I'm sure Israel and Mossad have their fingers in US politics but to claim that Epstein was a Mossad agent, you're going to need some big evidence to backt that up or just take it down because we already have enough conspiratorial bullshit out here

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    I think people have Epstein wrong. Ghislaine wasn't his accomplice. He was hers. Her father was linked to Mossad quite a lot and was buried in Jerusalem. The whole Maxwell family is crooked as all fuck.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    Epstein worked for Mossad period. Was he an exclusive officer of theirs? We don't know. We do know he did a lot of work with them. This is not a grand claim and I find kind of funny and kind of sad that you state it this way.

    For instance, if I do work for the CIA I would be an agent of the CIA. If I worked directly for them I would be an officer. Perhaps you are just confused as to the definitions.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Here's what's weird about it, when you have that much money, you don't tend to work for anyone.

    Why get involved in some complicated spy game? You're rich, you don't have to do shit, and in fact you're so rich you can do whatever you want... with children... I mean can you picture those same people who feel they are above the law, being beholden to anyone?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I don't know honestly. If I had several million dollars I would probably stop there, invest it and live off the interest and never have to work. I may hold down a job as a hobby, but I wouldn't be beholden to anyone. I guess I would never become a truly wealthy person.

    Obviously there is something else driving these billionaires. It is never enough for them and I think it probably is something along the lines of a mental illness.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    It's dragon sickness. Seriously. In all of high fantasy, there is exactly one dragon that has more than $1,000,000,000, when the story or setting was created. His name is Smaug. That gigantic pile of good and treasure amounts to somewhere between $10,000,000,000 - $15,000,000,000. In every other story or game, all the dragons (except of maybe one single Red dragon) have less than $1,000,000,000 in gold. (Admittedly the price of gold isn't helping here)

    RAW: all other types of dragons have less wealth than Red Ancient Wyrms. A Red Ancient Wyrm will have between 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 gold pieces worth of wealth. We'll assume they are a Philistine, and all their wealth is in gold. That means that one single Red Wyrm per world might have somewhere around 500,000 oz of gold. Currently that much gold would be worth just over 2 billion dollars, but again that is the extreme statistical outlier of the literal greediest and most evil type of dragon.

    Edit: oh and the worst part? The billionaires don't have an excuse. If the evil dragons don't hoard and eat their wealth just before they die, Tiamat / Thakisis will kill their soul. They literally take it with them. Our billionaires have no such rules governing them, they're just mentally ill.

    Edit 2: I'm aware that shadowrun exists. That's not high fantasy.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    You're nitpicking about his payroll status (asset? agent? subcontractor?) rather than looking at whether he was passing information to Mossad, coordinating his actions with Israeli intelligence leaders such as Ehud Barak and using his influence to benefit Israel.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    As usual, the Trump admin is using tools that have been available to the feds for years but they use them so ineptly that it has become obvious that they exist. I guess that is better than competent administrations doing to the same thing for less trivial and obvious shit.

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  • [–] 23 points 9 months ago (10 children)

    Can someone explain to me why this is focused on the city of Minneapolis specifically? Why is ICE focusing specifically on that city of all of them?

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  • [–] 28 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Racism against Somalis plus he hates Walz for running against him

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  • [–] 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    I read an opinion piece that suggested that he is upset that Minnesota is the only blue state in a region of red. Given that Minnesota is primarily white, he felt that he could use the Somali fraud as a way to turn [white] people against the democrats using xenophobia.

    Edit: I found the article.

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  • [–] 25 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Aside from revenge against Walz... one theory is that we're a functioning community that's ethnically diverse, relatively progressive, union strong, and very friendly to queer folks. Fox News would have you believe that any one of those features creates a godless hellscape, but we're doing pretty good. Minnesota grew a huge budget surplus under Walz, and then we invested it in schools and social programs. The Republican tradition is to destroy something (see: the federal government) and say, "See? Told you it was broken!"

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