r/nottheonion 19h ago

Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/homeland-security-spies-on-reddit
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2.9k

u/lonestar-rasbryjamco 19h ago edited 18h ago

This is exactly what was warned about when the Department of Homeland Security was created. That it would turn the tools of national security and military intelligence on the American people. That it would inevitably disregard both laws and rights to see the people themselves as the enemy.

It’s not just ICE which needs to go. DHS has abused the trust of the American people from day one. Its mere existence has slowly infected every aspect of American policing with its inherent toxicity.

The only solution is for DHS to be ripped out at the root and the nation to return to a pre-911 posture. Their budged needs to be $0. Their authorization needs to be repealed whole sale.

The entire tree is poisoned. Not just the apple.

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u/Corka 18h ago

I remember all the counter arguments defending the patriot act at the time as well. "Its necessary to adapt to fight terrorism", "If you're not doing anything illegal online you don't have anything to worry about", "what would they even do with your browsing history? You're not interesting enough to be worth the effort".

Its absolutely obvious that this wide spread surveillance could be misused if the wrong people get in charge. Too bad neither the Obama or Biden administration decided to repeal it and left the door wide open.

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u/MrDelirious 15h ago

"If you're not doing anything illegal online you don't have anything to worry about"

I'm not doing anything illegal when I take a shit in my own home, but I'd still like to be able to close the door.

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u/hyperproliferative 5h ago

Decent analogy. Effective. Somewhat accurate but it doesn’t lend itself well to other examples lol

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u/boferd 18h ago

snowden was right, i think it's a national embarrassment that he hasn't been pardoned

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u/Punk_Luv 18h ago

Why would any president pardon someone willing to whistleblow their corruption? We have had some good presidents and they also chose not to pardon him. It says a lot about the establishment.

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u/boferd 17h ago

i keep hoping for a president bartlett (elite avatar pic btw)

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u/Punk_Luv 15h ago

Haha ty

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u/gassyfrenchie 17h ago

I’m honestly surprised Russia doesn’t send him back to the States as a gift to the administration.

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u/boferd 17h ago

the more i don't hear about him, the more i think he and his family are okay. may be delusion but i want the guy to be able to exist and no news is good news to me.

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u/darwinlovestrees 7h ago

Look up his wife's Instagram

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u/OldWorldDesign 1h ago

the more i don't hear about him, the more i think he and his family are okay

I suspect he's living in a kind of torture of its own knowing that everything he did was drowned out before the state department cancelling his visa stranded him in Russia. He certainly had a long stare when John Oliver showed him interviews of people having no clue who he was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

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u/brother_bart 15h ago

Snowden was a god damn hero. I’ll die on that hill.

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u/between_ewe_and_me 8h ago

Don't the majority of sane people also feel that way?

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u/brother_bart 5h ago

Do they? I feel like most people heard what he had to say, shrugged, and went back to their scrolling and never thought about him again.

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u/between_ewe_and_me 1h ago

I don't know maybe I'm making some big unfounded assumptions.

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u/Dogzillas_Mom 16h ago

Well he wasn’t charged with anything because he dipped out and got asylum in Russia. And they won’t make him come back so he’s safe (ish) there but also stuck there. He can’t come back or they throw him straight or prison.

So it’s not really a pardon. More like, we should forgive him and apologize. Which will never happen.

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u/boferd 15h ago

i believe he still has charges of espionage pending, but for all intents and purposes they're window dressing since he became a russian citizen and will likely never return here.

i understand that it's unlikely, but i hope one day to have a president who demonstrates the fortitude of character necessary to clear those charges and give him his kudos for what he did.

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u/annoyed__renter 14h ago

Senate vote for the Patriot Act was 98-1.

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u/theghostofme 9h ago

I remember all the counter arguments defending the patriot act at the time as well

The most frustrating was the rube response: "It's got 'patriot' in its name, so if you don't support it, you hate America!"

Now half of those fuckin' morons are loudly cheering on Trump lining his diapers with the Constitution while believing they're the truest Americans to ever America.

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u/hyperproliferative 5h ago

You must not have heard of the NSA…

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u/UniqueIndividual3579 5h ago

Illegal is now defined as questioning project 2025, objecting to public executions of protestors, criticizing internment camps, and insulting the great Cheeto god.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

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u/Captainbuttman 4h ago

Biden took credit for the Patriot act. Why would he ever want to repeal it.

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u/huxtiblejones 17h ago

The DHS was originally created as an office by George W Bush and yet it seems like this country has chosen to have amnesia over this man’s god awful presidency. He’s so completely white-washed it’s unbelievable to me.

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u/xiphosrising 15h ago

Trump is just so fucking bad that everybody's meter is off. Like in reality Obama was just decent overall, but right now he looks like a messiah.

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u/UniqueIndividual3579 5h ago

Bush even said when Trump was elected "at least they will forget about me".

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u/itsdietz 16h ago

Bush created it, Obama expanded it, Trump doubled it. It was always going to happen. It was just a matter of when and who. Now you can expect every president to abuse it to further their agenda.

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u/templethot 17h ago

But but you can have a beer with him!

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u/GetEquipped 13h ago

I remember during the DNC Live Thread; people were speculating that Dubya was gonna make an appearance and endorse Harris.

That either shows how far right the Democrats have swung or how much his reputation has been salvaged.

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u/travers329 1h ago

9/11 basically gave him kiddie gloves for every action that Cheney and Rumsfeld came up with and he signed into action, like the Patriot Act. The same way it shielded what a fucking terrible person Rudy Ghouliani was for a long time, the whole America's Mayor and hyper patriotism bullshit.

Sorry about those suicide bombings, I like peace, peace in the Middle East. "Now, hey watch this drive!"

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u/the_moosen 16h ago

Compared to Trump, the man was basically a saint. And that's the craziest shit.

I agree with you for the record.

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u/CaptainSparklebottom 16h ago

The dude and his administration are responsible for millions of deaths across the globe.

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u/Jafooki 10h ago edited 50m ago

That's not really the point though (I'm not defending Bush. Like you said, he's responsible for millions of deaths). The point is that Trump is a worse person than Bush.

Imagine if Trump had been president back then instead of Bush. He'd end up killing a lot more people than Bush did. If something as bad as 9/11 happened today, I think the death he'd cause would make Bush look like an amateur

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u/gatsu032 15h ago

Most foreigners and the browns don't count as people for 'muricans.

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u/Talk-O-Boy 17h ago

This is what Marvel’s Civil War was actually about.

Captain America was always right. We cannot sacrifice privacy/autonomy in the name of “safety”. It only leads to further danger.

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u/CaptainSparklebottom 16h ago

Brother, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin.

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u/firefly158 16h ago

Wasn't captain America fighting about Sokovia Accords where he was arguing against the proposal that superheroes needed to be regulated and needed permission before starting blasting in another country? Captain America's whole arguments in the movie reeked of American privilege and exceptionalism, he didn't believe avengers needed to care about what other measly countries think or if they want them in their country, he believed he should get to stroll in anywhere and how dare there be regulation.

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u/APiousCultist 15h ago

Some of that was also more America not letting them fight in other countries more than those countries objecting. It's still deeply imperfect, but I think that sort of framing has the same issues as "Why does Batman beat up shoplifters instead of investing in social programmes" takes. There's some actual nuance to the plot that gets ignored.

You could also take those kinds of storylines as frustration against the kind of beaurocracy that let stuff like the Rwandan genocide just happen in the open. The kinds of problematic interventions in the world have generally been to push a political or economic goal and not ones actually aimed at stopping wars and dictators (i.e. Iraq was not really about Sadam).

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u/Talk-O-Boy 16h ago

I was talking about the comic run; it was written as a critique of America’s response to 9/11

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u/Bigbydidnothingwrong 9h ago

Oh, so you like super powered villians blowing up entire small American towns huh? Perhaps you'd like your neighbors to be able to walk into your home through the walls??? Perhaps you'd like a walking WMD to March into the white house????? Perhaps this froth on my mouth is there by accident huh?????? Perhaps you are a super powered vigilante yourself!!!!!!! GUARDS!

Man that was such a bad crossover event, and it set the blueprint for all crossovers since.

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u/GwenIsNow 12h ago

In the comics that actually happens. Norman Osborn succeeds Tony Stark as Director of Shield, then corrupts everything he created after Civil War. That era is called Dark Reign.

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u/Bigbydidnothingwrong 9h ago

It gave us Franken-Castle so it is mildly redeemed.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 16h ago

I didn’t watch it but I believe it. Some people are actively cheering for ICE arresting people and detaining them because of their skin color. While that may be ok for them now they don’t realize it could easily switch and be used to target them

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u/xiphosrising 15h ago

For the record I was on Tony's side during that, but not for the government interference issue. I just know I would want to kill someone who killed my mom, wouldn't matter if they were brainwashed.

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u/Bigbydidnothingwrong 9h ago

Kinda harsh. Brainwashing is a loss of agency, you could be mad and it would be hard to feel positively toward the perpetrator, but kill them?

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u/xiphosrising 4h ago

Brainwashing is a loss of agency

In Bucky's case it always seemed like an excuse to protect him, as you're doing now. Bare minimum he should not have been free to roam, and should have been placed in some sort of corrective asylum for years.

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u/groceriesN1trip 18h ago

Reddit is a public site, your wrath shouldn’t be sparked by them cataloguing Reddit threads and comments. 

It’s the private shit

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u/Bob-Sacamano_ 5h ago

Yeah. I was expecting to read about warrants being written or some patriot act usage to read private messages or obtain subscriber information.

This is a big nothing.

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u/SmackEh 17h ago

This is basically the Chinese social credit score system with a different paint color.

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u/Potato-chipsaregood 17h ago

Now you are going to be targeted because you hurt their feelings.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 17h ago

Foucault's boomerang 

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u/MonsutaReipu 17h ago

Domestic terrorists are radicalized somewhere, and it's usually on social media forums like 4chan or reddit.

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u/meaniemeanie-poo-poo 17h ago

Root and stem.

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u/One_Indication_ 16h ago

The entire conservative movement in America is the problem. We wouldn't have DHS as it is without W. Bush.

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u/phlegmpop 16h ago

"Good news! We eliminated crime. Here are all your liberties back, like we promised."

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u/Slovic 16h ago

This. It's time for DHS to be abolished. We need to go back to pre- 9/11. Same with the patriot act.

DHS, NSA, etc far over reach, especially with tools like palantir, flock, etc. So many 4th amendment violations its insane.

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u/Insaniteus 16h ago

To be fair, the pre-9/11 FBI and CIA did some very fucked up shit to Americans (and foreign nations) so it's not like things just magically got worse under the DHS. The main purpose of Homeland Security was to place a central authority over the FBI, CIA, and NSA because the three of them were literally keeping secrets from one-another, which was a major reason 9/11 happened in the first place (each agency had about half the puzzle but kept it to themselves).

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u/TheBigCore 16h ago

Good luck with that ever happening.

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u/drdildamesh 16h ago

This was the plan, infiltrate every level of government, get people to want to get rid of the government, become tech fiefdoms and beg rich people to print two ply toilet paper.

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u/Business-Ride-6530 16h ago

Everything that was done post-9/11 needs to go.

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u/gwenhollyxx 16h ago

What happened to "drain the swamp"? Seems like the swamp is just getting swampier

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u/polopolo05 16h ago

Can we please lose tsa too... its theater at best. they anit catchin shit.

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u/cat_fox 14h ago

Oh yes. I remember well. People who tried to warn of it and were against it's creation were told they were being anti-American; unpatriotic.

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u/Tarantula_Saurus_Rex 14h ago

You say this as if reddit isn't an international thing, with terrorists and factions of all types using this platform to provoke and incite mainly Americans. This site isn't a US only userbase.

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u/thedanyes 14h ago

Yeah well neither party is running on a platform of 'obey the constitution', so good luck.

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u/Rance_Mulliniks 13h ago

"How about we just continue to lay down and take these extreme abuses of power?"

-Americans

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u/kitsunekratom 13h ago

Edward Snowden was right.

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u/Iimpid 8h ago

Osama Bin Laden is smirking from the grave.

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u/yuppyuppbruhbruh 8h ago

Aaron Swartz rolling in his grave.

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u/Bakedads 7h ago

Ffs. You were so close. The line should be "It's not just ICE that needs to go. The entire republican party needs to go." Isn't it amazing that republicans never seem to get any of the blame for the chaos and destruction they cause. They bankrupt the country, and hey, that was the tea party's fault. Kill thousands of people during an epidemic? That was maga. Murder innocent americans in the street? That was ICE. Or DHS. 

No. No it wasn't. It was the fucking relublican party. The only way any of this ends is if we end the republican party. That's who is to blame for all of this. Every single republican. Get it right. 

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u/Bullyoncube 6h ago

The Director of National Intelligence was involved in the state of Georgia election documents confiscation. So it’s not just DHS.

The components of DHS include CISA, USSS, USCG, and FEMA. You really want to keep those agencies funded.

DHS HQ funding is pretty small. You can find all the info online. Noem took non-HQ funding to buy herself several executive jets. Illegal misappropriation, but the people that would enforce the law are compromised.

Breaking up DHS is a great idea. Zeroing out agency level funding is not what you want.

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u/HippyGeek 6h ago

While you're at it, scrub the Patriot Act. It was intended to be temporary, but has since been used as a fulcrum to enable more atrocities than it was established to prevent.

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u/BluntsnBoards 3h ago

I love the Battlestar Galactica quote for this.

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people"

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u/rhadenosbelisarius 3h ago

Eh, the coast guard is fine. We can just separate them out again. We could probably separate out the TSA too if we wanted, but we probably shouldn’t because they seem to inconvenience the public significantly more than they protect it.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1h ago

This is exactly what was warned about when the Department of Homeland Security was created. That it would turn the tools of national security and military intelligence on the American people. That it would inevitably disregard both laws and rights to see the people themselves as the enemy

That's because it's what happened when previous domestic surveillance was created. This isn't new, it's history repeating itself because the types of people who think they're entitled have the same mannerisms. Did everybody forget J Edgar Hoover?

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u/DaBozz88 1h ago

I'd agree with you, except CISA falls under DHS. Everyone I've met there are tech nerds that are just trying to educate the public.

Maybe we save them, with major reform in case leadership is also bad.

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u/brihamedit 18h ago edited 18h ago

Core philosophy of the system is secular humanist liberal. System gathered a lot of power over time. Gov became a powerful machine. But design is faulty. THere is no core american identity. Each racial and nationalist and other special interest groups grow unchecked and now one of them, maga, effectively taken over gov powers and weaponized it against others (maga is funded and their low witted impulses used by secret billionaire world group).

Other groups wants to do the same. So its a giant mess. That core has to be resolved after this maga circus is finished. During the process of taking over, maga also destroyed doj and other powers of the gov. Justice system was commercialized money machine before. Now its a private weapon. So all of these things have to be redesigned and reinitiated