• Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    (k) All Federal law enforcement agencies with investigative authority shall question and interrogate, within all lawful authorities, individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement. Investigations should prioritize crimes such as the following: assaulting Federal officers or employees or otherwise engaging in conduct proscribed by 18 U.S.C. 111; conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. 241; conspiracy to commit offense under 18 U.S.C. 371; solicitation to commit a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 373; money laundering under 18 U.S.C. 1956; funding of terrorist acts or otherwise facilitating terrorism under 18 U.S.C. 2339, 2339A, 2339B, 2339C, and 2339D; arson offenses under 18 U.S.C. 844; violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. 1961 et seq.); and major fraud against the United States under 18 U.S.C. 1031.

    This is pretty specifically targeted at orgs actively calling for and advocating for violence.

    They’re chasing ghosts that don’t exist. This is all incredibly performative, there are no orgs or ngos to go after for any of this.

    I think they’re just doing performance for the sake of appeasing the base.

    • LangleyDominos [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      Protests where someone knocks over a trashcan is violence. Vocal support of those protests is support for violence. It doesn’t have to lead to a conviction that’s widely accepted by the courts as valid. It just has to let the feds get their foot in the door for an investigation. Then they can open an org’s books and scrutinize funding or the way money is spent. They can tie together different groups with RICO. If a person donates $1,000 to PSL and $20,000 to the DNC, those groups are connected by the donor. If PSL spends money sending people to a “violent” protest, then PSL is implicated. The donor and the DNC are implicated by association. The feds get to investigate those people.

      This allows conservatives, who own the executive, to investigate their political rivals. They can collect data (data is everything) and get an idea of how funding is moving around the country. Then they can cut off funding by freezing accounts during the investigation. Now their political enemy can’t fund anything right when they need money the most. Imagine cutting off 30% of the DNC fundraising spigot for months at a time right before an election. Imagine being able to defund the entirety of PSL or the DSA.

      They don’t have to arrest and execute their political enemies. They just need enough info to know where to hurt them and the excuse of law enforcement. I wouldn’t look at this and try to piece together how it allows them to imprison or kill all leftists. To me it’s more of a Gilded Age tactic of sabotage.

      • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        YES thank u. i have been screaming this at everyone i can in person.

        wait until they roll out full sanctions on individuals in the U.S. can be done entirely by the executive

      • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        Yep it’s just sanctions tactics turned inwards.

        There’s no dramatic images of dozens of people being marched off to black sites never to be seen again. There’s no court drama because the government has long had assumed great latitudes in controlling money, doing interdiction on it, and forcing the injured parties to positively prove otherwise in courts in long, expensive, boring, hard, up-hill processes.

        But it’s a chilling effect just the same. And it clogs the gears of the opposition, it makes the lives of the leadership hard when say they can’t access banking services because their risk profile is too high or else it’s illegal because of these restrictions on them. It puts a price on associating with these groups by leading to contamination and tainting of your own group so others tend to avoid touching or helping or interacting (again sanctions tactics, classic).

          • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            12 days ago

            Bitcoin will not help you. Half of the reason places like Coinbase are allowed to operate us because they regularly turn over their transaction data to the government when asked to. On top of that, Bitcoin is literally a ledger of transactions. All it takes is one person not using a secure transaction and the whole thing is open to scrutiny and can be dug into.

            • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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              11 days ago

              Cash is king for a reason. Gift cards and burner accounts are ways to get around those kind of sanctions but yeah, it does make life horribly difficult when some places don’t even do cash for rent sometimes.

    • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      there are no orgs or ngos to go after for any of this

      Would Trump lie to prosecute his political enemies? ??? Yes. That’s pretty much all he does.

      He calls all immigrants criminal and the majority of the deportations have been against people without criminal records.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      12 days ago

      funding of terrorist acts or otherwise facilitating terrorism under 18 U.S.C. 2339, 2339A, 2339B, 2339C, and 2339D;

      I think this is an important bit when tied to the antifa designation. They’ll claim any protest they don’t like was an antifa organized event and then go after any organizations that helped fund the protest.

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      “lawlessness” and “conspiracy to commit offense” suggest that it can also be used to attack orgs with members who break the law in a non-violent manner, which is frequent in serious protests, doesn’t it?