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An update on the J6 pipe bomber story. Steve Baker of Blaze Media is now claiming that a Capitol Hill Police officer planted the pipe bombs based on gait analysis from the videos released from the FBI of the pipe bomber and known footage of the Capital Hill Police officer. (https://www.theblaze.com/news/former-capitol-police-officer-a-forensic-match-for-jan-6-pipe-bomber-sources-say). Blaze Media also claims Shauni Kerkhoff the officer in question left the Capitol Hill Police to join the CIA mid 2021 to work on dignitary protection.
Blaze Media claims the gait analysis was a 94% match but I'm unsure as to how unique that match is or how suspects were selected for matching or how many suspects were tested. Apparently, the pipe bomber also walked with a limp and Shauni had a football related injury that required an operation. Hypothetically, if 1/100 people would score a 94% match then its very likely such a match could have been produced by just trying to match against all the Capitol Hill Police officers. However, if only one suspect was tested and this testing was based on some other lead then you would have more confidence that this match was not a coincidence. Shauni was the neighbour of a person of interest that was linked to the metro card that was allegedly used by the pipe bomber (https://archive.ph/wMRun).
Steve Baker was also arrested in relation to the J6 riots (https://loudermilk.house.gov/where-is-the-outrage-over-steve-bakers-prosecution-3/) and may hold some animus against Capitol Hill Police officers.
Congressman Massie has made a statement about the claim on X (https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1987120156682953165):
The Blaze better be extremely certain, or they're gonna get a 100m+ civil judgment. The risk that Baker's gone off the deep end isn't trivial, and he's been very maximalist in reporting before. That said, the pipe bomber has been one of the more severe of many misses when it comes to the law enforcement response to
I'm generally very skeptical of gait analysis. Human-brain gait analysis has been extremely limited: open in scihub, and you'll find that the 'experts' got 71% and the randos 64%... when scoring one of six potentials in the training set). CNNs have done much better, but they still have problems with training data or large numbers of classes. That's not as bad as outright frauds like bite mark analysis, but it's one of the places both prosecutors and juries both seem to take that error rate seriously. And "he personally pegged the match at closer to 98%" makes me think this is the sort of human-lead that leaves a lot of space for thumbs on the scale.
The metro card is more interesting. I'll admit I have a lot less knowledge about the internals of those systems, so there might be well-known vulnerabilities re: spoofing, and there's always a genuine possibility that the original owner just dropped it somewhere. The FBI response seems extremely basic But it a lot of winking toward circumstantial evidence that, if weak, would at least narrow the search area much more for the gait analysis to not just be hilarious fraud -- though in turn, it would point to either unprofessional or nonprofessional planning for the bomber even if true, which I don't think the Blaze wants to recognize.
It sounds like the metro card might not have been from the pipe bomber but someone the FBI thought was a person of interest. But it is a very weird coincidence that someone the FBI thought was a person of interest was next door neighbours with a Capital Police officer. The gait analysis can be explained by Blaze seeing what they want to see. However, while it might be unlikely that a Capitol Police officer might be neighbours with a person of interest if we are willing to expand it to federal employee its probably not that unlikely.
It would also be funny if this was not a cover up and it turns out the suspect is actually part of some right wing militia. Of course at this point a lot of people will have trouble believing she was part of a right wing militia even if she was.
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Think your sentence got cut off there.
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Gait analysis is one subset of video and image analysis, which is generally pretty good. I wouldn’t convict anyone on it but it’s very good for narrowing suspects.
And in this case it’s extremely suspicious that the suspect lives next door to the guy registered on the metro card / getaway vehicle. And neither was ever staked out.
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Does The Blaze have $100M?
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I would put gait analysis in the same category as bite mark analysis, handwriting analysis and forensic firearm analysis. All pretty much worthless, probably mostly used for parallel construction purposes
It’s closer to facial recognition software, which has gotten fairly good.
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Comparing the marks left on bullets to the different rifling of individual firearms seems legit. You have doubts?
Not OP but it did always seem insane to me. Most bullets go through a pretty destructive process when they collide with a target. At those speeds lead is more like playdough. The barrels of the gun also don't seem like they should all be that unique. Mass production doesn't usually create uniquely identifiable things.
I could understand general identification differences like ammo or weapon differences. But anything that differentiates different guns of the same make and model seems suspect.
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I always felt sure this was a false-flag. The idea that someone could get away with doing that in DC, the most surveilled place in America, next to the most surveilled political offices? It’s just impossible. It doesn’t work like that. Especially not in the AI age. Every street is surveilled, so even with no facial features or DNA they could figure out who did it through brute force process of omission.
I suppose the reason for this is that if the protesters managed to actually secure the building, they could make a whole show of the bomb in order to justify lethal force against the protesters. Maybe they would even let it explode so that they would have footage to put on repeat.
Who's "they"?
CIA in conjunction with DC police. Like, they wanted a contingency plan for if the protesters had somehow hardened their position; it may require the use of lethal force to disperse them; this requires an emotional justification for the public (the bombing).
the other conspiracy is 'they' wanted to discourage objections to the certification of the electoral count. the protestors provided a justification for suspending congress and then this created pressure for senators on congressmen who would otherwise voted to reject some States from doing so. if the protest didn't work out then the pipe bombs were a backup plan for creating pressure. there is also a claim that the joint session needed to be suspended in order to prevent motions for pausing the certification process from being voted on (https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/03/12/the-parliamentary-motive-behind-the-j6-fedsurrection/)
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And there wasn't a single Trump-friendly DC police officer to blow the lid on this operation?
Fallacious logic. There have been plenty of conspiracies that have held up to scrutiny with no one whistle-blowing, despite the likely large number of personelle involved.
MK-Ultra, for example, is only know due to a filing mishap that meant not all the paperwork on said project was successfully destroyed.
More recently, we've learned of 275 plain-clothes FBI agents amoung the January 6 crowd - not a single whistleblower.
Conspiracies can work just fine, it seems.
Or look at the Twitter - Biden laptop scandal. The IC spent months “prebunking” a story they knew was true so when it came out social media would take it down. We know because Musk bought Twitter.
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Given that police are the profession with just about the highest concentration of MAGA true believers, I'm going to call BS on the idea that operation Bring Down Trump could proceed without a single person breaking ranks.
It’s slightly more believable when you consider that Trump only got 5.4% of the vote in D.C. in 2020. And of course, not every officer would need to be in on it, just the higher-ups. I’m not claiming that there was a conspiracy, but your particular objection doesn’t seem to me to hold much water.
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Image and video processing in general is very sophisticated. Much more sophisticated than the public is aware. No comment on whether this specific application is any good or not.
If only Blaze had just used good old reliable “anonymous sources”. Then we could believe unhesitatingly, as with stories that Donald Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, Donald Trump wrestled his presidential limo driver, Donald Trump called soldiers losers and suckers, etc. etc. These are all stories I was treated as some kind of crazy MAGA partisan for having the temerity to doubt.
Then — between this and the revelation of Arctic Frost, perhaps it’s time to have another conversation about The Deep State. As in, the thesis that the security state operated a slow-moving coup against Donald Trump might have been right about everything. That there really was a vast conspiracy to destroy Trump. And MAGA was right about everything.
It barely matters. The goalpost just shifts to them having been correct to do so, because the axiomatic belief is that Trump must be destroyed by any means nessecary. They are already electing officials that gloat to the opposition about wanting to see them murdered. You think they care about corrupt investigations at this point?
Define “they”. I think there are a lot of smart people on this forum and other places who fell for the Russiagate scam or should otherwise realize they were wrong about the Deep State. This matters insofar as we want smart people to realize what we’re up against.
The people who voted for Jay Jones.
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