This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Probably, because they aren't allowed to argue framing as a defense and the United States federal court system is well known for beating people, figuratively, into guilty pleas through intimidation via threatening cruelly long sentences if they don't plea and are found guilty. So, imagine, you are told by the judge you can't allege the government framed you in your trial. You can stage a half-defense at your trial, but if the jury doesn't buy it, since it is not the true defense, you will go to jail for 5 to 10 extra years. They plea out at this point.
And that is a federal matter how? Because the kid will at some point cross state lines in interstate commerce? How is that relevant to J6? It seems suspicious. People lie and slander each other all the time, what if the allegations were produced by the J6 investigation and are not true?
I'm going to reply here to keep the conversations we have together concentrated.
I don't doubt that instances of this happens. But for this particular case you cited, I see that Daniel Tocci plead guilty to child pornography. Let's say he was intimidated and framed into pleading a guilty plea on "sprinkle some child porn on him", well, this is the perfect administration and the perfect FBI director with a great conservative media system who would love to hear this story and spread it as far and as wide as possible. His defense attorney also doesn't seem like the type to let his client make such a plea seeing as they're fighting on procedural ground for evidence dismissal. If the injustice to Daniel Tocci is real, Trump is right there in the correct spot to help him.
I would love to have a different example where you can point to J6er defendant intimidation/framed.
Trump's blanket pardon applied to Tocci and then the DoJ argued that it should not apply to easily-frameable, obscene photo possession cases, but should apply to hard-to-frame illegal gun possession cases springing from J6 searches. What kind of logic is that? And IIRC that logic worked, and Trump stood down because he can't afford to look like that guy with all the Epstein stuff going on. It would be the perfect framing these days, it's like a witch allegation 400 years ago, anyone who gets in the way of it also gets accused and it's incredibly easy to frame more people.
well this is a different argument isn't it? Trump pardoned the J6 stuff, and looks like the DOJ is arguing that evidence of other crimes collected during J6 investigation should not be prosecuted further. And yes, looks like they're only doing that for the politically defensible stuff. And yes that's bad because it's inconsistent.
But what you're saying happened to Daniel Tocci is clearly a lot different: intimidation, planting of evidence, and framing of child porn possession. Again, if Daniel is innocent, there are now plenty of platforms in which he can tell his story.
In addition, based on what I can find, "[s]ix of the pardoned January 6th insurrectionists are charged with committing child sex crimes, ranging from sexual assault to possession of child pornography." (I think I counted only 2 with child porn charges). Seeing as there's 1.5k+ J6ers, that's a very very very small amount of people being framed. I can easily see at least an order of magnitude more and most people won't bat an eye. I also don't see any reason why Daniel Tocci is so special that he needed child porn planted. Occam's razor points to that Daniel Tocci was highly likely already in possession of child porn.
I still believe it has not been proven that he wasn't framed, and therefore he isn't guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But I agree it would be a rogue framing and not systemic action by the US federal government. My priors on him already possessing it are low because I'm skeptical anybody actually enjoys obscene photographs, I'm skeptical such a person would go to J6, see the news about investigations, and choose not to throw it away or at least encrypt it, and I am generally skeptical that the few people who do enjoy such material actually let it sit around in a giant downloaded collection unencrypted. When you add all of these priors up and combine it with FBI agents being allowed to posses and distribute the obscene photographs, I'm thinking it's more likely a rogue agent or technician, motivated by hatred for MAGA, planted it, knowing that Trump would likely pardon him for the J6 behaviors.
Just as you think "it has not been proven that he wasn't framed", you also haven't provided evidence strongly against "it has not been proven that he was framed". And I do think Daniel Tocci has a lot of avenues to pursue justice if he so desires. At the very least, he probably can get someone whom he trusts to lay out the evidence that he was framed.
Uhhhhhhhh, I mean out of 1.5k+ people, only one or two did so, is it really that surprising? My priors is that people who would follow a liar are not that intelligent, they are depressed about the loss of their political idol, stressed about news of investigations, or just stupidly overconfident, and let things slip. I don't know anyone who like obscenity but there's a reason why anime is looked down upon because of the weeb's penchants for lolis, and that's the public ones, who knows what they do in private.
So this person, a rogue agent, or this group of people, a rouge group, was able to plant:
This rogue agent, or this group of rogues, was able to pull the wool over the judge (who could be part of the group), all the people that handled chain of evidence (who could also be part of the group), and the defense attorney (who could also be part of the group), and the interrogators (who could also be part of the group) would put pressure on Daniel Tocci so that even though he's innocent would then plead guilty. And they must have done it with future sight because their search (and therefore planting of the evidence) was done November 2023, a full year before the 2024 November election. And of all the J6ers, they just decided to plant evidence on this random Daniel Tocci guy.
Look, I am always ready for stories of systematic abuse of power and coverups. No need to look further than the Catholic Church and Boston to know that decades of widespread wrongdoing and injustice can escape the public eye. But that proves the point: there was a system that worked its weight to let the crime happen and then coverup the crime. Like I said, if framing Daniel Tocci was so easy, I would have expected an order of magnitude more at the very least (so 20+ instead of 2) also had that done to them.
No because he's in prison and was not allowed a fair trial. It's also illegal to publicize the evidence of the case, which I think is a property unique to obscene photographs cases. Doesn't that violate public trial provision of the US constitution? How can a trial be public if it is illegal to display the evidence in public or to even view the evidence in private?
While it would look more like framing if there were less images, it's still possible if someone who had access to his stuff for a couple of hours did it. But why do you trust your government so much? Isn't it weird that they call themselves Justice, extremely narcissistic to do, while slandering this man and violating almost his entire bill of rights? They violated his right to privacy by searching him, the violated his freedom of assembly by searching him as a result of going to a political rally, they violated his 8th amendment rights by demanding 70 months in lockup for having disgusting photographs, they violated his right to public trial through the nature of the law they prosecute him on and by intimidating him into pleading guilty, and they violated his 10th amendment right by prosecuting him for something that is unrelated to interstate commerce. Then they call themselves Justice? Yes, I don't trust those people, I don't care how nasty some of the people they lock up are, two wrongs does not make a right and there is something rotten going on there.
As I mentioned, I don't believe you've proven that it was an unfair trial.
There are plenty of other non-child-pornography examples where evidence is only described and not shown: espionage, trade secrets, etc. The right to a public trial has been broadly interpreted to mean the proceedings are available to the public. Journalists and the public certainly can go and attend the court hearings. I'm sure if we want to dig enough there is plenty of public information you can get about the trial. As for child pornography in particular, you might disagree with this but it's considered that continued existence of such materials constitutes ongoing harm (New York v Ferber and Osborne v Ohio are the relevant cases and you will probably be interested in the dissent of Osborne). And again, there is no need for public access of evidence as the prosecution, the judge, the jury, and the defense would have had plenty of time and opportunity to assess and review the evidence that would be brought prior to trial proceeding.
That I am totally in agreement with you, wouldn't take more than 15 minutes with a competent computer person. The interesting question for me has always been why would those guys not cry foul and say they were framed.
Just because I have to fight my company to get a better wage does not mean that I don't trust in my company's processes. Just because I think the processes are dumb and wasteful does not mean they don't produce correct and beneficial results for the greater whole. I trust and am cautious of the same individuals all the time, why can't I do the same thing with the government? At worse, thankfully, they can just be voted out.
Just because it's narcissistic doesn't mean that they are wrong. Also this case never got to the supreme court.
As I mention, I am not convinced of any arguments for slander or that Daniel Tocci's constitutional rights were violated. Just like the sexual abuse victims around the world, it would require Tocci to have great courage to make public the abuse and levy those charges in court of law, but it can happen, and it must start from that.
I'm sure they got a warrant, unless you're against that in general (are you?).
There is a sizable portion of this country that consider the "political rally" an "insurrection".
6 years for the participation in an illegal industry, the 6 years presumably was given by the book in that there was a minimum and maximum sentence for what he plead guilty for. "having disgusting photographs" is a reductive description of what actually happened. I have photos the disgusting litter box my cats make after they eat food their stomachs don't like, there aren't any laws about that I can assure you.
I've discussed the part about public trial above so I won't address it here. As for the "intimidation", so far you have not provided any evidence of intimidation.
Can you confidently say that all of the CSAM in Daniel Tocci's possession is Massachusetts-homegrown? I'm going to bet he didn't produce them himself and guess that Tocci got them over the internet.
At this point I'm not sure who you're outraged at. You're outraged at the judicial system? You're outraged at the Supreme Court Justices specifically? You're outraged at case details that you haven't provided evidence for (planting evidence, framing charges, intimidation)? You certainly can believe whatever you want to believe, and I came in to this discussion hoping to know or learn something I didn't know before but I am coming out of it finding your claims unexamined and unconvincing.
I'm offended by, not exactly outraged at, the people of the United States and their failure to live up to their founders' original ideal of liberty. For at least a century they have abridged their original constitution and its protections of liberty in exchange for a folkish, hoi-polloish idea of safety as well as equality. I primarily find it disgusting, all things considered, the way that they govern and they way that they call it justice.
I would say I'm a moderate libertarian. I believe the American Congress has the right to ban the sale and purchase of CSAM, appropriately defined, between states. I think it ought to do this. My moderate view is that non-commercial byte transmission does not constitute commerce, and so federal laws cannot regulate it. That's because a strong 10th amendment is key for liberty, and it's what the founders intended. I believe states can and should constitutionally regulate the non-commercial transmission of CSAM. I actually don't believe videos and photographs constitute speech and so I don't believe the 1st amendment protects them at all.
However, I believe that the 4th and 8th amendments are your commands from your founders to not fall behind Europe in terms of privacy rights and government harshness, and you have failed, in CSAM sentences and other areas like drugs, computer hacking, and threats, although tellingly not in dealing with black criminals. I think current USA CSAM laws are probably obeying the 1st amendment, but many federal charges fail the 10th, although this is irrelevant to the defendants ultimately because the cases could just be charged in state court instead. And I think many CSAM investigations fail the 4th amendment and many sentences fail the 8th. And in Tocci's case I think all these elements are present, even though he was not investigated for CSAM specifically, the J6 raids also failed the 4th amendment because they were the result of an ultimately illegitimate investigation, and the DoJ understood this for all accessory cases except for pedophilia related ones, but that is downstream of their pervasive violating of the 8th amendment regarding such cases.
The ultimate result of all this is a 19 year old in federal prison for 15 years because his girlfriend sent him a nude photo on Snapchat. Snapchat conducts essentially governmental surveillance which is illegal currently in Europe and automatically detects the nude, sent privately between two people, and immediately sends the evidence to the federal government. This is unreasonable search. The federal government has jurisdiction because the nude went through snapchat servers in another state, and snapchat is kinda involved in commerce, or something. Doesn't matter. Safety Americans want a leviathan federal government so they dumped the 10th amendment a long time ago. Ok anyway he gets arrested by surprise NKVD style, as Americans cheer on because of safety, and then has the option to plead guilty for a „lenient” five years in prison or go to trial and get a 15 year sentence when a jury of his peers convicts him after their government used illegal-for-mere-non-badgeGods (I also support getting rid of almost all special exceptions for law enforcement agents but the Constitution was not this libertarian explicitly) malware to break into his phone, which is yet again unreasonable search and seizure that is cheered on for safety reasons.
The only thing stopping what I just described is a „trust me, bro” from the American government, which is how Russia and China work, not a liberal enlightenment state. That makes the United States no better than Russia and China when it comes to „justice.” While the case I described will breed controversy when it happens, a lot of people will say he deserves the wood chipper or something like it, because 17 and 19 is a disgusting age gap. Or maybe his girlfriend will only be 16, and he will get no sympathy, lol. It will happen soon because Snapchat is going to know the age of borderline teenage girls exactly now, due to ID verification, and they're going to include that in their detection algorithms. And the tech for just detecting nudity in a brand-new photo is somewhat new as well, I think before they compared photos to a pre-existing hash database of stuff that had already been prosecuted on. We have already seen that the American government WILL prosecute late teen boys and early 20s men for their normal relationships, and it's not going to stop, and because of how unjust the American government is, it's going to pervasive, it's going to break all privacy standards ever thought of in the 18th century, and it's going to be severe. Like, sick and depraved teenage boy dating girl two grades below him sentenced to justice by the DoJ severe. Us Europeans will look on, idly wondering what is wrong with you lot, and the boys will rot in prison. Many of you will cheer for his sexual abuse behind bars. Justice will be served, United States style.
In most European countries, this type of privacy invasion is illegal. In most European countries, this kid can't do more than 18 months in jail for having a nude of his underage girlfriend. Maybe none at all, depending on the country.
To make this more Motte, I have the exact same opinions on the Aaron Swartz case. The federal government had no constitutional jurisdiction; it had practical jurisdiction because Americans have violated their own states' rights in exchange for safety for over a century. They violated his right to privacy by using secret subpoena spam to include massive amounts of pre-crime surveillance in the court case, a lot of which is more regulated in Europe. Then they threatened to violate his 8th amendment rights if he did not agree to plead guilty to charges, telling him he would get 50 years in prison, offering 6 months for a plea, which is of course violating his right to a trial through illegal threatening to deprive him of another right. Americans have destroyed their 8th amendment protections, again, for safety, because they are a cruel and scared people, and that is how their government was able to openly do this.
Ultimately I think the United States judicial system has a privacy and cruelty problem in a lot of areas of law and this is downstream of other negative trends. It's not quite a first world country any more when it comes to criminal law. It's more like what I would expect dealing with an overfunded Muslim police state or something. At least those are restricted by not having billions to dump into surveillance of thought crime. The American surveillance regime and the Snowden case is another point related to the 4th and 8th amendment.
And as a consequence, I don't trust American government agents. I think they're likely to be sociopaths. And sociopaths frame people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link