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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What specifically is the case against Bellingcat?

I've seen a lot of nonspecific innuendo about them especially since Elon Musk's "psyop" accusations, but then what seems like one of their main guys volunteers this apparently unprompted (which is the first I've heard about it despite following the Belgorod raid all day, including through pro-Russian sources), which seems at odds with the idea that they're so tied up with western intelligence agencies.

A lot of it's just politics, but Bellingcat's actions related to the whole leak thing has been pretty overt, and that story in particular smelled a bit too much of parallel construction (yes, there are auties who can identify people from their kitchen counter; there are even ones who would make that argument to NYT; there aren't ones who'd do that and get a sympathetic or trusting view from the NYT)

I don't know that this points to 'spooks' themselves rather than merely just being bog-standard progressives being fed info, or even necessarily what extent that difference matters. If they are, Toler's tweet is some evidence against an incredibly strong editorial commitment to the party line... but in turn I don't think that's too unusual, either.

I don't know, by definition. The boring-and-probable explanation is that it's just excusing a leak from the active investigation using traditional methods (eg printer tracking and checking access logs a la Reality Winner, some 'confidential human source' that just so happened to be logged into that tiny room, so on), most likely as a political tactic to get ahead of any story framing him as a 'whistleblower'. Yes, the FBI isn't supposed to leak like a sieve, yes it could technically screw up the investigation or drive a target to do something drastic, but it's not the sort of problem that should surprise anybody or actually has ramifications for the feds.

((I mean, I'd like if someone though about overlap with rules against tag-along-journos during searches, but that'd probably take legislation and it's not gonna happen.))

The paranoid conspiracy one's that the information was found in non-traditional methods, and Bellingcat et NYT effort was built to launder that. At the less scuzzy level, some merely technical problem like they got a rubber-stamped warrant/subpeona to Discord and thirty other social media companies, wanted them to search for people posting the images, but weren't supposed to provide the images to search for given classification status. At the moderate one, Discord went out and gave the info to the feds, either of its own accord or after being 'politely requested': possibly not entirely kosher depending on exactly how hard that 'request' went, but no one can actually challenge it, and the big advantage to concealment is that everyone will Keep Using Discord.

At the more morbid one, they only had to ask their own techs, or the techs of another federal agency. Which would be bad at the technical level that it would require breaking SSL or having taps on major servers, but worse in the political sense that they're also not supposed to do that. But if the DHS or NSA does an upgraded log-them-all, they very much don't want that to become public, or show up in a court case, or whatever.

it's just excusing a leak from the active investigation using traditional methods (eg printer tracking and checking access logs a la Reality Winner, some 'confidential human source' that just so happened to be logged into that tiny room, so on)

What would be the point of that? These approaches aren't secret and are totally above board.

At the moderate one, Discord went out and gave the info to the feds, either of its own accord or after being 'politely requested': possibly not entirely kosher depending on exactly how hard that 'request' went, but no one can actually challenge it, and the big advantage to concealment is that everyone will Keep Using Discord.

Why would the feds care if people keep using discord or not? Why would people stop using discord just because they gave info about this guy who shared classified information? Are they worried about scaring away all the other zoomers sharing classified documents on zoomer irc?

What would be the point of that? These approaches aren't secret and are totally above board.

In the case of well-known and above-board approaches, the point is less disguising how he was caught, and more hiding who told the NYT about him, especially if the official use of those approaches was known to a relatively small number of people. There have at least been some infrastructural efforts to try to prevent tactical leaking by the FBI, and they're absolutely useless, but they're absolutely useless because of this style of 'hint' being possible.

Why would the feds care if people keep using discord or not? Why would people stop using discord just because they gave info about this guy who shared classified information? Are they worried about scaring away all the other zoomers sharing classified documents on zoomer irc?

If people believed that Discord (or some set of social media 'private' closed-group comms, or some subset of encryption, or whatever) are broken, they will stop using them for far broader realms that just being a dumbass zoomer trying to impress kids with classified info. I mean, they won't, in practice, but if you had a pretty serious investment giving very deep insight you wouldn't want to risk even a fairly small chance of losing it.

Do people really believe that discord will put up any resistance to a federal inquiry? This isn't even "broken", it's a fact of life.

You're overestimating online hard righties.

Groups like the Aryan Brotherhood are mostly just prison / drug gangs. That's why you get otherwise confusing gangs like the Nazi Lowriders who are neo-nazis plus hispanics. They do commit hate crimes but they also filter out anyone too obviously crazy or incompetent to join their criminal organization.

A lot of the neo nazi stuff is there to make sure that the gang members are permanently excluded from lawful society and thus fully committed. A guy with a faded "Arizona Meth Dealers" tattoo could probably still get construction jobs if he just shrugged it off as "I was an idiot when I was younger". A swastika? Not so much.

So Discord neo-nazis are really scrapping the bottom of the barrel. There was one Atomwaffen cell that was made up of a man in his mid 30s and a 15 yr old high school student. You're probably assuming the man in his 30s was running the cell. You'd be wrong.

So based on their behavior and proven competence I'm confident in saying that a lot of them don't realize that their Discord conversations aren't actually private.