A third person overheard his boastful recount and tipped off the FBI, who then found security footage of him
(emphasis mine)
This is wrong. The FBI already had the security footage, and it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t already know who it was. (They say his cell phone connected with towers in the Capitol. They didn’t just find this out.)
They’ve been doing a half-assed “parallel construction” program of pretending they don’t know who all the insurrectionists are and keeping each file on ice until they get a tip. The gullible or complicit press have been playing along. The gullible public have been eating it up. I’m looking at you all.
It’s wonderful that these traitors are facing punishment for their assault on our country and our democracy. That doesn’t make the surveillance state a good thing. Let’s keep our eyes open.
(I’ve had to go through that very same training, specifically because I have admin access to most of the systems at work and there was a chance I could stumble upon PHI.)
In this case, I’m not confident the FBI does know who the insurrectionists are. They have done a really shitty job, possibly at the direction of multiple administrations, of keeping tabs on right-wing provocateurs and wannabe terrorists. They’ve wasted countless hours and dollars building dossiers on BLM and DSA activists instead - peaceful protestors and mutual-aid activists.
They might not know the identities of insurrectionists who didn’t bring active cell phones into the Capitol – that is, the non-idiotic minority. But this guy isn’t one of those. When do you think the FBI discovered his identity? January 7th? January 10th? Is it possible they didn’t know his identity until his dentist turned him in? No, that is not possible. Why would you want to pretend it is?
Just as we can walk and chew gum at the same time, we can simultaneously urge the feds to round up these traitors while not kidding ourselves about the panopticon.
You’re absolutely right about that part; the law enforcement organizations our tax dollars fund have long – perhaps all along – ignored their duty and focused instead on repressing legitimate political activity. How shocking is it that the FBI’s headquarters building is still named after J. Edgar Hoover?
I’m sorry, are you the lead investigator on this case, because you can’t actually know any of that, unless you know the details of the investigation.
While we all (almost all) essentially have tracking devices on us now, the fact is that there is a shit ton of this stuff, terabytes and terabytes that get produced on a daily basis, because this includes billions of people on the planet. It may be a panopticon, but the feds aren’t going to know to look at a particular individuals in that mass of information unless they have a specific reason to do so. The sheer amount of information is like a firehose, not a faucet.
Much like everyone believing that all human knowledge is now being saved and preserved, it turns out digital information is much like other kinds of materials - someone actually has to sort through and organize it, because otherwise, it’s effectively useless for gaining understanding. The panopticon, like much else in our glorious “future,” is turning out to be far less “effective” for what people thought it would be, I’d argue. Especially since the primary people who are collecting this data is not law enforcement, but private corporations.
There are tons and tons of people in and around DC every day. The FBI cannot just grab cell tower connection data and conclude everyone who was carrying a phone in DC on Jan 6 was one of the terrorists who attacked it. Only a small subset of people in that area actually stormed the capital. They [the FBI] have a tough job of figuring out which ones were terrorists storming the capital, and which ones were the innocent bystanders who were getting terrorized by them. Even of the ones who marched from the Orange Hitler’s rally to the capital building, not all of them were involved in storming it. There was a portion who thought all they were going to do was stand around outside on the sidewalk and hold signs, and who were almost as shocked as the rest of us that it turned into a full blown insurrection.
So cut the FBI a little slack. They’ve got a tough job to do.
Edit to add: The ones who posted evidence against themselves on facebook were the easy ones to find. All the ones who didn’t take selfies are harder to identify and track down. A lot of them were self-aware enough afterwards not go to around bragging about it like this guy did.
They SHOULD have been tracking violent right wing terrorists for years now, since at least Oklahoma City if not prior to that. They (and other law enforcement agencies, federal, state, and local) have not taken this very real problem seriously in the slightest. If they had, some of these groups would have been on their radar prior to this. Instead they’ve focused on rounding up Muslims and left wing activists.
But no, they can’t just grab cell tower data. And this would not have helped with the people who had no connections with right wing militia groups. But it WOULD have helped with the organized groups that were part of this insurrection and who helped to radicalized people outside these groups.
For the most part, the ones who were in the militias were tracked, and are sitting in jail now (or out on bail). They were the ones quickly rounded up. It’s all the others, who just tagged along that day and followed the crowd who are tricky to identify.
They only really started taking this seriously under Obama when threats to him became more serious. But again, this is a problem since before the Oklahoma City bombing (which was in 1995!!!) and then the bombing in Atlanta at the Olympics (1996!!!), and the fact that they pretty much let it fester and focused only on “lone wolves” - which is a tactic adopted by white supremacist leaders like David Lane for that specific purpose and has now been adopted by groups like Islamic state. But in the 90s, they were too focused on left wing groups who were not killing people, but burning down car dealerships and logging companies, and chaining themselves to trees, clearly the “real” threat to human life and safety… (/s, obviously).
By that time, it was already a major problem that led to some serious radicalization of more mainstream conservatives. There is serious overlap between some parts of the GOP and these movements, well prior to the rise of Qanon.
Just because people, particularly journalists, on the internet knew who about 50 of the insurrectionists were on sight does not in any way preclude the possibility the FBI did not know who they were. Why else would the FBI ask the public to help identify even the cosplaying Q guy? To look stupid?
I’m talking about the subset of insurrectionists who carried active cell phones. We know their identity was available to the FBI for the asking. It’s true I don’t know whether they asked. But isn’t that a safe bet?
I can only guess at the FBI’s reason for playing dumb. But that’s another safe bet. Google “parallel construction”. It’s been discussed pretty widely, including here on BoingBoing.
In no way contradicting your stance, but IIRC, didn’t the Feds warn some of the bad people in the days leading up to the insurrection not to come to DC as rumors gained traction?
Indeed. I think that under Obama, they finally started taking these groups seriously, but I’d argue it was far too late by then. They had grown and were more effective at recruiting people by then, in part thanks to the internet and also due to the fact that some white people lost their shit when a Black guy became president. They said it at the time, his election was a boon for recruitment (this is according to former white supremacist Derek Black, whose father is Dan Black). The tactic of pushing out white supremacist talking points into the GOP by having white supremacists run as members of the GOP, but hiding to some degree their background, worked like a charm.
So my argument here is that attention should have been paid since the 90s before it got so bad, and before they were able to infiltrate one of the major parties so very much.
