'BlueLeaks' Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/06/blueleaks-exposes-files-from-hundreds-of-police-departments/ <comment><USER2> >"Netsential confirmed that this compromise was likely the result of a threat actor who leveraged a compromised Netsential customer user account and the web platform's upload feature to introduce malicious content, allowing for the exfiltration of other Netsential customer data."

So they are spinning it as a user's fault? Not the fault of Netsential for allowing malicious content to be a problem...

<comment><USER3> That's the first thing I thought, too - sounds like they are trying to spin it as some malicious user "broke in". If a "customer user account" is able to upload a malicious payload and exfiltrate huge amounts of other customers' data, there's a much larger, underlying problem here. Hard to see how Netsential could get through this fiasco and still have any business.

<comment><USER4> Legally speaking, if you find a bug and abuse it (to e.g. extract data), you're breaking the law; I know people don't want to hear it and want to protect whistleblowers, but it's factually illegal to steal data like this.

That's what whistleblowing is all about though; purposefully breaking the law or a contract (like an NDA) to expose shit. Some countries will protect whistleblowers, others have to flee and seek asylum abroad.

So don't deny whether or not law and/or contract was broken, instead focus on whether the action was justified. Yes the system was broken and open for exploitation, but the attack was not accidental: they intentionally uploaded a malicious payload, intentionally extracted data, and intentionally uploaded it to the internets.

<comment><USER5> Actually this is not whistleblowing. Technically, you need to have legal access to the data to whistleblow. If you have to acquire access to the data illegally to then release it its just illegal.

<comment><USER6> Worked for the Pentagon papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm disappointed that U.S. police departments would use such low a quality service with no focus on security. Looking at Netsential's website, their services look very basic and inexpensive. There's not even a mention of security on its site. It was only a matter of time before they were hacked.

[https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=280](https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=280)

<comment><USER8> That website is _ancient_. The layout is done with tables and there are bits of code in there specifically for IE7.

That means it'll work on anything. The old desktop PCs that sit around in public offices for decades will display it with no problems. Compare that to a beautiful, modern website from a rival that plain won't load let alone render on that ancient computer.

The one with the working website wins the contract.

<comment><USER9> What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic .

<comment><USER8> _What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic._

Lots of things.

\- Screen readers expect HTML tables to _be_ tables. If there aren't things like a caption the screen reader can inform the user of a problem.

\- In a lot of cases the table won't inline in to a logical structure for reading out. A screen reader will read cells out from left to right, which interleaves content from one column with content from another when that isn't the intent. CSS layout will _usually_ read better.

\- Table-based layouts use a lot more code than CSS layouts, which is more to download and more to parse.

\- In the case of that website in particular, there's a _ton_ of inline styling which is more unnecessary data to download.

\- Using tables for layout makes it much harder to develop truly responsive layouts for mobile; doing things like hiding download/battery intensive page elements is much harder (especially if those things span several cells). That site does have some media queries for controlling styles, but it could be doing more.

<comment><USER9> That missed the point of my comment. Wasn't arguing 'for' table designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If what the article says is true and PPI is indeed in these documents than these documents are ripe for fraud, criminal use and identity theft. This is worse than a password leak.

<comment><USER11> If previous incidents have taught us anything, it's that taxpayers should buy free credit monitoring to everyone affected by the leak and be done with it. Maybe throw in $10 to anyone that can prove they suffered losses as a direct result of the leak.

<comment><USER12> Monitoring sucks. Freeze your credit (don't just lock it) until it's absolutely needed, then refreeze it. This will choke off much of the business of credit bureaus, but too bad so sad. There are a number of interesting approaches to solving the same problems as credit bureaus (risk assessment, identity verification, etc.) that don't carry as much consumer risk as the big three bureaus do every single day.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure your parent comment was oozing sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> tweet with the bittorrent magnet URL and trackers: [https://twitter.com/eldstal1/status/1274660276508545025](https://twitter.com/eldstal1/status/1274660276508545025)

<comment><USER15> I got meta parser error for the torrent. Did anyone else had issues?

<comment><USER14> try with transmission, a number of less capable bittorrent clients don't like single-file 290GB torrents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is quite wild. Is there any finer-grained summary of the sort of data leaked, and how extensive it is? Even a million documents could be anything from mundane to incredibly sensitive, depending on the sort of content.

<comment><USER13> The leak is still too new and too large for a very detailed analysis, but BleepingComputer has an article[1] on it.

[1] [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/blueleaks- dat...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/blueleaks-data-dump- exposes-over-24-years-of-police-records/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Stewart Baker, an attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of Steptoe & > Johnson LLP and a former assistant secretary of policy at the U.S. > Department of Homeland Security, said the BlueLeaks data is unlikely to shed > much light on police misconduct, but could expose sensitive law enforcement > investigations and even endanger lives.

But then there was this: [https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1273329710576152581](https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1273329710576152581)

<comment><USER14> far-right extremist terrorism greatly outranked radical wahabbi/salafists and similar in 2018/2019, domestically, in the USA:

[https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism- unite...](https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-far-right-extremism-united- states)

[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/201...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/03/07/467022/confronting- domestic-right-wing-terrorist-threat/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-e...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white- extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown- terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/)

<comment><USER18> I see that first link kind of buried the lede in footnote 2: " The number of casualties from attacks by Islamic extremists has been greater than by right- wing extremists, largely because of a few cases like Omar Mateen's Pulse nightclub attack that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others."

So right wing terrorism is a greater threat, unless you are worried about being killed.

<comment><USER19> If you are killed it doesn't matter how many others died with you. I personally tend to be more worried about things that happen often and are widespread, than things that happen seldom and are more localized.

But if asked "Are you more worried about right wing or islamist extremists?", my answer is "Yes".

<comment><USER20> From a number point of view, you should be more worried about common crime than terrorism from any side.

<comment><USER14> From a pure numbers/statistics point of view a great deal more people die from slipping and falling or drowning in their bathtub every year than are killed by either form of terrorism in the USA.

But we still should take efforts to reduce that, whether it's by building showers with textured floors and efforts to counteract terrorism...

[https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns- in...](https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-in-a-tub- nearly-every-day-in-1201018.php)

<comment><USER21> However, falling in the bathtub isn't ideologically driven or at risk of increasing dramatically based on political shifts.

We don't take terrorism or white supremacy seriously because it poses an imminent threat to everyone right now, we take it seriously because it has the potential to put hundreds of thousands to millions of lives at risk in the future if left unaddressed.

<comment><USER22> I am sorry to say this but white supremecy does not have the potential to kill millions. It's like saying gang violence has the potential to kill millions.

<comment><USER14> Except that within the memory of people still alive to witness it, it killed approximately 6 million people in concentration camps...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Stop messing with people, and this won't happen. I don't feel bad for the police.

<comment><USER24> I too dislike hyper aggressive militarized police who act above the law. But anyone who makes facile generalizations about entire groups of people is merely mirroring the problem, not helping it.

Edit: "populations" -> "groups of people"

<comment><USER25> Normally I agree, but this is one of those situations where the problem goes _far_ beyond "a few bad apples". The entire police culture in the United States is built on the "good" cops not reporting, fiercely defending, or even lying to provide cover for the bad ones. And at that point, every person who tolerates the bad behaviors ends up enabling them, and therefore become complicit in them.

<comment><USER24> >not reporting, fiercely defending, or even lying to provide cover for the bad ones. And at that point, every person who tolerates the bad behaviors ends up enabling them, and therefore become complicit in them.

Precisely the same mentality is present in many of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in the US.[1]

Are you able to think objectively for a moment, and see how your reaction to police doing that, is similar the police's reaction to criminals doing that?

[1][https://youtu.be/nFhWpTKvD8E](https://youtu.be/nFhWpTKvD8E)

<comment><USER26> Classic whataboutism.

EDIT: The commented post was edited after I wrote my original above comment. Now it's more like victim-blaming.

<comment><USER24> When two things are directly interrelated (attitudes among police and attitudes among criminals), are we not allowed to discuss them both? Why not? Seems like you're trying to purposefully shun context, which isn't a practical way of understanding reality.

<comment><USER27> For one thing, LEOs receive governmental and societal sanction, are armed with lethal force, and receive legal immunity, and so clearly should be held to a higher standard.

<comment><USER24> Agreed! That still doesn't mean Collective Punishment is ethical

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment)

<comment><USER28> Stopping all of agroup from doing something terrible is a far cry frol collective punishment. In fact there's no need to punish at all here, simple eliminate the problem.

<comment><USER24> That's not what were talking about here. Were talking about indiscriminate hacking/doxing of police, and the people who are cheering that on. How is that going to effectively address the root causes of police militarization?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The only remarkable fact about this leak is that us plebes get to see the other side of the one-way mirror.

<comment><USER30> You get to see how the sausage is made in a developed country which is, by far, an outlier in its crime-rate. I'm all for increasing police de-escalation training and policing standards in-general, I just don't think it will solve the problems that the protestors want to be solved when the crime rate is as high as it is. Ultimately, the cops are going to get jaded and stressed in ways that cops in other nations would not, and they will always prioritize their life and well-being over that of the perpetrator.

I was travelling a few years ago, and hanging out in the hotel bar in Portland, Maine, and I listened in on a heated conversation between some guy and a lady whose husband is a cop. They were discussing police brutality and the protests at the time (Baltimore maybe?), and the lady's point was basically "do whatever you want with regulating police behaviour, but I will take my husband coming home at the end of the night over anything else"

It's possible with the falling rates of crime, this may just solve itself (though increasing police training and standards is a good thing regardless).

<comment><USER31> The crime rate in America is relatively low according to official data:

\- [https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/30/new-fbi- data-v...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/09/30/new-fbi-data-violent- crime-still-falling) \- [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/10/17/facts-about...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/)

The latter indicates that, depending on which data you use, the violent crime rate dropped 50–75% between 1993 and 2018 (the larger drop is from BJS, which has some methodology for estimating unreported crimes). The property crime rate dropped at 50–70% over the same time period.

Various actors in society—police gangs (sorry, "unions"), public prosecutors, for-profit prison operators, and straight up fascists—have been stoking fears of Americans for decades such that there are people who genuinely believe that America (as a whole) has more crime even when the numbers completely put a lie to that.

I'm certain that the leaks from this will reinforce what we should already know: America is increasingly a surveillance state of its police against its people, that the police rarely end up doing the jobs that they are nominally hired for (solving crimes), and that there has been an overall reduction in crime but an increase in policing outsized compared to the value police forces provide.

Don't believe the bollocks.

<comment><USER30> >The crime rate in America is relatively low according to official data:

Come on. And those are aggregate numbers. There is variability between different states, and rural vs urban crime. For example, I just looked up the homicide rate in Atlanta Georgia (17 per 100k), vs Oslo, Norway (0.5 per 100k). That's crazy big.

>have been stoking fears of Americans for decades such that there are people who genuinely believe that America (as a whole) has more crime even when the numbers completely put a lie to that.

Things were really bad in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The downtown cores of most major cities were dangerous. Don't pretend it was OK before. Things like the 90s 'crime bill' didn't just come out of nowhere. It was bad. Things only started changing the late 90s and early 2000s when cities went through resistance and yes, crime started falling.

<comment><USER31> America has a very easy answer to reducing the death rate, but that it cannot or will not take: get rid of the guns. Get them out of the criminal hands, get them out of non-criminal hands, and get them out of cop hands.

You're right that the 90s `crime bills` didn't come out of nowhere. But they didn't come out of a "we need to make our communities safer" perspective (that was merely the sales pitch)—because they increased criminal penalties on acts that generally affect low-income and minority "criminals". They _built_ the problems we have today. The whole idea of a "super predator" was as much a racist invention as Ronald Reagan's "welfare queens in Cadillacs".

Civil Forfeiture and RICO sounded like a great idea when it was to be used against white-collar beneficiaries of criminal enterprises. Except that's not how it got used, and so cops in all jurisdictions started rolling up money from regular citizens just like a regular protection racket, except without the protection. It was _meant_ to be used against the cartels, but instead it got used as an income booster.

What made communities safer? It _wasn't_ giving cops and prosecutors more powers. Reinvestment in those communities. Education. Treatment for trauma. Those things _all_ made far more difference in making communities safer than any single power given to cops since the 90s. Those things just destroyed some of the communities even more. Cities are _safer_ when you have people spending money in them and living there. Suburbs and exurbs and white flight made downtowns more dangerous by taking all of the money out of the cities and leaving people in desperate straits. Reurbanization and gentrification reversed the trends (although gentrification has its own problems).

Related to the use of aggregate numbers, read the Pew link. It talks about the rural/urban variability and about local perception of crime (people believe that there's more crime across America, but most do not believe that there's more crime in _their_ area).

<comment><USER30> >America has a very easy answer to reducing the death rate, but that it cannot or will not take: get rid of the guns.

Color me skeptical. Does banning certain drugs prevent drug-related crime? These kinds of indirect proposals (e.g. ban guns), that purport to solve complicated social problems (e.g. crime-rate) never pan out, but they are attractive because it FEELS like they are the answer - especially if you already have an ideology that underpins that belief.

> But they didn't come out of a "we need to make our communities safer" > perspective (that was merely the sales pitch)

Of course it did. That's exactly why that bill was passed.

>because they increased criminal penalties on acts that generally affect low- income and minority "criminals".

Because those companies are the most impacted by crime, petty or otherwise. Gated rich communities were perfectly fine.

>Reinvestment in those communities. Education. Treatment for trauma. Those things _all_ made far more difference in making communities safer than any single power given to cops since the 90s. Those things just destroyed some of the communities even more.

None of the things you present as explanations are actually supported by anything. You're putting out explanations that you FEEL are correct based on your own ideology and biases. City, State and Federal governments spend an inordinate amount of money already. Maybe they should spend more, but I don't see evidence that that will lead to outcomes you think it will.

>It talks about the rural/urban variability and about local perception of crime (people believe that there's more crime across America, but most do not believe that there's more crime in _their_ area).

Don't gas-light. Pull up the crime and homicide rates of a few American cities and compare to Europe. Clearly, America is an outlier.

<comment><USER31> Banning guns _absolutely does work_. Ask the people of Australia or Scotland whether gun bans work. It doesn't eliminate violent crime, but it has an _absolute_ effect on both the terror and spread of same. (Yes, some people switch to knives or bats, but such people are going to find their ways to be violent just as people who want to pretend that gun bans don't work will conveniently ignore the majority of countries who have gun bans and lower violent crime rates.)

Your assertion that the reason crime bills were passed is "we need to make our communities safer" is nonsense. It's the reason that was sold to terrified Americans—and most of the terror was provided by the news, not the reality. (IIRC, the crime rates were _already dropping_.) The reasons that they were passed is a) racism, b) profit, c) power, and d) racism.

And yes, America's an outlier. But mostly because it also has the widest wealth gap in the developed world (_mostly_ predicated on race, but not exclusively).

I'm not gaslighting anyone—I'm telling you straight up that America's crime problems—such as they exist are:

1\. Incorrect, usually radicalized, reporting in a way that supports the _fear_ that there is more crime than there is; 2\. Overpolicing and overprosecution, especially of minority persons; 3\. the effects of extended systemic racism and the casual acceptance of white supremacy in policing; and 4\. poverty and the criminalization of being poor or otherwise disadvantaged.

If people have no hope, what do you expect?

<comment><USER30> You just assert things as facts. You assert that American gun rights are the cause of levels of crime. You assert the wealth gap is responsible for levels of crime. You assert the intent of the crime bill was "a) racism, b) profit, c) power, and d) racism". That is not true. The 90s were not Jim Crow 1890s. People did actually care about crime and impact of crime and it was really bad. Did people just forget that during the 70s, 80s and 90s crime destroyed inner-cities? That the urban renaissance of the 2000s didn't actually occur until AFTER crime-rates started to fall? Also, it is a well known fact (though conveniently ignored) that the crime bill had the support of minority communities and minority leaders, because it's not pleasant to live and raise children in a neighborhood with gang violence, crime and open drug use.

You have no basis for anything of those things.

>2\. Overpolicing and overprosecution

America has an over-sentencing problem. American prison sentences are higher than anywhere in the world. The people who are actually in prison, are guilty of the crimes they are accused of being guilty, the difference is that in Europe a rapist may get probation, while here (e.g. Weinstein) gets 23 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Source: [https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets](https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets)

Their server seems to be dead right now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are there data descriptors somewhere or a sample of what's in these files?

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, so many [flagged] and [dead] comments!

<comment><USER35> that's the culture war playing out, with bad agents all around. somebody posts a tweet linking outlaw motorcycle gangs to riots, gets flagged, i post a rebuttal in the same thread, also get flagged. it's a site full of narcissist "oh no, somebody has a different opinion from mine!"

<comment><USER36> Does it feel like things have really gone downhill since you joined?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So how many watchlists do I get put on if I download this?

</comment><comment><USER38> Years ago a fusion center in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential domestic terrorists. There were so many controversial aspect to these fusion centers.

[https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-09-12/ron- pa...](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-09-12/ron-paul-a- domestic-terrorist/)

<comment><USER39> This is the kind of pseudofact that tends to trigger my BS detector (tl;dr: it's BS), so I followed your link. It mentions Ron Paul in only one sentence beyond the headline: where it appears in one clause, a semicolon-separated member of a list of "disturbing incidents": " _a Missouri-based center 's report that support for Ron Paul's presidential bid was a sign of membership in a domestic terrorist group_".

But if you did, there's a link at the bottom to the report they're citing, so let's check that: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/documents/fusioncenterreport....](http://www.austinchronicle.com/documents/fusioncenterreport.pdf) This one isn't original reporting either. It's a 38-page think tank whitepaper from "The Constitution Project" on the subject of Fusion Centers in general.

And _IT_ only mentions Ron Paul in one sentence too, where it mixes it in with two other items in the same bullet point: " _A Missouri-based fusion center issued a February 2009 report describing support for the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul or third party candidates, possession of the iconic "Don't Tread on Me" "ag and anti-abortion activism as signs of membership in domestic terrorist groups_" So now we've gone from your 8 year old link to a point three years farther in the past. And the source for that attention grabbing headling is still nowhere to be found.

But that bullet point was footnoted, so let's check that. It's... another news story! Actually the URL in the footnote is stale and broken, but I found the story by headline using Google: [https://www.columbiatribune.com/article/20090314/News/303149...](https://www.columbiatribune.com/article/20090314/News/303149835)

So this tells us all about the Ron Paul thing, right? Nope. It, too, mentions Ron Paul in only one sentence: " _Red flags outlined in the document include political bumper stickers such as those for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, talk of conspiracy theories such as the plan for a mega-highway from Canada to Mexico and possession of subversive literature._ ". So that's dilluted _STILL FURTHER_ in a bunch of other items, most of which sound... not too terribly off to me.

And the source for this report? They have a link, but not to the report: [https://www.infowars.com/secret-state-police-report-ron- paul...](https://www.infowars.com/secret-state-police-report-ron-paul-bob- barr-chuck-baldwin-libertarians-are-terrorists/)

Yup, four hops and we're at Infowars. And the report they cite? Not public. They're apparently the only one who have seen it.

You got fooled by "media laundering" into regurgitating partisan agitprop. I can't prove your "fact" is wrong, but the support for it is _VERY_ thin.

<comment><USER38> And your pseudo 60 second detective work is an example of another problem: you speak authoritatively on a topic you just learned about.

The Missouri Highway Patrol retracted the report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) in 2009. They removed the mentions for Ron Paul and Campaign for Liberty.

The Highway Patrol launched an investigation into the origin of the report. The Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder called for the suspension of the Director of Public Safety "until those responsible have been identified".

We personally investigated the story in 2009. I have seen the report. I served as a national Ron Paul campaign person and currently work within the IC and international law enforcement.

The Fusion of Paranoia and Bad Policy - Center for Democracy and Technology 4/1/2009

[https://cdt.org/insights/the-fusion-of-paranoia-and-bad- poli...](https://cdt.org/insights/the-fusion-of-paranoia-and-bad-policy/)

<comment><USER39> I'm not speaking authoritatively on anything. I followed the link you provided to learn about the subject, and it led me only to Infowars.

[OK, you found an original scan, thanks.] That new link is still broken. Where is the report? Don't give me partisan think tanks or your personal experience on the Paul campaign, give me a source.

OK, now can we take this seriously? What's the language in that report that says that the center was associating Ron Paul support with domestic terrorism or whatever? All I see is that it says militia membership correlates with right wing violence (seems reasonable). I STILL can't find anything significant about Ron Paul. It's certainly not a major point. Please point me to it.

<comment><USER38> This is the only link I can find. The Lt. Governor was involved in the story — what in the world are you claiming? You are defending fusion centers who targeted people with thought crimes?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100108060904/media.kspr.com/do...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100108060904/media.kspr.com/documents/MIAC_report_kspr.pdf)

<comment><USER39> I'm TRYING to figure out where the support for the statement "a fusion center in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential domestic terrorists." comes from!

And I still can't find it. This report isn't about domestic terrorism, it's about the militia movement (which correlates, but it's not the same thing). And it's absolutely not about Ron Paul, I can't even find where it mentions that fact in passing.

You're spinning like crazy here, about a 12 year old report saying (apparently) unflattering things about a 16 year old presidential campaign. No one is being called a domestic terrorist anywhere in these links.

<comment><USER40> OP: "a fusion center in Missouri listed Ron Paul supporters as potential domestic terrorists"

Report, top of page 7: "Militia members most commonly associate with 3rd party political groups. It is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitutional Party, Campaign for Liberty, or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr."

Honestly, I'm sympathetic to many of the ideologies and ideas that are described in this report, but I actually think the document is important as an internal document for police. They need to be informed about radicals within these ideologies, and knowing who they might vote for for president is very relevant for helping to understand or empathize with them, especially for conflict deescalation.

Say you're in a hostage negotiation with a sovereign-citizen type who's worried you're going to disappear them to some black-ops prison. If you knew enough about the movement to abolish the Fed, about FEMA camps, or about the NWO, and said you're a Ron Paul supporter, you might be able to establish trust. Ron Paul isn't strictly someone involved with the latter two conspiracies, but there is a heavy correlation between the three, and he's the highest profile figure supporting the first.

These documents aren't political, they're tactical information for real-life police work. Police have to deal with the radicals, even if they're a fringe minority.

<comment><USER41> The signal to noise ration between Ron Paul supporters and violent criminals is arguably less than people of a certain skin color and being a violent criminal. Can someone support political profiling while dismissing racial profiling?

(this is a mental exercise in principled reasoning. I'm not racist).

<comment><USER39> There is a difference between noting an association between characteristics and acting on them.

"Racial profiling" isn't bad because it's based on the (correct, though specious -- they're poorer) observation that young black men commit more per- capita crimes, it's bad because it leads to law enforcement _behavior_ that causes young black men to be stopped, frisked, detained, prosecuted and incarcerated at rates _MUCH HIGHER_ than their per-capita crime statistics would indicate.

Basically: the idea that "black kids are criminals" leads police to disproportionately enforce the laws against black kids while letting "non- criminal" demographics off the hook.

But no one argues we should censor reports that detail youth crime statistics by race, which is what's happening here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I kind of share the sentiment expressed in the final quote of the article. From the way the dataset is described this could be really helpful to criminals and really harmful and dangerous for other folks - police and civilian alike.

<comment><USER43> I would rather have an extra criminal on the streets than risk ruining someones live that is innocent because some cop planted evidence.

Just this week a bodycam from NYC officer shows him planting drugs over 2 years ago. The person who's involved took a plea deal because they didn't want to risk going to jail for many years. The cop still has his job and this wasn't the first time.

Try getting a job in the US with a criminal record.

<comment><USER44> Not if you are in a witness protection program against a drug mafia. They will take their opportunity to send a message.

Overall I agree though. This is the same baseless defense used against leaking of info on war crimes.

I doubt planting evidence is common, but it will nevertheless be interesting to dig through that. If it is true the cop is still serving, it should be a huge scandal. These practices need to be stomped out immediately.

<comment><USER45> > If it is true the cop is still serving, it should be a huge scandal.

Who cares if it's a huge scandal? I remember reading about the "scandal" years ago. The cop is still has his job and was never charged with a crime.

The cop broke the law multiple times on video, an innocent person suffered physical and mental harm. The cop caused harm to all of society by reducing the trust between members of society. Yet he has a job, one with power over others where his word matters more than others.

Hence the protests.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Negatively strange' antihypermatter made out of gold - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1183980

<comment><USER2> title is misleading, the gold nucleii collide to create the a quark-gluon- plasma (probably) which eventually cools and condenses to create these new particles which are made from regular old quarks and gluons like every other baryonic particle.

Rather than somehow magically creating a new form of matter from gold.

I guess the exciting part is that they contain a hyperon which is a baryon with one strange quark in it, in this case it looks like a lambda-bar which is gonna be made from anti up, down and strange quarks. Well that and you've managed to bind three of these anti-particles into an anti-Helium or anti- Hydrogen isotope

<comment><USER3> Right on! Here's a bit more explanation from Ars Technica: [http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/strange- antipart...](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/strange- antiparticles-pop-out-of-rhics-quark-gluon-plasma.ars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "negatively strange"

Is that, like, "boring", "commonplace", "average" matter?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they just won Buzzword Bingo for the month.

</comment><comment><USER6> could it mean that some of the galaxies we see are entirely anti-matter galaxies? Woooo.</comment>


USDA Scientist Punished for Pollinator Research - <AUTHOR> http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/usda-scientist-punished-for-pollinator-research.html <comment><USER2> Having worked in a USDA/ARS lab as just a tech, I can note a few things that might be of interest (my observations only of course).

1\. Industry connections are very deep in USDA/ARS.

2\. Managers are scientists. This is a double edged sword. Often scientists are not very good managers, but managers without deep science knowledge would cause other issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> The link to the "whistleblower narrative" at the bottom is quite interesting.

[http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/usda/10_26_15_Lundgren_Whist...](http://www.peer.org/assets/docs/usda/10_26_15_Lundgren_Whistleblower_%20Complaint.pdf)

First impression is the Papiernik character is a micro-manager who may or may not have control issues. Then again you have to consider who wrote the narrative.

</comment><comment><USER4> Power corrupts.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good. We need to punish those who peddle false information on behalf of the chemical industry.

<comment><USER6> If this is irony then it's pretty dumb. The scientist is being suspended for "publishing research about adverse effects on monarch butterflies from widely- used neonicotinoid insecticides"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: A tool to share bookmarks with only my company? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, is there any web based tool that allows me to easily share links, sorted in folders (not tags) with only the members of my company? And that can be setup in such a manner that each member gets notified when a new link is added? <comment><USER2> Diigo have a group bookmark feature which may fit your needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, there are plenty of personal web services that need a business clone and del.icio.us is one of them, same as wikis, twitter, etc.

<comment><USER4> RE: Wikis: Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki, and is very easily installable on an intranet environment: (<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki>)

RE: Twitter: Yammer. (<https://www.yammer.com/>)</comment></comment>