THE POLICE PROBLEM
The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
♦ ♦ ♦
Our definition of ‘cops’ is broad, and includes prison guards, probation officers, shitty DAs and judges, etc — anyone who has the authority to fuck over people’s lives, with minimal or no oversight.
♦ ♦ ♦
RULES
① Real-life decorum is expected. Please don't say things only a child or a jackass would say in person.
② If you're here to support the police, you're trolling. Please exercise your right to remain silent.
③ Saying ~~cops~~ ANYONE should be killed lowers the IQ in any conversation. They're about killing people; we're not.
④ Please don't dox or post calls for harassment, vigilantism, tar & feather attacks, etc.
Please also abide by the instance rules.
It you've been banned but don't know why, check the moderator's log. If you feel you didn't deserve it, hey, I'm new at this and maybe you're right. Send a cordial PM, for a second chance.
♦ ♦ ♦
ALLIES
• r/ACAB
♦ ♦ ♦
INFO
• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
• Killings by law enforcement in the United Kingdom
• Killings by law enforcement in the United States
• Know your rights: Filming the police
• Three words. 70 cases. The tragic history of 'I can’t breathe' (as of 2020)
• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.
• Police lie under oath, a lot
• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak
• Police unions and arbitrators keep abusive cops on the street
• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
• When the police knock on your door
♦ ♦ ♦
ORGANIZATIONS
• NAACP
• National Police Accountability Project
• Vera: Ending Mass Incarceration
view the rest of the comments
Download Signal Private Messenger.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms
https://signal.org/android/apk/
Create local groups.
Organize there.
Migrate any sensitive discussion to Signal. If possible, migrate all messaging to encrypted traffic. By using encrypted traffic you safeguard encrypted tactical exchange via obfuscation. A drop in an ocean is less identifiable than a drop in a pond.
Always turn on disappearing messages. Have a backup mechanism for when they take down Signal, as it is inevitable.
You've been invaded. Act accordingly.
Signal is a good start.
I recommend simplex chat
It is a tiny bit more complicated to set up and it's not syched on a centralized server or use any personally tracable identifier.
Ya gotta love the one coward that downvoted this and doesn’t have the balls to show themselves in an explanation why.
Just like ICE, they’re spineless.
It could be a technical reason relating to Signal.
I wish I had a better answer than Signal for messaging, but it is the best we have right now. Most people who are security or tech familiar are very disconnected from what ordinary people can use or are willing to learn to use.
We need tech that has sensible defaults, low user complexity, and minimal new user friction. Right now, that's Signal.
Most tech I make these days doesn't even require an email. I generate keypairs behind the scenes instead and use QR codes to manage identity. After accessing the service, I then can escalate with unobtrusive notices (Provide your email to recover your account, etc). This auto-account pattern eliminates entry friction.
Of course, you need bot mitigation so a privilege escalation can be used as a user progressively explores more capabilities. The technical of this is a bit involved but the end-user experience is very low friction.
This gets a user invested (they can see content and actually interact with it), which then gives them a reason to progressively use more features.
Just theoretical right now but we'll see if it works for layman users. If someday people use it over Signal, then I'll know.
I prefer Matrix, harder to shut down and decentralized.
Though signal is still great!
Matrix has optional encryption and is difficult for non-tech savvy users to setup.
That puts them at the mercy of tech users, and without mandatory encryption it makes people much more vulnerable.
That said, I use Matrix myself, mainly to use WhatsApp without using WhatsApp. I also built a translation plugin to use an LLM for translating to any language in a natural tone, with audio voice transcriptions and auto-translations of my voice messages to the target language.
So I like Matrix but still would recommend Signal.
I tried to pitch Matrix as a Slack alternative for my makerspace. We setup a trial server and ran into various technical issues. As you say, non-tech savvy users were going to have a hard time. It was enough that people didn't want to make the switch.
My hope is that it gets better, and when Slack eventually stabs us in the back (which of course they will), Matrix will be sitting there in a better position.
Encryption is enabled by default in most sane clients for DMs. Groups are not by default because encryption in huge groups is slow.
And if you use a public server it's not that hard to set up.
It is for people outside of tech circles. Just having to locate an instance is a massive amount of friction. But you need to locate an instance and a client, and there are a lot of configurable options and things that can go wrong.
Signal is turn-key, easier than Whatsapp friction wise, encryption by default, open source, non-profit, and secure. I don't like that their messaging platform isn't more open and that they don't have mitigation against, say, AWS going offline, but at the moment, they are the only app I have successfully migrated "normal" people to.
I think in the future, fediverse-esque tech will reduce their friction. Instead of managing instances, data is user-sovereign, instances never see non-encrypted user data, users automatically move between them, you don't sign up you have generated signing keys that are opaque to users unless they want to see them (tech people), etc. Fediverse can actually be LESS friction than current social media people use, but that hasn't been implemented yet.
That's fair.
For communications with my friends and family I set Matrix (with element) up for them and it works perfectly, though I can see why using signal is simpler.
Your method is good, but it also makes them dependent on you for messaging.
What happens if something happens to you? What if you get bored? What if you don't have time to maintain it?
It is actually a big responsibility, and most people aren't lucky enough to have someone like you in their lives.