Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.
Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.
markus_zhang•May 21, 2026
Ah the new dark pool. Does anyone remember those from the trading? I still remember ARCA (good rebate back in the day), ECN (very fluid and very cheap), and a few dark pools that I used to get out of a trade quickly.
What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?
aliasxneo•May 21, 2026
> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
giancarlostoro•May 21, 2026
4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.
marcosdumay•May 21, 2026
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
psychoslave•May 21, 2026
Such a low level of expectation of ethical level for non human beings is not fair.
reaperducer•May 21, 2026
At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
That was amazing. I once witnessed a protest like that, in Hannover Germany I think. The idea of 4chan people actually going up the stairs and out of the house into the open air and talking to people, like with molecules and sound waves and all that stuff, it still blows my mind.
QuercusMax•May 21, 2026
Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.
Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.
red-iron-pine•May 21, 2026
the mormons are big in feddy gov agencies, for example
Deprogrammer9•May 21, 2026
Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs
stronglikedan•May 21, 2026
Man, I wish something like this would have happened to me when I was younger and spunkier. For years, I've had so many scenarios planned in my head for how something like that would play out! Even today, I might not just ignore it even though my propensity to give fucks has waned over the years.
joe_the_user•May 21, 2026
It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).
Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?
colechristensen•May 21, 2026
Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
CGMthrowaway•May 21, 2026
That may be true however today it is 2026 not 1961, LRH fell off the earth in 1980, and it is feasible that after the raids in 1977 and/or upon gaining tax-exempt status in 1993, some sort of deal was cut with the US state/intel apparatus to co-opt the church for another purpose
colechristensen•May 21, 2026
No, shady deals and intel capture fits perfectly fine with the original dystopian novel in the real world.
sysguest•May 21, 2026
damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
sidewndr46•May 21, 2026
people believe in scientology as much as they believe in a literature club. If you listen to someone like Tom Cruise's statements he says "I have gotten to where I am today because of Scientology". He doesn't name off specific procedures, treatments, practices, etc. Partially because they are barred from naming them.
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
psychoslave•May 21, 2026
Religion is all about social function, at least from social science perceptives I guess.
hydrogen7800•May 21, 2026
This is an interesting way of putting it, but matches my thoughts. I think most such organizations (political parties, religions, businesses, large organizations of many types) consist of true believers at the bottom of the pyramid, and moving up the ranks are folks who recognize that they can advance by understanding the game and utilizing the group mind to maintain credibility among the true believers, while displaying ambition to elites to advance the groups goals. At some point in the hierarchy are folks whose primary or only function is to advance the groups goals using middle ranks to maintain legitimacy with the believers.
loeg•May 21, 2026
You get or used to get true believers working in hellish conditions[1] on the boats, paid ~nothing. It might be a quid pro quo convenience for the Tom Cruises, but there are also some suckers.
So what you're saying is that everyone that works at Amazon and Facebook are now at grave risk because the bad guys now think they're informants?
GolfPopper•May 21, 2026
Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.
erxam•May 21, 2026
You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.
srameshc•May 21, 2026
I love this comment, I just couldn't ever frame it so well :)
bigbuppo•May 21, 2026
Come to think about it, the one person I know that works at Meta is the absolute worst person I know.
kgwxd•May 21, 2026
It's bad guys all the way down.
shermantanktop•May 21, 2026
Looks like a nothingburger? It's unfunded. An email describes a protest without giving a framing that the site would prefer. Then it turns out that nobody knows what it does, but it might do something bad.
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
Shalomboy•May 21, 2026
My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.
erxam•May 21, 2026
I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.
lacewing•May 21, 2026
Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
whimsicalism•May 21, 2026
Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well
kube-system•May 21, 2026
Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
LoganDark•May 21, 2026
Do you mean unfounded?
1234letshaveatw•May 21, 2026
Unfunded. It's in the article
acidhousemcnab•May 21, 2026
There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?
shermantanktop•May 21, 2026
The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
pc86•May 21, 2026
Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?
kittikitti•May 21, 2026
As an American, I genuinely trust my data with China more than I do with the United States.
organsnyder•May 21, 2026
That's actually a very logical stance: China is much less interested in what you're doing as an individual citizen—and much less able to act on what they know—than the United States is. For the same reason, Chinese citizens should trust the United States with their data more than China.
I'm convinced Meta is a cult with Total control. It will go to any lengths to make money.
booleandilemma•May 21, 2026
Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.
verdverm•May 21, 2026
No one is going to save us. I've recently been moved to direct action and started participating in a local indivisible.org group. It's had untold positive impacts on my personal mental state being with people trying to make things better, or at least slow the damage for now. Much of that is from going out and talking to random people on the street, handing out information and having conversations. Also quitting social media at the same time, save one exception for HN.
This just seems like a progressive PAC. Which, okay that's fine, but not exactly giving "weaker government" vibes, just "we want our team in charge for a bit" vibes. Happy to be proven wrong, though.
rc_kas•May 21, 2026
Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.
:(
1234letshaveatw•May 21, 2026
established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"
jp_sc•May 21, 2026
Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?
whimsicalism•May 21, 2026
Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing
> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”
shevy-java•May 21, 2026
You have Trump. You see how he is surrounded by the superrich.
You have Palantir.
You still think this is "sensationalist"? I don't think so. The assumption
here is that you wish to isolate this onto Seattle only. I think this is global
instead. By focusing only on Seattle we lose the wider picture. Anyone remembers
how people were surprised that Facebook connects offline-data to accounts? It's
why they are more accurately called Spybook.
whimsicalism•May 21, 2026
Interesting. You should write an article about this and post it on HN. This article is about an unfunded website run by someone at the Seattle PD.
jedahan•May 21, 2026
That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.
ah, yes, the little 8-line explanation there by the entity in question absolutely clears them of all suspicion, really.
i am sure that information obtained by seattle shield is not shared to anyone outside of seattle borders. police departments and the FBI are not known to share information, after all. police are especially cagey about sharing with other agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism.
shevy-java•May 21, 2026
Not so surprising - we kind of suspected this. Anyone remembers Snowden or Assange?
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
pc86•May 21, 2026
Authoritarianism didn't work in the past because it was too hard to control that many people. You simply didn't have the scale unless you were willing to roll tanks down city streets, and even then all it did was buy you an extra couple years, maybe a decade or two. Eventually, someone always got close enough to end you and then it started falling apart.
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.
ethagnawl•May 21, 2026
Please tell me they're using Workplace.
jedahan•May 21, 2026
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
6thbit•May 21, 2026
If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
croes•May 21, 2026
No
Yes
Maybe
pamcake•May 21, 2026
Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?
Barbing•May 21, 2026
> Are there really ways out?
Not with that attitude
jedahan•May 21, 2026
Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
Manuel_D•May 21, 2026
Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
KennyBlanken•May 21, 2026
> Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
stronglikedan•May 21, 2026
If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
jedahan•May 21, 2026
This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
ozozozd•May 21, 2026
So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
red-iron-pine•May 21, 2026
this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
KennyBlanken•May 21, 2026
Holy false equivalency / whataboutism, Batman.
ishouldstayaway•May 21, 2026
> ...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine
zuzululu•May 21, 2026
How bad are things in Seattle that they are resorting to this? What the hell happened to my hometown?
tinix•May 21, 2026
> All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.
the number of times I've been harassed by police for taking photos... even in small towns in the middle of nowhere people are paranoid.
neoCrimeLabs•May 21, 2026
I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.
Unfortunately we have to live in the reality that any unusual thing is a suspicious thing. There’s a whole entire concept that has been popularized around the concept of “see something, say something” and it would be expected that such vague concepts generate paranoia. I am not in a touristy or scenic area so seeing people out taking photos is unusual here.
mrobot•May 21, 2026
Interesting they have not contacted me about how they are going to be paying their subscription fee
I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free
Zhenya•May 21, 2026
“ The notice lists a few examples of attacks on Jewish targets in other U.S. cities last year; it does not mention widespread anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian attacks throughout the country.”
Why would it mention it on an anniversary of an attack on Israel?
Bias alert!
lorecore•May 21, 2026
Why would an attack on Israel warrant spying on US citizens? We are not Israel and our government should not be working for Israeli interests.
red-iron-pine•May 21, 2026
you're not gonna believe this
sailfast•May 21, 2026
I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.
Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?
baddash•May 21, 2026
It might be a purposefully sensationalist framing in order to increase KPIs. It works because a lot of people have strong opinions things without thinking much.
baddash•May 21, 2026
My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:
1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.
2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.
3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.
4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?
Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.
dakolli•May 21, 2026
I don't want any secretive surveillance, I don't care if you can prove whether its malicious or not.
baddash•May 21, 2026
ok. I don't know who you are and I don't really care what your surveillance preferences are.
lstodd•May 21, 2026
It's like you never heard of Snowden.
You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.
dakolli•May 21, 2026
Random Idea:
Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.
Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.
22 Comments
This lame argument should be added to the List of Fallacies. It's used everywhere as a "wild card" argument.
> Makeup
> MLB Pitch Framing by catchers
> Surveillance States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies?useskin=vect...
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).
https://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org#Lawsuits
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
https://indivisible.org/get-involved/find-a-group/
:(
> The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”
You have Palantir.
You still think this is "sensationalist"? I don't think so. The assumption here is that you wish to isolate this onto Seattle only. I think this is global instead. By focusing only on Seattle we lose the wider picture. Anyone remembers how people were surprised that Facebook connects offline-data to accounts? It's why they are more accurately called Spybook.
i am sure that information obtained by seattle shield is not shared to anyone outside of seattle borders. police departments and the FBI are not known to share information, after all. police are especially cagey about sharing with other agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism.
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
Yes
Maybe
Not with that attitude
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/chronic...
I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free
Why would it mention it on an anniversary of an attack on Israel?
Bias alert!
Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?
1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.
2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.
3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.
4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?
Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.
You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.
Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.
Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.