- You not getting a job.

- You losing a job.

- You getting "moved" to small villages (e.g. as a teacher).

And if they couldn't affect you they went for your relative. E.g. your children being bared from studying at a university even if they are qualified and so on.

The whole film is fantastic.

I'd highly recommend also watching Christian Petzold's Barbara [1]. It's an equally fine film, but it has a different focus.

Here, the heroine is an ordinary physician (played by Nina Hoss), banished from Berlin to some province. The film captures the nightmare for the ordinary citizen of authoritarian police states, including the depressing fact that nearly anyone in your life could be informing on you. We also see how cooperating with the state authorities can get you privileges, such as better housing.

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2178941/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

~

p.s.: this review is quite good. Almost felt like quoting it in full, as it is rather topical to the thread as well:

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2764284/

It's very German, but also very Soviet, it's almost surreal.

These two seem to be getting more popular nowadays.

If it's "we the people", it's totally fair and indicative of a very progressive and tolerant society. Or something.

This is a very dishonest framing.

However, the tightly guarded boundary between "tolerant" and "intolerant", as well as "context thereof" must be defined precisely and not be moved around according to one's mood, or depending on whether someone is losing an argument, or whether someone is in an outgroup or in an ingroup.

A good application of the paradox of tolerance requires integrity, which is a threatened species among human traits.

What these FBI agents did, if true, was reprehensible. But surely we can come up with a better comparison than one of the most evil secret police regimes ever to exist.

The FBI isn't "less evil" because they "tolerate" laws that they have no ability to ignore. They aren't tolerating them out of the goodness of their hearts, or out of a sense of morality. If they had the ability to ignore them, they would.

Edit: Re: responses

I'm not claiming that the FBI is incapable of violating the law, I'm objecting to the parent's claim that they are somehow "less evil" than the Stasi because they "allow" the law to be upheld, when they're not the ones allowing anything. Yes, when they are able to get away with breaking the law, they sometimes do. It's not clear how prevalent this is, because "able to get away with it" implies not getting caught.

They do have the ability to ignore laws, lots of government organizations ignore congressional guidance all the time and it only ever comes back to bite them if someone objects loud enough.

The US legal system doesn't "prevent" people from doing anything, we just punish violations and for those violations to be punished someone who cares about the violation has to be aware of the violation.

It's a pretty common meme in cop shows today that "We can't wait for a judge to give us a warrant - let's bust down the door" to which the audience cheers since bad guy is obviously bad, but that is illegal and, it can potentially destroy a case IRL - but only if the defense finds out the entry was illegal.

Not to be too inflammatory but there are plenty of cases where they ignore them without technically having the ability.

The hicks and the inner city crowd both mostly hate federal law enforcement.

The Bill of Rights doesn't permit anything, but rather lists certain inalienable rights held by all persons on U.S. soil--or so the story goes. The worry that it could be construed as a list of grants was extremely controversial.

The fact that there still exists, to some degree, a mechanism in the USA to challenge this in some cases is indeed something to celebrate, but the quite reasonable comparison is not just legitimate and appropriate but is a tool for trying to fix the injustice, not just retail (one victim at a time) but wholesale (change of law).

There's a quantitive difference between an FBI agent inviting an idiot to coffee, and fabricating a plot with him to blow up a post office, and an FBI agent getting in touch with an idiot who is plotting to blow up a post office, and offering to give him fake explosives.

The former might be entrapment. The latter is good policework.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20...

The police would plant people in suspect groups who pressure the rest of the group to engage in terrorist activity.

This isn’t exclusive to 1970s USA. Similar things happened in mosques after 9/11 where Imans would know an FBI agent simply because he was the only extremist in the congregation.

And in the United Kingdom, there were long term plants in environmental organisations who engaged in ecoterrorism.

I do not recall any stories of the latter.. perhaps there is one or some - and perhaps things have occurred that saved the X Y or Z and we'll never know - and that's great.

However I think it's high time that people paid more attention to the details of these "be afraid / keep sending us budgets" stories and see that many are fabricated just to check off a PR box.

9 out of 10 sex trafficking headline stories are the same, and similar.

It's not just the top level of the DOJ - the local law agencies use the same playbook (especially vice squads) for the same reasons. imho.

The more we start comparing to other countries and say “oh well at least we’re better than them” the more complacent people are.

Not to mention many of US’s worst action have had the excuse of “well there was some worse country out there we gotta stop!”

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

So we have to be thankful that we are "allowed" to spend our life's saving on fighting a lawsuits against a trillon dollar government ?

For every such case there are probably 100 other people who folded. There is no difference between those cases and cases where stasi might have done the same thing. It is 100% same.

Let's not mention people lacking money for a proper legal defense.

But now that we're talking about it, you might want to read about FISA Courts. Also stuff like https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-sides-aclu... and yet..

Edit: Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.

For example, the author experienced involuntary exile while technically "not guilty." Many employers will fire an employee who is charged with a crime, without a conviction. A "not guilty" person can be arrested and held in jail until a court date which could get postponed repeatedly.

There are plenty of cracks people can fall (or be pushed) into.

Would you be willing to risk that the system you live in is decent? I live in the UK and I hope I never need to find out, because I have a few doubts.

We (America) have lots of folks that accept plea agreements because we put pre-trial folks in jail and treat them like criminals, which can easily ruin lives even if you are found not guilty.

Of course, you might not be talking about the US system when you refer to a decent system, so maybe you are correct.

Once again, it's just the garbage logic that EVERYTHING can potentially affect more than one state, so they have the right to control everything via the interstate commerce clause.

What are you even talking about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muxVGmgykA4

Sure a NH or ME politically appointed administrator would follow that acknowledgement up with something about being bound to serve the will of the public/electorate but acknowledging public opinion is a thing that needs to be considered probably puts him in the top half of Massachusetts political appointees.

The UK is also proposing a law to give informers and police widespread immunity from prosecution for undercover crimes: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/spy-cops-law-bill-polic...

That's the basic premise of any state and society.

Shafting people has been around for aeons

It's their job to pick someone, you can't assume guilt because he was chosen.

He's got a lot to lose which the article makes painfully clear:

- time with family

- personal reputation

- fulfilling personal/religion goals

- ... and a lot more

Personally, I think it enlightening to consider the opposite scenario: what about those on the fringe with nothing to lose? The FBI has a life changing program for you! They'll give you a sense of purpose, a feeling like you're part of something, and all the support you need to ... become the star of the next foiled terrorist plot.

Leverage takes many forms, and need not have anything to do with being guilty of a crime.

This is an absolutely disgusting suggestion.

Maybe on paper or as long as you are lucky.

In most EU countries such stories of police abuse are way, way less common.

Including things like unwarranted searches, seizing money with no good reason, swatting, aggressive questioning.

Maybe you can let us know about the facts you have at hand to make claims like these.

EDIT: yes I got it thank you to everyone who explained. I'm not a native english speaker and misunderstood the phrasing.

But their statement was open to misinterpretation, and it's possible that I might be the misinterpreter.

Here's an audio interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore elaborating. https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-make...