Lurker > Antifar

I only watched a little bit of it but I did see Pete's line about how he won 80% of the vote as a gay dude in Mike Pence's Indiana and I was amused.

Probably, The Brothers Karamazov.

The not-to-impeach vote was bipartisan.

State investigators and college police used a controversial tracking technology called "geofencing" to collect personal information from the cellphones of antiracism protestors at the University of North Carolina after being tipped off by the FBI, according to documents obtained by NBC News via a freedom of information request.

The documents also show that the university signed a three-year, $73,500 contract for the use of geofencing in 2016, a contract that ran through the end of October 2019.

"Geofencing" captures the social media posts of people entering a specific area. The technology locates any cellphones that cross into the area by locking onto their geolocation systems, and then records social media posts and sometimes other data from the phones.

Versions of geofencing have been used in politics, including by the Trump reelection campaign and the Texas Democratic Party, and by retailers, who send ads touting sales and products to any nearby cellphones.

At UNC, however, internal university emails obtained by NBC News show that officials used the technology at least once to monitor activists who showed up for a protest at a campus Confederate memorial known as "Silent Sam" a statue of a gun-wielding rebel soldier.

On Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017, white supremacists met in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a planned march to protest the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a city park. A white supremacist drove his car into a counter-protestor, killing her.

The incident raised concerns among law enforcement officers in other cities, including Chapel Hill, about potential violence at other protests.

At just before 1 p.m. the next day, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017, an FBI agent sent the chief of the UNC campus police an email that said, "I'm sure you're already tracking, but wanted to make sure," and mentioned that anti-racist protestors were expected to gather at Silent Sam at 7 p.m. for a "Charlottesville Solidarity Action."

"We have no information of any planned violence at this time," said the FBI agent. "Any intelligence we develop will be pushed your way."

The Silent Sam statue was already the site of regular protests. That afternoon at 3:12 p.m., when a small group of people had gathered at the statue, UNC police intelligence chief Jake Kornegay sent an email to the UNC police chief and three other members of the department.

"Geo-fence is being monitored and real-time distribution list established with Orange County LE and ISAAC/JTTF," wrote Kornegay, referencing law enforcement from the surrounding county, the State Bureau of Investigation's Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, which combines local and federal law enforcement. He also said he was doing "some link analysis on social media" and that only "a few people" were at the statue.

That evening, during the Charlottesville Solidarity Action, the crowd at the statue had grown to 175 to 200 people, according to minutes of a meeting held five days later by a university group referred to as the High Interest Events Team. "Aggressive in demeanor and approach," said the minutes. "Event was surveilled."

There is no evidence in the materials obtained by NBC News to show whether geofencing was used at protests prior to or after Aug. 13.

But according to contract information obtained via the freedom of information request, the university had begun began paying a Vermont-based company called Social Sentinel Inc. $73,500 nearly a year earlier to use software that allowed them to pull social media posts from a geographic area. The purchase order from the company says the data Social Sentinel provided to the school was given to them by "one or more social media services or third party data providers."

The documents show the contract extended from Nov. 1, 2016 through Oct. 31, 2019.

A university spokesperson confirmed that the campus police continue to use geofencing, but would not say for what.

The spokesperson declined to comment on how the technology has been used, or when it was used, saying that, "The university coordinates with and relies on assistance from state and federal law enforcement agencies when appropriate in order to ensure campus safety."

UNC police, Kornegay and Carol Folt, who was university chancellor in 2017, did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation defended the practice, saying the agency only monitored "publicly available posts within a certain geographic area" but declined to specify exactly what information was obtained.

"This information was monitored in an attempt to prevent any potential acts of violence (such as those that have occurred at other public protests around the country, including Charlottesville) and to ensure the safety of all participants," said Anjanette Grube, the SBI spokesperson, in a statement. "No records of the posts are kept after the event has concluded."
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Geofences, or virtual perimeters, are often used by companies to deliver location-based ads for goods and services. But they have also been used by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency as a form of cell phone monitoring, according to agency and whistleblower reports.

Geofences have also been used by local law enforcement agencies in recent years, including in cases against defendants in Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon and Alabama. In those cases, the technology was deployed to capture identities near a crime scene to identify potential suspects, witnesses and victims or collect evidence.

NBC News was unable to identify any other colleges that have used geofencing to monitor protestors.

Eight legal experts contacted by NBC News said using geofencing on protestors, especially in the absence of a crime, may violate federal statutes and infringe on demonstrators' First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Aziz Huq, a professor of criminal procedure at the University of Chicago Law School and a graduate of UNC, said the technology could lead to police abusing their power.

"If governments are allowed to open-endedly collect information and then examine the information and find evidence of what it thinks is a crime creates an incentive at the front end for government to over acquire info

Before Streeling built the Pete Buttigieg page in 2011, a user named Hanumang06 created a Peter Buttigieg page in July of 2010. It was deleted less than a month after its creation because of Buttigiegs then lack of notability. In the discussion preceding that deletion, one Wikipedia editor noted a comment Hanumang06 had made while uploading a photo of Buttigieg. This is a biography created by his campaign staff using a picture from his campaign, Hanumang06 wrote.

Before uploading the photo himself, Hanumang06s first act on Wikipedia was to make a request on Wikipedias Files for upload page, which allows unregistered or less experienced users to request that someone else upload a file on their behalf.

Hanumang06 and Streeling share a number of similarities beyond their belief that Pete or Peter Buttigieg deserved Wikipedia enshrinement. While arguing against the deletion of the Peter Buttigieg page, Hanumang06 referenced none other than Andrei Cherny as part of his effort to defend Buttigiegs notability.

And like Streeling, Hanumang06 made a point to distance himself from the subject at hand, writing in the deletion discussion that he is not Pete Buttigieg by the way.

While both the edit logs and the original Peter Buttigieg page itself are hidden from the average Wikipedia user (as is the case with all deleted pages), a Wikipedia admin who requested anonymity to avoid blowback shared that deleted content with Slate.

The text of Hanumang06s short-lived creation is nearly identical to the text Streeling would use in creating the Pete Buttigieg page over a year later. So who is Hanumang06?

Googling the username will lead you to a college message board where, in 2006, Neehar Garg of South Bend, Indiana, posted his AOL Instant Messenger handle: Hanumang06. I reached out to Garg, who declined to talk on the phone but did confirm that he was Hanumang06 and, several emails later, also claimed ownership of the Streeling account, which was created the day after Hanumang06s last recorded edit.

Garg has declined to go on the record to discuss any details related to the accounts and their activity, including to what degree he was affiliated with Buttigiegs treasurer and mayoral campaigns, if at all. When I asked the Buttigieg campaign about Gargs relationship to past campaigns, Meagher wrote, I believe he volunteered with the treasurers race but never in paid capacity, and was not involved in the mayoral campaign.

When I asked Meagher whether he was saying definitively that the Streeling account had no connection to Buttigieg and that Buttigieg did not know whose it was, Meagher replied, Right. He does not know whose it is. And when I asked whether Buttigieg has ever asked staffers to edit Wikipedia on his behalf, or has ever known about any staffers who had done so, Meager replied simply, No and no.

It seems worth noting here that Pete Buttigieg is one of only seven people currently following Garg on Instagram (both attended St. Joseph High School, though Garg is about six years younger).

Buttigiegs treasury campaign was also fully aware that at least something on Wikipedia was happening on his behalf. The photo Hanumang06 uploaded, which he claimed was being uploaded at the direct behest of Pete Buttigieg himself, now has a permission box beneath it noting that Wikimedia Foundation has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication. While most users cant view the actual correspondence in which permission was granted, a Wikipedia user with the necessary permissions shared a screenshot of the correspondence with Slate. That email, which was sent from [email protected], begins with the following line:

I hereby affirm that I, Peter Buttigieg, am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of the photo PeteButtigieg.JPG, a headshot of myself, found on wikipedia at http://en.wikipeida.org/wiki/File:PeteButtigieg.JPG.

The email is signed, Peter Buttigieg, Copyright Holder, July 14, 2010.
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So what, exactly, is going on here? The evidence seems overwhelming that, despite the campaigns repeated denials, Pete Buttigieg has had knowledge of, and at least some active participation in, the maintenance of his Wikipedia presence. This is not a crime. Its just a deeply weird thing to deny. Two potential scenarios come to mind.

One possibility is that the two accounts have two different people behind them. Garg, who self-identified to Wikipedia as a campaign staffer, is indeed Hanumang06. But when he proved unable to prevent the Peter Buttigieg page from being deleted, Buttigieg or someone else very close to him took matters into their own hands by registering the Streeling account. Having seen the issues Garg ran into by acknowledging his campaign affiliation, Buttigieg or his new agent would have insisted that Streeling was not affiliated with this candidates campaign. In the spirit of the cover-up, when asked about the Streeling account, the campaign would have asked Garg to take responsibility for both. This scenario, though entertaining, feels a bit too conspiratorial.

In the other, perhaps more likely case, Garg really is ultimately responsible for both accounts, but worked closely with Buttigieg and/or his campaign to raise the young future mayors profile. In this case, Garg would have to be either such good friends with Buttigieg or such a staunch supporter that he would feel compelled to semiregularly tweak Buttigiegs Wikipedia presence. He would also have to have an interest in the man who played at Pete Buttigiegs wedding, as well as Buttigiegs favorite watch brand. This scenario is more honest and almost aboveboard, except for the persistent denials by the Buttigieg camp that he or his campaigns knew anything about any of it. As in the first case, here the campaign would have to be so eager to dispel the notion that Pete Buttigieg would ever use Wikipedia for self-promotion that theyd even lie about Buttigieg having known someone else was editing his page on his behalf.

As any young aspiring politician knows, carefully maintaining your image online is key. And no tool in your early-career arsenal is quite as effective as Wikipedia.

Luckily for Buttigieg, there is at least one person carefully looking out for his needs on Wikipediasomeone who has followed his political career from its very beginning, and whose interests and connections track his own with eerie sympathy. This Wikipedia user was there to post the sites first mention of Pete Buttigiegs political career in 2010, and to write the very first iteration of Pete Buttigiegs Wikipedia page. They go by the username Streeling. Streeling is an old Irish word that means wandering, the sort of word that might be familiar to the son of a scholar who studied James Joyce. Joyce uses the noun streel, meaning a disreputable woman, in Ulysses, which Pete Buttigieg has cited as the book that influenced him the most.

The Wikipedia user known as Streeling, however, is not Pete Buttigieg, according to the Buttigieg presidential campaign. I reached out to them after trying and failing to dismiss a tip Id gotten about the account possibly being the mayors own. Its not his. Hes never had a Wikipedia account, Buttigieg spokesperson Chris Meagher told me over email. The account has no connection to Pete Buttigiegs past or present political campaigns, Meagher says, and Pete Buttigieg has no knowledge of whos responsible for it. It appears it is an overzealous supporter of the mayors, Meagher said. He does not know whose it is.

Streeling has also denied being connected with Pete Buttigieg. I am not affiliated with this candidates campaign, Streeling wrote after creating the original Pete Buttigieg Wikipedia page just hours after the 2011 South Bend mayoral race had been called in Buttigiegs favor. The more I looked into Streeling, however, the more the various denials around any affiliation with Buttigieg seemed bizarre and, in a few instances, explicitly untrue. Though why a campaign would try to dissemble about something so completely benign is unclear.

Streeling appears to have first made their account in July of 2010, when they went to the page for Indiana elections and, as they notified other users, added all the major statewide candidates, and referenced their various campaign sites. One of those added candidates was Pete Buttigieg, who was running for state treasurer.

Streeling also took a bit of time that day to do some grammar-related tweaks on the Indiana State Treasurer page, in addition to adding a few citations on various state government pages.

About a month later, still during the campaign for treasurer, Streeling made a few stimulus packagerelated edits. And another month after that, they updated literary scholar Terry Eagletons page to note that he had spent a semester as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame, in the English department where Buttigiegs father had been teaching since 1980.

Later, in 2011, Streeling added the musician David Wax to the notable alumni page for Deep Springs College, which Wax attended before enrolling in Harvard, where Pete Buttigieg got his undergraduate degree. Wax, notably, played at Buttigiegs wedding. On his website, Wax described Buttigieg as one of my oldest friends.

Updating pages about notable alumni appears to be one of Streelings passionsespecially when they are pages that have failed to recognize Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In 2011, for instance, Streeling added Buttigiegs name (describing him as Mayor-elect of South Bend, Indiana) to the list of notable Rhodes Scholars exactly one day after hed won his mayoral campaign.

Six minutes later, Streeling also went on to create the page for Pete Buttigieg on Wikipedia.

In an entirely unrelated aside, while Wikipedias rules strictly forbid users from editing pages that present a conflict of interest (pages about themselves, for example, or about their employers), all but the most obvious cases generally rely on the honor system for enforcement.

Back to the matter at hand, in a comment on this new page creation, Streeling wrote that they had created profile for a notable politician (bio needs developing however, too campaign-y in my opinion). Another six minutes after that, Streeling took to the Pete Buttigieg Talk page (where Wikipedia editors discuss any issues related to the entry) to expand on the fact that they definitely didnt endorse the campaign-y tone of the page they had just finished writing:

I think this is a notable political figure, though I do think his bio needs more outside sources just to avoid any hint of campaigning. I am not affiliated with this candidates campaign, and put this up after his election was over.

They also noted that they just wanted to emphasize that this wasnt intended as some sort of campaign product.

Next, Streeling went on to update the notable alumni entry for Buttigieg on the page for St. Joseph High School, changing Democratic nominee to Mayor-elect. And exactly one day after Buttigieg assumed office in January of 2012, Streeling changed the qualifier to read simply Mayor. A few weeks later, Streeling added Mayor Pete to Wikipedias page for notable Buttigiegsbetween Australian rugby player John Buttigieg and Maltese poet Ray Buttigiegbringing the total number up to a whopping five notable Buttigiegs.
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More recently, in February of 2014, Streeling also did some minor upkeep on the Wikipedia page for Skagen Denmark, a Fossil-owned watch company. A few years later, Buttigiegs then-boyfriend, Chasten Glezman, would propose to him with none other than a Skagen watch. And this year, Buttigiegs presidential campaign would release what is essentially a Mayor Pete mood board for supporters to design against. That design kit includes, again, a Skagen watch.

Taken together, Streelings preoccupations seem to be the sorts of preoccupations that might consume a person like Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg. Indeed, the fact that Streelings interest in Buttigiegiana extends so far back makes it hard to believe there could be some wholly independent other person who cared so much about such an obscure political figure.

One of President Donald Trumps top re-election advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has traditionally relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states but will be able to start playing offense in 2020 due to relaxed Election Day rules, according to an audio recording of a private event obtained by The Associated Press.

Traditionally its always been Republicans suppressing votes in places, Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trumps re-election campaign, said at the event. Lets start protecting our voters. We know where they are. ... Lets start playing offense a little bit. Thats what youre going to see in 2020. Its going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.

Asked about the remarks by AP, Clark said he was referring to false accusations that the GOP engages in voter suppression.

As should be clear from the context of my remarks, my point was that Republicans historically have been falsely accused of voter suppression and that it is time we stood up to defend our own voters, Clark said. Neither I nor anyone I know or work with would condone anyones vote being threatened or diluted and our efforts will be focused on preventing just that.

Clark made the comments Nov. 21 in a meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Associations Wisconsin chapter. Attendees included the state Senates top Republican, Scott Fitzgerald, along with the executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Audio of the event at a country club in Madison obtained by the liberal group American Bridge was provided to AP by One Wisconsin Now, a Madison-based liberal advocacy group.

The roughly 20-minute audio offers an insiders glimpse of Trumps re-election strategy, showing the campaign focusing on voting locations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which form the the so-called blue wall of traditional Democratic strength that Trump broke through to win in 2016. Both parties are pouring millions of dollars into the states, anticipating theyll be just as critical in the 2020 presidential contest.

Republican officials publicly signaled plans to step up their Election Day monitoring after a judge in 2018 lifted a consent degree in place since 1982 that barred the Republican National Committee from voter verification and other ballot security efforts. Critics have argued the tactics amount to voter intimidation.

The consent decree was put in place after the Democratic National Committee sued its Republican counterpart, alleging the RNC helped intimidate black voters in New Jerseys election for governor. The federal lawsuit claimed the RNC and the state GOP had off-duty police stand at polling places in urban areas wearing armbands that read National Ballot Security Task Force, with guns visible on some.

Without acknowledging any wrongdoing, the RNC agreed to the consent decree, which restricted its ability to engage in activities related to ballot security. Lifting of the consent decree allows the RNC to play by the same rules as Democrats, said RNC communications director Michael Ahrens.

Now the RNC can work more closely with state parties and campaigns to do what we do best, ensure that more people vote through our unmatched field program, Ahrens said.

Although the consent decree forced the Trump campaign to conduct its own poll monitoring in 2016, the new rules will allow the RNC to use its multi-million dollar budget to handle those tasks and coordinate with other Republican groups on Election Day, Clark said.State directors of election day operations will be in place in Wisconsin and every battleground state by early 2020, he said.

In 2016, Wisconsin had 62 paid Trump staff working to get out the vote; in 2020, it will increase to around 100, Clark said.

Trump supports the effort, he said in the audio recording.

Weve all seen the tweets about voter fraud, blah, blah, blah, Clark said. Every time were in with him, he asks what are we doing about voter fraud? What are we doing about voter fraud? The point is hes committed to this, he believes in it and he will do whatever it takes to make sure its successful.

Clark said Trumps campaign plans to focus on rural areas around mid-size cities like Eau Claire and Green Bay, areas he says where Democrats cheat. He did not explain what he meant by cheating and did not provide any examples.

Cheating doesnt just happen when you lose a county, Clark said. Cheating happens at the margin overall. What were going to be able to do, if we can recruit the bodies to do it, is focus on these places. Thats where our voters are.

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin.

If theres bad behavior on the part of one side or the other to prevent people from voting, this is bad for our democracy, Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said in reaction to Clarks comments. And frankly, I think will whoever does that, it will work to their disadvantage. It will make them look, frankly, stupid.

Wisconsins attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, represented the Democratic National Committee in a 2016 New Jersey lawsuit that argued the GOP was coordinating with Trump to intimidate voters. Kaul argued then that Trumps campaign repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. The Republican Party disputed any coordination.

It is vital that Wisconsinites have free and fair access to the polls, and that we protect the security and integrity of our elections, Kaul said in a statement in reaction to Clarks comments. The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been and will continue working with other agencies to protect our democratic process.

Mike Browne, deputy director of One Wisconsin Now, said Clarks comments suggest the Trump campaign plans to engage in underhanded tactics to win the election.

The strategy to rig the rules in elections and give themselves an unfair partisan advantage goes to Donald Trump, the highest levels of his campaign and the top Republican leadership, Browne said. Its clear theres no law Donald Trump and his right-wing machine wont bend, break or ignore to try to win the presidency.

Is this guy a Republican, because otherwise this seems mean spirited

. Not to mention the "i i i i i i" clusterfuck.