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TheTowerBard t1_j7pspsw wrote

This is domestic terrorism. They are purposefully trying to instill fear in people, in kids. I know this is happening all over the country and they rarely get the people, but we need to figure out a way to stamp this shit out. It’s literally terrorism and we should treat it as such.

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GreenPL8 t1_j7q2f29 wrote

Terrorism, yes. But unless you know a VOIP call was initiated from the US vs abroad, you don't know if it's "domestic."

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TheTowerBard t1_j7q31ei wrote

That's fair, but uh... I'd also bet the farm it's domestic 99% of the time.

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RoyalIndependence500 t1_j7qk488 wrote

Similar to the domestic terrorists who are shooting and trying to destroy our power grid.

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TheTowerBard t1_j7qki0w wrote

Exactly. Right-wing domestic terrorism has been steadily rising since the 90s but folks still want to ignore it.

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RoyalIndependence500 t1_j7qwryj wrote

I have a friend in the federal government (a law enforcement division) who currently works out West. Of course he can’t discuss much, but he has commented that the situation is much worse than the public realizes. He has concerns that we are in a long term situation that will deteriorate much sooner than any of us realize. I hope he is wrong, but he is not prone to exaggeration.

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TheTowerBard t1_j7rgylg wrote

I’ve heard the same. Lots of incidents aren’t making the news, either.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7rf90z wrote

> Similar to the domestic terrorists who are shooting and trying to destroy our power grid.

Has there been any proof of who did that? I wouldn't put anything past rightoid yahoos, but I've only heard supposition so far. Maybe I missed something.

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TheTowerBard t1_j7rh63s wrote

Which one? This is actually something that has been happening a lot but doesn’t often make the news. Going back a number of years too. And yes, we know it’s right-wing groups doing it. Sorry I don’t have sources at the moment but google can deliver some I’m sure.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7ric19 wrote

> Which one?

Any of them, really. And yeah, I remember hearing about some in CA in the early 2010s.

The most I heard about the recent one down south (the Carolinas maybe?) was that someone tweeted something about not liking drag queen story hour around the same time as the substations were damaged. I just wondered if there was ever more of a connection than that. Shrug.

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TheTowerBard t1_j7rpslj wrote

There have been multiple incidents even since the one in North Carolina. This is my point, there are incidents occurring that the majority of the population are completely unaware of. This isn’t even a right-wing media issue, everyone is ignoring this stuff.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7sbwey wrote

Huh, that's really odd. The media doesn't usually miss a chance to present a story with an obvious red team/blue team angle, and this is teed right up for them. Anything but healthcare, I guess.

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Ok-Title-270 t1_j7rs8ez wrote

We don't know that, the mainstream news just says so

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RoyalIndependence500 t1_j7s00ex wrote

https://www.reuters.com/legal/fbi-arrest-two-including-neo-nazi-leader-plot-attack-baltimore-grid-2023-02-06/. There is this, it addresses one thwarted plan.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7sbjul wrote

Huh, TIL. This whole thing feels like it glows, but time will tell.

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smurphy8536 t1_j7u1h36 wrote

Gets proof. Ignores proof. Blames the gov’t.

Sorry not the feds fault you’re dumb.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7wkzfm wrote

> Ignores proof.

I did say TIL.

> Blames the gov’t.

Sorry-not-sorry: the government's decades-long history of infiltrating and instigating right-wing groups in order to create fear and advance the interests of the ruling (billionaire) class has made me skeptical of the real threat posed by two yokels with a plan to "destroy [a huge city]". From Operation Gladio in Europe, to all the Muslim teenagers entrapped via fake plots during the GWB and Obama years, to the January 6 rubes being thoroughly infiltrated by provocateurs (3 of 4 top Proud Boy leaders were FBI agents or informants, the lead guy they just convicted had been working with the FBI for ~10 years, etc etc), the pattern is clear.

Every major anti-globalization protest in the early 2000s had violence instigated by federal and state provocateurs. I was in Montreal when some of us actually caught some police provocateurs. (The cops later admitted it). Now they mostly just use identity politics to derail the left: "we want healthcare for all!" "what about purple lesbians in wheelchairs! Medicare for All is racist!"

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Robivennas t1_j7ra4l7 wrote

Here is a relevant article

It looks like this is happening all over the country and federal authorities are investigating. The calls are coming from (or being routed through Ethiopia). Everything I’ve read about this points to not domestic, but of course we don’t have all the details yet.

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TheTowerBard t1_j7rhd9b wrote

It’s very easy to make it look like you are somewhere else on the internet. The tools are actually free for anyone and lots of people do it for non-nefarious reasons.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_j7rev29 wrote

The schools have a strong incentive to CYA - who would want to be the one who ignored the one-in-a-million real threat? - and no incentive to not scare kids needlessly. This in turn creates a strong incentive for every anon or crank with a 3-line python script to spam out these robocalls. It's the same reason swattings happen: no matter how many innocent people the cops shoot, or how many babies they severely burn in their cribs with flashbangs, they have the same incentive to CYA and act on every implausible, anonymous TTY message.

> but we need to figure out a way to stamp this shit out

Right on. Stopping automated phone calls, or just not accepting them as a pretense for lockdowns and SWAT raids would go along way. Just having to actually call, expose your caller ID, and speak (with your actual voice!) would stop 99.999% of cranks cold.

Longer term, we should seek to change the material conditions which breed the sort of bleak nihilists that call in bomb threats (or worse). That's unlikely to happen, because asking why people's lives are so precarious, lonely, alienated and hopeless that they'd act out anti-socially inevitably leads back to our cruel economic system, and profits for the billionaire-pedo-island-class must be preserved at all costs. Expect lots of band-aid approaches and blaming identity groups (men/Muslims/xyz category) instead.

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johannthegoatman t1_j7uwwq8 wrote

There are already lots of easy ways to end call spoofing, we just need the government to enact them

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TheTowerBard t1_j7uykhu wrote

As usual with this sort of thing, our government is about 10-20 years behind.

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