I don't trust the administration to use the law in good faith, but this article is misquoting the DoJ statement. The articles omits the very relevant qualifier:
The article:
> Last week, the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
The DoJ:
>“If a person acts as an agent of any foreign power to carry out any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power, he or she must register with or notify the appropriate federal authorities”
So the first amendment is suspended for individuals whose opinion/public activity - according to the administration - "furthers the goals of a foreign power".
This rules out protesting any kind of war, tariffs, or even things the administration likes, like demonstrating in support of Israel. Obviously the plan is not to apply the rule evenly, its just an authoritarian lever to silence dissenting speech the government does not like.
Would this not mean that if you oppose the Iran war because it's bad to kill civilians or you want gas prices to go down, that's OK - but if you oppose the Iran war because you're trying to help the Iranian government's foreign policy goals, that's acting as a foreign agent?
(Similarly, demonstrating in support of Israel because you think the US-Israel alliance is good for the US vs. good for Israel.)
The qualifier here is that the public demonstrations must further the propaganda of a foreign power? If so, that doesn’t seem to be much of an obstacle if the people making the arrest are the ones who decide whether or not a protest is furthering foreign propaganda.
So I can read the DOJ sentence two ways, I first interpreted it as #1, but it sounds like you took it as #2?
1. "We mean people who at that time qualify as agents under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act, we said "acting as" because it indicates a temporary employment status rather than an innate human characteristic."
2. "We are weasel-wording to target all people with similar acts to how agents would act, but who would not qualify under the law we want you to think we'd be drawing authority from."
I empathize with your concern, but as bad as things are we shouldn't assume infinite malice from all federal entities in all circumstances. Not out of kindness or charity, but because it would be a maladaptive strategy for handling problems.
If they try charging Joe-Shmoe under FARA, there's still some chance of loss in federal courts.
No need to assume infinite malice, but given the track record, it would be naïve to assume anything other than a default of malice unless proven otherwise
The evidence in front of us (the malicious words of the person in question) strongly favors malice anyways.
My guess is that they're drawing a distinction between reporting that says:
1. People in general who have opinions that might happen to align with a foreign power's stance.
2. People who are literally "agents" of a foreign power as defined under laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 [0], which often involves being directed/hired/paid.
That'd be a significantly different legal standard. (The constitutionality of FARA-type laws being a separate question.)
There's not any question about it: the president already said in no uncertain terms (and probably all caps) that anybody opposing datacenters is a foreign agent working against the usa.
Only a truly naïve person would not have seen this next logical step (prosecutory threats) coming when the preceding step received virtually no opposition.
TBH we should support any channel by which America is forced to share money with the rest of the world. Imagine if they had a billion abortion protestors - maybe they couldn't afford data centers.
I think Twitter is the best counterargument to this defeatism. I don't personally know anyone that uses the platform any more, and I don't recall needing it for anything for years. From that remove, it's now just the platform for lazy politicians, lazy journalists, and scammers of one form or another. If there's more exclusive information there I'm not aware of, I really don't need it.
No, but I'm referring to the AI news that gets posted on HN with a former Twitter link, because those companies don't have a proper news site of their own.
I don’t really see X as Twitter anymore. The old Twitter is long gone, Bluesky for me is its spiritual successor and everyone I know from Twitter is there now (Mastodon is its own thing somehow, still nice but feels different for me).
However, I still call Meta Facebook, just because. :)
dont see how its bullying? someone is demonstrating a very childish point of view , almost to the point of preaching. which I would say a little bit of critical thinking says is otherwise. why else would so many want xcancel in the first place?
At what point do we need to contend with an out-of-band mesh network? Sure you didn't connect your TV to your LAN, but did anyone within LoRa range, on any device from the manufacturer?
I think the disappointing reality is that those ad networks have enough access to the content of your attention (and therefore what you talk to your friends about) that the technical cost and risk of surreptitious audio monitoring just isn't necessary.
I had this exact thought today, having recently been on a nostalgic Minecraft binge.
Incidentally, I can't place it, but Minecraft is an infinitely more enjoyable hangout and break/build stuff game than NMS. NMS is just very sterile to me.
I have runtipi on 2 homeservers, and fully recommend it. It is not like Coolify, which feels like a mini cloud provider control plane. Runtipi is like an app store. You can load your own app definitions side-by-side with the centrally provided store. Once you have that set up, it's a quick Claude task to translate almost any selfhosted project into a simple click-to-install app through the UI.
> Those people need to get their local government to regulate noise from all buildings
I think this is the core of the 'moral panic'. it isn't anti-AI, it's the fact that many AI datacenter builders have been somewhere between surreptitious and intentionally illegal in their avoidance public knowledge of what they are doing, most likely to avoid exactly the regulation you're recommending. As a result, there's now categorical public distrust of both the industry and the local government that has shirked their obligation to the public welfare.
It is reasonable to conclude that you don't act as secretively as these builders have unless you have something to hide.
The article:
> Last week, the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
The DoJ:
>“If a person acts as an agent of any foreign power to carry out any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power, he or she must register with or notify the appropriate federal authorities”
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