I was shocked to find so much willful stupidity while the world is burning around us. Like that meme with the dog. Here's my favorite variation on it:
Posted on 04/01/2024 10:04:39 AM PDT by nickcarraway
"It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will," he claimed.
The FBI spends "every day, all day long" interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that's what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity.
Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad's house and said that they had been given "screenshots" of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident online on Wednesday.
Abdeljawad told agents that she didn't want to talk and asked them to show their badges on camera, which the agents refused to do. She wrote on Facebook that she later confirmed with local police that the FBI agents really were FBI agents.
"Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account," one agent in a gray shirt said in the video.
"So we no longer live in a free country and we can't say what we want?" replied Abdeljawad.
"No, we totally do. That's why we're not here to arrest you or anything," a second agent in a red shirt added. "We do this every day, all day long. It's just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will."
Shibly says that he doesn't know which Facebook post caught the agents' attention, and that it was the first time he had heard of Facebook's parent company, Meta, preemptively reporting posts to law enforcement. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, and Kayla McCleery, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Oklahoma City office, declined to comment.*
Meta's official policy is to hand over Facebook data to U.S. law enforcement in response to a court order, a subpoena, a search warrant, or an emergency situation involving "imminent harm to a child or risk of death or serious physical injury to any person." The company received 73,956 requests from U.S. law enforcement and handed over data 87.84 percent of the time in the first half of 2023, according to the Meta website.
Abdeljawad's Facebook timeline is public, so the FBI agents could have found it themselves. For the past week, she has made multiple angry posts per day about the war in Gaza, referring to Israel as "Israhell." But none of the posts on her feed call for violence.
Ironically, Abdeljawad had also posted a warning about exactly the kind of government monitoring she was later subjected to.
"Don't fall for their games. Our community is being watched & they are just waiting for any reason to round us up," Abdeljawad wrote. "If you're Muslim and/or pro-pal consider all your media accounts, Google searches, mail, messenger, local mosques & political events monitored. #NYC #usa #PoliceState #FreePalestine"
Shibly claims that Abdeljawad knew how to assert her rights from her time volunteering at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, where Shibly used to be a state-level director. "It's unfortunately normal behavior for the FBI to target the community like this," Shibly says.
In his caption of the video, Shibly added some advice to others: Abdeljawad was right to refuse to speak and right to record the interaction, but should not have stepped outside the house to talk to the FBI agents.
He tells Reason that his main goal with Abdeljawad's case is to raise awareness of people's rights when dealing with the FBI.
"It's wrong what they did. Realistically, with where the community's at, I don't know if we have the bandwidth to go after them for it," Shibly says. "Moreso, it's, ok, continue to exercise your rights. If they do contact you again, they're going to be hearing directly from us. We're going to deal with it. We're going to put them in check."
*UPDATE: After publication, McCleery provided the following statement; "Every day, the FBI engages with members of the public in furtherance of our mission, which is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. We can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity. The FBI is committed to ensuring our activities are conducted with a valid law enforcement or national security purpose, while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans."
And you don’t think they are not doing the same on this site?
Everyone posting on this site can be assured that they are and that they have cataloged every post and have traced every single person who have posted specific keywords.
And remember they do not record interrogations, are liars and did I say they are liars?
Churchill said we won. He was wrong.
I guess it’s a good thing I’m banned for life from Farcebook.
Churchill was a fool, and no single person did more to help communism in the 20th century.
How is that? As I recall he was the one who decried the “Iron Curtain” and also warned us about Islamic fanaticism.
He rescued the USSR just when it was about to collapse. He tricked FDR into saving the Soviet Union, and act against it’s own interest. The USSR was not even required to declare war on Japan until three months after victory in Europe was achieved. No country lost WWII more than the U.S. and Churchill was a snake.
Right or left ; the FBI is an anathema to liberty.
She’s a “volunteer” for CAIR. They are a subversive group trying to take down our country from within. Go ahead and support the terrorist Palestinians if you want to. I don’t trust them or her any more than I trust the FBI.
I have to say I completely disagree with you, on this one.
The US was approached by Churchill in May 1940. The Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941.
Stalin entered our program in 1941 and we sent materials before August 1941 to the USSR.
The USSR was already fighting against German, then. The fight against the Nazis needed all side to fight, unless you wanted even more US citizens dead, as Russia was conquered by Germany.
Churchill did nothing to help the USSR be “saved,” and Churchill was one of the most stellar leaders of the last century.
You need to bone up on your history.
He hassles non conformance Fartbook users for fun
Churchhill was in competition with Stalin to get aid from the USA
“That’s why we’re not here to arrest your or anything.”
Well, not quite; they were there for the “anything.” Three armed, undercover clothed panty sniffers to “have a conversation” - which falls under the “anything” - with an unarmed female.
Just following orders. Tomorrow’s leaders at the agency...unless Trump.
Yelling fire in a theater creates a potential threat as moviegoers may stampede. Posting words on social media?
Stop and frisk is for weapons. Posting words, again?
Where do you draw the line?
I never had a social media account until Trump got kicked off them. I thought he might end up at Parler, because that was about the only "conservative leaning" site, so I signed up for that. Then Parler got kicked off, so I went to Gab, once again thinking Trump would end up there. I next tried Gettr, and when Truth Social finally allowed people to access the site through their computers, I joined that too. But, I didn't' get anything from any of the sites, so I quit them all. I don't understand what people see in them, or why they are on them all the time. I'd rather be reading a good book, instead of looking at reposted crap all the time. If I want to see multiple postings of the same thing, I can just spend time on FR.
Meanwhile we got God knows how many terrorists, gang members, foreign military invading the country every day
The majority of the crap that passes as news articles today never answer the 6 questions required for a good article or incident report: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? I learned that in my English college courses, and in my job.
I posted this story a few weeks ago:
I drive a truck for a living and as per the dept. of transportation all drivers are subject to random drug testing. I usually get called once a year, some years not at all.
After the FBI raided Trumps mansion in August of 22 I was so ticked off I blasted the FBI on their Facebook page “Why aren’t you guys looking into all the terrorists, gang members coming across the border? When did the FBI become the Gestapo of the democrat party?” I never posted anything hostile.
About a week later I got called for the drug test. Then a week after that another drug test. Two weeks after that, another drug test.
Draw your own conclusions.
Good thing I never go on facebook. I save my sedition for freep.
I was shocked to find so much willful stupidity while the world is burning around us. Like that meme with the dog. Here's my favorite variation on it:
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