Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines

6/24/2026 at 1:24:54 PM

Nobody's talking about how "terrorism" has expanded to mean, in law, armed opposition the the government. Throw in terrorism and the sentence goes up dramatically.

Is it possible to oppose the government with arms yet not be a terrorist? I'd say, yes. But I never expect to see a prosecution acknowledge that. They're even making drug smugglers into terrorists and murdering them extrajudicially.

by hughw

6/24/2026 at 2:57:07 PM

This is one of the great contradictions in American society. The right to bear arms is enshrined as a fundamental right in the Constitution, but the state will treat anybody who chooses to exercise this right as being an inherent threat. This is especially the case when it intersects with certain law enforcement practices, such as no-knock warrants. There have been multiple cases where police execute a no-knock warrant and kill someone who thinks they're being burglarized for holding a gun, or someone shoots at the police without knowing they're police and then gets charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.

by ndiddy

6/24/2026 at 2:23:27 PM

Two of those people were not involved in any of the planning and discussion of weapons via Signal and still got 30 year sentences, for the magazines bit. The shooter claimed he only shot because he saw the officer shooting at the back of fleeing unarmed protestors - this type of law enforcement is frowned upon in most other countries but regularly happens unopposed in the USA and officers will claim and most of the time get qualified immunity. The whole prosecution feels of a kind of the misuse of laddering and felony murder charges.

by stevenwoo

6/24/2026 at 4:47:53 PM

Well, drug smuggling is a traditional part of inter empire warfare. Pump the population of the oppossing entity full with societal dissolvents then use the innet turmoil for an intervention

by warumdarum

6/24/2026 at 5:22:10 AM

In Poland during the Soviet occupation (1945-1989) people were beaten and jailed for having a copier that would be used for copying magazines and brochures

by p0w3n3d

6/24/2026 at 7:24:39 PM

Nowadays your printer puts secret markings into everything, and Microsoft and Apple can link those to your account and IP address.

by Terr_

6/24/2026 at 9:05:10 AM

I'd argue it was a vassal state, not occupied (per se) at least from the 1950's onwards. Yes, the soviet troops did station in Poland, but the beatings were administered by other Polish citizens.

by FromHoiPolloi

6/24/2026 at 1:06:02 PM

It still is, it just changed owners.

by stillvasals

6/24/2026 at 7:21:38 PM

And who would be the owners? Give names.

by bit-anarchist

6/24/2026 at 9:23:23 AM

This is hardly a new approach or development.

A decade ago, reading Linux Journal would get you flagged as being an extremist : https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4rp5l6/nsa_classifie...

by 8fingerlouie

6/24/2026 at 6:42:13 PM

There’s literally no comparison between “flagging”, which has no legal requirement or no actual consequence without actual trial, and the results of an actual trial.

by adjejmxbdjdn

6/24/2026 at 6:27:38 PM

I don't think you've understood the story you're commenting on. These people weren't "flagged" as terrorists, they were convicted and sentenced (extremely) harshly.

by qwery

6/24/2026 at 9:58:37 AM

Were they giving people 50 years in prison for it back then too?

by SOLAR_FIELDS

6/24/2026 at 6:55:26 AM

The sentences are pretty crazy but what’s with the strange understatement.

> One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)

The accurate statement is that he shot and wounded a police officer who he intentionally targeted according to his own testimony (where he claims he did so because he thought the cop was going to shoot his guys).

> Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines

The accurate statement is: “hiding zines that could be considered evidence of affiliation at the request of your arrested wife”.

Listen, the sentences seem politically motivated. They’re quite long. But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.

This is pretty out there stuff. And I’m not going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who yells “get to the rifles” then gets to the rifles and shoots a policeman that he could have been ‘potentially inciting violence’ by shooting. He committed violence. And hiding the facts here does not make me sympathetic.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/sentencing-for-8-accused-o...

by arjie

6/24/2026 at 6:48:02 PM

> But if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.

30 years though? And for moving what material exactly?

I think you can have some kind of rationale for why these people should be prosecuted. I'm not sure that's the issue for many though — the issue is the proportionality of the sentence.

by derbOac

6/24/2026 at 10:27:35 AM

> One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation)

Sounds like attempted murder for a start rather than incitement or provocation. Or worse, given there was a crowd.

by a96

6/24/2026 at 8:27:36 AM

>if you joined a protest group where the organizer shoots a policeman and you’ve all got weapons at home and then you tell people to move the material you have at home that indicates you’re part of the group then I think the convictions are pretty accurate.

Oh, tell that to the president of the United States and half of Congress and half of the Senate (and half of the country). Remind me what was their reaction and actions after the pardon of Jan 6 rioters?

by Arodex

6/24/2026 at 8:57:21 AM

The Jan 6 rioters were convicted and given similarly long sentences. Certainly Trump doing something doesn’t make it valid.

by armchairhacker

6/24/2026 at 4:49:18 PM

> similarly long sentences

Enrique Tarrio got 22 years for masterminding an attempt to violently overturn the results of a Presidential election.

Daniel Sanchez-Estrada got 30 years for moving some magazines.

The median Jan 6 sentence was 10 months. The shortest sentence for a protestor here was 30 years.

by lux-lux-lux

6/24/2026 at 7:32:38 PM

Ok, that guy’s sentence is egregious (they all are, as were the Jan 6 ones, but I think he shouldn’t even have jail time).

I have less sympathy towards those who vandalized and the one who shot at police. 100 years is insane, but those acts are blatantly illegal.

by armchairhacker

6/24/2026 at 10:53:58 AM

Well, if he did it and there was no opposition, it certainly makes it "valid". Where exactly has it been made invalid? Has anyone done anything to make it invalid? Aren't they free, and can they do it again?

And the slush fund for the Jan 6 rioters is just suspended, not canceled. It will come back.

by Arodex

6/24/2026 at 1:14:14 PM

Just because something happened doesn’t make it “valid”: it’s not moral, and your side doing it may not have the same effect (good people can’t use evil tools as effectively as evil people).

I don’t really care whether Jan 6 rioters are free, they’ve spent months-to-years in jail anyways. What’s important is preventing future crimes, which punishing deserved people broadly on your side helps.

> Can they do it again

In 2028 if a Dem wins? At best they’re looking at another few years. (Trump won’t successfully pardon a crime as egregious as this (before anyone serves time) unless the Dem is really ineffective, because of how similarly it can be used against his side.)

by armchairhacker

6/24/2026 at 10:21:31 AM

They were given similarly long sentences, despite shooting zero people.

by like_any_other

6/24/2026 at 1:03:49 PM

Honestly, I think both Jan 6 and these rioters deserve punishment, but not such long sentences. Prevention and deterrence - prevention by monitoring (at least to prevent them from going near “enemy territory”) and taking their guns, deterrence by at most a few years in prison, other penalties (like fines), and the social consequences. Anything more is unnecessarily harmful and wastes prison resources.

by armchairhacker

6/24/2026 at 7:11:36 AM

[dead]

by postpawl

6/24/2026 at 7:22:40 AM

[flagged]

by copper-float

6/24/2026 at 4:57:08 PM

Since violence is never the answer, do you think any institutions or organizations whose primary arm is violence should be disbanded in favor of non-violent alternatives?

by pluralmonad

6/24/2026 at 5:04:46 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

6/24/2026 at 4:25:16 PM

Careful, accurately portraying these people's crimes will likely get you downvoted and flagged, unfortunately. It's sad, but there's likely people here who support what happened.

This type of "you can't downvote me for valid reasons" style of intro to a comment is going to lead to many people downvoting you immediately.

Not many people are going to believe your appeal to "real discussion" when leading with that.

by Goronmon

6/24/2026 at 8:25:54 AM

If you want a discussion, here it is:

>this kind of behavior can't be normalized

What happened to the Jan 6 rioters?

Ashli Babbitt received military funeral honors for what?

Discuss: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

What is the intent of the 2nd amendment? It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?

by Arodex

6/24/2026 at 1:55:30 PM

> It allows citizens to beat arms, but for what purpose?

To form state-level militia. It even starts with a sunset condition: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ..." — so arguably, since a well-maintained militia is universally considered in no way necessary (nor sufficient) for state security, the second amendment should have lost its power long time ago.

by Joker_vD

6/24/2026 at 7:31:52 PM

> To form state-level militia.

Right, to expand on that a bit:

1. When the Second Amendment was written, there was already a solid active legal framework and culture for "well-regulated militias" meant via the Articles of Confederation. Every single state was required to run and fund their own militia.

2. The US Federal Constitution was originally (pre-civil-war) purely a set restrictions on the Federal government. One of its explicit purposes was to preserve state autonomy.

3. Therefore Second Amendment was (originally) intended to prevent the federal government from sneakily disarming individual states by literally removing their pool of weapons and volunteers.

Whether it should still mean the same after many years and other amendments is a much trickier problem, but the idea that it always meant an individual right to arms is a false mythology.

by Terr_

6/24/2026 at 7:43:22 PM

Beg to differ: to the purposes of the idealized free USA, a popular militia was, and still is, the only solution for a free territory of people. A modern organized army as understood today is all about ceding your right as an free individual to become subservient to a large authority.

by bit-anarchist

6/24/2026 at 6:41:20 PM

A reminder that the current administration was running military operations on Signal.

by adjejmxbdjdn

6/24/2026 at 11:47:52 AM

> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds. One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation). I would never condone that kind of activity.

This is the crux of the issue - from the perspective of the government, this was a group of people who lead an armed terrorist attack on a government facility in order to disrupt the functioning of that facility because they held an ideological belief that the facility was immoral; and it's irrelevant that not every member of the group personally shot a cop with an AR-15, just as it wasn't relevant that Osama bin Laden didn't personally hijack any planes and crash them into buildings when the US government sent special forces to break into his compound and kill him.

> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause:

> “[…] including their decision to communicate and auto-delete messages on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform widely used among activists, journalists and other citizens wary of government surveillance.”

Given that the other evidence that they planned violence was that they set off fireworks outside the facility, vandalized it, and then shot a cop in the neck when the cop came to investigate the vandalism, I don't really care that the government prosecutors also considered their use of Signal as evidence that they planned violence. Frankly, if you're part of a group that is planning violence, it is a good idea to use an encrypted messaging platform like Signal that has an auto-delete feature to do that planning, the prosecutors are correct to note this.

by JuniperMesos

6/24/2026 at 12:18:52 PM

I found the wording of "inciting violence" odd - surely firing a rifle at police officers is violence and not simply incitement for others to join in? It sounds like the author of the article is so obsessed with the social ramifications of acts they can't see the literal ones.

by GaryBluto

6/24/2026 at 1:51:44 PM

The use of private communications absolutely, fundamentally, positively, holistically cannot be allowed to be recognized as "evidence" for anything, including planned violence, or we have lost the final fight and society is doomed forever.

Do not let your apathy be the tool of another man's evil.

by soulofmischief

6/24/2026 at 1:10:05 PM

[flagged]

by stillvasals

6/24/2026 at 2:47:36 PM

The country has changed massively through voting in the last 25 years. I would rather not change to a system where political groups attack others with guns and bombs to change things, because that's the alternative you're proposing.

Touch grass, find a significant other, and build a life.

by mmonaghan

6/24/2026 at 3:19:18 PM

This article is quite dishonest.

> Let’s be clear: a few of the protesters were out of bounds.

"out of bounds" is a nice way of putting it. Terrorism is an accurate description.

> But these sentences far outstrip anything that’s been given to anyone on the right wing: the leader of the Proud Boys, as this article notes, was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

I think the difference here is the planned terrorist activity, and condolence of violence. If the Proud Boys were doing to same sort of thing, then fair - but I cannot find in a Google search that they did.

> One protester wasn’t even present, but was sentenced to 30 years for moving some zines

> The ninth defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest, but was convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record after prosecutors said he moved leftwing zines and other materials at the request of Rueda, his wife, after she was arrested.

Clearly it was not just "moving some vines", it was knowingly concealing evidence and attempting to prevent the course of justice.

> Instead, other “evidence” was used to infer that they planned violence, including this specific argument that should give everyone pause

An argument can be made there, all are innocent unless proven guilty. But I suspect they admitted to being fully aware and supportive of the terrorist activities. The prosecution can claim all they like, the important thing is what ends up being considered.

by bArray

6/24/2026 at 6:42:44 PM

> "out of bounds" is a nice way of putting it.

This I agree with.

> it was knowingly concealing evidence

The article does not misrepresent this. The issue being raised is about how they were tried/convicted/sentenced. The part you quoted shows this.

> Terrorism is an accurate description.

> ... the difference here is the planned terrorist activity, ... If the Proud Boys were doing [the] same sort of thing ...

I'm genuinely interested in what "terrorism" means to you.

by qwery

6/24/2026 at 10:17:56 AM

Don’t forget shipping people to foreign concentration camps for having tattoos.

by secretsatan

6/24/2026 at 4:22:38 AM

Anyone who values democracy is automatically an anti-fascist.

Democracy is _inherently_ anti-fascist.

by rekabis

6/24/2026 at 11:38:22 AM

Democracy also has a 'tyranny of the majority' vulnerability in which it can enforce policies onto minorities that could be just as harsh compared to policies imposed by autocracies. For example - Japanese American internment in WWII.

by da-x

6/24/2026 at 10:21:01 AM

If there is a large group of people who use a term like "anti-fascist" as a tag line it no longer is a literal representation of the words. Just like how you wouldn't say that a guy rolling coal in a lifted pickup with a confederate flag and an AR mounted in the window who calls himself a "freedom fighter" is literally fighting for freedom.

Otherwise you will just be talking past people who are interpreting it to mean something else. Which of course you are free to do if you don't think what you are trying to say has enough value to be worth avoiding the miscommunication.

by SpaceNugget

6/24/2026 at 4:35:16 PM

I'd argue that most, if not all clandestine cells that call themselves themselves "Antifa" are as anti-Fascist as the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" were socialist.

by GaryBluto

6/24/2026 at 10:28:16 AM

These are the values of the original antifa that killed and died for democracy by the way: https://web.archive.org/web/20211222183606/https://www.washi...

by like_any_other

6/24/2026 at 7:02:47 PM

Labelling (all?) American (Allied?) personnel as "antifa" or even "anti-fascist" is an interesting move. The article doesn't seem to demonstrate what you suggest it does nor does it seem particularly relevant in general. What are you trying to say?

by qwery

6/24/2026 at 7:31:58 PM

That, if we accept that logic, we must either say the Allies who fought in WWII didn't value democracy, or we must accept a definition of anti-fascist that is so broad, it easily includes people even many on the right would call Nazis.

by like_any_other

6/24/2026 at 1:08:21 PM

A lot of people desire their own oppression, so I don't think democracy is inherently anti-fascist.

by nisegami

6/24/2026 at 9:43:02 AM

Even though I am commited to resisting "fascism" in all it's forms,the people convicted were definitly working themselves up to do something even worse. For me there crime was to be undisaplined and they did not understand there responsibilitys while armed, which is unexcusable. If they realy wanted to engage in armed struggle against fascists, then there are plenty of places where they could voulenteer to fight irregular mercenary forces hired and equiped by companys and governments to destroy populations that have the missfortune to live on top of some oil or other extractable resource, but what they did was cosplay bieng a revolutionary in a suberban environment, and no doubt had plans to hook up for a few drinks at the club later. These people made the classic, fascist, mistake of thinking in terms of a hiarchical relationship of rights, and forgot , that everybody has rights, even a dumb ass junior cop who goes where he's told, while for all anyone knows is fielding texts from his wife ,promising that he will take the van in and get the brakes checked.

by metalman

6/24/2026 at 6:33:05 AM

The ability of Texas to adhere so intensely to the idea of radical individualism while also being wholly committed to fascism at a policy level has always confused me.

When I studied Texas history in University, the textbook opened with a sentence along the lines of "Texas Government has always been characterized by incompetence and nepotism", and through that lens, I filed many of the absurdities (e.g. Greg Abbott's entire career and the "free speech area" on my university campus) under that bucket.

A couple decades haves since passed and my view has changed to see the openly racist institutions, targeted policing and zero-sum "satesmanship" at both local and state levels that forego core democratic values for "winning" (or at least lining the pockets of your donors) as something more jaded and sociopathic.

There are a lot of truly good, smart people in Texas, yet it's been an fairly openly fascist state for decades. Coming from the Bay Area and having lived in a lot of places, I've never felt like I lived in a police state more than in the DFW metroplex, although when visiting family in Northern CA, CAMP operations in Mendocino County come as a close second in terms of authoritarian vibes.

I was so confused with how many people from the valley openly aligned and invested in such a deeply corrupt state in the 2000s. Elon was unsurprising given his fashy incel leanings, but Apple's choice to build the Austin campus floored me. An office in a state where your female employees don't have reproductive rights? How do you endorse that?

You can't just look past the political rot that has defined Texas for generations with the excuse that you can buy a "Keep Austin Weird" sticker at H.E.B. The people in Austin and across the state advocating for a better future and an accountable government deserve a shoutout, but man, if you wanted to see the writing on the wall for American Democracy, all you needed to do was look at Texas anytime between 1996 and now.

It's sad because it really is beautiful country full of decent people, but it's blatantly and unjustifiably corrupt, and diametrically opposed to the core American values that it attaches to it's lifted, 9-tom, 1/2"-longer-than-the-same-model-sold-in-every-other-state pick 'em up truck, and it's gamed so hard that the people in the state will never undo it.

Texas was the test case.

by jeromie

6/24/2026 at 9:46:41 AM

Texas is where a large section of the founders of the Confederacy fled to once it was clear the war was lost. It’s harbored their bigotry and ideology.

You’re right about it being the test case. Having one of the largest state populations meant that it helped drive textbook curation for elementary/HS education. Smaller red states that didn’t have the population or budget to define their own textbooks would use Texas’.

by krn1p4n1c

6/24/2026 at 4:32:09 PM

It's not confusing. It's a state that pretends to adhere to an idea of radical individualism that is just a vehicle for fascism. The individualism practiced is just 'the right to abuse/oppress others without state interference, so long as 'others' means groups the state culturally doesn't like'.

It's really a failure of reconstruction that we ended up with the South remaining basically an anti-democratic apartheid state. Even though Jim Crow stopped being legal for a while, the political elites running the states didn't really change. Slavery was really America's original sin and its legacy still poison the american experiment; that southern planter mentality never left.

by dascrazy_96

6/23/2026 at 11:57:39 PM

Well. It's a signal. What did you expect?

by LargoLasskhyfv

6/24/2026 at 6:35:57 AM

Would you mind elaborating?

by dtj1123