FBI agents monitor social media. As domestic threats rise, the question is who they're watching

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/09/01/fbi-social-media-surveillance/7947126001/?gnt-cfr=1

No paywall
https://archive.ph/QUP14

On Aug. 11, Adam Bies logged into his account on Gab and started typing:

“I sincerely believe that if you work for the FBI, then you deserve to DIE.”

Bies, 46, was an aspiring freelance photographer who had filled his website with action photos of fast cars and outdoor sports. He had been fired from his day job in marketing for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, he wrote online, and had struggled in his efforts to file an unemployment claim.

As federal prosecutors would later describe in court filings, Bies was filling his days posting under a pseudonym on Gab, a social media service popular with right-wing extremists.

His post included a link to a Fox News story about FBI Director Christopher Wray decrying the wave of violent threats directed at the agency in the three days since the search of former President Donald Trump’s home and club Mar-a-Lago. He compared federal agents to Nazi forces. He fumed about “police state scum.” And he composed what might have been seen as a final plan.
“I already know I’m going to die at the hands of these … law enforcement scumbags,” he wrote, interspersed with profanity. “My only goal is to kill more of them before I drop.”

Four days later, warrant in hand, armed federal agents and SWAT teams surrounded Bies’ home, near a tumbling waterfall in the deep-forest hunting country of western Pennsylvania. Inside the house were Bies and his 12-year-old son. It was dark, near midnight.

*snip*


Hi Agent Mike!

[CentralMass]

1. Such is life. If you don't start nuthin, there won't be nupthin.

Although I hope they are looking into Lindsey Graham's remarks.