Republican State Lawmaker Livestreamed Himself In Mob Storming US Capitolhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/republican-state-lawmaker-livestreamed-himself-in-mob-storming-us-capitol/A Republican lawmaker recently elected to the West Virginia State Legislature yesterday livestreamed himself storming the US Capitol with the Trump-incited mob that tried to stop certification of Joe Biden's presidential election victory.
Derrick Evans, who was sworn in to the West Virginia House of Delegates last month, "was livestreaming on Facebook as he and other protesters muscled their way through the doors of one entrance carrying Trump flags and signs," BuzzFeed News wrote, adding that Evans shouted, "Patriots inside, baby!"
The now-deleted video shows Evans "wearing a helmet and clamoring at the door to breach" the building, the Associated Press reported.
https://apnews.com/article/social-media-electoral-college-west-virginia-media-7c5635060b39f41337229511a26ed61d"'We're in! Keep it moving, baby!' he said in a packed doorway amid Trump followers holding flags and complaining of being pepper sprayed," the AP wrote. "Once inside, Evans could be seen on video milling around the Capitol Rotunda, where historical paintings depict the republic's founding, and yelled 'no vandalizing.'"
The video also showed "Evans lead[ing] the crowd in a chant of 'Trump!'"
Though deleted from Evans' Facebook page, portions of his stream can still be viewed, as clips were reposted by others. After getting through the door with the rest of the crowd, Evans yelled, "We're in! We're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!" Evans also chanted "freedom" several times and yelled "our house."
https://www.reddit.com/r/WestVirginia/comments/krxnz2/delegate_derrick_evans_breaking_into_the_united/Evans claimed he was acting as an "independent member of the media" in a statement posted to Facebook. "I want to assure you all that I did not have any negative interactions with law enforcement nor did I participate in any destruction that may have occurred," Evans wrote. "I was simply there as an independent member of the media to film history."
Evans' claim that he was acting as a reporter did not convince Democratic House Minority Leader Doug Skaff, who "called on [House of Delegates Speaker Roger] Hanshaw to suspend Evans' access to the statehouse and launch an investigation," the AP wrote. "'Delegate Derrick Evans not only participated in this violent, intentional disruption of government; he helped lead a group that he organized to travel to Washington, DC, to cause this chaos,' [Skaff] said in a statement."
Evans' term runs until November 30, 2022. Members of the House of Delegates are paid $20,000 a year.
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Insurrectionists’ Social Media Presence Gives Feds an Easy Way to ID Themhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/insurrectionists-social-media-presence-gives-feds-an-easy-way-to-id-them/Law enforcement agencies trying to track down insurrectionists who participated in yesterday's events at the US Capitol have a wide array of tools at their disposal thanks to the ubiquity of cameras and social media.
Both local police and the FBI are seeking information about individuals who were "actively instigating violence" in Washington, DC, on January 6. While media organizations took thousands of photos police can use, they also have more advanced technologies at their disposal to identify participants, following what several other agencies have done in recent months.
Several police departments, such as Miami, Philadelphia, and New York City, turned to facial recognition platforms—including the highly controversial Clearview AI—during the widespread summer 2020 demonstrations against police brutality and in support of Black communities. In Philadelphia, for example, police used software to compare protest footage against Instagram photos to identify and arrest a protestor. In November, The Washington Post reported that investigators from 14 local and federal agencies in the DC area have used a powerful facial recognition system more than 12,000 times since 2019.
Neither would an agency need actual photos or footage to track down any mob participant who was carrying a mobile phone. Law enforcement agencies have also developed a habit in recent years of using so-called geofence warrants to compel companies such as Google to provide lists of all mobile devices that appeared within a certain geographic area during a given time frame.
... With all of that said, however, the DC Metropolitan Police and the FBI will probably need to look no further than a cursory Google search to identify many of the leaders of Wednesday's insurrection, as many of them took to social media both before and after the event to brag about it in detail. In short: you don't need fancy facial recognition tools to identify people who livestream their crimes.
Back on December 22, The Washington Post reported that organizers planning to rally on January 6 were openly discussing the potential for violence on that day on multiple social media platforms, including Parler, Gab, and Telegram. Reporter Marissa Lang continued in several subsequent stories to explain the high potential for violence at yesterday's events. Several other outlets, including Bloomberg and BuzzFeed, have also reported that the extremists who stormed the Capitol had been planning well in advance not only on fringe or explicitly right-wing sites but also in Facebook groups.
These extremely public plans also make for extremely public "paper" trails for any law enforcement agencies now interested in tracking down the participants. Several suspects have already been very easily identified.
The shirtless fellow with the furred, horned helmet, for example, is Jake Angeli, an extremely well-known Arizona man who has given multiple media interviews about his pro-Trump views. Another man seen near Angeli in several photos wore his work ID badge as he broke into the Capitol; his employer has already confirmed that he has been fired.
Local media outlets around the country have easily identified several other participants, including Adam Christian Johnson, the Florida man who grinned and waved to the camera after he stole the lectern from the House floor. Arkansas resident Richard Barnett, the man who put his feet up on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) desk to pose for a photo before stealing a piece of her mail, gave an interview to his local CBS affiliate about his participation in the mob.
Although many have later deleted their videos, that won't help them: not only are Facebook and other platforms subject to subpoenas and search warrants, but individuals and groups have been making plentiful copies and backups to preserve evidence.