They had already been outed by internet sleuths possibly, but not necessarily, informed by leaks from the police. The FBI is making a press release about an investigation only to save face because the criminal conspiracy is already common knowledge among those interested. In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network. They have well-publicized, patently unlawful dragnet signals intelligence collection capabilities. The targets are people who organize openly on Zoom and Discord, and broadcast volumes of their ideology on bumper stickers, Mastodon, and Blue-Twitter. So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate? I feel like ICE is Floyd/BLM repeated as farce.

> In the universe of a competent FBI, which I think is ours, they already know who is in the network.

Certainly they know the handles of those people, and what they've said and what documents they've exchanged.

Connecting Signal accounts to real-world identity... well, that's definitely the FBI's wheelhouse, but some might make it easier or harder than others.

But there are a few cases where even the Internet sleuths are pretty confident about identity.

> So why does (if the press is to be believed) an authoritarian, fascist, ultra-right-wing regime allow them to operate?

Rationality requires treating behaviour inconsistent with a quality as evidence against that quality.