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DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

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Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#91

Post by Retric »

emodendroket wrote: post #67
Retric wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not simply (ed: only) based on ethnicity.

When people talk about banning "profiling" that's what they mean.

A credit score could be made more accurate if you included race and ethnicity, but current models are more accurate than one built simply on race and ethnicity. (This may simply be measuring the recial bias of society, but more data is almost always useful.)

Sure, it may offend people to include race, it's not required. EX: People without children are a higher risk than those with children. On it's own not a big deal, and you can't trust any one thing, but screening even 1 in 3 people is still vastly cheaper than everyone.

In the end we can be just as effective without including race if we simply spend more money to profile more people. Making more people suffer for little gain vs. standing up for your principles is less clear cut than people want to admit. Still, both options are viable.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#92

Post by sooheon »

everdev wrote: post #82
decebalus1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not. My dad had one of those 'extensive questioning' sessions the first time (and only the first time) he flew to Israel because (we think) he is former non-US military. He's also whiter than snow, basically the definition of Caucasian.

You're right that there are many ways to profile, but race and religion have been historically pervasive profiling techniques. It does seem more fair to simply put everyone through the same process. If you're annoyed at why you (an innocent) have to be subjected to such stringent and time consuming security, that's how innocents who fit "the profile" might feel as well.

If those doing the profiling are interested in being successful, and race and religion prove to be ineffective indicators of threat, then such profiling should stop (or bombs will keep getting through at an inordinate rate). Otherwise, race and religion are simply observations about passengers which have value in directing attention.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#94

Post by JoshTriplett »

robbiep wrote: post #81
JoshTriplett wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where as Australia's is order of preference with instant runoff (you literally cannot throw your vote away) This is a tangent, but IRV is horribly broken: it throws your vote away for you, by ignoring all your preferences other than the top choice until it decides that your top choice no longer matters. If you vote A > B > C, IRC ignores that you prefer B over C until it eliminates A. That can cause C to win. That…

It is also a powerful force for forcing cooperation between political parties, which trade preference deals. This is a powerful force for centrism, an important feature of stable democracies - compare australia’s Relatively centrist governmnents and political parties (despite what the stagnation we see at present) VS the vast and expanding gulf between us parties

So is a better rank-based system. I can't think of a single reason to prefer IRV over better rank-based voting systems, and plenty of reasons not to.

I absolutely agree that our voting systems are part of the problem; first-past-the-post is broken.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#95

Post by mr_spothawk »

omegaworks wrote: post #58

Hacker News, can we come up with clever ways to undermine this growing trend toward authoritarianism? How effective are ear plugs as a countermeasure? Parabolic mirrors? How can we divest from organizations employing these anti-populist, anti-democratic measures?

> How can we divest

learn to grow your food

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#96

Post by PhasmaFelis »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #68
stevenjohns wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

El Al security is not a good model at all. I'm still yet to figure out what they achieved by seizing my backpack (that had all of my personal documentation) and damaging my brand new MBP 2016 and Pixel tablet (by very clearly dropping them a dozen times) had to do with security. Especially when they lied about putting it on the plane and I arrived at Ben Gurion with literally nothing other than a passport in one pock…

Why has El Al security seized your backpack? I can see why they'd want to search a backpack, but can't for the life of me understand why they'd seize it. I know airlines can sometimes check-in your carry-on items when they run out of cabin space. Is this what happened to you?

People with a little power and no supervision are likely to abuse it for their own ego. I doubt it's anything more than that.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#97

Post by PhasmaFelis »

handelaar wrote: post #23
jstanley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If police are unable to control the crowd, at what point is that simply because the crowd is so large that the police should be unable to control them? If the DDR had this sort of technology, would the Berlin wall still be standing? And, if so, would that be a good thing?

As someone who used to organise large demonstrations in London for CND [a UK anti-nuclear org] a long time ago -- there is no point that the crowd is ever so large that a combination of the organasition itself with the police where the crowd "should" be unable to control it. In fact when you're putting together a demo in London you meet the Met police and meeting that requirement is one of the things you discuss with…

> As someone who used to organise large demonstrations in London for CND [a UK anti-nuclear org] a long time ago -- there is no point that the crowd is ever so large that a combination of the organasition itself with the police where the crowd "should" be unable to control it. In fact when you're putting together a demo in London you meet the Met police and meeting that requirement is one of the things you discuss with them.

It sounds like that depends on the police and protesters being at least nominally willing to cooperate, however grudgingly. That's not always the case. If the police and the local government think that the protesters have no right to be there at all and the only thing preventing open violence is the fear of bad publicity, it's a lot more of a powder keg.

If the protest is about police violence, for example. Have a friendly advance chat with the police about where, when, and how many, and you'll likely show up to find your venue packed with concrete barricades and cops in riot gear to "preserve public safety". You need to get a critical mass of protesters in place with cameras on them before the cops can get fully organized, or they'll shut you down before you can begin.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#98

Post by azernik »

alexeldeib wrote: post #64
stevenjohns wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are the metrics they use. Despite being an Australian citizen with a very clean record, as well as having a very Western name, I was red flagged before I even arrived because of my country of birth. With El Al, you're interrogated before you board the plane. When you go to check in, there is a "pre check-in" where you show staff your passport and they check your name off against a paper list. That paper…

Thanks for the detail, and for your own experience. The interrogation interests me. It sounds you don't feel it was useful? I had heard about this kind of interrogation over mundane stories, and understood it as a way of "testing" individuals' stories (especially under duress). But that would depend on it being repeated/prodded thoroughly, which it seems isn't the case.

"Repeated/prodded thoroughly" matches all of the descriptions of the long-form interrogations by Israeli airline and airport security. If they got to the 100 shekels in his wallet, then that means they probably asked him about a lot of other things first, and searched his wallet, and probably tried to put together a timeline of exactly when he went where to try to find cracks in the story.

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#99

Post by mirimir »

omegaworks wrote: post #58

Hacker News, can we come up with clever ways to undermine this growing trend toward authoritarianism? How effective are ear plugs as a countermeasure? Parabolic mirrors? How can we divest from organizations employing these anti-populist, anti-democratic measures?

I'm pretty sure that motorcycle helmets with active noise control would help a lot. Also maybe padded bodysuits. But there'd be downsides for protest groups to show up wearing such gear, no?

Re: DC police used sonic cannon to direct crowd flow during Women's March

#100

Post by Pyxl101 »

alexeldeib wrote: post #64
stevenjohns wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are the metrics they use. Despite being an Australian citizen with a very clean record, as well as having a very Western name, I was red flagged before I even arrived because of my country of birth. With El Al, you're interrogated before you board the plane. When you go to check in, there is a "pre check-in" where you show staff your passport and they check your name off against a paper list. That paper…

Thanks for the detail, and for your own experience. The interrogation interests me. It sounds you don't feel it was useful? I had heard about this kind of interrogation over mundane stories, and understood it as a way of "testing" individuals' stories (especially under duress). But that would depend on it being repeated/prodded thoroughly, which it seems isn't the case.

It sounds like this interrogation strategy could be designed to make the interviewee think that the interlocutor is onto something, even if they aren't.

If you're a regular guy, you're likely to react by becoming bored and tired. If you're doing sinister stuff, there is a chance that you might start to stress out from the interaction. I believe similar techniques are used when screening people for government security clearances using a polygraph. They seem to push people hard and accuse them of lying. I can only assume it's with the intent of causing legitimately guilty people to "crack".

I am not trying to justify the practice, just speculating about the purported rationale. Not a very fun experience as an innocent person.

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