Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
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Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#2I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath.
> The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full access to a content stream known as the “firehose” — a rare privilege among tech firms and one that lets Dataminr, recently valued at over $1.8 billion, scan every public tweet as soon as its author hits send. Both companies denied that the protest monitoring meets the definition of surveillance.
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#3I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full acc…
Who needs a panopticon when the prisoners post evidence themselves?
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#4I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full acc…
so the leftists sold out the leftists? classic.
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#5I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full acc…
Who needs a panopticon when the prisoners post evidence themselves?
Social media flips the classic panopticon on its head; instead of instilling fear of perpetual surveillance to keep others disciplined, it instills a fear that others can't see you until you self-discipline according to the algorithm's desire.
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#6I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full acc…
A lot of people, frankly, don't have any principled understanding of what it means to oppose surveillance. Dataminr says it's not doing "surveillance" but "newsgathering", based on some ad-hoc distinction they have no idea how to flesh out. And the article author doesn't seem to know either; he says Dataminr's defense was a "linguistic distinction" and a "euphemism", but none of his sources really explain what the correct distinction is between surveillance and newsgathering.
Personally, I think any principled opposition to surveillance is going to end up including some practices which have traditionally been considered news. The reason that Dataminr's activity is surveillance is that "look at these random tweets!" news articles are also surveillance.
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#7I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full acc…
Why is this comment downvoted?
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who needs a panopticon when the prisoners post evidence themselves?
Social media flips the classic panopticon on its head; instead of instilling fear of perpetual surveillance to keep others disciplined, it instills a fear that others can't see you until you self-discipline according to the algorithm's desire.
The irony of this being downvoted...
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#9I get the sense that most HN commenters are against having police surveil this kind of event in the U.S.
Could someone share the reasons for this strong opposition?
Personally, I can imagine valid reasons for and against conducting such surveillance. But given how many people feel otherwise, I wonder if I'm missing something.
Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
#10I get the sense that most HN commenters are against having police surveil this kind of event in the U.S. Could someone share the reasons for this strong opposition? Personally, I can imagine valid reasons for and against conducting such surveillance. But given how many people feel otherwise, I wonder if I'm missing something.
Because the political class has demonstrated repeatedly that they are mostly corrupt and will take advantage of the data illegally, just like with echelon and prism, and what they are now trying to do with the EARN IT act.