Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #58

rapind wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think deeply about what you're proposing.

I am thinking about it. Think about what you are proposing. Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime?

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #80

seph-reed wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily. Without hesitation, obviously, hard yes. If the KKK wants to be a tiny minority of people who lack the nuance to direct their anger at anything other than a color of skin, maybe we need to work on our education system. If they haven't committed a crime, then either they haven't hurt anybody, or we need to work on our judicial system. Inevitably, the microscopic amount of good that could be done would be vastl…

Well if you're willing to accept that the government should not keep tabs on racist organizations or militias, then I guess we've cashed out our disagreement to terminal values. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Post by toofy » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 4:19 AM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #82

slg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, this goes because just surveilling a legal protest. These protests were specifically against the police's abuse of their power. This resulted in a police response that was much more adversarial than a traditional legal protest would face. Aiding the police in surveilling protesters allows police to further abuse their power and target protesters for retribution. Providing this monitoring isn't that dif…

At least 17 people were murdered during this time and a few more since this was posted: https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/06/03/twitter-user-compile... The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, but they can and have identified looters and murderers who have tried to discredit the fact that black lives matter with their actions. So I'm not clear why so many peo…

Post by acituan » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

jerrybee wrote: post #30

stefan_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first obvious point is that protesting is a constitutionally protected activity, as is any political speech on Twitter, and this is interpreted extremely widely - so why are public institutions in the business of surveilling this legal, ney protected activity? But there is more to it. Courts have long recognized that state activity that can be reasonably construed to chill exercise of ones constitutional freedoms…

Aren’t the tweets ingested by Dataminr public? I agree this would be problematic if they were using private data, but using data available to anyone on the platform feels like fair game.

Post by cwhiz » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #137

cwhiz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is a private platform. You have no free speech rights on Twitter. You have no rights at all, other than the Terms of Service. The Bill of Rights protects you from the government. Twitter is not the government.

The problem with this argument is that it's the setup for en-masse dragnet surveillance. After all you have no rights on what you give to third parties, and you also have no expectation of privacy, so surely there's nothing wrong with the government scooping it up without even needing a warrant. In the 21st century, our "papers and effects" are digital, online, and stored by third parties, and the law hasn't kept up…