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Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

theintercept.com

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Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#141

Post by austincheney »

stefan_ wrote: post #17
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #9

I 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.

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…

Political speech on Twitter is not constitutionally protected. Twitter is a private platform that can legally block any speech with or without government interference so long as that interference is not present in the capacity of a government agent.

The first amendment is limited to protections against government interference.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#142

Post by cwhiz »

olefoo wrote: post #102
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.

Twitter is a private platform, it's true. But the GOVERNMENT is prohibited from using the services of a private contractor to chill the exercise of one's first amendment rights. Not that that will limit the creation of ethically dubious firms like ClearviewAI or Palantir.

The government can’t chill your right to tweet because you don’t have a right to tweet. Your tweets are public and you don’t own them, not even your own.

There is no law restricting the governments right to collect public data.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#143

Post by refurb »

elliekelly wrote: post #38
darawk wrote: post #35

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? There are lots of things that are protected activities that I would like surveiled. Militias. The KKK. Neo-nazis. I certainly hope the FBI and other law…

I would agree, with the giant caveat that I would like those activities to be surveilled only upon a showing of probable cause and with judicial oversight. The government shouldn’t have carte blanche to “investigate” citizens who are not suspected of committing a crime.

who are not suspected of committing a crime.

How about people suspected of planning a crime?

It would be really hard for cops to prevent crimes if they had to wait until after it was committed in order to surveil.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#144

Post by paulmd »

cwhiz wrote: post #140
paulmd wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you want to argue that the law should be changed then that is fine. But it doesn’t change the current reality.

Yes, when a government has found a clever end-run around the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure that definitely needs to be fixed.

Not sure why exactly you think "aha, so you admit it is legal!" is a particularly insightful thing to say, obviously all authoritarian governments have decided that they have the legal right to intrude on their citizens' privacy and thus have self-determined their actions to be legal. That has nothing to do with whether it's the morally right thing, or is in keeping with the spirit of the constitution.

To wit: China has determined that they have the legal right to disperse assemblies in Taiwan. That is legal there too. Do you think that is the right thing?

Kohlberg addresses this with his stages of moral development - some people think "because it is law, therefore it is moral", and that's really as much thought as they need to put into it to justify it to themselves. They don't bother addressing whether it should be legal, and that seems to be the thrust of your argument.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#145

Post by refurb »

shpongled wrote: post #19
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #9

I 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 history has shown time and time again that governments cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interest of the people.

How does that jive with the overwhelming propensity for big government on HN?

“I don’t want the gov’t to know I was at a protest, but I’m more than happy to give them all my medical data and work for a nationalized company.”

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#146

Post by toofy »

jrumbut wrote: post #40
jerrybee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the US system is best served by Americans being very pessimistic of law enforcement getting anywhere near politics. Many of the ugliest chapters in our history involve failing to uphold this standard.

> ...very pessimistic of law enforcement getting anywhere near politics.

> Many of the ugliest chapters in our history involve failing to uphold this standard.

I don’t have data to back this up, but I certainly would not be shocked to read a study which showed that police, rather than enforcing laws universally, are far more likely to be using their discretion attempting to steer society by selectively punishing segments of people who they view as “unamerican.” Whether it’s done to juggalo types from “the wrong side of the tracks”; strange religions; different races; or like in the past, pot smokers, guys with long hair, or punks with colors in their hair. etc... etc... etc...

I don’t know how we fix this problem, but I suspect the tendency to view “others” as problematic and applying pressure to other groups in a misguided attempt to steer them into compliance is part of the problem.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#147

Post by tzs »

jb775 wrote: post #32
dgarrett wrote: post #29

Dataminr Access and Deletion Requests: https://www.dataminr.com/access-and-deletion-requests

> We will use the information you provide to process and to maintain a record of your request. What a paradox...In order to delete your records, they create records on you

For data on people in the EU, that's essentially required to comply with GDPR.

That's because of backups. GDPR doesn't really say if handling a deletion request just requires deleting from your live databases or if you also have to through your backups and delete from them too.

I didn't save the link, but at least one country's privacy regulator has clarified that deletion requests do not apply to backups, but if the backup is ever restored you have to delete any restored records that had been subject to a deletion request.

Hence, the need to maintain a record of deletion requests in sufficient detail to re-delete those records if they ever come back.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#148

Post by rapnie »

darawk wrote: post #113
minerjoe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Usually". Evidence? I doubt that the police pre-emptively stop many crimes at all. They catch criminals _after_ they have committed crimes. Even if they were able to catch every crime before it started, ala minority report, they, based on past behavior, would most likely seriously abuse that power hence the strong opposition here to having them even come close to posessing that power.

> "Usually". Evidence? I doubt that the police pre-emptively stop many crimes at all. They catch criminals _after_ they have committed crimes. Here's a long list of terrorist incidents, some of which were pre-emptively disrupted by the FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20... > Even if they were able to catch every crime before it started, ala minority report, they, based on past behavior,…

> I come down pretty squarely on the harms from not doing so being greater

And this feeling you have may stem from another political narrative being created and amplified: the fear of 'the other'. The fear that justifies all of this to so many people.

Sowing the FUD that e.g. most people from Mexico are "criminials, rapists, carrying disease", or that Moslims are terrorists. That terrorist sleeper cells may be everywhere. A gliding scale of xenophobia created for political purposes.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#149

Post by jakear »

ciarannolan wrote: post #31
colordrops wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this comment downvoted?

Maybe because HN is full of people that work for similar privacy-destroying tech companies. I find that people on this board get a bit touchy when you talk about FAANG companies doing immoral things. (I know this isn't a FAANG company but its affect is in the same vein).

Does “FAANG companies” really mean literally those 5 companies? That’s not very usefully of a term. I think it’s more the concept, which I’d say Twitter is included in.

Re: Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr

#150

Post by hevelvarik »

mintplant wrote: post #128
TeeMassive wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem right now is that there are a lot of people who want to (and did) commit violent acts and use black block tactics. They openly encourage lawful protesters to dress homogeneously all clad in black under the pretense of protecting protesters against police but in fact they do so to commit acts of violence and then meld away in the crowd, effectively taking hostage the lawful protesters. The argument can be…

You write with such conviction and certainty, and yet I must point out that it's black bloc , not "block".

The grandparent also wrote with absolute conviction but you take no issue with that because spelling, right
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