Police surveilled protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by toofy » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

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,…

And almost every single one of those they had evidence, indications of which particular individuals to monitor/infiltrate. Often this was through reliable sources.

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

#152

Post by toofy » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:12 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?

> Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime?

There is an ocean of options in between “do nothing” and “surveil and database every citizen who potentially maybe, might, could exercise their constitutional protections and protest.” A vast amount of options.

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

#153

Post by musu98 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

thekid314 wrote: post #105

Natsu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Boston I was standing beside the police as the let looting occur. There were only about 5 shops broken into and only 1 that I saw looted, but the police were standing 10 feet away from one and didn't do anything about it.

Only 5 shops? Jeez.

What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? With anti police sentiment so high here, it would be a thousand times higher on the street. I'm not sure stopping the looting there and then would be a good idea.

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

#154

Post by ehsankia » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

dgarrett wrote: post #29

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

I had no idea who or what Dataminr was before this, but I recently started a simple Twitter bot [0], and noticed they were crawling every single link I posted multiple times, even though I explicitly disallow in my robots.txt. Their User-Agent just says to contact them, and there didn't seem to be a way to get them to stop, so I just banned their user agent from my servers. It is scary how little information there is about these random companies like Clearview AI or this that just gobble up everything online with no care.

https://twitter.com/CatalogScanner

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

#155

Post by toofy » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #98

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…

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.

We can’t pretend this discussion isn’t directly rooted in government overreach, the government is using the data.

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

#156

Post by ponker » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #143

elliekelly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In general, cops directly prevent almost no crimes. Their job is basically to respond to crimes and either stop it in progress or find and punish the perpetrators. If they have a prevention effect it is from deterrence.

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

#157

Post by mintplant » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

hevelvarik wrote: post #150

mintplant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm expressing doubt that 'TeeMassive is well-informed about black bloc tactics or that their claims are rooted in truth, since they made a basic error that would seem to stem from third-hand hearsay.

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

#158

Post by Waterfall » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

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…

I think it's stupid to post this on Twitter and Facebook. I know someone who was protesting the policy of taking away guns from people deemed a threat and posting his guns. Sure enough his guns were taken away. The interpretation are too broad and it's better not to advertise anything that can be detrimental to yourself. I don't support the fact that this happened but I don't believe it's a good idea to give away information that can be hurtful to you. Activism happens in the court of law, not your Facebook or Twitter rants that make you seem unhinged and gives reasons to "lawfully investigate" you.

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

#159

Post by toofy » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #124

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get the sense that most HN commenters are against having police surveil this kind of event in the U.S. Look to your left and right. The people building this dystopia are right here on this site.

"Notably, Epstein, who was known for his interest in obtaining blackmail through the sexual abuse of the underaged girls he exploited, also claimed to have “damaging information” on prominent figures in Silicon Valley. In a conversation last year with New York Times reporter James Stewart, Epstein claimed to have “potentially damaging or embarrassing” information on Silicon Valley’s elite and told Stewart that these…

I hope we’ve reached a point where aside from pedophilia or coercive sex practices, sexual proclivities and drug use would not be enough to blackmail anyone today. The religious right and their “moral majority” have been hamstrung both through the courts and through culture moving on.

Prior to the first tech boom wider society also believed not wearing a suit was a reliable indicator that a person was stupid. We’ve progressed past these ridiculous ideas. I know plenty of exceptional performing individuals who both like sex and occasionally use drugs. If we’re backsliding into the right’s moral majority tyranny again, someone let me know as my filter bubbles may have me blinded.

Either way, none of the high profile Silicon Valley people I know would care that someone knows they have sexual desires.

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

#160

Post by nmfisher » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

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.

> 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.

In Western jurisdictions, probable cause and judicial oversight are only relevant to searches of private property, arrests/etc. Police have always been empowered to surveil public behaviour, and in my opinion, rightly so.

It would be incredibly impractical to require judicial authorization for something as simple as browsing a public neo-nazi forum, or driving around looking at known drug-spots.

The question is whether the ubiquity of social media/phone cameras has changed our attitude. Arguably, we've created an inescapable, 24/7 surveillance apparatus . If you attend a protest, there's a real chance your photo may very well end up on Twitter/Facebook/etc, inadvertently or otherwise.

I do think it's time to discuss the role of phone cameras in modern society.