161–170 of 261 posts
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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.
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> "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 everyw…
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> "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.
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> This part of your comment really, really rubs me the wrong way. Your personal inclinations absolutely cannot direct the apparatus of state on a whim Last I checked, we lived in a democracy. A democracy is composed of the collective whims of the citizens. I'm simply registering mine. You're free to oppose if you so desire. My point though is simply to illustrate the ideological contradiction latent in the comment I…
> Last I checked, we lived in a democracy. The United States is a Constitutional Republic with rights explicitly enshrined therein, including its amendments. You are more than welcome to your opinion on violating constitutional rights but if you want the rule of law then you should follow the constitutional process to add an amendment in order to revoke said rights. > So, you are opposed to government surveillance of…
Tell me: which constitutional rights are violated by the police reading your public twitter feed?
> Yes! You either believe in free speech and freedom of assembly or you don't. If these groups are a clear and present danger, show probable cause already. If they aren't, counter-protest, shame them, embarrass them, whatever.
And how are you supposed to obtain probable cause, if you cannot even read people's public twitter feeds? Can you read their public websites? Their leaflets? What kind of research exactly is the FBI allowed to do on these groups?
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.
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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.
Reading public messages seems like a super reasonable thing for the police to be doing, to keep tabs on groups that have recently engaged in disruption and violence. Whether those groups are right wing or left wing.
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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…
> The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, "police SHOULD NOT go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech". FTFY They can do lots of things they should not. They should not run cars into protesters. They should not push over old men who are not causing trouble. They should not shoot unarmed people in the back who are running away. They should not…
They shouldn’t kill even for legitimate counterfeit bill complaints. Police should use the absolute minimum force required to both apprehend suspects (as limited by relevant law) and is required by public safety; not one ounce more.
If someone is accused of committing a crime, it’s up to the courts and the jury to determine if they’re guilty and what the punishment shall me, the police don’t get to play judge, jury, and executioner.
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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.
Isn't that their job?
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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.
I’ve seen many videos of the same types of behaviors. My suspicion is things like this are intentional. Police are incredibly aware of how things are framed in media reports and they’re very aware of how little the media questions their actions–though I suspect, from their own actions repeatedly caught in video, this benefit of the doubt they've been afforded may be slipping away.
> 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, recentl…
Last I heard, there were less than 10 companies with access to the full firehouse (which has every tweet). Most only get a partial feed, if that. Disclaimer: Used to work for Dataminr; was laid off.
The full firehose was originally given to a small number of companies, including Gnip (eventually purchased by Twitter). What Gnip did was provide filtering for the firehose as well as some historical searches; this in theory would allow companies to receive in soft real time every tweet that was relevant to their search query.
The result is that there are tons of people who don’t have access to the full firehose, but effectively have the ability to receive every single tweet that’s relevant to their search query. It wouldn’t be very hard to find every tweet relevant to a protest, as this is superficially quite similar to finding tweets relevant to a brand or marketed event.
That being said, this isn’t a product that you can just sign up for and use. You had (my contacts no longer work at twitter) to negotiate a contract with Twitter directly to get access to this, pay large sums of money, and go through a fairly high touch sales and support process.