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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

#201

Post by unreal37 »

jakear wrote: post #149
ciarannolan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter is not even trading at the stock price it was 2 years ago. It's not a FAANG. It's not a growth stock. It just barely escaped being a Yahoo.

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

#202

Post by Proziam »

pnako wrote: post #185
darawk wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's keep in mind what we're actually discussing here. We're talking about police monitoring public Twitter feeds. They're not tapping phones. They're not secretly infiltrating groups with undercover agents. Just reading stuff that's published in public, for all the world to see. Reading public messages seems like a super reasonable thing for the police to be doing, to keep tabs on groups that have recently engaged…

It's hard to disagree with this point, really. I don't see how you can prevent the police from reading stuff that's being broadcast for everyone else to see. And threats of violence, or evidence of organizing to cause violence, should be investigated.

I think it's rather easy actually.

The police aggregate vast sums of data and uses it in ways that the public does not understand, intend, or expect. It's not unlike the way people 'sign' away their privacy on the internet without being aware that their data will then be sold and resold and used against them.

It is a common belief that information is a weapon, and it certainly can be used as one. So does it makes sense, at least from one perspective, that our information should not be legal to catalogue? After all, it is illegal in the U.S. for the government to create a registry of firearms owners because such a registry could be used against the people and its very existence would be an infringement on the rights of those people.

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

#203

Post by incrimintal »

textgel wrote: post #194
gophicer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be white.

Does anyone know mechanically what this^ is? The account has sat dormant for 2 years after making 2 comments in 2018 and after 2 years of silence it spits out this. Is it part of some sort of farmed bot network? Or is it an old account that got cracked and used by spammers?

One of the past comments mentioned "Trumps base" when talking about a musician he doesn't like. People who don't like people who voted for Trump are usually Democrats. Democrats hate white people, which explains the racist comment. The guy probably just lurked for two years until that comment triggered him.

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

#204

Post by shpongled »

refurb wrote: post #145
shpongled wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. A cursory glance over my comments would show that I don't have a desire for big government. I think we should immediately abolish the IRS, ATF, DEA, and NSA

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

#205

Post by minerjoe »

darawk wrote: post #114
minerjoe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also have no idea how much terrorism we have due to the FBI, ala CONINTELPRO.

Sure. But a lack of concrete, precise information doesn't mean we can throw up our hands and just call them equivalent, either. The FBI disrupts quite a bit of terror activity, and quite a bit more never materializes because the FBI exists. They've certainly engaged in their fair share of abuses over the years, but I don't think you can seriously argue we'd be better off without them.

Um. Yes I can. It's in the same vein as letting a few guilty people go free to ensure that less innocent people get sent to prison.

I'd rather still have Matin Luther King around than to have whatever the FBI claims to have disrupted.

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

#206

Post by sacks2k »

To have a safe society, you need to either have lots of surveillance, so people know they are being watched and will think twice about committing crimes (countries with very string gun laws like England and Australia have very strong surveillance systems in place) or the ability for anyone to defend themselves legally against said criminal.

When you try yo get rid of both guns and surveillance, it only increases the crime rate and hurts innocent people.

Very large cities like New York and Chicago are seeing this in action right now. Police are either quitting, not working, and are being defunded as we speak. New york and Chicago had record crime rate increases, including murder.

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

#207

Post by some_random »

sacks2k wrote: post #206

To have a safe society, you need to either have lots of surveillance, so people know they are being watched and will think twice about committing crimes (countries with very string gun laws like England and Australia have very strong surveillance systems in place) or the ability for anyone to defend themselves legally against said criminal. When you try yo get rid of both guns and surveillance, it only increases the…

I don't know if I'd cite England and Australia as safe societies

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

#209

Post by pmarreck »

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".

I, too, used to be a grammar fascist.

Then I fell in love with an otherwise quite intelligent woman with dyslexia

At some point I just stopped trying to correct her to/too/two confusion

It would be nice if everyone used correct grammar. But you understood what they were trying to say, which is what made it possible for you to suggest the correction.

What I'm getting at is that I now think it's impolite to call someone out on their grammer in a public forum (I know you saw what I did, there)

The tone of online discourse has eroded so badly of late that I think it's best to become a politeness fascist now.

We don't call people out on their lisp, their tics, their stutter, their mumbling, their gait... but calling people out on their spelling online is OK apparently

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

#210

Post by minerjoe »

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,…

"were pre-emptively disrupted"

Says the FBI, with a conflict of interest large enought to drive a big truck full of fertilizer though in publishing these things. They also have a varified history of lying through their teeth.

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