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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

#231
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The FBI didn't kill MLK, though. If you eliminated the FBI, you woulnd't get MLK back. But you would have a few hundred more serious terror attacks in the US history, probably a decent number of them against minorities.

> The FBI didn't kill MLK, though.

We know they tried to do so at least once while maintaining deniability.

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

#232
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The FBI didn't kill MLK, though. If you eliminated the FBI, you woulnd't get MLK back. But you would have a few hundred more serious terror attacks in the US history, probably a decent number of them against minorities.

Do you have any evidence of this claim besides press-releases from the US government?

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

#233
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

So, you're simply unwilling to accept any evidence on the subject? Do you have any evidence at all to support your perspective?

Sorry, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show credible non-governement evidence that the FBI has stopped just some of the numerous terrorist you are referring.

Bring out FBI press-releases and the like and I'll just have to point you at the many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

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

#234
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're simply unwilling to accept any evidence on the subject? Do you have any evidence at all to support your perspective?

Sorry, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show credible non-governement evidence that the FBI has stopped just some of the numerous terrorist you are referring. Bring out FBI press-releases and the like and I'll just have to point you at the many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

> many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

You mean like the entire practice of forensic fiber analysis, which they were forced to cop to after the fact: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimo...

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

#235
post #224
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It links to primary sources on everything, so this seems to me more a distraction than a meaningful critique. The fact that this is all easily verifiable, yet hard to find compilations of, is a critique in the other direction.

I wasn't debating the facts of your argument. I was simply telling you that the debate is already lost as soon as you link to a site that still claims Obama wasn't born in the US. In many people's minds, it isn't worth the energy to dispute your point because you are already displaying symptoms of someone who lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to assess and process basic facts. If the only important pieces…

I wasn't trying to direct that at you, personally and I do understand what you're saying. This instinct to discredit the source is literally what's killing the news right now. People gladly swallow outrage porn, but when they see a fact compilation, their first instinct is to evaluate the one who compiled it (who is irrelevant to said facts) instead of engaging with the facts themselves.

Even to the point of missing that it's an honest compilation and includes those killed by police during the protests. But he's the biased one here, right?

Besides, that's a silly shibboleth all told. I voted for Obama and I wouldn't have cared even if he was born in Kenya (he wasn't). McCain was born in Panama and I didn't care about that, either.

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

#236
post #235
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't debating the facts of your argument. I was simply telling you that the debate is already lost as soon as you link to a site that still claims Obama wasn't born in the US. In many people's minds, it isn't worth the energy to dispute your point because you are already displaying symptoms of someone who lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to assess and process basic facts. If the only important pieces…

I wasn't trying to direct that at you, personally and I do understand what you're saying. This instinct to discredit the source is literally what's killing the news right now. People gladly swallow outrage porn, but when they see a fact compilation, their first instinct is to evaluate the one who compiled it (who is irrelevant to said facts) instead of engaging with the facts themselves. Even to the point of missing…

Facts generally need context. Are these deaths actually linked to protesters? Are they motivated in some way by the protests or is the connection coincidental? How do these number of deaths compare to other protests? How do they compare to times when there are no protest? Questions like that need to be answered for the facts to have value. Most of us don't trust whatever context is given by a source like the one you linked. That is why people attack the source. Because the story here is the context of the facts and not the facts themselves.

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

#237
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're simply unwilling to accept any evidence on the subject? Do you have any evidence at all to support your perspective?

Sorry, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show credible non-governement evidence that the FBI has stopped just some of the numerous terrorist you are referring. Bring out FBI press-releases and the like and I'll just have to point you at the many FBI statements from the past that are now obviously blatent fabricated lies.

These are just isolated demands for rigor. I gave you a concrete list. You're welcome to dispute any of them on the actual facts. Until then, I think we're done here.

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

#238
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sen…

But this information is already being cataloged. It's being published on a platform that explicitly catalogs it, for the public. Anyone tweeting on Twitter is doing so with the full knowledge that anything they say might get signal-boosted by someone with a high follower count and become a major public incident. It happens with extreme regularity. The idea that there is some kind of expectation of privacy here seems…

We as a collective seem to treat the government as a natural person online, but not in person.

If a police officer sits down at the dinner table next to me and listens in on my conversation with friends and family, I'd be quite uncomfortable. I'd feel equally uncomfortable if they sat across the restaurant and pointed a microphone at the table to record everything. However, suddenly we treat them like normal people if they download the entire contents of our digital lives and process every word we've ever written online.

It's one thing for Twitter to be accessible to natural persons publicly. It's another for a government to treat everyone as though they are under investigation at all times, without a warrant.

For clarity, in my opinion, a police officer who just happens to follow me on twitter because he likes video games is a natural person. However, he stops being a natural person once he starts representing the organization he works for.

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

#239
post #107

This kind of surveillance is not very effective for preventing or solving crimes. It is much more effective at making lists of people willing to lawfully and peacefully stand for the human rights or others, -- "potential subversives", as the parties monitoring might call them. Imagine, instead, if law enforcement were to stand outside of a marijuana-legalization rally and collect the sort of data effectively collecte…

I'm not sure the crime solving utility is wholly relevant here, police have other duties like maintaining public safety. The obvious utility seems to be monitoring different protest zones for signs that violence is beginning to break out. If x people are suddenly tweeting about a fire or gun shots near an active protest then you know it would probably be wise to at least send a scout over there to evaluate the situat…

> I was able to spectate active looting in my own city's downtown when the protests first came to us via various livestreaming instagrammers and while it was mostly a curiosity for me I imagine it would have been useful to a dispatcher who had to decide where to send officers

We all watched the same thing in our cities. And we watched as the police chose to launch projectiles into crowds of protestors instead of doing anything about the smashing and looting.

On the first night of large protests (May 29), I found myself in my city of Portland, OR, on SW 3rd and Yamhill. On one side of me (to the East), where a small group of matching black-clad people had gone, were the unambiguous sounds of windows being smashed and building alarms going off. In other directions, especially South and West, there were huge groups of protestors, simply occupying the area.

The police engaged, without a single exception that came to my awareness, in the latter group, breaking them up into smaller and smaller contingents as the night went on, while doing nothing about the much smaller group going around smashing.

I described my experience in detail the following morning.[0]

The same story has emerged from streamed video throughout the USA.

So I don't think there's any evidence at this time that the police view stopping rioting or "active looting" as a goal.

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/gtj1zm/what_i_saw...

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

#240
post #236
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to direct that at you, personally and I do understand what you're saying. This instinct to discredit the source is literally what's killing the news right now. People gladly swallow outrage porn, but when they see a fact compilation, their first instinct is to evaluate the one who compiled it (who is irrelevant to said facts) instead of engaging with the facts themselves. Even to the point of missing…

Facts generally need context. Are these deaths actually linked to protesters? Are they motivated in some way by the protests or is the connection coincidental? How do these number of deaths compare to other protests? How do they compare to times when there are no protest? Questions like that need to be answered for the facts to have value. Most of us don't trust whatever context is given by a source like the one you…

> Are these deaths actually linked to protesters?

Mostly they were done by looters, a few by police. That's all shown in the linked articles, which give names and dates and locations.

> How do these number of deaths compare to other protests?

You remember that Charleston protest? One death. Number of unarmed black people killed by police in 2019? Ten. That's eleven too many, of course, but you wanted context and those are the most recent and closely related stats. Most protests are smaller scale and have few or no deaths, though, e.g. other big protests like the Women's March, March for Life, etc. don't normally involve looting or fatalities. Nobody died protesting Trump's inauguration, either, that I'm aware of.

> Questions like that need to be answered for the facts to have value.

They are answered, by the links to mostly local news stories where you can read all about David Dorn, a black cop murdered by looters. You can watch the video from the sister of the girl murdered outside of a Davenport, IA Wal-Mart. There's tons of context in the sources, that's just a convenient set of names and links.

> That is why people attack the source. Because the story here is the context of the facts and not the facts themselves.

The context is available to anyone capable of clicking two links. There are also names given which can be looked up to find sources you prefer. But maybe you're right that I should compile a giant list. I just feel that it's hard to justify it as worthwhile when people engage on a non-factual level. I can't take the beliefs of lazy thinkers seriously.

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