Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 268 posts

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#91

Post by giantg2 »

Dig1t wrote: post #45

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent i…

"unconstitutional government action like this"

Is this unconstitutional? I was wondering what case law there is about the government buying data like this.

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#92

Post by Dracophoenix »

detaro wrote: post #74
beebmam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, how can someone claim that collecting public information, like tweets, is "spying"?

It's not exactly unusual that people consider too-detailed and/or large scale attention paid to technically public things "spying" or similar to it. E.g. if the government were to have agents follow members of a group anywhere and watching their homes, without breaking into private spaces, that'd probably be labeled as such too. Even though they are just collecting publicly visible information and report "Mr Smith is…

> Even though they are just collecting publicly visible information and report "Mr Smith is getting close to the court house. Mrs Smith spoke to the lawyer again.

If this observation was made done from a public area or from a publicly visible vantage point, how would you're describing be any different from news coverage?

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#93

Post by majormajor »

Dig1t wrote: post #45

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent i…

> Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you.

Words won't protect you. Precedent won't protect you. Guns won't protect you. If you are in a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted, and you're outnumbered, it's already too late. As you say, for many people already "Constitutional" is just a weapon to be wielded when it suits them and ignored when it doesn't. But the reason why that's bad needs to be much more than "because this piece of paper says so," it needs to be "because these are things we all agree are important."

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#95

Post by bjt2n3904 »

CPLX wrote: post #85
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't communicate well. They use the word "spying", when "surveillance" would be more appropriate. How would you feel if you found the past three weeks, there was someone parked outside your home, who followed you to work, and logged when and where you left? I mean, it's all public information, right? How would you feel if they did this, specifically because of your political beliefs?

I get the concept. But there's a pretty obvious difference between just sitting in my home and going to work and posting on a global media platform that is literally intended to reach every other living human as its core reason for existing. The argument seems bizarre to me. A much better pre-technology analogy would be if I wrote lots of letters to the editor of a newspaper and people read them. Maybe it would even…

Who cares whether it's "spying" or "surveillance"?

Here's the real issue, which this semantics argument is derailing. Several times, a shooting spree has occurred, and all the government agencies say, "Oh, yeah... We knew about them! Anyways, the mass shooter's community is very much under attack..."

Pretty hard to swallow when the federal agencies are spending time and resources holding a magnifying glass over political opponents (with a long, LONG track record of nonviolence).

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#96

Post by giantg2 »

theGnuMe wrote: post #67
tqi wrote: post #59

Can someone explain the legal theory that diffentiates using something like Dataminr to monitor tweets vs simply having an army of agents manually searching for them? I agree that it feels like the scale of the former makes it different, but is there a principled reason why that is the case?

I don't know, but Congress passed legislation to prevent the digitization of gun records. So they have massive paper files and a small set of agents to match guns to crimes. You would think with AI we could track all guns and bullets to crimes eventually.

"Congress passed legislation to prevent the digitization of gun records."

Funny thing about that which could also apply to data/AI/etc, is that I understand the ATF is ignoring that law anyways.

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#97

Post by jandrese »

Dig1t wrote: post #45

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent i…

I get what you're saying, but on the other hand abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions.

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#99

Post by vkou »

giantg2 wrote: post #91
Dig1t wrote: post #45

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent i…

"unconstitutional government action like this" Is this unconstitutional? I was wondering what case law there is about the government buying data like this.

> Is this unconstitutional?

Probably not.

Re: U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr

#100

Post by zmgsabst »

jandrese wrote: post #97
Dig1t wrote: post #45

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent i…

I get what you're saying, but on the other hand abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions.

In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things.

> Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Post reply on HN