US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters' • Hacker News Board

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#61

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #56

Karunamon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent job at evading the fairly direct question that was asked of you, and lumping it in with a bunch of irrelevant comparisons to slavery. So, let's try this again. What are your thoughts on those gentlemen in Oregon who took over an empty building on federal land? What about the 2011 riots in Vancouver when their hockey team lost? What about the Trump rally in California this year? What about Ferguson a couple…

They were morons, but they were protesters. It's really unfortunate that one of them was killed. Their cause doesn't have all that much public support, though. I also doubt that they've exhausted other options - generally, you don't escalate from 'petitioning the government' to 'martyrdom through a suicide pact'. They missed the 'block some freeways, chain themselves to city hall, march on Washington' steps. They wer…

So, apparently not all causes are equally legitimate. Is "public support" the rubric here? How much public support?

The thing about Ferguson is that the "protest" was based on completely false pretenses. The guy the protestors chose to build their narrative on robbed a store, assaulted the clerk, then assaulted the cop who was there to investigate the robbery. The actual evidence was on the side of the state in that particular case, which is probably why the cop who shot him was never charged.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#62

Post by netik » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #33

slucidi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geotagging is something that tends to be on by default, and lots of people aren't aware they can shut it off. (or that it's happening in the first place)

The Twitter app properly communicates when you're geotagging your tweets or not, and allows deactivation using a simple click before you submit. If that's all it takes for privacy, then I'm ok with this. Facebook is much more sneaky. I would be curious to know how many protesters shared their location without wanting to. Witnessing my family of tech-unaware people, privacy leaks is a monster they're all afraid of, th…

Defaults are strong and powerful, though. This is the main issue which companies like this have taken advantage of.

Many users don't know that something is on by default, and if the default is to geotag, people will nearly always forget to disable the geotagging.

You or I might know what it means when the 'place' icon is highlighted during a tweet. Non technical users might not understand the implication of thier actions.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#63

Post by vkou » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #61

vkou wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were morons, but they were protesters. It's really unfortunate that one of them was killed. Their cause doesn't have all that much public support, though. I also doubt that they've exhausted other options - generally, you don't escalate from 'petitioning the government' to 'martyrdom through a suicide pact'. They missed the 'block some freeways, chain themselves to city hall, march on Washington' steps. They wer…

So, apparently not all causes are equally legitimate. Is "public support" the rubric here? How much public support? The thing about Ferguson is that the "protest" was based on completely false pretenses. The guy the protestors chose to build their narrative on robbed a store, assaulted the clerk, then assaulted the cop who was there to investigate the robbery. The actual evidence was on the side of the state in that…

You're reading what you want to read, not what I wrote about Oregon.

The thing about Ferguson is that the protest was based on over a century of racist policing across America, and particularly in Ferguson (And I'm not just speaking of police killings - consider the DOJ report on Ferguson.) Michael Brown, and the treatment of his body was the last straw, not the first one.

I suggest you educate yourself on the question of race relations. Between the World And Me [1] is a good start, if you want to understand why so many encounters between African Americans and police end as poorly as they do.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=between+the+world+and+me+pdf...

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#64

Post by deftnerd » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #35

etherealmachine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. > Why is it bad for a government to aggregate public data? In the past, this has been problematic. There are several examples of government agencies using their authority to suppress political dissent. The Stasi in Germany, the KGB, Hoover's FBI. True, they had private data as well, but the problem wasn't the source of the data - it was that they used it for political suppression. It's clear that the agenc…

While I can appreciate the slippery-slope argument against mass surveillance and bulk data collection, comparing municipal police with infamous clandestine federal investigative agencies borders on conspiracy theory. While I don't doubt that the police dislike like the criticism, it seems more likely that their strongest incentive is to keep the peace (specifically preventing the destruction, theft, assault, and murd…

One useful tactic that I use to give something "the smell test" is to reverse the targets. There have been cases where police acted improperly or illegally, so if this company was using cellphone data and aggregated social media data to let propestors know the identity and social media posts of all the police, would that be improper?

That feels wrong, so my "smell test" makes me also think that the other way around is wrong. Police should be acting on immediate actions of protestors, not potential actions based on some black box social graph algorithm that tells them who to arrest.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#65

Post by alasdair_ » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

Paul-ish wrote: post #25

What is special about these feeds? The Facebook data was only publicly available data; ie stuff I could get by going to the right page in by browser. Was it the same with twitter? Why is it bad for a government to aggregate public data? Not just public data, but messages I assume the writers intend to be broadcast to the world. Were not talking about private emails or messages here. I'm not trying to defend what is h…

One issue is that Facebook makes it relatively difficult to clearly know what data is completely public and what is not, especially for casual users.

In addition, a lot of the data is geotagged in ways that are non-obvious to non-technical users.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#66

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #63

Karunamon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, apparently not all causes are equally legitimate. Is "public support" the rubric here? How much public support? The thing about Ferguson is that the "protest" was based on completely false pretenses. The guy the protestors chose to build their narrative on robbed a store, assaulted the clerk, then assaulted the cop who was there to investigate the robbery. The actual evidence was on the side of the state in that…

You're reading what you want to read, not what I wrote about Oregon. The thing about Ferguson is that the protest was based on over a century of racist policing across America, and particularly in Ferguson (And I'm not just speaking of police killings - consider the DOJ report on Ferguson.) Michael Brown, and the treatment of his body was the last straw, not the first one. I suggest you educate yourself on the questi…

And you're responding to a point that I didn't make, given the whole point of the last two posts was to coax you into describing at exactly what point a random group of people is allowed to shut down major infrastructure without detractors being finger-wagged at.

The fact that you can differentiate Oregon from Ferguson tells me that you have a mental model, I just want you to elaborate on it. Kind of like I asked you, point blank, three posts ago.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#67

Post by weberc2 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 2:18 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #53

weberc2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is a false dichotomy. Protesters can protest without shutting down infrastructure. 2. There is no conclusive evidence that anyone's "basic human and constitutional rights" are infringed upon.

Protests that do not inconvenience anyone could be ignored indefinitely.

Correct, protesters have a right to free speech, and everyone else has the right to ignore that speech. No one has a right to threaten critical infrastructure because they failed to make sufficiently compelling arguments.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#68

Post by weberc2 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 2:27 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #45

weberc2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the "borderline fascism" of protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens over the actual anarchy of allowing protesters to infringe upon those rights with impunity. Democracy isn't perfect, but anarchy is worse. Further, would your tune change if the protesters were right-wing? Would you support their right to block critical infrastructure (not to mention the violence that characterizes so many of these "p…

An abolitionist stealing a slave impedes on the rights of a law-abiding citizen to own another human being as chattel. Is this really the hill you want to die on? People turn to protest, violent, or otherwise, when other forms of petition have failed.

Are you really comparing "going to work without being held hostage", "not having your property looted or burned", and "not being assaulted/murdered" to slavery? Is this really the hill you want to die on?

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#69

Post by weberc2 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 2:32 AM UTC

crazypyro wrote: post #48

weberc2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a long history of blocking crucial infrastructure during civil unrest and protesting. Its used as a tactic because its effective. Nothing about it is new or specific to today's society. What does this have to do with anything? Is this supposed to justify the tactics? > How does that justify potentially infringing upon the protected rights of the protestors? Why do you think police need justification to enf…

>What does this have to do with anything? Is this supposed to justify the tactics? Original commenter specifically mentioned "at time..." which I took as an implication that there was something special about today's society. >Why do you think police need justification to enforce the law without infringing on the rights of protesters? Because you don't lose your rights when you protest, even if you break the law? The…

You misread my statement. To be clear, the police don't need extra justification to enforce the law so long as they are respecting the rights of the protesters.

Re: US startup Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'

#70

Post by weberc2 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 3:19 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #31

Karunamon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to disagree on that because the alternative is a breakdown in the rule of law. If you're going to block a major thoroughfare, you should expect police response (it's illegal for a good reason), and that response to escalate if you don't cooperate. You don't get an exception to law to harass hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent people just because you feel put upon.

The United States was founded on the principle that yes, you can harass hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent people just because you feel put upon. I think that even has been called the American revolution (With a little helping of the Civil War.) Not to mention that almost every form of social progress came at the cost of inconveniencing all those poor, poor people who want nothing to do with the struggle for ci…

The U.S. was founded on the principle that people have the right to a voice in government, and if that voice is denied people can rise up and overthrow the government. This isn't to say that the expression of this right was entirely just, moral, or ethical. In other words, the ends don't necessarily justify the means.

> When you put convenience and order over basic human and constitutional rights, yes, you bloody well should be inconvenienced. The status quo 'inconveniences' these people every day - far worse then a blocked freeway. Perhaps you should channel your inconvenience at the oppressor, rather then the victim.

You're begging the question. There's no direct evidence for systemic racial bias in policing, there are only disparities, some of which haven't been accounted for because the U.S. does a shitty job of collecting this data (and sometimes left-leaning politicians even censor certain data that don't support their narrative, like offender race statistics in the NCVS or various city-specific data sets). Insufficient data isn't proof or even strong evidence of anything. That said, there are actual victims--those who have had their property stolen or destroyed or who have been harassed, assaulted, murdered by BLM activists.