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Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

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Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#91
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a police officer observing you briefly with their eyes is quite different than an entire police department outsourcing surveillance of protected activities to a third party which monitors your online activity over time.

How? What expectation of privacy do you have walking down the street, or in your public social media posts?

I've learned that when people refer to "constitutional rights/protections" outside of a strict legal setting and framework, it's almost always disappointingly predictable and devoid of merit. The gulf between the law as its written and interpreted through the courts, and what people with a casual interest believe it to be, is really impressively vast.

At the end of the day if you want privacy, don't broadcast your activities on open platforms that were DESIGNED to observer and record you.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#92

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

Just today I was preparing some slides for a course that makes the student participate and show some topics we're interested in regarding social and ethical issues in compsci

I googled a bit and I found a hn comment that talked about an article which explains what you say

Basically, they estimate drug use in the population, and they draw a map, and black and white people more or less have the same habits in drugs use. They draw a map of the past arrests by the police for drug crimes and they're skewed towards the black neighborhood. There's a bit more about it since the article dealt with predictive policing and Ai but the gist is what you're saying, and this causes a self reinforcing feedback for the police (which in turn arrests more black people and the loop goes on)

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#93

Is this really surprising to anyone? If you're out in public and using public websites to organize protests, it's a given that data will be mined about that. The trick is to make it unattractive for those doing the enforcing to act upon their analysis of that data.

This is surprising. Why are the police monitoring constitutionally protected activity?

Police in my city go to pretty much every protest and take video and photos (with big zoom lens) from the roofs of nearby buildings. It's always surprising to me that more people don't notice.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How many gaza protests have there been in the US alone in the past two years and how many of them had any violence at all? I wouldn't call it a "high probability."

MANY Gaza protests in Germany escalated into violence, especially against the press - the local RSF section posted about this a few months ago [1], and in numbers more journalists are attacked at Palestine rallies than at far-right rallies [2], and that one is a legitimate challenge to achieve given how many attacks against journalists came from that wing.

No matter one's stance on I/P, the pro Gaza crowd is absurdly militant.

[1] https://www.reporter-ohne-grenzen.de/pressemitteilungen/meld...

[2] https://taz.de/Angriffe-auf-Journalisten/!6072709/

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#95

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

[flagged]

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#96

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

[flagged]

What exactly is a "good demographic"? This sounds an awful lot like judging people based on their inherent characteristics.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#97

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#98

Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on: 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy). 2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often. 3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished mo…

> Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate

Do you have data backing this claim? For example, homicides (that are not a subject for reporting bias) don’t follow a uniform distribution, so I would expect other crimes to also be non-uniform.

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