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Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

theintercept.com

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Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#3

Post by rqtwteye »

Unless there is a massive rethink of a lot of laws we are running into a surveillance state worse than Orwell could have come up with. "No expectation of privacy in a public space" made sense when there were no databases that could record and analyze everything that's going on and people didn't live half of their lives on the internet. And tech is only going to accelerate the ease of total surveillance.

I think Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there. Instead of viewing the "Founding Fathers" as the ultimate source of wisdom we should accept that they made decisions that made sense during their time but times have changed so some decisions should change.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#5

Post by Aurornis »

rqtwteye wrote: post #3

Unless there is a massive rethink of a lot of laws we are running into a surveillance state worse than Orwell could have come up with. "No expectation of privacy in a public space" made sense when there were no databases that could record and analyze everything that's going on and people didn't live half of their lives on the internet. And tech is only going to accelerate the ease of total surveillance. I think Jeffe…

> I think Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there. Instead of viewing the "Founding Fathers" as the ultimate source of wisdom we should accept that they made decisions that made sense during their time but times have changed so some decisions should change.

These ideas sound great when you imagine ideal politicians doing exactly what you want.

They're not so appealing when you remember that on a long enough timeline you'll get some political leaders who would abuse such a power to no end: Rewriting the constitution to give the president unchecked power or remove term limits would be more likely targets than anything you're imagining working in your favor.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#8

Post by Teever »

lenerdenator wrote: post #6

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.

It is unfortunately surprising to a lot of people.

For what ever reason many people lack the ability to understand the casual connections between things that happen online and in the real world.

Re: Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

#10

Post by krapp »

Aurornis wrote: post #5
rqtwteye wrote: post #3

Unless there is a massive rethink of a lot of laws we are running into a surveillance state worse than Orwell could have come up with. "No expectation of privacy in a public space" made sense when there were no databases that could record and analyze everything that's going on and people didn't live half of their lives on the internet. And tech is only going to accelerate the ease of total surveillance. I think Jeffe…

> I think Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there. Instead of viewing the "Founding Fathers" as the ultimate source of wisdom we should accept that they made decisions that made sense during their time but times have changed so some decisions should change. These ideas sound great when you imagine ideal politicians doing exactly what you want. They're not so appe…

...and simply not including the 19 year expiration in the new version because why would you?
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