[HN Gopher] Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests
___________________________________________________________________
Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests
Author : jbegley
Score : 116 points
Date : 2025-03-17 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Headline is kind of clickbaity. They could have just as easily
| used "LAPD Surveilled Gaza Protests Using A Tool Called
| Dataminr". Bonus: The tool name is in the URL itself!
| xmprt wrote:
| I'd change it to "A Social Media Tool called Dataminr". On its
| own, the name of the tool is meaningless.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > 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.
| krapp wrote:
| ...and simply not including the 19 year expiration in the new
| version because _why would you?_
| geodel wrote:
| Why wait for 19 years? Lets change constitution along
| administration change in DC.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| You can! Just have to get the votes.
| gs17 wrote:
| Jefferson wanted 19 years to make it something each
| generation gets the chance to do, based on life expectancy at
| the time.
|
| >And the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any
| one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say
| 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the
| term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation,
| nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly
| extend a debt.
|
| >[...] On similar ground it may be proved that no society can
| make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The
| earth belongs always to the living generation. [...] The
| constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished
| then in their natural course with those who gave them being.
| This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself,
| and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law,
| naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced
| longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
| _bin_ wrote:
| > Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19
| years.
|
| This is a terrible idea, actually. The risks of opening the
| door to majorly modifying the Constitution are very, very high.
| There are a lot of core freedoms (speech, arms, press come to
| mind) that would likely come off worse, not better, were we to
| do so. Which get hit hardest would depend mostly on who's in
| office at the time, which is extra bad.
| johnisgood wrote:
| You could always make sure it could only increase and not
| decrease privacy or what have you.
|
| Similarly, the "expire every 19 years" must always be
| included and must never be removed.
|
| Gotta keep this small though, because then what's the
| point...
| krapp wrote:
| >You could always make sure it could only increase and not
| decrease privacy or what have you.
|
| How could one "make sure" of this, and with what authority?
|
| >Similarly, the "expire every 19 years" must always be
| included and must never be removed.
|
| Again, says who? The constitution has expired, and with it
| any legal basis for such a requirement.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Enforcement is always an issue either way though.
|
| So whoever does it today, or would do it either way in
| our hypothetical scenario.
| gs17 wrote:
| I don't agree with the idea (and technically by
| Jefferson's logic it should now be a much longer period,
| which shows it would need to be more flexible), but
| whatever process approves the new Constitution (probably
| involving a Supreme Court-type entity) would have to
| require these changes. Future Constitutions would both
| have "this document expires in 19 years" and "the
| successor of this document must include this clause, and
| the clause 'this document expires in 19 years'", and
| another for privacy (which would be up to whatever court
| allows the new Constitution). Enforcement is still
| "difficult", but that's kind of inherent in the process.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Thanks, you put it better than I could. :)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _future Constitutions would both have "this document
| expires in 19 years" and "the successor of this document
| must include this clause, and the clause 'this document
| expires in 19 years'", and another for privacy (which
| would be up to whatever court allows the new
| Constitution)_
|
| You haven't abolished the Constitution, then, you've just
| forcing a recurring, streamlined amendment process. Given
| the song and dance SCOTUS nominations have turned into,
| I'm sceptical it would work out how you think it would.
| eej71 wrote:
| While Jefferson is an understandably venerated figure in the
| foundation of America, he was not active in the creation of the
| constitution. He of course wrote The Declaration of
| Independence and while having misgivings about the strength of
| the executive branch, he went on to become a hugely influential
| president.
|
| On the filp side, it took him a while to come around to see the
| folly that was the then French Revolution whereas his political
| critics - notably Adams, Washington, and the frequently
| maligned Hamilton, were quick to keep their distance from it.
|
| I like Jefferson but he sometimes seems to have an overly rosy
| and romantic view of revolutions. Tearing down is easy.
| Building up is very hard.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19
| years. I think he had a point there_
|
| You want every state to come up with its own way of determining
| how to send delegates to a convention literally unbound by any
| law?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19
| years. I think he had a point there_
|
| Good idea, wrong institution.
|
| "In 1857...reformers in the New York State capital of Albany
| created a new Metropolitan police force and abolished the
| Municipal police, as part of their effort to rein in the...New
| York City government" [1]. Maybe start with abolishing and
| rebooting enforcement agencies from time to time.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_P...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| 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.
| Teever wrote:
| 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.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| I think that while not surprising it's still interesting and
| useful to know exactly how they are doing it and what tools
| they are using. In the US protests are a constitutionally
| protected right and visibility into how they are monitoring and
| reacting to them is important.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| If we remove the tech from the story and consider the old
| "colonial village test":
|
| A man walks up and down the street either shouting about, or
| handing out flyers, that say "We should get together and
| blockade main street in protest of the illegitimate taxes
| Congress has passed on our whiskey." Is it legal for the cops
| to stop him? Probably not.
|
| Is it legal for the cops to move their plans around to show
| up on main street that day? I can't see why it wouldn't be.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's more than legal for the cops to do that; it's a
| longstanding norm. In fact, at many protests, it's
| something you actively want to see, because counterprotests
| can get rowdy and dangerous.
| mmooss wrote:
| > If we remove the tech from the story
|
| If we remove the tech from the dropping of the atomic
| bombs, what's the big deal?
|
| You can't remove the tech; it is intrinsic to the issue.
| CalChris wrote:
| This is surprising. Why are the police monitoring
| constitutionally protected activity?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| For the same reason they use ancestry databases to narrow the
| field of potential serial killers to a few that can be
| investigated through legally-admissible means.
|
| There is a _vast_ gap between what the cops can do in general
| and what holds up in court, but to a first approximation: the
| things they aren 't allowed to do because it would taint the
| case are in general explicitly spelled out, and if it isn't
| spelled out it's legal to use as a stepping stone to
| conventional, more-understood-protections police tactics.
| Thus arresting someone for a general Twitter post is probably
| off-limits (the incitement-to-riot or sedition laws are
| narrowly tailored), but taking someone online who says "Hey
| let's all get together and do a riot" seriously, and
| allocating police resources to prepare for it as if they're
| telling the truth about their intentions, is almost certainly
| legal.
|
| (This is _the_ battleground that the ACLU fights on in this
| day and age).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Because protests, even over mundane things like being able to
| turn right on red, can quickly turn into something ugly.
| Protests over issues like Gaza have a high probability of
| turning violent, even if the protesters themselves are
| peaceful. Keeping protests from turning into destruction is
| one of the responsibilities of the police. The trick is for
| them to do it in a way that doesn't favor or stifle any
| group's ability to be seen and heard.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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/
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I specifically constrained it to the US because I'm aware
| that the dynamics and tactics of these movements are
| highly regional and I simply don't know what it's like
| elsewhere.
|
| Sometimes I get annoyed how US-centric the conversations
| can be on here but given the subject is american police
| using a US-made surveillance tool against protestors in
| the united states I think it makes some amount of sense
| this time.
|
| Thanks for the info about another area though, it is
| interesting to me.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| For what it's worth, German pigs are just as bad when it
| comes to surveillance of (at least) Twitter during
| protests. I myself earned a nasty letter after a live-
| reporting from a Nazi rally a few years ago.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I know I've lived in three countries and the details
| vary but the police suck shit in every one. I assume it's
| universal.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Depends whether you see vandalism of property as a
| violent act, or have the idiotic 'it's only property,
| it's insured' attitude.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I've been to three dozen of these things and I haven't
| even seen small-scale protest vandalism like paint on the
| roads or fire extinguishers sprayed on cars.
|
| All the violence I've seen has been from police, and one
| case of counter-protestors throwing clods of dirt. Which
| continued for hours since the police did not stop it and
| the pro-palestine protestors did not escalate or even
| fight back.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Protests over issues like Gaza have a high probability of
| turning violent
|
| What is the probability? I'm not saying it never happens,
| but a 'high probability'? Let's see some data!
|
| Maybe there's a bias based on what you see in the news -
| they naturally cover the violent ones (and then depict them
| as the entire protest instead of something that happened
| off to the side that most people didn't even know
| occurred).
| tptacek wrote:
| When the police watch you walk down the street they are also
| monitoring constitutionally protected activity.
| text0404 wrote:
| 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.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Acts in public are not protected. This, however is:
|
| "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
| and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall
| issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or
| affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
| searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Posting on a publicly accesible website is the legal
| equivalent of standing on the street corner having a
| conversation. A police officer doesn't need to search
| anything because it's out in the open.
| sixothree wrote:
| Yes. But you cannot follow a person around indefinitely.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| That's the thing about exigency, it is temporary.
| sixothree wrote:
| Then the metaphor is broken. So find a new metaphor.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Nah, that's a malfunction of your reading comprehension.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Maybe as an individual you cannot, but I don't see why a
| group of people (cops) couldn't.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| A conversation is ephemeral unless someone specifically
| goes out of their way to record it. That is not true by
| default for just about anything involving a computer and
| we all know it. Where's the line between obtuse and
| lying?
| rabidonrails wrote:
| but in this case (to keep with the comparison) the people
| having the conversation are recording it themselves and
| posting it publicly.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They do it more than you'd think. There're a ton of pictures
| of La Cosa Nostra members walking around in Brooklyn taken by
| FBI agents. They even made sure to get the good side of Casso
| and Gotti.
|
| Walking around and talking to each other? Constitutionally
| protected.
| mmooss wrote:
| Very possibly those people were named subjects of active
| investigations for crimes; the protestors are not named
| (it's a dragnet), not subjects of investigations, and are
| suspected of no crimes.
| imperfect_light wrote:
| 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.
| bluescrn wrote:
| The troublemakers go prepared, plain dark clothes and
| masks.
| prophesi wrote:
| It's not surprising to me because The Intercept regularly
| reports on the use of Dataminr by various US agencies.
|
| https://kagi.com/search?q=dataminr+site%3Atheintercept.com&r...
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is not "surveillance" when the cops see your tweets.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Judging by the cops I see around chicago their main
| responsibility is reading tweets actually.
| bavent wrote:
| Or eating Portillos. Or napping in their cars.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Does surveillance need to be covert? Historically, if the
| police are observing you or your event specifically, that's
| surveillance.
| nickff wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, but there's a difference between
| using a non-covert method of communication like telephone or
| SMS, and a social media post, which is designed to be relayed
| and amplified.
| Tostino wrote:
| What legitimate reason would the police have for monitoring
| everything on social media that is protected by the
| Constitution?
| nickff wrote:
| That really depends on which police you're talking about,
| and one's views on the Constitution. State and local
| police have fairly broad powers, and I don't know much
| about California's laws, so I'm not in a position to
| judge this.
| tptacek wrote:
| It technically is! The ACLU has a model ordinance called CCOPS,
| which it encourages municipalities to pass (I got my own muni
| to pass a version of it last year), and it includes an
| expansive definition of "surveillance" that definitely includes
| tools that read public posts on social media.
|
| Importantly, CCOPS doesn't forbid surveillance; it simply
| requires new instantiations of it to be approved at an open
| board meeting. Things like Dataminr would almost certainly
| pass.
| jeffbee wrote:
| As you say, expansive. As in: it _expands_ the definition of
| surveillance in a way that isn 't widely accepted.
| bgschulman31 wrote:
| This seems like mostly a nothingburger. If you want to
| communicate privately there are plenty of pieces of software that
| allow for that.
| mmooss wrote:
| How do you communicate with the public and attract to a protest
| people you don't already know?
| delichon wrote:
| Imagine the reverse: A police department vows not to use social
| media to help predict where to deploy their forces to protect
| public safety. That sounds like malpractice. A commitment to
| civil rights doesn't restrict them from gathering real time
| public intelligence, a.k.a. situational awareness, to do their
| job.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| LAPD and LASD are going to bankrupt Los Angeles. They're more
| concerned with being a paramilitary police force versus stopping
| or preventing neighborhood crime.
| tharne wrote:
| > They're more concerned with being a paramilitary police force
| versus stopping or preventing neighborhood crime.
|
| Didn't they pull back on enforcement of quality of life crimes
| when the previous DA stopped prosecuting criminals? You can't
| expect the police to arrest criminals knowing full well the DA
| is immediately going to drop or reduce charges and let them
| loose.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > You can't expect the police to arrest criminals knowing
| full well the DA is immediately going to drop or reduce
| charges and let them loose.
|
| You can't expect the police to do their jobs?
| tharne wrote:
| > You can't expect the police to do their jobs?
|
| Imagine you're a programmer, or a chef, or a carpenter,
| really anything. Now imagine you go to work every day, put
| in 8-10 hours a day working hard, and at the end of each
| day someone in a more powerful position than yourself
| throws out, ignores, or otherwise destroys all of your work
| for that day.
|
| And this happens every day, day after day. No matter your
| work ethic or how much you care about your job, sooner or
| later after enough of your work is sabotaged, you're going
| to give up.
|
| So no, I do not expect the police to "do their job" as you
| put it, when a chief prosecutor publicly and vocally
| undermines that work each and every day. If you can't
| understand that very fundamental human reaction, then I
| don't know what to tell you.
| MegaButts wrote:
| Whenever you feel like not doing your job, just tell your
| boss "I don't want to" and see how that goes for you.
|
| I understand how motivation works. Sometimes doing a job
| sucks. That's part of why you get paid to do it.
|
| It sounds to me like those police officers don't want to
| do their jobs. I'd encourage them to quit instead of
| wasting tax dollars. Of course the real issue is they
| want the money without the work, and the respect without
| having to earn it.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| But that isn't what appears to be happening. Their "boss"
| (the DA) is the one saying "I don't want to". When your
| boss gives you clear incentives, like not prosecuting
| (throwing out) portions of your work, you are going to
| stop that work and focus on other things.
| MegaButts wrote:
| The DA is not their boss. Cops are supposed to enforce
| laws. The DA is supposed to prosecute them. The cops are
| just using the DA as an excuse to not do their jobs. And
| once you normalize the cops not arresting people, now the
| DA has an excuse for prosecuting fewer criminals - at
| that point how do you decide who's to blame? Now you have
| two dysfunctional organizations, each pointing the finger
| at the other, and you've already normalized at least one
| of them. Even if you think the cops shouldn't be
| arresting people because of the DA, at the very least
| this skews data on crime as police are making fewer
| arrests independent of crime levels.
|
| This is like me saying I don't want to do my job because
| those other guys in the other department aren't going to
| do anything with it, so I'm just not going to bother. I
| think almost everyone can relate to lazy/incompetent
| coworkers - does that mean you should also be
| lazy/incompetent? The way to fight laziness is with hard
| work, and the way to fight incompetence is with
| competence. What you're advocating for just normalizes
| dysfunction.
| asacrowflies wrote:
| I know if I refused to do my work or even hinted I
| wouldn't do it...no matter if the boss destroyed it... Id
| be fired faster than those police lighting up a suspects
| vehicle with bullet holes.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| Why are these comments saying that not doing a small part
| of a job that your boss doesn't want you to do is means
| for dismissal?
|
| If something you are doing is being thrown away, you
| should change focus (like pulling back on quality of life
| arrests, and focus on real crimes).
|
| If your boss is destroying all your work, you're going to
| get fired for not producing anything. I'd recommend you
| figure out what your boss cares about.
| gusgus01 wrote:
| Not to be flippant, that sounds like working at a lot of
| big tech companies nowadays. More conceptually, you have
| the constant churn of in house tooling meaning what you
| wrote last year needs to be rewritten to work with the
| new version of X (be it the ticketing system or the new
| process to store secrets or the new frontend framework
| that will fix everything). And even more concretely,
| there are teams that will fully get sunset when a new
| product or service deprecates them or beats them to
| market. Famously, that was how the iPhone was developed,
| with teams competing internally in Apple.
| https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/28/iphone-creation-click-
| wheel-t...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| So I'm an employee at any grocery store or pre-prepared
| meal place (fast food, Starbucks, what have you) who does
| their job in compliance with a health code?
|
| ... that could, actually, explain a little bit of the
| work ethic (though I'm pretty sure it's "scraping along
| the bottom of minimum wage" that explains most of it).
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Welcome to having a job/career. We've all put time and
| effort in to projects that never materialized. Do you
| expect every one of your ideas to be adopted and
| implemented by others? Surely not...
|
| LAPD is a bastion of terrible police work. They have a
| rich history of killing, beating, racism, and organized
| crime. Maybe they're still doing bad police work, ever
| considered that? This budget is to protect them from
| civil rights lawsuits they're losing on the regular...
| which actually makes them the law breakers.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| LAPD has never been anything but a violent gang, and the DA
| didn't "stop prosecuting criminals"
| tharne wrote:
| > the DA didn't "stop prosecuting criminals"
|
| The voters of California certainly think he did:
| https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/11/george-gascon-
| pamela-...
| skrtskrt wrote:
| yeah because there were tens of millions of dollars spent
| on right wing reactionary ad campaigns to convince people
| of that
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > LAPD and LASD are going to bankrupt Los Angeles.
|
| LAPD and LASD aren't both part of any single entity called "Los
| Angeles" (the city and county of that name being separate
| entities).
|
| > They're more concerned with being a paramilitary police force
| versus stopping or preventing neighborhood crime.
|
| That's pretty much true (and foundationally so) of all American
| local general-jurisdictions police forces.
|
| LASD and LAPD may have problems beyond those endemic to
| American police agencies, but that isn't one of them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| 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 more than people in the "right" one at an equal
| level of misbehavior.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| 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-...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Sounds like that estimate is doing all of the heavy lifting
| and cannot, by definition, ever be verified.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Yeah, that's quite a strong assumption. Basically, they're
| assuming that the local drug use is similar to the national
| one. While not perfect, they provide some other cases in
| which these data were deemed more trustworthy than police
| reports. at least to me it is quite crystalline that a
| system relying on past police data to predict future crime
| will be inherently biased by the fact that the police data
| itself is biased towards certain demographics
| coolspot wrote:
| > 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.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I remember, back when cannabis was illegal in most states, a
| common argument was that white and black people reported
| using cannabis at the same rate when surveyed. However, many,
| many more black people ended up in prison for it.
|
| Here is a survey of US youths that supports this premise:
| https://monitoringthefuture.org/data/panel/demographic-
| subgr...
| Aloisius wrote:
| I'm confused. That doesn't appear to show the same rates
| between demographics.
|
| It appears to show generally more frequent use in men than
| women, younger than older and until somewhat recently,
| white than black or hispanic.
| coolspot wrote:
| > people reported using cannabis at the same rate when
| surveyed. However, many, many more black people ended up in
| prison for it.
|
| As I understand it, people went to prison mostly for
| selling or possessing amounts that are implying selling.
| Which might explain the difference. Would you go to prison
| for possessing a single joint back then?
| deepsun wrote:
| 1. Bogus claim. I'm pretty sure Swiss drivers run red light way
| less than Lebanese, for example.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> 1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code
| violations at about the same rate (things like parking
| violations and music piracy)._
|
| What? The rates of parking violations and music piracy vary
| dramatically with age and gender.
| blorkusmelorkus wrote:
| Twitter started as TXT2MOB for organizing protests, and now it
| and social media have become surveillance tools. The irony.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Twitter started as TXT2MOB for organizing protests, and now
| it and social media have become surveillance tools_
|
| Propaganda, communication and surveillance vary only inasmuch
| as the sender and/or receiver are cooperating. When done in
| public, communication necessarily empowers the other two.
| Centigonal wrote:
| This is a really great piece of wisdom. Thank you!
| ngruhn wrote:
| Don't you have to register protests in the US? So if there
| registered the police already knows about them, right? And if not
| they are illegal, no?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _And if not they are illegal, no_
|
| Usually not, no. At least not until lawfully ordered to
| disburse.
| sureglymop wrote:
| This isn't a statement about these specific protests (that I'm
| not informed enough about) but don't you find "registering" a
| protest at least a little bit laughable?
| 7402 wrote:
| It depends where you are and the circumstances. You certainly
| need a Parade Permit if you will be marching down a city street
| blocking traffic, e.g, for New York City:
| https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/services/law-enforcement/permi...
| fortran77 wrote:
| It would be malpractice if Law Enforcement didn't track
| terrorists and terrorist sympathizers gathering to support
| terrorist regimes.
| swores wrote:
| You're confused - this story is about tracking people
| protesting for peace, not tracking either the IDF or Hamas.
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