> 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.
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.
> 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?
Direction matters? same or _lower_ frequency of use does not seem like 'shifting the goalposts' on the original claim of disproportionate _incarceration_.
Direction matters, though as the answer to a different question than whether rate of committing crimes is uniform. We are in this sub thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43393070
The above linked data show self-reported cannabis use within +/- 10% over the relevant pre-legalization period (before 2012), if anything with a slight advantage to whites. Drug arrest and incarceration rates vary by much, much more (factors of 2-6 between whites and blacks). Against that, use rates of 15 vs 13ish vs 12.5ish are as good as uniform , esp. on a survey with all the inherent variability therein (even for one as competent and longstanding as the cited work).
So what's the quibble? That the shares aren't exactly equal? Or that there are other demographic cuts with larger differences (and, y'know, aligned carceral disparities)? Or that cannabis use isn't representative of 'petty crime'?
They argument does not depend in the slightest on the equality of crime rates, its depends on the their similarity. The data linked show quite similar rates of reported use for cannabis. You can make all sorts of valid counterarguments at this point.
Refuting the language used to express the argument ('uniform', 'equal') is
meaningless-to-disingenuous nitpicking of its form with basically no consequences for its substance.
That’s my point though? If the argument doesn’t depend on it, why make an easy to nitpick and disprove claim as part of it, especially if it doesn’t even come to bear on the point anyway.
I’m not the one who brought up the nitpick in the first place, so you can argue with them instead if you prefer people didn’t do so in the first place.
Yes, that's what the survey I linked indicates. I didn't want to make that claim because that's not the argument I'd heard in the past, even though that is what this survey indicates.
Do you know of some society in which "petty crimes and code violations" are more or less similar socially to homicides? I'd suggest pondering a comment more carefully. People mostly don't contemplate gunning someone down anywhere near as frequently or thoughtlessly as they might jaywalk, or get a speeding ticket. (though there are exceptions of course)
The comparison doesn't have to be with homicides. "Every demographic does X at about the same rate" is such a flat-out wrong assumption that you'd really have to cherry-pick X, with lots of caveats and conditions, for it to hold true.
I think there's an ingrained sense of revulsion, in all of us that live in the cultural era that descended from Enlightenment ideals of equality for all, against the idea that there exist observable group-level differences on nearly any metric you could think of, but that doesn't make it any less true.
The statement was about petty crimes. Things like downloading a song without paying.
If you think people of certain ethnic, racial, political, or religious demographics are more likely to download a song without permissions, I'd like to know what demographics you think are the most likely and least likely to do it.
Because I don't know of a single person in my life who has a computer and hasn't done it.
Uploading/distributing/broadcasting a song without copyright permission to do so, might conditionally be a crime, if that usage does not fall within "Fair Use" such as for education, journalism or commentary.
Let's stop ceding more power and control to the copyright cartel, and be careful not to repeat their propaganda that misleads people into thinking sharing books or other media needs to always involve a payment to some publishing corporation.
> 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.
Crime rates are likely different for different socioeconomic classes for many reasons, but also the socioeconomic class likely determines in part the types of crimes.
For example, poor people are more likely to do petty crime and physical crimes, while rich people tend to do complex frauds involving large sums.
So you cannot compare rates for one particular crime across socioeconomic groups because they will gravitate towards the opportunities that are present to their class.
I read it as a scenario / "even if" for the presented thought experiment, not a load-bearing assertion about reality. As in the argument being made works equally well whether either way, and trying to challenge it misses the point.
> homicides (that are not a subject for reporting bias)
There is very serious bias in which deaths are labelled homicides, and in who is held responsible for them. The idea that homicide stats are bias-free is weirdly pervasive, but absolutely without basis, on either the victimization or (even moreso, since the prior bias also impacts this on top of the direct bias applicable to it) perpetration side.
If there are lost keys everywhere you will actually find some looking under the streetlight. Honest statistical reports may even be written highlighting the frequency of lost-key-findings under streetlights. Credulous readers might begin to suggest that some innate factor of the pooling of their light causes keys to fall exactly within boundaries of their illumination. They might even prefer elected representatives that propose streetlight removal policies, to reduce the scourge of lost keys.
“Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself”. Of course “faked” is deliberately overblown, but just the way you collect your data could already amount to a “fake”, even if it wasn't deliberate. So those statistics mentioned by GP could be honest as far as intentions are concerned. It would merely be incompetence.
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)
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
I suppose the implication could be that the set petty crimes and code violations, which includes many things, among which are parking violations and music piracy (two things that vary dramatically between demographics), has an equal distribution between all demographics.
If parking violations are an old demographic problem, and music piracy are a young demographic problem for example (even though it is assumed that more things are in the set than just these two) then it could be that they roughly cancel each other out.
I guess one would really need to know what the full set petty crimes and code violations consists of to be sure.
See NYC's recent law changes to legalize jaywalking. I won't pull up the exact citations but there were evenly distributed tendencies to jaywalk yet something like 80-90% of police engagements were with PoC
I am not disputing that, the comment I replied to assumed that offenses were not evenly distributed because two of the examples in the set of petty crimes was not evenly distributed offenses by demographic.
Note that this is commission of offense as opposed to say police activity around offense, which is a different thing, as you note with your jaywalking example.
My post is maybe a huge straw man that supports your post (parent)
Incoming Leo Sharp. He transported thousands of kilos of drugs in his car for the Sinaloa Cartel during his career. In the United States. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Sharp
Of course, He was white, he was old, he was a United States Veteran. This is just a funny single case.
Let's be realistic, given two towns, one whose median age is 70 and the other filled with teenage boys sporting new licenses, one of them is going to need to invest more into policing resources than the other, ceteris paribus.
I wouldn't extend that to calling teenage boys "bad." But we did come with higher negative externalities to our communities, particularly when behind a car, than other demos.
> 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.
For what it's worth, the Israeli side sees the situation as every nation has pitfalls and misgivings at about the same rate. However, nations who are under threat from well-funded media campaigns (AlJazeera, BCC) will be discussed more often. The end result is that nations in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished more than nations in the "right" one at an equal level of misbehavior.
Dude. Israel is committing genocide. Your persecution complex is making you blind. Put yourself in your neighbor’s shoes, please.
Do this not just to be a descent human being—do this for the sake of your own survival. What will happen when Israel has made every nation hate it more than ever, and the US finally cuts the purse strings?
Israel is not committing genocide. Not by any reputable definition of genocide. Israel is waging war against an enemy who in fact clearly states their intention to genocide the Jews.
You are correct to be angry about the amount of people dying in this war. But you should direct your anger to those responsible for both starting the war and for directly endangering those people.
“Look what you made me do” is what you’re saying, but Israel could stop attacking Gaza today and not suffer a single material attack from Gaza for a long time. Way, way more Palestinians have died since October than Jews. Israel has no need to keep on its current course. It has made its point and is now making a completely different point—that it is a cruel nation incapable of self restraint.
Nobody can force you to self reflect. Nobody can spare you the consequences if you refuse.
> “Look what you made me do” is what you’re saying, but Israel could stop attacking Gaza today and not suffer a single material attack from Gaza for a long time.
No, "Look at what you made the Arabs do" is what Westerners say to Jews to excuse kidnapping and murdering babies and elderly. Nobody here says that. Gaza could have stopped attacking Israel any time between 2005 and October 6, 2023 and not suffered a single attack from Israel. And from October 7, 2023 they could have returned our children and our parents and our sisters, and the war would have ended immediately.
> Way, way more Palestinians have died since October than Jews.
So your argument is that the side with more casualties is in the right? Or that not enough Jews have died?
Where you advocating for the Jews on October 8th, while the body count from the current conflict was still more Jews than Arabs?
> Israel has no need to keep on its current course. It has made its point and is now making a completely different point—that it is a cruel nation incapable of self restraint.
Israel has not "made its point" because the hostages are not yet home. Israel is cruel? The Gazans freely sacrifice their own children _and_ our children in the name of a religious war, and we're the cruel side? I believe that you know very little of Gazan or Muslim culture, and probably less of Israeli or Jewish culture.
> Nobody can force you to self reflect. Nobody can spare you the consequences if you refuse.
Reflect on what? Wanting our children back home? What consequences do you think could possibly be worse than having our children captive?
How sure are you that if the hostages were returned, that the war would end? Netanyahu needs this war to continue to stay in power, I don't think he has an exit plan, I think he intends to have this war last as long as possible. 60% of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, when will it be enough? When the last building is destroyed, will they start blowing up the rubble piles? Do you think there's an exit plan?
When there’s hostage situation, nations normally don’t skip straight to genocide. There should be an escalatory response. Genocide is way, way out there and most people wouldn’t advocate genocide even if it was their own family who was captured. The fact that you don’t even realize you’ve skipped past all reasonable responses and settled on the most extreme, insane response, is why I’m asking you to self reflect.
Obviously, it was horrible for the hostages. I feel bad for them and I’m glad that many have been released.
But Israel’s response shows how insecure they are, how immature and dangerous they are.
Let’s be honest. All you have to do is admit Israel is committing genocide and is wrong to do so and start advocating for more peaceful measures, and by doing so you’ll discount the neonazis. I’m being really blunt here. Because right now your position is so extreme, so unwilling to truly change, that all your doing is making people who hate Jews look correct. Is that what you want?
In light of all that, please self reflect. I’m being your friend, I apologize for how painful this conversation is for you, but you have got to learn because you’re right, the stakes really are high, you are just playing by the wrong rules.
You just want him to concede your point so you feel better. You are not being his friend. Israel is under no definition committing genocide. Please self-reflect and admit this to yourself. Alas your position is too extreme and unwilling to change.
It would be disingenuous if it weren’t for the fact that tens of thousands of innocent bystanders that Israel deemed subhuman are dead. That bloody smoking gun seems to be escaping you both.
Even if you don’t think Israel’s neighbors deserve life, you have to recognize that the entirety of western civilization and the Islamic world both see what Israel is doing as reprehensible.
Now I’m not asking you to say they’re right because they’re the vast majority (that would be subjective), what I’m asking you to agree with is that Israel needs to stop making everyone hate them, because it will be worse for Israel if everyone hates them.
That is an objective fact I hope we can agree on, regardless of the value you place on human life.
Am i weird in that this feels kind of normal (im not american)?
Protests should be protected, but i normally assume protestors get permits, and a reasonable police presence is around. Not to intimidate anyone, but just to make sure nobody gets too rowdy, keep protestors and counter-protestors away from each other (to prevent violence), provide aid if anyone gets hurt (big masses of people is always a trample risk). Otherwise just do normal crowd control sort of things.
If they were surveiling individuals who participated afterwards, maybe that would be something, but it seems like (according to the article) all they were doing was keeping track of when protests were happening.
Protests are not private events. They are literally the most non-private event possible. That is the entire point. I dont think there is any reasonable expectation of privacy in terms of time&date of demonstrations.
Yeah it's a tool, the use of it will show the issue. For example if they only surveil certain types of protests and not others.
Another worrying element of protest surveillance is the documented practice of sending in provocateurs who commit violence or break stuff or cause problems to allow a pretense for crackdowns.
In most democracies there are rules about being fair in terms of issuing permits and a court system where you can sue if they aren't fair in issuing permits.
> In most democracies there are rules about being fair in terms of issuing permits and a court system where you can sue if they aren't fair in issuing permits.
But this does not guarantee that you will get a permit.
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.
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.
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.
If you remove the tech from dropping of atomic bombs, you still have firebombs, gas attacks, and myriad other weapons that may or may not be considered either war crimes or simply too destructive to allow. You can still extrapolate and / or build analogies from the older models to the new one.
Why can't we remove the tech in this context? Is the issue that the tech allows surveillance of public conversation to happen cheaply at scale, and that creates a fundamentally different scenario from someone saying things in public being overheard? Because I'd argue it does not; if one says things in public one should expect authorities to overhear the thing too because they're also in public.
One simple difference that jumps out to me straightaway is the a gaping gulf between "decided to check it out" and "wrote down the names of everyone there and stuck it in a state-owned filing cabinet"
People aren't taking umbrage with the cops knowing there is a protest, or attending one, you're right, that would be unreasonable.
> you still have firebombs, gas attacks, and myriad other weapons
All are post colonial-era technology.
By analogy to your argument, if we can only address surveillance as if colonial-era technology was used, then we can only address military actions that way. What if someone set off a colonial-era explosive? Not a big deal, right?
I think I see what you mean if we're talking morality. If we're talking law, this is exactly the rabbit-hole people end up going down trying to justify or un-justify the Second Amendment in an era where the weapon is a 60-to-1 force multiplier for body count, not a 1.5-to-1 (in that if two men approach you with a knife, and you have a colonial rifle, you can probably reliably shoot one of them and then you're on equal footing with the other).
The law has all kinds of pockets where they wrote it when people were on horseback... But it still applies.
> The law has all kinds of pockets where they wrote it when people were on horseback... But it still applies.
That's not how it works. It can't be ignored, but even words change meaning over years (and are often imprecise to begin with). The Supreme Court changes intepretations - a lot, recently.
You actually really can’t extrapolate too much from existing weapons when the nuke was dropped. The singular, overwhelming devastation of that one weapon radically altered international politics forever.
Tech might change scale, but we still had surveilence, secret police, masacares, etc in olden times.
If anything, in olden times many of these types of things were considered normal. As hard as it might feel like it is to see it, we have come a very long way when it comes to morals of wars & state violence. If nothing else at least we mostly feel like its "wrong" now.
I didn't claim otherwise and it's irrelevant to my point, regardless. The point is that you can't exclude technology from the issue - surveillance with modern tech and with pre-industrial tech are very different things. Now you can do almost complete surveillance of the population (just track phones and you know everywhere everyone goes).
(Also, where and when specifically are you talking about? The 1950s US? State intelligence agencies didn't really exist, afaik, before maybe the (20th century?).)
I'm just saying these issues aren't new. One of the reasons the us had limited domestic intel services back in the day is that they were scared of this sort of thing.
As an example the surveilence practised by soviets or east germany was much more invasive despite not having phones.
I'm saying they are new, because the technology is different - like saying 'transportation isn't new' when comparing horses and airplanes. The technology is inseparable from the issue.
> One of the reasons the us had limited domestic intel services back in the day is that they were scared of this sort of thing.
Do you have evidence of that? Many people are scared of it now, and that does limit it to some degree, but not a lot.
> As an example the surveilence practised by soviets or east germany was much more invasive despite not having phones.
They were enabled by technology far more advanced than the colonial era. They did have phones and they tapped them, tapped rooms, etc., and used communication tech to centralize and disseminate the information, as well as using mass communication to implement propaganda.
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.
I am pretty sure this would be a crime in my home country. There are court cases cementing that anything except superficial photography/filming by law enforcement lacks any kind of support in law. There are even laws restricting use of photography in situations when exercising any coercive measures ("tvångsåtgärd").
The USA is pretty behind in personal rights. Americans love to shout about freedom but don't realize how many rights we don't have that other countries do. Especially after 9-11 when we signed away a ton of rights.
I'd say we're not too far away from par for the course, Western nations-wise, when it comes to civil liberties. At least for now. There are still things that you can do in the US (particularly related to speech) that are very different in Europe, for better or worse. Actually here of late it's been worse more than it's been better, but alas.
It's the whole "freedom to fail only applying to the layperson" thing that we're behind on.
EDIT:
Western nations/Common Law countries, I should specify.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
> the protestors are not named (it's a dragnet), not subjects of investigations, and are suspected of no crimes.
That could very well be true, though there's also the possibility that there are people there who are subjects of investigations. The article doesn't really say; it just mentions that it's a possible threat to civil liberties. And to be fair, it very well can be, particularly in the hands of the current administration.
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.
mostly scale: accumulation of data over time and use of that data (a single brief observation of an anonymous person vs identification and observation of a person over time, with real-time activities reported to law enforcement). same way that it's unacceptable/illegal for a police officer - without probable cause or a warrant - to follow you down the street to your home, then wait outside your home and follow you 24/7, recording all your activities which exist in the public sphere, then putting you on a departmental watchlist where your protected activities are broadcast to all officers in real-time.
you may be ok with that ("i don't have anything to hide", "i trust the police/government", "the free market will prevent abuses [by companies like Dataminr]" are some rebuttals i've heard recently), but it undermines our constitutional rights, setting a dangerous precedent and chilling free speech/association (per the ACLU). additionally, how else is this collected information being used by the police and Dataminr? what are their retention policies? what other kinds of analysis are being done (fta, there seems to be a not-insignificant number of false positives)?
> mostly scale: accumulation of data over time and use of that data
I'm a long-time, hardcore civil libertarian so I share your concerns about potential law enforcement abuse. However, in the instance being cited here, I'm not seeing a clear violation of 4th amendment rights. Posting on openly shared social media is not only public speech, these days it's advertising and promotion. I assume you wouldn't have a problem with law enforcement subscribing to a press release monitoring service that would notify them if someone is sends out media press releases promoting their protest in that agency's jurisdiction. Arguably, not having any situational awareness of open-to-the-public mass gatherings planned in their area might be something they'd even be blamed for if overcrowding turned into a public safety situation at a book signing or something and they were oblivious.
So, while I want to restrict police overreach as much as possible, the challenge is in how we might craft guidelines of what's allowable vs not allowable which are clear and consistent.
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.
The expectation is there is a limitation on resources that can be deployed for law enforcement officers viewing things with their eyes. It's virtually unlimited with technology.
Walking down the street is not a constitutionally protected activity not that the police should monitor it without a statutory reason. Driving also isn’t. If you think different you’ll have to cite different. But assembly and expression are constitutionally protected.
But back to my original question, why are the police monitoring constitutionally protected activity?
Walking down a public street absent some public safety or similar imposition is in fact a Constitutionally protected activity. It is not at all like driving.
No, that is your opinion and not a cite. In fact, the government can regulate your walking with cross walks and traffic lights.
Again, why are the police in this case monitoring constitutionally protected activity?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
You're just wrong. There's a whole line of cases about this.
Walkers and strollers and wanderers may be going to or coming from a burglary. Loafers or loiterers may be "casing" a place for a holdup. Letting one's wife support him is an intra-family matter, and normally of no concern to the police. Yet it may, of course, be the setting for numerous crimes.
The difficulty is that these activities are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten amenities have been, in part, responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent, and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits, rather than hushed, suffocating silence.
You keep repeating "constitutionally protected activity" like it carries more weight the more you repeat. The Intercept article does the same thing.
If we step back and look at what's happening at "pro palestine" protests across the world, much of it is toxic and unwelcome by the wider community. Law enforcement sees the negative energy and responds using passive tracking tools and other measures. They're seeing escalating "decolonizing" associations too, as these groups try to merge with their socialist friends and agendas.
In my country Australia, they've taken the Aboriginal flag and Palestine flag and joined them together, parading them along the street screaming about colonisation. Many contain raised fist graphics and calls for resistance. And you wonder why cops are monitoring?
Barely qualifying as activity worth "protecting" in many cases. In particular, the terror-aligned rhetoric by masked mobs screaming about global intifadas, "resistance by any means necessary" and other stuff unrelated to peace or anything remotely "anti-war". No peace symbols in the crowd but plenty of Hamas flags, is the answer to your question.
Law enforcement sees the negative energy and responds
Typically, in sane societies, it's preferable that the coercive part of state power is deployed for things more concrete and definable than 'negative energy'.
In this case, negative energy often leads to civil unrest and other things in law enforcement's wheelhouse. The police were even called to Google's offices last year, you might remember. Pro-palestine clowns refused to leave the office. They were arrested and fired.
See how easily negative energy turns into trespass? Nothing wrong with cops planning ahead for the inevitable, based on historical data for that type of protest.
Because it involves gatherings of large crowds in public spaces. It is their job to make sure that such gatherings result in no harm of either the protesters nor the local community.
> 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).
> pretty much anything that might attract the attention of antifa will also attract violent elements like the black bloc types or opposition
What does that have to do with Gaza-related protests? If you are saying it applies to them, you haven't established that there is a significant level of violence.
True, when the Zionist gangs showed up at UCLA and started shooting Roman candles, and choking out and beating protestors it did get violent really quick.
Luckily the police showed up to protect the Zionists so they could keep committing violence.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Peaceful protest sometimes attract a few bad apples. Things have ways of going wrong. If the police weren't on top of these activities, they would look massively incompetent in their job.
Even then, it isn't often enforced. A few times a year people walk out into freeways in groups to shut down traffic and get at most a slap on the hand for it.
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?
> 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 coöperating. When done in public, communication necessarily empowers the other two.
Propaganda and surveillance. If you’re communicating in the open, it’s trivial for a non-coöperating receiver to tap in. And it’s only a touch more trivial for a non-coöperating sender to join in on the rabble. You cannot have a private and public communication protocol.
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.
Not necessarily. I agree with that. But in American English usage it is distinct from your meaning, which is more aligned with "extensive". The first entry for "expansive" in my usage dictionary is "tending to expand". The main reason to choose the word is to communicate growth.
I think the idea of no expectation of privacy in public places crashes with the ever increasing capabilities of law enforcement and companies to register your activities and views.
What is now registered with digital dragnets that can be queried at any time is what would require actual man-hours 50 years ago for just following one person.
That's basically the approach taken in Carpenter v. United States. The Supreme Court said, sure, the police could track people in public with dozens of cars and thousands of man hours, but using CLSI data means it can be done with a few mouse clicks.
You can't apply the "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard when you get into these new electronic forms of surveillance. It's become far too cheap and easy to surveil.
Not that I fully endorse their broaded view of privacy, I see it as much more of a fundamental right. That said, I was impressed that this court(who constantly misunderstands technology) understood this.
I cannot endorse this overbroad definition of "privacy" and in fact I can't see the logic in it at all. It is true that in the past the cops could not automatically hoover up your posts, but is also true that in the past no individual person could reach millions/billions of other individuals instantly with short messages and videos. The increase in scope of police collection of public communications is proportional to the increase in reach of those communications platforms. It is all well-balanced.
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.
Why would they need a "legitimate reason"? They are people like any other people. Anyone has the right to read things on Twitter. Police officers are normal people, they don't have special rights or privileges and they don't have special restrictions or limitations. That is the foundation of policing by consent.
We are paying their salary. Why should they be spending time attempting to proactively police a group who is just exercising constitutionally protected right?
There is actual crime they could be investigating. Instead they are wasting resources on something that they shouldn't have anything to do with unless there is a threat of violence.
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.
That said, if you put a classified advert in a newspaper and police read it,i wouldn't call it survelience, and that feels more similar to reading twitter posts.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Remember that actual literal swastika-wearing nazis were average law abiding citizens. If nazis are scared to come in contact with you you're doing well.
You make a really good point! The average law abiding citizen is much more afraid of petty crime against Elon Musk, a man who does the Nazi salute, than they are about losing their constitutional rights. That is how we wound up with a militarized police force in the first place, with the average person being more afraid of terrorism than encroaching totalitarianism.
> i would argue the people in these protests are likely the people committing street crime.
No, I'm not mad, I just don't see the link between the Gaza protestors (who I don't particularly support) and the vandals torching Teslas. And now you are mentioning Kyle Rittenhouse, which seems like another canard.
I don't see any evidence between those things, I'm wondering if you have any or if you just think all protesters are criminals?
I didn't comment specifically about GPs intent. I am referring to the use of the word by a larger group. I have no idea what GPs intent is but I have a pretty clear idea why the word was adopted by the anti-Israeli antisemitic propaganda machine.
- Are Jewish people judged to a different standard than others?
- Is the pattern similar to historical persecution of the Jewish people, specifically in this case we're talking about blood libels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
- Follow the money or literally find the source of the accusation. Is the source clearly antisemitic? Then the accusation is likely antisemitic.
Let's say you are or might be a serial killer. How should I talk about it without offending you? Just asking.
If for example Israel was setting up gas chambers and systemically killing all the Palestinians in the middle east that would be pretty hard to hide. If you have no evidence you're going to go down the road of interpreting the genocide convention to fit your agenda, misrepresenting the ICC ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq9MB9t7WlI ), making up things, cherry-picking statements by Israeli officials and ignoring ones that don't suit your agenda. etc. The simplest explanation here that holds water is that we have a war during which we have civilians casualties.
> Let's say you are or might be a serial killer. How should I talk about it without offending you? Just asking.
If that is an issue, it absolutely should be addressed; personal offense doesn't outweigh the deaths of others. Imagine if an alleged serial killer said, 'nobody can talk about that because it offends me.'
It's also a well-worn tactic to change the subject from one's own behavior to attacking people who raise the issue - the right-wing has been using it for years, now on behalf of Israel.
I'm not changing the subject: The issue is that Israel has killed ~50,000 people, injured many more, and destroyed most of their resources including things like healthcare, infrastructure, just buildings. It is blocking access to food and essential supplies. Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to have their property stolen, physical violence, lack of the rule of law, and being terrorized. Israeli leaders openly talk about seizing Palestinian territory, harming Palestinians, and contempt for harming them.
Whatever you call it, those are the issues. Whether it meets a legal standard of genocide is something a court can figure out, but there are warrants from a widely-recognized court.
You say you're not changing the subject and then you go ahead and change the subject.
The number of casualties is consistent with the kind of war that's being waged. If Hamas hadn't used healthcare and educational facilities then those wouldn't be targeted.
The warrants are not related to genocide. They're about war crimes. They're also political and illegal (Israel isn't a member of the ICC and Palestine is not a country) but there you went and changed the subject again.
Israel can kill as many people it takes to secure its citizens. As long as it is targeting Hamas, which it is, there is no upper bound. It can legally target hospitals and schools that are used by Hamas. That is all legal and moral. The rest is up to the Palestinians and Hamas. If Hamas removes the need for Israel to keep fighting it by surrendering then this war will be over. If Hamas keeps threatening to kill Israelis then Israel will eliminate this threat just like any other country would.
You'll see Hezbollah has also set up headquarters in schools in Syria.
Another subject again- Palestinians in/from the west bank are killing civilians and attacking Israelis. That is the root cause for what's going on there. Once they stop doing that we can make progress. The Israeli right is in power because Palestinian violence has convinced Israelis the only way that they can live in peace is to put a right wing government who will be extremely harsh with the Palestinians in power. This is the Palestinians own doing as a group. Sure, I sympathize at the individual level but as a group they decide to take a path of violence against a much stronger group and do their best to create a situation in which they are going to lose a lot.
Palestinians need to drop their violent struggle and the gullible people of the west need to stop supporting that. That is the only way they will get anything. We were on that path to some extent during the Oslo accords and the Palestinians literally blew this up, along with hundres of Israelis in busses and malls and restaurants.
do you have citations for any of this ("most protestors", "calling for destruction", "extermination", "misinformation", etc)? you may also be surprised to find that much of the world doesn't consider the opinions of the USG to be reliable, including the claim that Israel is not committing genocide - other organizations such as the UN and human rights groups like Amnesty and HRW disagree.
> Please do not insult colonialism by comparing it with Zionism
My language was intentional and precise. I didn't say "colonialism" (which I'm not defending BTW). I said "settler colonialism" [1], which is precisely what has gone on here. From the Nakba to the 1967 war to the West Bank settlers, you have over 75 years of ethnic cleansing and displacement. That's ettler colonialism.
I can't speak to whatever colonial society you're from. You don't say. I will say I struggle to think of examples of where colonialism worked out well for the colonized however.
Weren't the Jews ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948/1949? Isn't the return of Jews to the West Bank in 1967 the undoing of ethnic cleansing?
Honest question, not trolling. I assume that you see the situation differently, I'd love to understand your viewpoint if you care to explain it.
They were in response to being attacked by Hamas for the umpteenth time. Every single time Israel responds, doesn't wipe out Hamas, agrees to a ceasefire, and it is then broken a year or two later by these insane death cultists.
They have had enough. Fair enough, I think. No other country would be told it should just tolerate nutters firing rockets at it daily, rapes, murders, killing civilians at music festivals.
Just some small corrections here because the news has changed since like last year where you still seem to be. As of today, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire (after tons of delays, like a negotiator being assassinated [1], but that was a moment ago), but one side is not actually respecting it [2], and the other side is literally in the process of dying en masse from hunger [3,4]. Really hard to even know what you are talking about here!
Don't tell me what side you're on by quoting Al Jazeera the propaganda arm of Qatar.
All the do-gooders were saying that if we only get a ceasefire Hamas would release the hostages. Guess what - they didn't. If they've released them then the ceasefire would likely have held. All of them. Unconditionally.
Hamas is over. They can make the call at what cost to the Palestinians. The "peace protestors" are calling for more bloodshed.
This really isn't a matter of political opinion or who you think is right or not. Israelis feel like Hamas is an existential threat. They will keep fighting until that threat is removed and the hostages are returned. The cost is up to Hamas.
These is no dying en masse from hunger. But there will certainly be more food after Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages. In the meantime Hamas can provide for its citizens from its stocks in the tunnels.
For a long time tech people lived in a bubble believing the idealistic BS spun by Silicon Valley. What we've seen over the last few years is how the mask has come off. There are two factors at play here:
1. The wealthy, and by extension Silicon Valley founders, inevitably end up moving in lockstep with US government policy. Wealthy people inevitably become conservative to protect and grow their wealth. Any idealism is a temporary recruiting tool. Ultimately, all tech companies become defense contractors and end up aiding the surveillance state, repressing speech and supporting gencoide (eg Myanmar); and
2. Transhumanism [1]. I can remember hearing about this from tech people a decade ago. I really had no idea how popular this was (and has become). Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are all transhumanists. The central idea here is "what can I do now to ensure the best future for the gene pool?" And of course all these weirdos think their genes are superior because they're rich. It's why the likes of Elon can't stop having children.
It's not surprising Dataminr (who I'd honestly never heard of until now) is providing material support to repression. This is every tech company.
