4 ms·

I disagree those two positions are at odds. You can be vehemently against social media monitoring by government agencies and warrantless wiretaps and still poi

I disagree those two positions are at odds. You can be vehemently against social media monitoring by government agencies and warrantless wiretaps and still point out the many times law enforcement and others in a position to help ignore signs of distress. Moreover, there isn’t proof that this type of monitoring actively stops mass shootings or other attacks. Sometimes it does — for sure (though mostly when communication is happening through email and not social posts) — but we’ve seen plenty of anecdotes where concerning public postings were pointed out to authorities and nothing was done.

thomastjeffery 8y ago
The key word here being, "warrantless".
craftyguy 8y ago
I suspect that the set of people who publicly "appear distressed" (definition of which is entirely subjective) is quite a bit larger than the set of people who commit violence. I also suspect that the former is not necessarily a superset of the latter. In other words, casting a wider net means you'll scoop up a lot of innocent people, with possibly devastating results for them.
tbabb 8y ago
> vehemently against social media monitoring by government agencies and warrantless wiretaps Does reading publicly published information constitute wiretapping? > we’ve seen plenty of anecdotes where concerning public postings were pointed out to authorities and nothing was done This is what I'm getting at-- responding to obviously-troubling social media posts seems entirely reasonable after the fact. Perhaps it is? But at the same time it carries an implication of law enforcement pre-emptively acting based on the content of public speech, which has its own worrying implications, as evidenced by the examples in the article. Earnest question: What's the legal boundary in other circumstances? Can/should law enforcement take action if a person uses a megaphone in the town square to announce they're going to use their AR-15 to kill all the $x people? If they published an op-ed in the local newspaper to the same effect? (If yes, how is facebook/twitter different from a town square / op-ed column?)

thomastjeffery 8y ago

The key word here being, "warrantless".

craftyguy 8y ago

I suspect that the set of people who publicly "appear distressed" (definition of which is entirely subjective) is quite a bit larger than the set of people who commit violence. I also suspect that the former is not necessarily a superset of the latter. In other words, casting a wider net means you'll scoop up a lot of innocent people, with possibly devastating results for them.

tbabb 8y ago

> vehemently against social media monitoring by government agencies and warrantless wiretaps Does reading publicly published information constitute wiretapping? > we’ve seen plenty of anecdotes where concerning public postings were pointed out to authorities and nothing was done This is what I'm getting at-- responding to obviously-troubling social media posts seems entirely reasonable after the fact. Perhaps it is? But at the same time it carries an implication of law enforcement pre-emptively acting based on the content of public speech, which has its own worrying implications, as evidenced by the examples in the article. Earnest question: What's the legal boundary in other circumstances? Can/should law enforcement take action if a person uses a megaphone in the town square to announce they're going to use their AR-15 to kill all the $x people? If they published an op-ed in the local newspaper to the same effect? (If yes, how is facebook/twitter different from a town square / op-ed column?)