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I've been on a few demos that turned violent. Among them the famous one when George Bush decided to pay a visit. In all cases, the organizers wanted to cooperat

I've been on a few demos that turned violent. Among them the famous one when George Bush decided to pay a visit. In all cases, the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction.

zo1 6y ago
We're not allowing governments to do the proper, necessary surveillance to control and prevent crimes in general, including ones at demonstrations/protests. Whenever these ideas start popping up, someone always finds some "privacy" concern that spoils a lot of tech-answers to crime and violence, including here on HN. I find it very saddening as the victims of these crimes end up being victims that are ignored by "privacy" advocates and proponents, as if "privacy" is a bigger concern than violent crimes.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The idea that we just need a bit more surveillance to ensure our safety is not a compelling one right now.
- pjc50 6y ago
  The original violent crime - the murder of George Floyd - was filmed in public. That is the kind of violent crime that needs to be controlled to stop the cycle of riots.
lazyjones 6y ago
> In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. FWIW, German police regularly used undercover, black-clad, violent agents as a pretext for breaking up peaceful protests. It's probably an established tactic. But the situation in the USA looks very different (from here), violent protesters appear to be a small minority of the problematic people, most of which are just criminals using the opportunity to loot.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  Agent provocateurs are definitely a concern for protest organizers. Be they from anarchists, white supremacists, the police, or the state. There are a lot of bad actors that win with choatic protests.
- smcl 6y ago
  This is something that really concerns me, because it's such an incredibly effective way to undermine any sort of demonstration. Are there any effective countermeasures to agent provocateurs that anyone knows of?
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  From what I understand it’s actually untrue- the media are just more likely to film and show destruction rather than peaceful protests. In Minneapolis there were both massive peaceful protests and looting, but the property damage was covered more than the protesting. Given that the argument for looting is that people care more about property damage than about the protection of black lives against police oppression, this only further evidences the argument for property violence in response to human injustice...
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    It's well documented. For example, in this interview with a police officer: https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article107870345/Wir-werden-von-der-Politik-verheizt-Polizisten-erzaehlen.html https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article107870345/Wir-werde... > "Ich weiß, dass wir bei brisanten Großdemos verdeckt agierende Beamte, die als taktische Provokateure, als vermummte Steinewerfer fungieren, unter die Demonstranten schleusen. Sie werfen auf Befehl Steine oder Flaschen in Richtung der Polizei, damit die dann mit der Räumung beginnen kann. Translation: "I know that we insert undercover agents as tactical provocateurs, as hooded(disguised) stone throwers, among the protesters during large controversial protests. They throw stones or bottles at our command towards the police so it can begin the evacuation".
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
aspenmayer 6y ago
Life imitates art when it comes to tech; it's a hydra of an ouroboros[1] eating its own tails with its many heads. We did this to ourselves? It’s already happening in India and China. I’m sure it’s happening here too, with an added startup component with the example of Clearview AI. The big companies get in on the action too: ‘There are many companies that offer facial recognition products and services, including Amazon, Microsoft and FaceFirst. Those companies all need access to enormous databases of photos to improve the accuracy of their matching technology. But while most facial recognition algorithms are trained on well-established, publicly circulating datasets — some of which have also faced criticism for taking people’s photos without their explicit consent — Ever is different in using its own customers’ photos to improve its commercial technology.‘[2] 'In the 1998 Hollywood thriller Enemy of the State, an innocent man (played by Will Smith) is pursued by a rogue spy agency that uses the advanced satellite “Big Daddy” to monitor his every move. The film — released 15 years before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on a global surveillance complex — has achieved a cult following.' It was, however, much more than just prescient: it was also an inspiration, even a blueprint, for one of the most powerful surveillance technologies ever created. So contends technology writer and researcher Arthur Holland Michel in his compelling book Eyes in the Sky. He notes that a researcher (unnamed) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who saw the movie at its debut decided to “explore — theoretically, at first — how emerging digital-imaging technology could be affixed to a satellite” to craft something like Big Daddy, despite the “nightmare scenario” it unleashes in the film. Holland Michel repeatedly notes this contradiction between military scientists’ good intentions and a technology based on a dystopian Hollywood plot.' 'In 2006, the cinematically inspired research was picked up by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is tasked with US military innovation (D. Kaiser Nature 543, 176–177; 2017). DARPA funded the building of an aircraft-mounted camera with a capacity of almost two billion pixels. The Air Force had dubbed the project Gorgon Stare, after the monsters of penetrating gaze from classical Greek mythology, whose horrifying appearance turned observers to stone. (DARPA called its programme Argus, after another mythical creature: a giant with 100 eyes.)'[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-uploaded-photos-ever-app-then-company-used-them-n1003371 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-upload... [3] [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5
meragrin_ 6y ago
> In all cases, the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. How many organizers are there compared to participants? How are the participants supposed to know the police intrusion has been agreed to? How do you know there aren't participants who would choose to align themselves with the "autonomous bloc" over the police? Assuming all "good"(work with organizers) demonstrators work together, how would you give notice without giving the "autonomous bloc" ample time to disappear into the crowd? It isn't like the demonstrators are surrounding the rioters and/or opening a path for the police. As for using tech to track rioters, perhaps it is far from good enough in protest situations. I imagine it is hard to get a hold of enough data to train for that situation. Perhaps the police have been prevented from using it. I know Clearview AI tech has already been banned in a number of places. Did you ever go to the police to find out what you could have done differently to prevent the indiscriminate charge?
idealboy 6y ago
Insightful reply. I marched yesterday and police fired rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd because we were blocking a non-essential intersection. On a Sunday. We refused to leave and fortunately they left and let us have a peaceful march. There doesn’t seem to be an interest in separating out the extreme minority that protest violently. There had been zero violence or destruction that day. A very well-behaved crowd exercising peaceful civil disobedience met by violence from police. In 2020.
- misun78 6y ago
  Good for you in being somewhere with zero violence in looting, while here in nyc, entire neighborhoods (soho, herald square etc) has been ransacked and cops run over to death. National guard cannot come soon enough to put away these perpetrators in jail.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Not insightful at all. > after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction. The thing is that they can. That's a very deliberate tactic, down to planting of provocators. If you been watching what's going on around the world, the allegations of that, including provocator planting, followed pretty much every major demonstration event. It's naive, if not silly, to use that "hey, he started it first!" argument at the time when the fact of confrontation happening is already obvious. The talk now should not be who started the violence, but how to end it, a peace treaty to say.
  - kelvin0 6y ago
    Exactly. There exists an asymmetry in the dynamics of protesters vs police during a protest. Very simple: Anyone can be 'planted' in a group of protesters to start stirring up trouble (agent-provocateur). Then the police have 'justification' to use whatever amount of force they think is required. On the other hand, it's practically impossible for a regular citizen to be embedded into a riot police response unit. Add to that the police have practically no real oversight and investigate themselves (assuming internal affairs counts as police). One side can't fail (except morally), while the other side always will end up with the shorter end of the stick.
ooobit2 6y ago
Here's an idea, for whatever it's worth: Address the incentive to riot instead of attempting to assign full control and liability to one element over another. For all the obvious, on-the-nose proof that reactive states differ from proactive states, I find it very odd that people are still folding their arms and brandishing smug expressions for their equivalently useless ideas as soon as someone else's idea yields a critical failure. Critical thinking is not an art, nor a science, nor difficult. It just requires someone to maintain a consistent curiosity and skepticism for the utility of information. If someone tells you cats climb trees, you should automatically think, Not all cats can climb trees and How useful is this to me?. And if you have a cat, you might sequentially think, Do I have any trees that my cat could climb? and How much of a tree should I trim to prevent my cat from climbing it? and maybe Do I have a way to retrieve my cat from one of my trees? and so on and so forth. So, someone please explain why, given the seriousness everyone attributes to the lockdowns, to police brutality, etc. Just... why are you doing the equivalent of hearing that cats can climb trees, and then you think, My cat would never climb my trees, because my trees aren't cat-climbable trees, so that makes my cat, my trees and myself better than other cats, trees, and cat owners?
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Critical thinking is complicated and the subjects don't fit well in poster boards or chants, the results of critical thinking don't fit in with worldview discrimination "Does this idea fit in with my alignment or not"
  - ooobit2 6y ago
    I just demonstrated critical thinking. It took me longer to type the cat example out than it did to think of it. So, if that was difficult and required too much effort, am I to expect that less effort is being put into addressing racism and climate change? How can so many people be a whole league behind me and the 20+ cigarettes I smoke every day, though I know they're going to kill me? I shouldn't look like I'm making great life choices here.
briandear 6y ago
> I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction. I have been in the middle of protests when I worked for Reuters and the difference between peaceful and violent is very tiny. I was in the no-man’s land between the KKK and the New Black Panthers in the wake of the James Byrd Jr. lynching and it went from frenetic but peaceful to riot in 8.3 seconds. Actual combat is a a lot less ambiguous and disorienting. Not defending police or condemning them, but when an airborne brick heads your way, it’s a pretty tall order to expect immediate and accurate identification of friend or foe. It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. The Charlottesville, VA protest by the extreme right wing however is a counterexample — but it’s an exception that proves the rule. The Tea Party protests were never violent. In almost every large-scale protest that has left and extreme left wing elements, looting, fires, and violence is a foregone conclusion. It’s historical record. It’s really tragic because pretty much all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death, but as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts, then a large portion of the population now starts discussing and being angry about that rather than the core issue.
- sgustard 6y ago
  > how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence "The Women’s March on Washington was likely the largest single-day demonstration in recorded US history" and entirely free of violence. > all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death "Outraged" is a strong term. "One more tragic item in the news which is quickly forgotten" is more accurate for most of white America. > as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts No longer forgotten, is what that achieves.
- znpy 6y ago
  > The Tea Party protests were never violent. There's a big difference in protesting because you're being taxed too much (in you opinion) and protesting because people with your same skin colour are being systematically targeted by police and killed for no reason.

zo1 6y ago

We're not allowing governments to do the proper, necessary surveillance to control and prevent crimes in general, including ones at demonstrations/protests. Whenever these ideas start popping up, someone always finds some "privacy" concern that spoils a lot of tech-answers to crime and violence, including here on HN. I find it very saddening as the victims of these crimes end up being victims that are ignored by "privacy" advocates and proponents, as if "privacy" is a bigger concern than violent crimes.

ashtonkem 6y ago
The idea that we just need a bit more surveillance to ensure our safety is not a compelling one right now.
pjc50 6y ago
The original violent crime - the murder of George Floyd - was filmed in public. That is the kind of violent crime that needs to be controlled to stop the cycle of riots.

lazyjones 6y ago

> In all cases the police didn't care and charged peaceful and violent demonstrators alike. FWIW, German police regularly used undercover, black-clad, violent agents as a pretext for breaking up peaceful protests. It's probably an established tactic. But the situation in the USA looks very different (from here), violent protesters appear to be a small minority of the problematic people, most of which are just criminals using the opportunity to loot.

ncallaway 6y ago
Agent provocateurs are definitely a concern for protest organizers. Be they from anarchists, white supremacists, the police, or the state. There are a lot of bad actors that win with choatic protests.
smcl 6y ago
This is something that really concerns me, because it's such an incredibly effective way to undermine any sort of demonstration. Are there any effective countermeasures to agent provocateurs that anyone knows of?
TeaDrunk 6y ago
From what I understand it’s actually untrue- the media are just more likely to film and show destruction rather than peaceful protests. In Minneapolis there were both massive peaceful protests and looting, but the property damage was covered more than the protesting. Given that the argument for looting is that people care more about property damage than about the protection of black lives against police oppression, this only further evidences the argument for property violence in response to human injustice...
- lazyjones 6y ago
  It's well documented. For example, in this interview with a police officer: https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article107870345/Wir-werden-von-der-Politik-verheizt-Polizisten-erzaehlen.html https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article107870345/Wir-werde... > "Ich weiß, dass wir bei brisanten Großdemos verdeckt agierende Beamte, die als taktische Provokateure, als vermummte Steinewerfer fungieren, unter die Demonstranten schleusen. Sie werfen auf Befehl Steine oder Flaschen in Richtung der Polizei, damit die dann mit der Räumung beginnen kann. Translation: "I know that we insert undercover agents as tactical provocateurs, as hooded(disguised) stone throwers, among the protesters during large controversial protests. They throw stones or bottles at our command towards the police so it can begin the evacuation".
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago

aspenmayer 6y ago

Life imitates art when it comes to tech; it's a hydra of an ouroboros[1] eating its own tails with its many heads. We did this to ourselves? It’s already happening in India and China. I’m sure it’s happening here too, with an added startup component with the example of Clearview AI. The big companies get in on the action too: ‘There are many companies that offer facial recognition products and services, including Amazon, Microsoft and FaceFirst. Those companies all need access to enormous databases of photos to improve the accuracy of their matching technology. But while most facial recognition algorithms are trained on well-established, publicly circulating datasets — some of which have also faced criticism for taking people’s photos without their explicit consent — Ever is different in using its own customers’ photos to improve its commercial technology.‘[2] 'In the 1998 Hollywood thriller Enemy of the State, an innocent man (played by Will Smith) is pursued by a rogue spy agency that uses the advanced satellite “Big Daddy” to monitor his every move. The film — released 15 years before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on a global surveillance complex — has achieved a cult following.' It was, however, much more than just prescient: it was also an inspiration, even a blueprint, for one of the most powerful surveillance technologies ever created. So contends technology writer and researcher Arthur Holland Michel in his compelling book Eyes in the Sky. He notes that a researcher (unnamed) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who saw the movie at its debut decided to “explore — theoretically, at first — how emerging digital-imaging technology could be affixed to a satellite” to craft something like Big Daddy, despite the “nightmare scenario” it unleashes in the film. Holland Michel repeatedly notes this contradiction between military scientists’ good intentions and a technology based on a dystopian Hollywood plot.' 'In 2006, the cinematically inspired research was picked up by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is tasked with US military innovation (D. Kaiser Nature 543, 176–177; 2017). DARPA funded the building of an aircraft-mounted camera with a capacity of almost two billion pixels. The Air Force had dubbed the project Gorgon Stare, after the monsters of penetrating gaze from classical Greek mythology, whose horrifying appearance turned observers to stone. (DARPA called its programme Argus, after another mythical creature: a giant with 100 eyes.)'[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-uploaded-photos-ever-app-then-company-used-them-n1003371 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-upload... [3] [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5

meragrin_ 6y ago

> In all cases, the organizers wanted to cooperate with the police. They knew who were in the "autonomous bloc" (troublemakers) and would have gladly helped the police zone in on them. How many organizers are there compared to participants? How are the participants supposed to know the police intrusion has been agreed to? How do you know there aren't participants who would choose to align themselves with the "autonomous bloc" over the police? Assuming all "good"(work with organizers) demonstrators work together, how would you give notice without giving the "autonomous bloc" ample time to disappear into the crowd? It isn't like the demonstrators are surrounding the rioters and/or opening a path for the police. As for using tech to track rioters, perhaps it is far from good enough in protest situations. I imagine it is hard to get a hold of enough data to train for that situation. Perhaps the police have been prevented from using it. I know Clearview AI tech has already been banned in a number of places. Did you ever go to the police to find out what you could have done differently to prevent the indiscriminate charge?

idealboy 6y ago

Insightful reply. I marched yesterday and police fired rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd because we were blocking a non-essential intersection. On a Sunday. We refused to leave and fortunately they left and let us have a peaceful march. There doesn’t seem to be an interest in separating out the extreme minority that protest violently. There had been zero violence or destruction that day. A very well-behaved crowd exercising peaceful civil disobedience met by violence from police. In 2020.

misun78 6y ago
Good for you in being somewhere with zero violence in looting, while here in nyc, entire neighborhoods (soho, herald square etc) has been ransacked and cops run over to death. National guard cannot come soon enough to put away these perpetrators in jail.
baybal2 6y ago
Not insightful at all. > after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction. The thing is that they can. That's a very deliberate tactic, down to planting of provocators. If you been watching what's going on around the world, the allegations of that, including provocator planting, followed pretty much every major demonstration event. It's naive, if not silly, to use that "hey, he started it first!" argument at the time when the fact of confrontation happening is already obvious. The talk now should not be who started the violence, but how to end it, a peace treaty to say.
- kelvin0 6y ago
  Exactly. There exists an asymmetry in the dynamics of protesters vs police during a protest. Very simple: Anyone can be 'planted' in a group of protesters to start stirring up trouble (agent-provocateur). Then the police have 'justification' to use whatever amount of force they think is required. On the other hand, it's practically impossible for a regular citizen to be embedded into a riot police response unit. Add to that the police have practically no real oversight and investigate themselves (assuming internal affairs counts as police). One side can't fail (except morally), while the other side always will end up with the shorter end of the stick.

ooobit2 6y ago

Here's an idea, for whatever it's worth: Address the incentive to riot instead of attempting to assign full control and liability to one element over another. For all the obvious, on-the-nose proof that reactive states differ from proactive states, I find it very odd that people are still folding their arms and brandishing smug expressions for their equivalently useless ideas as soon as someone else's idea yields a critical failure. Critical thinking is not an art, nor a science, nor difficult. It just requires someone to maintain a consistent curiosity and skepticism for the utility of information. If someone tells you cats climb trees, you should automatically think, Not all cats can climb trees and How useful is this to me?. And if you have a cat, you might sequentially think, Do I have any trees that my cat could climb? and How much of a tree should I trim to prevent my cat from climbing it? and maybe Do I have a way to retrieve my cat from one of my trees? and so on and so forth. So, someone please explain why, given the seriousness everyone attributes to the lockdowns, to police brutality, etc. Just... why are you doing the equivalent of hearing that cats can climb trees, and then you think, My cat would never climb my trees, because my trees aren't cat-climbable trees, so that makes my cat, my trees and myself better than other cats, trees, and cat owners?

colechristensen 6y ago
Critical thinking is complicated and the subjects don't fit well in poster boards or chants, the results of critical thinking don't fit in with worldview discrimination "Does this idea fit in with my alignment or not"
- ooobit2 6y ago
  I just demonstrated critical thinking. It took me longer to type the cat example out than it did to think of it. So, if that was difficult and required too much effort, am I to expect that less effort is being put into addressing racism and climate change? How can so many people be a whole league behind me and the 20+ cigarettes I smoke every day, though I know they're going to kill me? I shouldn't look like I'm making great life choices here.

briandear 6y ago

> I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction. I have been in the middle of protests when I worked for Reuters and the difference between peaceful and violent is very tiny. I was in the no-man’s land between the KKK and the New Black Panthers in the wake of the James Byrd Jr. lynching and it went from frenetic but peaceful to riot in 8.3 seconds. Actual combat is a a lot less ambiguous and disorienting. Not defending police or condemning them, but when an airborne brick heads your way, it’s a pretty tall order to expect immediate and accurate identification of friend or foe. It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. The Charlottesville, VA protest by the extreme right wing however is a counterexample — but it’s an exception that proves the rule. The Tea Party protests were never violent. In almost every large-scale protest that has left and extreme left wing elements, looting, fires, and violence is a foregone conclusion. It’s historical record. It’s really tragic because pretty much all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death, but as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts, then a large portion of the population now starts discussing and being angry about that rather than the core issue.

sgustard 6y ago
> how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence "The Women’s March on Washington was likely the largest single-day demonstration in recorded US history" and entirely free of violence. > all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death "Outraged" is a strong term. "One more tragic item in the news which is quickly forgotten" is more accurate for most of white America. > as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts No longer forgotten, is what that achieves.
znpy 6y ago
> The Tea Party protests were never violent. There's a big difference in protesting because you're being taxed too much (in you opinion) and protesting because people with your same skin colour are being systematically targeted by police and killed for no reason.