13 ms·

The first obvious point is that protesting is a constitutionally protected activity, as is any political speech on Twitter, and this is interpreted extremely wi

The first obvious point is that protesting is a constitutionally protected activity, as is any political speech on Twitter, and this is interpreted extremely widely - so why are public institutions in the business of surveilling this legal, ney protected activity? But there is more to it. Courts have long recognized that state activity that can be reasonably construed to chill exercise of ones constitutional freedoms is similarly an infringement on those rights, and certainly take a very dim look on any sort of surveillance of political activity.

slg 6y ago
In my opinion, this goes because just surveilling a legal protest. These protests were specifically against the police's abuse of their power. This resulted in a police response that was much more adversarial than a traditional legal protest would face. Aiding the police in surveilling protesters allows police to further abuse their power and target protesters for retribution. Providing this monitoring isn't that different than providing them with tear gas or rubber bullets. It is actively contributing to violence against people simply using their constitutional rights.
- Natsu 6y ago
  At least 17 people were murdered during this time and a few more since this was posted: https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/06/03/twitter-user-compiles-list-of-victims-of-recent-riots/ https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/06/03/twitter-user-compile... The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, but they can and have identified looters and murderers who have tried to discredit the fact that black lives matter with their actions. So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals who undermine the message of the many peaceful protesters.
  - thekid314 6y ago
    In Boston I was standing beside the police as the let looting occur. There were only about 5 shops broken into and only 1 that I saw looted, but the police were standing 10 feet away from one and didn't do anything about it.
    - toofy 6y ago
      I’ve seen many videos of the same types of behaviors. My suspicion is things like this are intentional. Police are incredibly aware of how things are framed in media reports and they’re very aware of how little the media questions their actions–though I suspect, from their own actions repeatedly caught in video, this benefit of the doubt they've been afforded may be slipping away.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        I genuinely believe that they let the looting happen either to punish the citizens who dared question them, or in the hopes that we’d focus on the looting and not the cops beating citizens down.
    - musu98 6y ago
      Only 5 shops? Jeez. What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? With anti police sentiment so high here, it would be a thousand times higher on the street. I'm not sure stopping the looting there and then would be a good idea.
      - rumanator 6y ago
        > What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? Isn't that their job?
    - unishark 6y ago
      In other big cities, cops are kept on a very tight leash during protests and need permission from leadership to intervene.
    - dfxm12 6y ago
      In some areas, the cops are in league with the violent counter-protesters, which is why they watch them assault law-abiding people and do nothing about it: ...dozens of police looked on, in some cases chatting and sharing pizza with the group. They included Officer Joseph Goodwin Jr., whose brother Richie shoved one protester and was photographed punching another. [0] Maybe it's the same thing with the looters. 0 - https://www.inquirer.com/news/fishtown-philadelphia-community-meeting-zoom-protesters-vigilantes-police-20200630.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/fishtown-philadelphia-communit...
  - newen 6y ago
    It’s things like this [1]. Doesn’t matter if it’s cops who really did it. People would like for the cops to not have a list of anti-police protestors. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-activist-deaths-black-lives-matter-20190317-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-acti...
  - squeaky-clean 6y ago
    > The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, "police SHOULD NOT go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech". FTFY They can do lots of things they should not. They should not run cars into protesters. They should not push over old men who are not causing trouble. They should not shoot unarmed people in the back who are running away. They should not kill a black man by choking him to death with their knee over a false counterfeit bill complaint. And yet all these things happen. The police should not go after innocent protesters, but there's no way in hell I will believe that they will not, or are not doing so.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      > They should not kill a black man ... over a false counterfeit bill complaint. They shouldn’t kill even for legitimate counterfeit bill complaints. Police should use the absolute minimum force required to both apprehend suspects (as limited by relevant law) and is required by public safety; not one ounce more. If someone is accused of committing a crime, it’s up to the courts and the jury to determine if they’re guilty and what the punishment shall me, the police don’t get to play judge, jury, and executioner.
      - mlang23 6y ago
        Good summary. Reminds me that I am very thankful to $deity that I am not an U.S. citizen.
      - sitkack 6y ago
        Very much related to your last statement. Why Some Cops Think They're The Punisher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM7z7pDmEC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM7z7pDmEC4
  - slg 6y ago
    I hadn't heard of that website, but this is how the author of that article describes herself: >Sharon Rondeau has operated The Post & Email since April 2010, focusing on the Obama birth certificate investigation... Linking to a website like that is going to destroy whatever point you were trying to make for a large portion of your audience.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      It links to primary sources on everything, so this seems to me more a distraction than a meaningful critique. The fact that this is all easily verifiable, yet hard to find compilations of, is a critique in the other direction.
      - slg 6y ago
        I wasn't debating the facts of your argument. I was simply telling you that the debate is already lost as soon as you link to a site that still claims Obama wasn't born in the US. In many people's minds, it isn't worth the energy to dispute your point because you are already displaying symptoms of someone who lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to assess and process basic facts. If the only important pieces of that article are the links to primary sources, you could have linked to them yourself. That has potential to make you sound like a conspiracy theorist tying photos on your wall together with red yarn. However that is still better than linking to a conspiracy theorist website that seemingly proves the same point.
        Natsu 6y ago
        I wasn't trying to direct that at you, personally and I do understand what you're saying. This instinct to discredit the source is literally what's killing the news right now. People gladly swallow outrage porn, but when they see a fact compilation, their first instinct is to evaluate the one who compiled it (who is irrelevant to said facts) instead of engaging with the facts themselves. Even to the point of missing that it's an honest compilation and includes those killed by police during the protests. But he's the biased one here, right? Besides, that's a silly shibboleth all told. I voted for Obama and I wouldn't have cared even if he was born in Kenya (he wasn't). McCain was born in Panama and I didn't care about that, either.
  - toofy 6y ago
    > So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals Because someone can be against physical violence and simultaneously think surveilling everyone is wrong.
  - tharne 6y ago
    > So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals who undermine the message of the many peaceful protesters. It's because human beings are tribal by nature and tend to take social queues from those around them. SV and most major metro areas are overwhelming liberal, and right now it's trendy in those circles to issue blanket condemnations of all police activity with little regard for nuance. In a lot of ways it's very similar to George W. Bush and co.'s "You with us or against us" mentally shortly after 9/11. Then, like now, any nuance or pointing out of grey areas were seen as a form of disloyalty and siding with the enemy, despite the matter itself being very complex, and yes, nuanced.
- kyleblarson 6y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/31/photos-new-york-city-the-morning-after-it-erupted-in-protests.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/31/photos-new-york-city-the-mor...
bzb3 6y ago
Practically all activities that are legal and protected are surveiled in one way or the other precisely to make sure they stay within the confines of legality.
- behringer 6y ago
  And also to arrest the leaders of said protected activities.
- pstuart 6y ago
  That's a charitable interpretation. For example, infiltrating groups with undercover officers goes beyond making sure that said group is "legal".
  - darawk 6y ago
    Are you opposed to the KKK being infiltrated for surveillance purposes?
    - FilterSweep 6y ago
      theyre not classified as a terrorist group, antifa (a far more ambiguous group) which was at the protests is. the inaction toward the KKK is implicit consent toward their activities. I’m not certain how you could draw a connection given the two groups respective statuses.
      - darawk 6y ago
        My point is that they are both engaged in protected activities of free association and speech. If the standard is that the government should not surveil people engaged in those activities, then the KKK would have to be exempted too. Or, alternatively, you could formulate a more nuanced criteria for when the government should or should not surveil people.
        pstuart 6y ago
jerrybee 6y ago
Aren’t the tweets ingested by Dataminr public? I agree this would be problematic if they were using private data, but using data available to anyone on the platform feels like fair game.
- stefan_ 6y ago
  If the supreme court can learn new tricks, I'm confident HN can finally learn the difference between a police officer on his beat and a fully-automated data firehose mined in realtime or other perversions of technology. Witness United States v. Jones, the opinion delivered by Scalia: The Government contends that the Harlan standard shows that no search occurred here, since Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the area of the Jeep accessed by Government agents (its underbody) and in the locations of the Jeep on the public roads, which were visible to all. But we need not address the Government’s contentions, because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, we must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.”
  - starfallg 6y ago
    This is an ever present issue as technology advances and what was not possible to efficiently or effectively do before is now possible through these new techniques. And it is not limited to government and law enforcement either, the worst transgressions are from the private sector and political campaigns. As a society we are only starting to become aware of the implications. "Fair game" is the biggest misnomer - it is anything but.
  - jerrybee 6y ago
    Viewing a public tweet is not trespassing - its the point of the entire platform. US vs Jones determined that installing a tracker on a private vehicle is trespassing. As a tax payer, I would prefer my tax dollars are used as efficiently as possible - so if the alternative is to hire human police officers to manually search twitter and create reports then I would oppose that in favor of automated technology. I don't think the technology is the debate here, it simply enables us as humans to be more efficient. The decision to surveil is the debate here, and I can see it both ways. Do I think the police should be aware of a large gathering (regardless of purpose) in their cities? Yes, I think that's prudent for a variety of public safety reasons. Do I want this done in a way that does not interfere with protests or have a chilling effect? Yes, absolutely.
zo1 6y ago
Because the likelihood of protests turning violent and damaging property is high? I really don't see how we can say that protesting is a "protected activity" and yet not allow people to have an actual say in how things should be run. Almost as if we want people to think they can have a say (by protesting - yay, it's "protected"!), but not really give them an avenue to do so that is meaningful and likely to change things, except for physically showing up in concerted numbers to prove their opinion? From my perspective, protests appear to just be there to amplify loud minority opinions and distort the discussion at this point. For all we know, we're hearing the vocal minority of people, instead of the actual voices that need hearing. If we really wanted to fix protesting, to take an example: Homosexual discrimination at the workplace. Have a platform or "offline vote" if you will where all homosexual individuals are asked to rate their work experience, whether they had been discriminated against and what action they think should be taken, with the assumption that if it's found, that action needs to be taken. They then "vote", and we see the results. I bet that if the majority saw the results, they'd rightfully make their mind up pretty quickly. Instead, we forced homosexual individuals for years/decades to protest and complain about the things that were rightfully affecting them, and only once it reached some arbitrary critical mass, we as the rest of society decided to change. What were we "waiting" for exactly? For people to change their minds? People to cave in after being worn down even though they don't agree? Societal opinions to shift? A new generation grown up with the movement being taught to them by elementary school teachers? Cultural norms to adapt? Also, if we did get there and such a vote isn't followed up by actual action, then maybe our system of government is broken and we should fix it. Perhaps for that we should go out and protest.
- jhardy54 6y ago
  Are you volunteering to amplify the opinions or marginalized coworkers, or are you just trying to get people to stop protesting? Why not both? If your way gets better results then I'm sure people will stop the exhausting and dangerous work of protesting and civil disobedience.
- mardifoufs 6y ago
  >For all we know, we're hearing the vocal minority of people, instead of the actual voices that need hearing. Yes, and they have the right to protest too if they feel like their own voices aren't being heard. That's the beauty of freedom. You can't seriously be against people protesting simply because you don't want to do it too. It's like arguing against voting because some (or even most) people don't vote and those who do are usually more "vocal" or political. It's a very dangerous mentality
darawk 6y ago
> The first obvious point is that protesting is a constitutionally protected activity, as is any political speech on Twitter, and this is interpreted extremely widely - so why are public institutions in the business of surveilling this legal, ney protected activity? There are lots of things that are protected activities that I would like surveiled. Militias. The KKK. Neo-nazis. I certainly hope the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are keeping tabs on their activities.
- rapind 6y ago
  Think deeply about what you're proposing.
  - darawk 6y ago
    I am thinking about it. Think about what you are proposing. Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime?
    - taneq 6y ago
      I think that was the general idea, yes. Or at least, before they have strong indication that it’s likely to commit a crime.
      - darawk 6y ago
        How should they determine when a group is about to commit a crime though? Usually that's done via pre-emptive surveillance. If they are not allowed to surveil groups that they merely suspect might one day commit crimes, it will be very hard for them to know anything about their activities before the crimes actually get committed. It's certainly possible that this is just the price of freedom. But I think its a rather heavy price.
        minerjoe 6y ago
        "Usually". Evidence? I doubt that the police pre-emptively stop many crimes at all. They catch criminals _after_ they have committed crimes. Even if they were able to catch every crime before it started, ala minority report, they, based on past behavior, would most likely seriously abuse that power hence the strong opposition here to having them even come close to posessing that power.
cwhiz 6y ago
Twitter is a private platform. You have no free speech rights on Twitter. You have no rights at all, other than the Terms of Service. The Bill of Rights protects you from the government. Twitter is not the government.
- olefoo 6y ago
  Twitter is a private platform, it's true. But the GOVERNMENT is prohibited from using the services of a private contractor to chill the exercise of one's first amendment rights. Not that that will limit the creation of ethically dubious firms like ClearviewAI or Palantir.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    The government can’t chill your right to tweet because you don’t have a right to tweet. Your tweets are public and you don’t own them, not even your own. There is no law restricting the governments right to collect public data.
- paulmd 6y ago
  The problem with this argument is that it's the setup for en-masse dragnet surveillance. After all you have no rights on what you give to third parties, and you also have no expectation of privacy, so surely there's nothing wrong with the government scooping it up without even needing a warrant. In the 21st century, our "papers and effects" are digital, online, and stored by third parties, and the law hasn't kept up with that.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    If you want to argue that the law should be changed then that is fine. But it doesn’t change the current reality.
    - paulmd 6y ago
      Yes, when a government has found a clever end-run around the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure that definitely needs to be fixed. Not sure why exactly you think "aha, so you admit it is legal!" is a particularly insightful thing to say, obviously all authoritarian governments have decided that they have the legal right to intrude on their citizens' privacy and thus have self-determined their actions to be legal. That has nothing to do with whether it's the morally right thing, or is in keeping with the spirit of the constitution. To wit: China has determined that they have the legal right to disperse assemblies in Taiwan. That is legal there too. Do you think that is the right thing? Kohlberg addresses this with his stages of moral development - some people think "because it is law, therefore it is moral", and that's really as much thought as they need to put into it to justify it to themselves. They don't bother addressing whether it should be legal, and that seems to be the thrust of your argument.
austincheney 6y ago
Political speech on Twitter is not constitutionally protected. Twitter is a private platform that can legally block any speech with or without government interference so long as that interference is not present in the capacity of a government agent. The first amendment is limited to protections against government interference.
Waterfall 6y ago
I think it's stupid to post this on Twitter and Facebook. I know someone who was protesting the policy of taking away guns from people deemed a threat and posting his guns. Sure enough his guns were taken away. The interpretation are too broad and it's better not to advertise anything that can be detrimental to yourself. I don't support the fact that this happened but I don't believe it's a good idea to give away information that can be hurtful to you. Activism happens in the court of law, not your Facebook or Twitter rants that make you seem unhinged and gives reasons to "lawfully investigate" you.
belorn 6y ago
> protesting is a constitutionally protected activity As someone who don't live in the US but which country has a bunch of laws protecting protesting under specific conditions, I wonder a bit about that statement. Looking around for an answer, while the US governments may not deny a person's constitutional right to peacefully protest, they may regulate the time, place, and manner in which the protest is conducted. They can also deny permits as long as they have a compelling, objective reason to do so. So its a mixed bag when it comes to the US courts, and the question that seems to have most significance is what is or isn't an compelling objective reason. In order to sue the court you would need to both demonstrate the infringement of the right, and that the government does not have objective reasons (such as keeping order). I suspect the result of such court case would not be obvious, but rather uncertain with a lot of variation based the judges in question.

slg 6y ago

In my opinion, this goes because just surveilling a legal protest. These protests were specifically against the police's abuse of their power. This resulted in a police response that was much more adversarial than a traditional legal protest would face. Aiding the police in surveilling protesters allows police to further abuse their power and target protesters for retribution. Providing this monitoring isn't that different than providing them with tear gas or rubber bullets. It is actively contributing to violence against people simply using their constitutional rights.

Natsu 6y ago
At least 17 people were murdered during this time and a few more since this was posted: https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/06/03/twitter-user-compiles-list-of-victims-of-recent-riots/ https://www.thepostemail.com/2020/06/03/twitter-user-compile... The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, but they can and have identified looters and murderers who have tried to discredit the fact that black lives matter with their actions. So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals who undermine the message of the many peaceful protesters.
- thekid314 6y ago
  In Boston I was standing beside the police as the let looting occur. There were only about 5 shops broken into and only 1 that I saw looted, but the police were standing 10 feet away from one and didn't do anything about it.
  - toofy 6y ago
    I’ve seen many videos of the same types of behaviors. My suspicion is things like this are intentional. Police are incredibly aware of how things are framed in media reports and they’re very aware of how little the media questions their actions–though I suspect, from their own actions repeatedly caught in video, this benefit of the doubt they've been afforded may be slipping away.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I genuinely believe that they let the looting happen either to punish the citizens who dared question them, or in the hopes that we’d focus on the looting and not the cops beating citizens down.
  - musu98 6y ago
    Only 5 shops? Jeez. What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? With anti police sentiment so high here, it would be a thousand times higher on the street. I'm not sure stopping the looting there and then would be a good idea.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      > What did you expect the police to do? Stop the mobs while the looting happens? Isn't that their job?
  - unishark 6y ago
    In other big cities, cops are kept on a very tight leash during protests and need permission from leadership to intervene.
  - dfxm12 6y ago
    In some areas, the cops are in league with the violent counter-protesters, which is why they watch them assault law-abiding people and do nothing about it: ...dozens of police looked on, in some cases chatting and sharing pizza with the group. They included Officer Joseph Goodwin Jr., whose brother Richie shoved one protester and was photographed punching another. [0] Maybe it's the same thing with the looters. 0 - https://www.inquirer.com/news/fishtown-philadelphia-community-meeting-zoom-protesters-vigilantes-police-20200630.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/fishtown-philadelphia-communit...
- newen 6y ago
  It’s things like this [1]. Doesn’t matter if it’s cops who really did it. People would like for the cops to not have a list of anti-police protestors. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-activist-deaths-black-lives-matter-20190317-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-ferguson-acti...
- squeaky-clean 6y ago
  > The posts are public and the police cannot go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech, "police SHOULD NOT go after anyone for simply engaging in protected speech". FTFY They can do lots of things they should not. They should not run cars into protesters. They should not push over old men who are not causing trouble. They should not shoot unarmed people in the back who are running away. They should not kill a black man by choking him to death with their knee over a false counterfeit bill complaint. And yet all these things happen. The police should not go after innocent protesters, but there's no way in hell I will believe that they will not, or are not doing so.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    > They should not kill a black man ... over a false counterfeit bill complaint. They shouldn’t kill even for legitimate counterfeit bill complaints. Police should use the absolute minimum force required to both apprehend suspects (as limited by relevant law) and is required by public safety; not one ounce more. If someone is accused of committing a crime, it’s up to the courts and the jury to determine if they’re guilty and what the punishment shall me, the police don’t get to play judge, jury, and executioner.
    - mlang23 6y ago
      Good summary. Reminds me that I am very thankful to $deity that I am not an U.S. citizen.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      Very much related to your last statement. Why Some Cops Think They're The Punisher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM7z7pDmEC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM7z7pDmEC4
- slg 6y ago
  I hadn't heard of that website, but this is how the author of that article describes herself: >Sharon Rondeau has operated The Post & Email since April 2010, focusing on the Obama birth certificate investigation... Linking to a website like that is going to destroy whatever point you were trying to make for a large portion of your audience.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    It links to primary sources on everything, so this seems to me more a distraction than a meaningful critique. The fact that this is all easily verifiable, yet hard to find compilations of, is a critique in the other direction.
    - slg 6y ago
      I wasn't debating the facts of your argument. I was simply telling you that the debate is already lost as soon as you link to a site that still claims Obama wasn't born in the US. In many people's minds, it isn't worth the energy to dispute your point because you are already displaying symptoms of someone who lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to assess and process basic facts. If the only important pieces of that article are the links to primary sources, you could have linked to them yourself. That has potential to make you sound like a conspiracy theorist tying photos on your wall together with red yarn. However that is still better than linking to a conspiracy theorist website that seemingly proves the same point.
      - Natsu 6y ago
        I wasn't trying to direct that at you, personally and I do understand what you're saying. This instinct to discredit the source is literally what's killing the news right now. People gladly swallow outrage porn, but when they see a fact compilation, their first instinct is to evaluate the one who compiled it (who is irrelevant to said facts) instead of engaging with the facts themselves. Even to the point of missing that it's an honest compilation and includes those killed by police during the protests. But he's the biased one here, right? Besides, that's a silly shibboleth all told. I voted for Obama and I wouldn't have cared even if he was born in Kenya (he wasn't). McCain was born in Panama and I didn't care about that, either.
- toofy 6y ago
  > So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals Because someone can be against physical violence and simultaneously think surveilling everyone is wrong.
- tharne 6y ago
  > So I'm not clear why so many people are against the police catching the violent criminals who undermine the message of the many peaceful protesters. It's because human beings are tribal by nature and tend to take social queues from those around them. SV and most major metro areas are overwhelming liberal, and right now it's trendy in those circles to issue blanket condemnations of all police activity with little regard for nuance. In a lot of ways it's very similar to George W. Bush and co.'s "You with us or against us" mentally shortly after 9/11. Then, like now, any nuance or pointing out of grey areas were seen as a form of disloyalty and siding with the enemy, despite the matter itself being very complex, and yes, nuanced.
kyleblarson 6y ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/31/photos-new-york-city-the-morning-after-it-erupted-in-protests.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/31/photos-new-york-city-the-mor...

bzb3 6y ago

Practically all activities that are legal and protected are surveiled in one way or the other precisely to make sure they stay within the confines of legality.

behringer 6y ago
And also to arrest the leaders of said protected activities.
pstuart 6y ago
That's a charitable interpretation. For example, infiltrating groups with undercover officers goes beyond making sure that said group is "legal".
- darawk 6y ago
  Are you opposed to the KKK being infiltrated for surveillance purposes?
  - FilterSweep 6y ago
    theyre not classified as a terrorist group, antifa (a far more ambiguous group) which was at the protests is. the inaction toward the KKK is implicit consent toward their activities. I’m not certain how you could draw a connection given the two groups respective statuses.
    - darawk 6y ago
      My point is that they are both engaged in protected activities of free association and speech. If the standard is that the government should not surveil people engaged in those activities, then the KKK would have to be exempted too. Or, alternatively, you could formulate a more nuanced criteria for when the government should or should not surveil people.
      - pstuart 6y ago

jerrybee 6y ago

Aren’t the tweets ingested by Dataminr public? I agree this would be problematic if they were using private data, but using data available to anyone on the platform feels like fair game.

stefan_ 6y ago
If the supreme court can learn new tricks, I'm confident HN can finally learn the difference between a police officer on his beat and a fully-automated data firehose mined in realtime or other perversions of technology. Witness United States v. Jones, the opinion delivered by Scalia: The Government contends that the Harlan standard shows that no search occurred here, since Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the area of the Jeep accessed by Government agents (its underbody) and in the locations of the Jeep on the public roads, which were visible to all. But we need not address the Government’s contentions, because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, we must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.”
- starfallg 6y ago
  This is an ever present issue as technology advances and what was not possible to efficiently or effectively do before is now possible through these new techniques. And it is not limited to government and law enforcement either, the worst transgressions are from the private sector and political campaigns. As a society we are only starting to become aware of the implications. "Fair game" is the biggest misnomer - it is anything but.
- jerrybee 6y ago
  Viewing a public tweet is not trespassing - its the point of the entire platform. US vs Jones determined that installing a tracker on a private vehicle is trespassing. As a tax payer, I would prefer my tax dollars are used as efficiently as possible - so if the alternative is to hire human police officers to manually search twitter and create reports then I would oppose that in favor of automated technology. I don't think the technology is the debate here, it simply enables us as humans to be more efficient. The decision to surveil is the debate here, and I can see it both ways. Do I think the police should be aware of a large gathering (regardless of purpose) in their cities? Yes, I think that's prudent for a variety of public safety reasons. Do I want this done in a way that does not interfere with protests or have a chilling effect? Yes, absolutely.

zo1 6y ago

Because the likelihood of protests turning violent and damaging property is high? I really don't see how we can say that protesting is a "protected activity" and yet not allow people to have an actual say in how things should be run. Almost as if we want people to think they can have a say (by protesting - yay, it's "protected"!), but not really give them an avenue to do so that is meaningful and likely to change things, except for physically showing up in concerted numbers to prove their opinion? From my perspective, protests appear to just be there to amplify loud minority opinions and distort the discussion at this point. For all we know, we're hearing the vocal minority of people, instead of the actual voices that need hearing. If we really wanted to fix protesting, to take an example: Homosexual discrimination at the workplace. Have a platform or "offline vote" if you will where all homosexual individuals are asked to rate their work experience, whether they had been discriminated against and what action they think should be taken, with the assumption that if it's found, that action needs to be taken. They then "vote", and we see the results. I bet that if the majority saw the results, they'd rightfully make their mind up pretty quickly. Instead, we forced homosexual individuals for years/decades to protest and complain about the things that were rightfully affecting them, and only once it reached some arbitrary critical mass, we as the rest of society decided to change. What were we "waiting" for exactly? For people to change their minds? People to cave in after being worn down even though they don't agree? Societal opinions to shift? A new generation grown up with the movement being taught to them by elementary school teachers? Cultural norms to adapt? Also, if we did get there and such a vote isn't followed up by actual action, then maybe our system of government is broken and we should fix it. Perhaps for that we should go out and protest.

jhardy54 6y ago
Are you volunteering to amplify the opinions or marginalized coworkers, or are you just trying to get people to stop protesting? Why not both? If your way gets better results then I'm sure people will stop the exhausting and dangerous work of protesting and civil disobedience.
mardifoufs 6y ago
>For all we know, we're hearing the vocal minority of people, instead of the actual voices that need hearing. Yes, and they have the right to protest too if they feel like their own voices aren't being heard. That's the beauty of freedom. You can't seriously be against people protesting simply because you don't want to do it too. It's like arguing against voting because some (or even most) people don't vote and those who do are usually more "vocal" or political. It's a very dangerous mentality

darawk 6y ago

> The first obvious point is that protesting is a constitutionally protected activity, as is any political speech on Twitter, and this is interpreted extremely widely - so why are public institutions in the business of surveilling this legal, ney protected activity? There are lots of things that are protected activities that I would like surveiled. Militias. The KKK. Neo-nazis. I certainly hope the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are keeping tabs on their activities.

rapind 6y ago
Think deeply about what you're proposing.
- darawk 6y ago
  I am thinking about it. Think about what you are proposing. Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime?
  - taneq 6y ago
    I think that was the general idea, yes. Or at least, before they have strong indication that it’s likely to commit a crime.
    - darawk 6y ago
      How should they determine when a group is about to commit a crime though? Usually that's done via pre-emptive surveillance. If they are not allowed to surveil groups that they merely suspect might one day commit crimes, it will be very hard for them to know anything about their activities before the crimes actually get committed. It's certainly possible that this is just the price of freedom. But I think its a rather heavy price.
      - minerjoe 6y ago
        "Usually". Evidence? I doubt that the police pre-emptively stop many crimes at all. They catch criminals _after_ they have committed crimes. Even if they were able to catch every crime before it started, ala minority report, they, based on past behavior, would most likely seriously abuse that power hence the strong opposition here to having them even come close to posessing that power.

cwhiz 6y ago

Twitter is a private platform. You have no free speech rights on Twitter. You have no rights at all, other than the Terms of Service. The Bill of Rights protects you from the government. Twitter is not the government.

olefoo 6y ago
Twitter is a private platform, it's true. But the GOVERNMENT is prohibited from using the services of a private contractor to chill the exercise of one's first amendment rights. Not that that will limit the creation of ethically dubious firms like ClearviewAI or Palantir.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  The government can’t chill your right to tweet because you don’t have a right to tweet. Your tweets are public and you don’t own them, not even your own. There is no law restricting the governments right to collect public data.
paulmd 6y ago
The problem with this argument is that it's the setup for en-masse dragnet surveillance. After all you have no rights on what you give to third parties, and you also have no expectation of privacy, so surely there's nothing wrong with the government scooping it up without even needing a warrant. In the 21st century, our "papers and effects" are digital, online, and stored by third parties, and the law hasn't kept up with that.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  If you want to argue that the law should be changed then that is fine. But it doesn’t change the current reality.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    Yes, when a government has found a clever end-run around the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure that definitely needs to be fixed. Not sure why exactly you think "aha, so you admit it is legal!" is a particularly insightful thing to say, obviously all authoritarian governments have decided that they have the legal right to intrude on their citizens' privacy and thus have self-determined their actions to be legal. That has nothing to do with whether it's the morally right thing, or is in keeping with the spirit of the constitution. To wit: China has determined that they have the legal right to disperse assemblies in Taiwan. That is legal there too. Do you think that is the right thing? Kohlberg addresses this with his stages of moral development - some people think "because it is law, therefore it is moral", and that's really as much thought as they need to put into it to justify it to themselves. They don't bother addressing whether it should be legal, and that seems to be the thrust of your argument.

austincheney 6y ago

Political speech on Twitter is not constitutionally protected. Twitter is a private platform that can legally block any speech with or without government interference so long as that interference is not present in the capacity of a government agent. The first amendment is limited to protections against government interference.

Waterfall 6y ago

I think it's stupid to post this on Twitter and Facebook. I know someone who was protesting the policy of taking away guns from people deemed a threat and posting his guns. Sure enough his guns were taken away. The interpretation are too broad and it's better not to advertise anything that can be detrimental to yourself. I don't support the fact that this happened but I don't believe it's a good idea to give away information that can be hurtful to you. Activism happens in the court of law, not your Facebook or Twitter rants that make you seem unhinged and gives reasons to "lawfully investigate" you.

belorn 6y ago

> protesting is a constitutionally protected activity As someone who don't live in the US but which country has a bunch of laws protecting protesting under specific conditions, I wonder a bit about that statement. Looking around for an answer, while the US governments may not deny a person's constitutional right to peacefully protest, they may regulate the time, place, and manner in which the protest is conducted. They can also deny permits as long as they have a compelling, objective reason to do so. So its a mixed bag when it comes to the US courts, and the question that seems to have most significance is what is or isn't an compelling objective reason. In order to sue the court you would need to both demonstrate the infringement of the right, and that the government does not have objective reasons (such as keeping order). I suspect the result of such court case would not be obvious, but rather uncertain with a lot of variation based the judges in question.