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

• 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.
          • darawk 6y ago
            > "Usually". Evidence? I doubt that the police pre-emptively stop many crimes at all. They catch criminals _after_ they have committed crimes. Here's a long list of terrorist incidents, some of which were pre-emptively disrupted by the FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005 https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20... > 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. I don't really understand your point. I'm not arguing that they won't abuse their power. They will. They always do. The question is whether or not the abuses that might occur as the result of analyzing publicly available information are worse than the harms that might come from not doing so. I come down pretty squarely on the harms from not doing so being greater, but reasonable people can disagree, I suppose.
            • toofy 6y ago
              And almost every single one of those they had evidence, indications of which particular individuals to monitor/infiltrate. Often this was through reliable sources.
              • darawk 6y ago
                And where did they get that evidence?
            • rapnie 6y ago
              > I come down pretty squarely on the harms from not doing so being greater And this feeling you have may stem from another political narrative being created and amplified: the fear of 'the other'. The fear that justifies all of this to so many people. Sowing the FUD that e.g. most people from Mexico are "criminials, rapists, carrying disease", or that Moslims are terrorists. That terrorist sleeper cells may be everywhere. A gliding scale of xenophobia created for political purposes.
    • seph-reed 6y ago
      Easily. Without hesitation, obviously, hard yes. If the KKK wants to be a tiny minority of people who lack the nuance to direct their anger at anything other than a color of skin, maybe we need to work on our education system. If they haven't committed a crime, then either they haven't hurt anybody, or we need to work on our judicial system. Inevitably, the microscopic amount of good that could be done would be vastly outweighed by the chilling effect on every group that was trying to create positive change at the expense of the oligarchy. Aka: true patriots.
      • darawk 6y ago
        Well if you're willing to accept that the government should not keep tabs on racist organizations or militias, then I guess we've cashed out our disagreement to terminal values. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
        • seph-reed 6y ago
          You can think whatever you want. You can even think it with a bunch of people and hopefully not have to feel scared to think whatever is you will think, nor fear talking about whatever is you want to talk about. Even if that thing has something to do with creating real, actual change within our lifetimes.
        • squeaky-clean 6y ago
          I see you post on forums involving hackers and encryption. We're just going to keep tabs on you and other potential members of your militia, ok?
          • pnako 6y ago
            I suspect you're just disagreeing on what "keeping tabs" actually means. The government shouldn't put someone under (specific|personal) surveillance without strong evidence of course. But I don't see what prevents them from reading twitter, going into public chat rooms, etc.
    • monadic2 6y ago
      The FBI doesn’t appear to do a great job at preventing white supremacist domestic terrorism, so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
      • darawk 6y ago
        Relative to what? We have no idea how much terrorism there would be without the FBI.
        • minerjoe 6y ago
          We also have no idea how much terrorism we have due to the FBI, ala CONINTELPRO.
          • darawk 6y ago
            Sure. But a lack of concrete, precise information doesn't mean we can throw up our hands and just call them equivalent, either. The FBI disrupts quite a bit of terror activity, and quite a bit more never materializes because the FBI exists. They've certainly engaged in their fair share of abuses over the years, but I don't think you can seriously argue we'd be better off without them.
            • minerjoe 6y ago
              Um. Yes I can. It's in the same vein as letting a few guilty people go free to ensure that less innocent people get sent to prison. I'd rather still have Matin Luther King around than to have whatever the FBI claims to have disrupted.
              • darawk 6y ago
                The FBI didn't kill MLK, though. If you eliminated the FBI, you woulnd't get MLK back. But you would have a few hundred more serious terror attacks in the US history, probably a decent number of them against minorities.
    • dexterdog 6y ago
      Absolutely, yes.
    • jadell 6y ago
      Yes.
    • squeaky-clean 6y ago
      Yes
    • toofy 6y ago
      > Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime? There is an ocean of options in between “do nothing” and “surveil and database every citizen who potentially maybe, might, could exercise their constitutional protections and protest.” A vast amount of options.
      • darawk 6y ago
        Let's keep in mind what we're actually discussing here. We're talking about police monitoring public Twitter feeds. They're not tapping phones. They're not secretly infiltrating groups with undercover agents. Just reading stuff that's published in public, for all the world to see. Reading public messages seems like a super reasonable thing for the police to be doing, to keep tabs on groups that have recently engaged in disruption and violence. Whether those groups are right wing or left wing.
        • pnako 6y ago
          It's hard to disagree with this point, really. I don't see how you can prevent the police from reading stuff that's being broadcast for everyone else to see. And threats of violence, or evidence of organizing to cause violence, should be investigated.
          • Proziam 6y ago
            I think it's rather easy actually. The police aggregate vast sums of data and uses it in ways that the public does not understand, intend, or expect. It's not unlike the way people 'sign' away their privacy on the internet without being aware that their data will then be sold and resold and used against them. It is a common belief that information is a weapon, and it certainly can be used as one. So does it makes sense, at least from one perspective, that our information should not be legal to catalogue? After all, it is illegal in the U.S. for the government to create a registry of firearms owners because such a registry could be used against the people and its very existence would be an infringement on the rights of those people.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >Do you really want to take the position that the government cannot monitor any group until it commits a crime? Yes. That's better than the alternative. So many things can be construed as criminal that I don't think it's an impediment to the investigation of actual criminal in practice. If anything stops police from wasting our money surviving groups that are not actually threats to anything but the government wants under surveillance for political/ideological reasons.
      • tharne 6y ago
        That's a nice ideal, but ultimately very naive. Your idea would work great until a neo nazi group or a terrorist organization executed an attack killing a large number of people. Then everyone would be screaming at the government demanding to know why they weren't monitoring more so they could prevent just such an occurrence.
• elliekelly 6y ago
  I would agree, with the giant caveat that I would like those activities to be surveilled only upon a showing of probable cause and with judicial oversight. The government shouldn’t have carte blanche to “investigate” citizens who are not suspected of committing a crime.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • darawk 6y ago
    I agree in spirit here, but in practice in order to get probable cause of criminality or criminal intent, you need to do a little bit of surveillance/monitoring first. And it seems to me that a good compromise is "monitor publicly available media, like twitter to look for evidence of criminal intent, and then use more invasive tactics if you find it".
    • d2v 6y ago
      It takes a lot of faith in law enforcement to believe they won't abuse that power, especially given they are the target of criticism by these protests. The argument that it is illegal for them to abuse / misuse this information isn't very compelling either, given that they are the ones responsible for enforcing the laws that they would be breaking. I might be okay with this info just ending up in the hands of the FBI, but I definitely wouldn't want it winding up in the hands of my local law enforcement agencies, who are known for harassing and intimidating critics.
      • darawk 6y ago
        It's not that I think they won't abuse it. I know that they'll abuse it. The question we have to ask is whether their abuses will be worse than the consequences of total inaction on their part. And I think that balances in favor of surveillance, when it comes to public social media data, but certainly reasonable people can disagree.
    • drak0n1c 6y ago
      The compromise you're suggesting is what Dataminr is doing. Monitoring publicly available media like Twitter to look for evidence of criminal intent (albeit in an automated fashion).
• titzer 6y ago
  > that I would like surveiled This part of your comment really, really rubs me the wrong way. Your personal inclinations absolutely cannot direct the apparatus of state on a whim. Either those groups are suspected of criminal activity or conspiracy to commit criminal activity, which is probable cause for surveillance, or they aren't.
  • darawk 6y ago
    > This part of your comment really, really rubs me the wrong way. Your personal inclinations absolutely cannot direct the apparatus of state on a whim Last I checked, we lived in a democracy. A democracy is composed of the collective whims of the citizens. I'm simply registering mine. You're free to oppose if you so desire. My point though is simply to illustrate the ideological contradiction latent in the comment I was referring to. > Either those groups are suspected of criminal activity or conspiracy to commit criminal activity, which is probable cause for surveillance, or they aren't. Indeed. So, you are opposed to government surveillance of neo-nazi groups that eschew violence, then?
    • titzer 6y ago
      > Last I checked, we lived in a democracy. The United States is a Constitutional Republic with rights explicitly enshrined therein, including its amendments. You are more than welcome to your opinion on violating constitutional rights but if you want the rule of law then you should follow the constitutional process to add an amendment in order to revoke said rights. > So, you are opposed to government surveillance of neo-nazi groups that eschew violence, then? Yes! You either believe in free speech and freedom of assembly or you don't. If these groups are a clear and present danger, show probable cause already. If they aren't, counter-protest, shame them, embarrass them, whatever. More often than not, hate groups can't help but cross that line to violence or are already linked to violence. It's really almost an oxymoron to talk about neo-Nazi groups that "eschew violence" since they almost always believe in genocide and the violent overthrow of the government and are working towards it. I know it's a tempting rhetorical device, but it's really a strawman.
      • 6y ago
• Hello71 6y ago
  Feminists. Anti-war activists. Civil rights activists. Martin Luther King Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
• dfxm12 6y ago
  Cops are certainly aware of white supremacist activities, but they don't need to surveil anyone: In the 2006 bulletin, the FBI detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police in order to disrupt investigations against fellow members and recruit other supremacists. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i... Also, let's not forget the KKK's history of organized crime. They've earned any surveillance they're under. It's far from a straight comparison between them and ad hoc protesters when you're talking about "protected activities".