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Well, if the police want to? Basically yes. That is how the police work. They monitor the world for things they don't like and police them. We can't pre-empt ju

by roenxi 2y ago

Well, if the police want to? Basically yes. That is how the police work. They monitor the world for things they don't like and police them. We can't pre-empt judgement calls since the courts are retrospective systems, and the police have to be able to monitor public information for things they think are threats. If you have another option for how policing is going to work feel free to put it forward but it is going to be pretty radical. We have this complex system of rules, lawyers and judges to try and reign in the excesses, but at the end of the day there isn't any getting around the basic flaws in human nature or the requirement that the police need the power to investigate things they do not like. The police acting on their intelligence gathering in the sense of interfering with the lives of others is something that can be prohibited, but making a list of people isn't threatening enough or easy enough to detect. You may not like some specific list. The mafia may not like some specific list. The police must be protected from interest groups objecting to specific lists or the whole system won't work.

mulmen 2y ago
You have a deep misunderstanding of how law enforcement works. Police are there to investigate after a crime has occurred or to intervene to stop a crime in progress. There is no predictive mandate. When police start trying to predict the future they see the public as monsters.
- roenxi 2y ago
  But they do think a crime is in progress and has occured. People have been charged. That is why they were keeping the lists! These aren't lists of people to get Christmas hampers, these are lists of people the police expect to charge with crimes. Even if the police in this instance are, for the sake of argument, irredeemably corrupt there may be literally nothing they are going to do with these lists except call people criminals. Otherwise they'd keep them in a private capacity. It isn't reasonable to preemptively declare that the police can't suspect people of being criminals. These aren't matters that can be preemptively dealt with by adding rules or restrictions on the police reading public information. It has to be done in review.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    > But they do think a crime is in progress and has occured. Yes, crimes like having mud on your feet or a lawyer's phone number written on your skin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Cop_City#March_2023_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Cop_City#March_2023_prote... > these are lists of people the police expect to charge with crimes. Yes, that's the problem. These people aren't criminals. These are people that went to study groups, sometimes for unrelated reasons. It's politically motivated. The surveillance happened before any alleged crime. It's indefensible.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I suspect I'm not the one who has a deep misunderstanding here. How do you expect this to work? The police were tracking a bunch of people they were suspicious of with lists. Then several of them (I assume there is overlap here) have been charged with crimes. They may, in fact, be criminals. They probably are criminals, the US has a lot of dangerous and misguided law on the books that criminalises reasonable activity. Unless you happen to be a judge or a whip in a legislative body, you don't have the power to arbitrarily declare who is and is not a criminal based on your preferences. Odds are your entire community is a minority that lacks that power on many issues that are important to you. The way this works, and the only way it can work, is the police decide who they think are criminals and then there is a review afterwards of whether the police were reasonable or not. If you think they're doing a particularly terrible job then the review might result in all sorts of actions but it isn't a reasonable position to say that the police can't use public evidence when deciding who they think the criminals are. That is a view that will lead to silly results.
      - soulofmischief 2y ago
        Unfortunately, this simply does not hold up in reality, wherein police routinely stalk and harass individuals, to the point that the police decide to fabricate criminal evidence just to prove themselves right. I would know, this is exactly what happened to me, as I mentioned in another comment. An example of police organizations surveilling groups of people who are against a gas pipeline running through their lands: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/surveillance-state-descends-dakota-access-pipeline-spirit-camp https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/surveillance-state-des... Are they criminals for organizing and petitioning the government to relent? Example, from my own city, of how police organizations routinely fabricate evidence, typically against minorities and those the police have decided they "do not like" and "could be criminals". Unfortunately, my own hometown was not included in this investigation and my conviction wasn't overturned. https://www.wbrz.com/news/nakamoto-how-corruption-in-brpd-led-to-hundreds-of-dropped-drug-charges https://www.wbrz.com/news/nakamoto-how-corruption-in-brpd-le... What you fail to take into account is the average academic and emotional intelligence of the type of person who finds themselves working in a US police force, given the low pay, high stress and allure of wielding soft power. There aren't just a few bad apples; The entire bunch is rotten and we find this corruption as far back as we find State police forces. Now it's just more apparent because we also surveil the police.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Police are there to investigate after a crime has occurred or to intervene to stop a crime in progress. There is no predictive mandate. Of course there is. Foiling terrorist plots is a critical component of policing.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    > Foiling terrorist plots is a critical component of policing. Uh, what? Is this sarcasm?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Uh, what? Is this sarcasm? No. I'm not saying it should be the job of local police. But when a terrorist plot goes through, one of the first questions asked is why it wasn't stopped. (DHS and FBI are police inasmuch as they are not military or strictly IC, i.e. they can make arrests.) Similarly, police seize guns before they've been used to commit a crime and arrest dealers before they've sold drugs. In this case, the crime they're investigating would presumably be conspiring to do terrorism.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        > In this case, the crime they're investigating would presumably be conspiring to do terrorism. On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism I think the top comment about this being Atlanta's homeland security department or whatever threw me off. Conspiring to do something. The something isn't important for my argument so long as it's a crime. That conspiring is the crime in progress or already done. For all intents and purposes, it's preëmptive to the actual thing we want to prevent. But that's why we criminalise, in addition to the crimes per se, possessions, intents, et cetera. Police are not a purely reactive security element.
AgentOrange1234 2y ago
> They monitor the world for things they don't like and police them. That’s absurd. That’s not their mandate. They aren’t kings. They’re supposed to serve us.
soulofmischief 2y ago
> They monitor the world for things they don't like The police are not inherently justified. They receive their power from We the People and have no business deciding what they "do" and "don't" like. That is our legislators' jobs. The police do not get to arbitrarily decide threats outside of specifically mandated enforcement policy, and they do not get free reign to surveil and act on such information. As someone with reasonable OSINT experience, I recognize that eventually tracking data like this will be part of a routine, automatic dragnet. However, that does not mean we cannot police the police, that doesn't mean police get to actively build cases using this information, or even consider the information at all while making decisions about who to target. > requirement that the police need the power to investigate things they do not like Who required this? I don't remember signing off on anything of the sort, and I do not recognize the authority of any State organization or public servant which fails to follow the rules that We the People have set forth. > making a list of people isn't threatening enough or easy enough to detect I grew up in a very small town. I was on such a list, purely by association, and it led to me being stalked by a police officer who ultimately planted cannabis on me at the scene of an accident, and lied in court. I tried fighting it, but the judge and prosecutor were part of the conspiracy, going as far as to switch my public defender to someone they controlled. They also denied my right to a jury, and my defender denied my right for a motion to quash or an appeal due to mistrial, saying, "the judge is my boss and I'm not making my life difficult." I was convicted, on my first criminal offense, to 6 months in jail. Would have been longer but that was the maximum for a first cannabis offense in my state. I ended up getting denied jobs and it exacerbated my homelessness. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, because you're lucky enough that the policies you're advocating for have not specifically impacted you. You do not understand the depth of corruption that runs through our system, and how police surveillance and "lists" are just the tip of the State oppression iceberg. Not everyone is lucky enough to be a part of the protected class. > You may not like some specific list. That is correct. And as a citizen, it's my opinion that ultimately matters, not my local police chief's.

by roenxi 2y ago

mulmen 2y ago

You have a deep misunderstanding of how law enforcement works. Police are there to investigate after a crime has occurred or to intervene to stop a crime in progress. There is no predictive mandate. When police start trying to predict the future they see the public as monsters.

roenxi 2y ago
But they do think a crime is in progress and has occured. People have been charged. That is why they were keeping the lists! These aren't lists of people to get Christmas hampers, these are lists of people the police expect to charge with crimes. Even if the police in this instance are, for the sake of argument, irredeemably corrupt there may be literally nothing they are going to do with these lists except call people criminals. Otherwise they'd keep them in a private capacity. It isn't reasonable to preemptively declare that the police can't suspect people of being criminals. These aren't matters that can be preemptively dealt with by adding rules or restrictions on the police reading public information. It has to be done in review.
- mulmen 2y ago
  > But they do think a crime is in progress and has occured. Yes, crimes like having mud on your feet or a lawyer's phone number written on your skin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Cop_City#March_2023_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Cop_City#March_2023_prote... > these are lists of people the police expect to charge with crimes. Yes, that's the problem. These people aren't criminals. These are people that went to study groups, sometimes for unrelated reasons. It's politically motivated. The surveillance happened before any alleged crime. It's indefensible.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I suspect I'm not the one who has a deep misunderstanding here. How do you expect this to work? The police were tracking a bunch of people they were suspicious of with lists. Then several of them (I assume there is overlap here) have been charged with crimes. They may, in fact, be criminals. They probably are criminals, the US has a lot of dangerous and misguided law on the books that criminalises reasonable activity. Unless you happen to be a judge or a whip in a legislative body, you don't have the power to arbitrarily declare who is and is not a criminal based on your preferences. Odds are your entire community is a minority that lacks that power on many issues that are important to you. The way this works, and the only way it can work, is the police decide who they think are criminals and then there is a review afterwards of whether the police were reasonable or not. If you think they're doing a particularly terrible job then the review might result in all sorts of actions but it isn't a reasonable position to say that the police can't use public evidence when deciding who they think the criminals are. That is a view that will lead to silly results.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      Unfortunately, this simply does not hold up in reality, wherein police routinely stalk and harass individuals, to the point that the police decide to fabricate criminal evidence just to prove themselves right. I would know, this is exactly what happened to me, as I mentioned in another comment. An example of police organizations surveilling groups of people who are against a gas pipeline running through their lands: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/surveillance-state-descends-dakota-access-pipeline-spirit-camp https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/surveillance-state-des... Are they criminals for organizing and petitioning the government to relent? Example, from my own city, of how police organizations routinely fabricate evidence, typically against minorities and those the police have decided they "do not like" and "could be criminals". Unfortunately, my own hometown was not included in this investigation and my conviction wasn't overturned. https://www.wbrz.com/news/nakamoto-how-corruption-in-brpd-led-to-hundreds-of-dropped-drug-charges https://www.wbrz.com/news/nakamoto-how-corruption-in-brpd-le... What you fail to take into account is the average academic and emotional intelligence of the type of person who finds themselves working in a US police force, given the low pay, high stress and allure of wielding soft power. There aren't just a few bad apples; The entire bunch is rotten and we find this corruption as far back as we find State police forces. Now it's just more apparent because we also surveil the police.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Police are there to investigate after a crime has occurred or to intervene to stop a crime in progress. There is no predictive mandate. Of course there is. Foiling terrorist plots is a critical component of policing.
- mulmen 2y ago
  > Foiling terrorist plots is a critical component of policing. Uh, what? Is this sarcasm?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Uh, what? Is this sarcasm? No. I'm not saying it should be the job of local police. But when a terrorist plot goes through, one of the first questions asked is why it wasn't stopped. (DHS and FBI are police inasmuch as they are not military or strictly IC, i.e. they can make arrests.) Similarly, police seize guns before they've been used to commit a crime and arrest dealers before they've sold drugs. In this case, the crime they're investigating would presumably be conspiring to do terrorism.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      > In this case, the crime they're investigating would presumably be conspiring to do terrorism. On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism I think the top comment about this being Atlanta's homeland security department or whatever threw me off. Conspiring to do something. The something isn't important for my argument so long as it's a crime. That conspiring is the crime in progress or already done. For all intents and purposes, it's preëmptive to the actual thing we want to prevent. But that's why we criminalise, in addition to the crimes per se, possessions, intents, et cetera. Police are not a purely reactive security element.

AgentOrange1234 2y ago

> They monitor the world for things they don't like and police them. That’s absurd. That’s not their mandate. They aren’t kings. They’re supposed to serve us.

soulofmischief 2y ago

> They monitor the world for things they don't like The police are not inherently justified. They receive their power from We the People and have no business deciding what they "do" and "don't" like. That is our legislators' jobs. The police do not get to arbitrarily decide threats outside of specifically mandated enforcement policy, and they do not get free reign to surveil and act on such information. As someone with reasonable OSINT experience, I recognize that eventually tracking data like this will be part of a routine, automatic dragnet. However, that does not mean we cannot police the police, that doesn't mean police get to actively build cases using this information, or even consider the information at all while making decisions about who to target. > requirement that the police need the power to investigate things they do not like Who required this? I don't remember signing off on anything of the sort, and I do not recognize the authority of any State organization or public servant which fails to follow the rules that We the People have set forth. > making a list of people isn't threatening enough or easy enough to detect I grew up in a very small town. I was on such a list, purely by association, and it led to me being stalked by a police officer who ultimately planted cannabis on me at the scene of an accident, and lied in court. I tried fighting it, but the judge and prosecutor were part of the conspiracy, going as far as to switch my public defender to someone they controlled. They also denied my right to a jury, and my defender denied my right for a motion to quash or an appeal due to mistrial, saying, "the judge is my boss and I'm not making my life difficult." I was convicted, on my first criminal offense, to 6 months in jail. Would have been longer but that was the maximum for a first cannabis offense in my state. I ended up getting denied jobs and it exacerbated my homelessness. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, because you're lucky enough that the policies you're advocating for have not specifically impacted you. You do not understand the depth of corruption that runs through our system, and how police surveillance and "lists" are just the tip of the State oppression iceberg. Not everyone is lucky enough to be a part of the protected class. > You may not like some specific list. That is correct. And as a citizen, it's my opinion that ultimately matters, not my local police chief's.