Surveillance tools used by the Minneapolis Police Department
buzzfeednews.com
buzzfeednews.com
Now we are encoding these biases into models built with mass surveillance. Many of us upper middle class white folks turn a blind eye. Subconsciously we know that’s not really targeting us. “We have nothing to hide” is the battle cry of the apathetic middle class person... when you trace the origin not just to law and order but the “war on terrorism” the relationship to race is even more depressing.
Maybe when we examine deeper we see those using the tools of mass surveillance look like us (heck are from this industry!). This same people working in the surveillance industry only imagine getting the “bad guys” not people that look like them!
On their face this has nothing to do with race. Examine deeper and you see, it’s far easier to take away civil liberties when it’s the “other” it’s being taken away from. Where the in group can blissfully rationalize what’s happening to get on with their day
* taking a nap * eating a meal * riding a bicycle * playing Russian roulette
I didn't see anything like that from the 2A protests.
Yeah, the gun. It is more likely to hurt you. It doesn't matter if folks are threatening to use it or not. The gun can, in general, do more bodily harm. Just because folks didn't use them doesn't mean it isn't a threat. Rocks at least have more purpose than to put holes in things - guns are there to kill other things even when used responsibly. Gun ranges are simply training for this.
If you agree with the people holding the guns, you feel safer with them. If you agree with the people holding the rock, you feel safer with them. It doesn't matter what they are holding.
- Broken Hippo apparently hasn't been hit by a rock recently!8-) I joke, but...
We're speaking of men holding rocks. You underestimate the effectiveness of rocks as weapons. Every man knows how to use a rock as a weapon and almost everyone has thrown a rock or pounded something with a rock. You needn't throw a rock to kill/harm someone; it's likely faster and easier if you keep the rock in your hand.
Rocks have been used as weapons since before prehistoric times. Rocks have possibly been instruments of death for more of our ancestors than have bullets.
I mean, I'm sure someone had a CCTV turned on the guys, but surely you'd agree that the Richmond protest was less surveilled and less attended by law enforcement. Broadly, I think the fact that 2A protests tend to be met with gentle indifference by law enforcement instead of the mass surveillance and control techniques used against civil rights folks rather reinforces the upthread point, no?
Concealed carry does require a license (and sometimes a "training" class, which is laughable at best. (Seriously, I have never known anyone fail this class in my state. A driving license test probably has a 100 times higher failure rate.). And of course, as we are talking about a pro gun rally, carrying concealed defeats the purpose.
I'm a 2nd amendment proponent, but I've been in too many public gun ranges, too many gun shows, and been around too many idiot gun owners to think that the firearms training the vast majority of states (maybe every state?) has or provides is nearly enough. Owning a firearm in this country solely amounts too: have you yet been convicted of a felony or smoked weed?
I think if you go look this up, you'll find that these people are not, in fact, particularly peaceful as protestors go. They're simply ignored by the police in ways that the dreadlocked hippies are not.
(I mean, sure, those are all exceptions. But then most of the people in Minneapolis weren't burning anything down either. Have you ever been to a left-wing march? This isn't a demographic known for temper.)
Painting with a mighty broad brush. So if YOU have a gun that automatically makes you a non-peaceful individual?
"Have you ever been to a left-wing march? This isn't a demographic known for temper."
Are you serious? Ever hear of Antifa?
Most of the MPLS protesters are also normal people fed up with the lack of attention given to the plight of minorities and the poor in the United States. So yeah, no false equivalence/hypocrisy here from me.
I mean I'll grumble on social media, but taking time out of my day to protest is inconceivable.
Because this is a pretext to create infrastructure to go after you and your family.
"The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea#%22Biblical_Basis_fo...
1. The chilling effect it has on the general population.
2. Your group might be next.
The laws about voting (poll taxes, grandfather clauses) did claim to not be about race to pass muster regarding the 15th amendment, but the same is not true of laws concerning exercise of other civil liberties. The bulk of Jim Crow laws were quite explicitly discriminating on race.
That is quite a claim. I am neither agreeing or disagreeing, as I don't know enough about this. Could you share some specific examples of the rules that you are referring to and evidence that they were intended to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties?
Grandfather voting clauses: https://www.thoughtco.com/grandfather-clauses-voting-rights-...
Felony disfranchisement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_t...
Related to felony disfranchisement, the war on drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs
Gun control laws: https://newrepublic.com/article/112322/gun-control-racist
Literacy tests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting
Cash bail: https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/02/bail-reform-and-risk-as...
Stop and frisk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...
Some of these fall under the broader category of Jim Crow Laws[1], but most the original Jim Crow Laws are more obvious in their racism.
Policies that aren't laws carry the same effective force of law, but they can be changed on a whim by the president with an executive order.
The Federal Home Loan Bank Act established the agencies that would create redlining, but the redlining itself was created by the administrators and independent agencies created by the act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_Amendment_4
and republicans are still trying to subvert it by sneaking in restitution as a prerequisite. it was challenged in the courts, overturned, and now appealed
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/844297011/voting-rights-for-h...
check out this tweet
https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/1264687609995026437
Edit: what exactly am I getting downvoted for? Did I post something that wasn't factually correct? Did I use foul language? Did I antagonize?
Many felons are convicted and owe fees to their victims, or to the govt. If you commit a violent crime, or a financial crime, there can be a financial penalty. Many of the felons that want to vote, never paid back their victims, or the state, for the crimes they were committed.
The Florida proposition "restored the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation"
Now, they want to vote, but still haven't compensated their victims, which was a part of the sentence, based on a lawful conviction.
Jailed felons are subject to the laws of the land, but have no say in what those laws are. I think that's unjust.
It's especially nefarious when you consider all the people in jail for non-violent offenses.
In the past, felons were transported. It was cruel and caused unspeakable suffering. Kind of like what the felons did. So a balance of a sort.
I've got the strange feeling that Mars may not be the rich person's paradise folks joke about. It may be a prison colony. The rigors of the trip (permanent physical impairment) may preclude soft rich people from applying for the trip.
Anyway, to return to the topic, if I were officiating a baseball game and somebody came out on the field and broke the bat, pried up the bases and tossed the ball over the fence, I'd evict them from the park. It's only sensible. They can't obey the rules, they're out. Otherwise the game is completely disrupted.
Not all felons, though. Only the ones we choose to surveill and prosecute. So coke-sniffing bankers tend never to be caught. But 19 year old poor hispanic kids with weed in their pockets end up in jail on a three strikes violation because the police stop them all the time just for standing on the street.
> if I were officiating a baseball game
Now extend this analogy appropriately: what if the RULES of the baseball game were only written by the winning team? And that team made it so they were allowed to do this stuff without penalty? So they always win.
And the loser team can't fix that. Because to change the rules to make them fair they have to win, and they can't. Because of the rules.
That's how this works in reality: the point to disenfranchising felons isn't to punish them, it's to keep them from voting for the party whose policies might make them less likely to be felons.
Imprisonment is meant for rehabilitation in addition to punishment. There’s the idea, at least in theory, that people who commit crimes can eventually be functional members of society with full rights given a second chance. So we send people to prison and then let them resume their lives as citizens afterwards. If they owe money due to a civil suit they can still vote because why wouldn’t they? Franchise isn’t tied to financial means and shouldn’t be.
Don't forget the third big part: stopping them from violating the rights of others.
They do temporarily lose some rights, they do (and should) get them back when their "debt to society" is paid (which I find a slightly weird term, but whatever), why shouldn't the right to vote be one of the rights that you get back when you're rehabilitated and reintroduced into society, just like your right to freely move about?
Society is not a game or stadium. There is no outside.
Justice is imperfect.
Laws are not all as obvious as 'breaking the bat'.
Now, responding to the part of your comment that isn't the shitty, specious analogy. You beg the question, saying that felons don't get to vote because they've opted out of civilized intercourse. You don't bother to argue the antecedent, you just assume it. That doesn't address the question being asked in the thread, it just affirms the way things are.
If people aren't paying their debts, garnish their wages, seize their assets, or if they're flagrantly avoiding paying back debts, put them back in jail--you know, normal things that we already do which actually get people to pay back their debts. Failure to pay reparations is a legitimate concern, but it's not relevant to voting rights.
Let's not pretend this is about reparations. It's about disfranchising people.
According to you it should be simple. Whatever the sentencing judge has put in the sentence is the sentence. But that has proven not to be the case. The governor wants the DOC to find any and all unpaid fines and fees. And they want to be allowed years to resolve it.
The judge looked at the excuses the DOCs counsel was offering and quickly swatted it down. An ex-convict that has satisfied the terms of his sentence as it is written on the sentencing docket has no reason not to have their rights restored.
Ultimately the courts will decide whether the legal language "terms" includes fines and restitution. Seeing as these felons are free and fines are a civil matter I don't know how the courts could find that such things are part of their criminal sentence.
Edit: also btw I linked to reputable sources. I didn't obscure anything or omit anything.
It's right there on wiki:
>However, by mid-2019 Republican Governor DeSantis signed a bill into law which originated in the Florida Senate, SB 7066, which required that "people with felony records pay 'all fines and fees' associated with their sentence prior to the restoration of their voting rights"
It's a post facto qualifier. If fines were implied by the initial amendment this bill would be unnecessary.
If we had a magical, objective, 100% accurate way of determining whether judgments are fair and punishments are appropriate, then maybe it would make sense to suspend the voting rights of criminals. But we don't, and the only check on whether the criminal justice system is doing the right thing is the popular ballot. Allowing the criminal justice system to disenfranchise people is an obvious loophole.
Besides, what are we worried about? That criminals would vote to legalize their own crimes? If more than half the population are criminals, it's not clear that any sort of government is going to work at all....
Well, the second amendment may offer some protection as well.
I have been part of a special forces raid to capture or kill and I can tell you the opponent has no realistic way to win that day. Sure you can win in the long run if you are fighting at home with the enemy fighting far away from theirs but not they you will suffer heavy losses and live in a condition far from what most of us can imagine or are prepared to do.
What exactly would you, special forces or the government be able to do, to force them to comply with whatever order it is you are trying to impose?
It doesn't feel right that higher levels can interfere in lower levels in matters that does not affect them. We're seeing this right now in the EU, with various states trying to have their ideas promoted at the level of the EU as a whole, i.e. other nations, which clearly doesn't work because people have different cultures, traditions, etc. That's one of the reasons why Britain left.
The idea that people with handheld guns are going to take on a government with nuclear capabilities is an absurd fantasy.
I'm a supporter of the second amendment. There is plenty of justification for supporting the second amendment without entertaining absurd fantasy scenarios.
There are plenty of reasons to own firearms which have nothing to do with defending yourself against the government. When seconds count, the police are minutes away.
You defend your rights with guns, not aircraft carriers.
Now that you’re aware of this issue, I’m certain that you agree that conditioning voting on fines and fees related to a sentence is wrong.
Note, that Jim Crow was enacted not immediately after the Civil War but after the reconstruction period[3]. The aftermath of reconstruction involved a period of racist terror where the Ku Klux Klan and other forces effectively engaged in a guerilla campaign that restored white supremacy in the South.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
Many of these laws existed before the Civil War, and were simply "updated" to replace the word "slave" with "freedman".
Other laws cleverly redefined common terms, introducing technical language, so that they could claim that a former slave, forced to work for little or no pay, was "serving an apprenticeship" or "being punished for vagrancy". E.g., a slave in reality, but "on paper" an apprentice, a volunteer, serving a criminal sentence, etc.
Black Codes also severely limited the ability of black citizens to gather and organize, required impossible "literacy tests" to vote, and prevented black citizens from owning any type of weapon, either outright:
Louisiana: "No freedman shall be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons."
Or via a "may issue" licensing scheme:
Alabama: "Freedmen must not carry knives or firearms unless they were licensed so to do."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)
Except that key provisions of the act were struck down in 2013. Those provisions prevented states with a history of disenfranchisement from changing their voting laws. Since the court ruling several of these states have started back on the path of disenfranchisement.
(See, for instance, Jim Crow laws, redlining policies, poll taxes, etc. as many other commenters have already pointed to.)
That Wikipedia article has a lot of detail in it that explains things well beyond what I could within an HN comment, but I think one example is "separate but equal" which was anything but equal.
> evidence that they were intended
I will say that evidence of intent is not necessary or relevant to the claim. Subjectivity in the application and execution of the voting process--for instance, where to place polling stations--can end up disadvantaging minorities due to implicit/unconscious bias in administrators, even unintentionally.
edit: we rightfully so recognize people demanding proof of the holocaust as bad actors. why not with this?
If you have firsthand knowledge of any of these individuals being forced to work in this effort, by all means share it.
Somehow I think it would be roundly condemned by every law enforcement agency with any presence or interest in the area.
Hilarious, where can I invest?
I think it goes without saying but they’re far more likely to listen if you’re polite and suggest possible solutions instead of just complaining.
In California, the correct answer would have been to fucking vote out Feinstein. She practically built the surveillance state.
Go to town halls if / when they have them.
And vote.
The "fun" answer, to burn the system down, does not leave a better system in its place. The individual components are left to scramble to develop their own systems, which in the absence of strong moral leadership, are inevitably just as as corrupt as the larger system they came from.
We as technologists should promote strong encryption for everything.
Is it a good chance? No. But it's a chance.
I'm half serious.
The arguments for and against are both pretty valid.
On one hand children raised with positive values and a sense of moral duty to their fellow humans may be able to shift or counterbalance the direction the future is taking, but on the other, we could be leaving them to fend off with in a pretty shitty world that may have already peaked.
Pretty arguable of course, but still something worth pondering I think.
What's worse than them complaining about what we have done in the past is them questioning why we didn't do it sooner.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time to do it is now.
( of course, they'll never understand that things weren't actually dangerous in general and that they've lost tons and tons and tons of freedoms )
The short answer is systemic racism, but it seems that the practical examples of police overreach concern techies less than theoretical concerns about police overreach through surveillance.
https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1266146369905070080?s=...
So I typically end up just waiting a week or two for ostensibly fact-checked coverage and being out of the loop because there's so much uncertainty around developing events. But it feels like choosing feckless over reckless, so it's not a totally satisfying route.
1. Lots of people staying at home.
2. Lots of people out of work.
3. A challenge to the authority of the police to conduct society(the virus is more threatening than they are, and populations are resisting the return to business as usual narratives)
4. A lack of targets for police harassment to "let loose on" (because nobody is out and about)
These factors all build up to make a tinderbox where the officers who are looking for trouble(and they are always present and hungry for action) go out of their way to stir it up through provacateur tactics, and the population responds with quite a lot more force than usual since they are out of work and stuck at home and have nothing else to do. And it only escalates from there, because, again, you have police officers that are really dead set on the idea of "go get 'em", and see this as a role-playing opportunity. I should discuss the role-play in some more detail.
In the decades of collective memory, protests served as media flashpoints where the action is molded to the narrative. Everyone involved does a little bit of role-play, gets their fill of the narrative they want to see, and then goes home, with a few arrests and a bit of violence along the way, and a media product is subsequently served on the news afterwards, shaped to fit the tastes of the audience. Career activists would develop personal brands around the appropriation of protest groups towards news narrative, and the police were eager to play along and be the "other side". This dynamic of protest-as-product made protests seem unable to address legitimate concerns, since neither group was "going for the throat", as it may.
The dynamic has gradually shifted, at first slowly with protests like '99 Seattle WTO, and then faster as you get into the 2010's and live streaming takes off; coverage is getting much closer and more personal, and this runs in tandem with the rise of surveillance and police militarization creating pervasive cynicism about large institutions of all kinds. Branding of all kinds - from CNN to the blue check mark Twitter account - is mistrusted. Direct action is increasingly tolerated by the population, who can now easily hear the case for such without an intermediary. The virus has accelerated those trends, and so there's a sense of nobody holding back anymore.
Which, of course, makes it easier for the police to dehumanize the protestors.
https://twitter.com/jason_paladino/status/126639991697850777...
You can be reasonably sure it is collecting facial biometrics and perhaps IMEIs.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzbe3/customs-and-border...
Normally, I'm a very forgetful person, but letting debt pile up is something I never allow myself to forget.
When I lived in Germany everyone paid their parking tickets religiously. In the UK you'd also have your car towed away until you paid your tickets with interest plus the storage and towing fee.
j/k Their license will be suspended and the fee will be treble after the expiration date. And they still won't know until they get pulled over or run a license check.
edit/ I've been there personally and I was simply unable to afford them, it had nothing to do with forgetting. Thankfully I never had my car towed as a result.
My roommate got it worse though. He was towed for parking within 5 feet of driveway, yet the driveway was invisible because it had been completely covered by the 4-5 feet of snowed piled up on the side of the road.
It was my secret spot to park because it was generally avoided, logically, there was no reason to prevent parking there. It worked for a while then I got towed. and "NO PARKING" was sprayed on the pavement shortly after. Sometimes you make a mark on the world.
This is a tipping point but we need allies, especially people who know tech. There are grass roots protest organizations popping up everywhere that need serious pro bono tech help. If you work on distributed systems or production networks this stuff is stupid simple to you.
Split your work between fast & impermeable systems to our democracy.
how can one tap into the stream of information and find groups which need help? where can one learn more?
I'm noticing a dangerous pattern emerging in the left where people are siding with rioting. You know nothing about what riots do to cities. It destroys them.
This is the moment where Trump wins the re-election because of a growing movement that is sympathetic to destroying the great city of Minneapolis over criminal conduct of a police officer.
The actions of a riot might be that entities within areas gets destroyed, but that's hardly the goal.
It's similar to when kids mindlessly destroy public properties in the night in smaller cities. It's not because they just like to smash stuff, but because there is nothing else to do. Rioting tends to be the last possible action you have in your pocket, until a civil war appears. When people are feeling that no one is listening to them, they try to find other ways of getting heard.
And as history has shown us time and time again, riots sometimes work. I wish people didn't have to resolve to violence, but as an outsider who been watching the police brutality in the US for as long as I can remember, it doesn't surprise me that people has had enough.