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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

This kind of surveillance is not very effective for preventing or solving crimes.

It is much more effective at making lists of people willing to lawfully and peacefully stand for the human rights or others, -- "potential subversives", as the parties monitoring might call them.

Imagine, instead, if law enforcement were to stand outside of a marijuana-legalization rally and collect the sort of data effectively collected here: name, address, duration of involvement. They'd end up in court immediately, and it would likely be found that their actions had a chilling effect which created a prior restraint on the public's constitutionally protected speech.

Yet online this kind of data collection amasses more data and is more chilling due secretive nature since you never know when you're not being tracked.

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I'm not sure the crime solving utility is wholly relevant here, police have other duties like maintaining public safety. The obvious utility seems to be monitoring different protest zones for signs that violence is beginning to break out. If x people are suddenly tweeting about a fire or gun shots near an active protest then you know it would probably be wise to at least send a scout over there to evaluate the situation. This method also has the benefit of removing the need to have riot-ready police pre-emptively deployed to zones where everyone is keeping things calm.

Anecdotally, I was able to spectate active looting in my own city's downtown when the protests first came to us via various livestreaming instagrammers and while it was mostly a curiosity for me I imagine it would have been useful to a dispatcher who had to decide where to send officers. I don't see why twitter couldn't serve a similarly useful purpose.

> police have other duties like maintaining public safety

This duty has been used to justify arresting peaceful people and creating violent situations for decades. "He was gonna cause trouble".

> I was able to spectate active looting in my own city's downtown when the protests first came to us via various livestreaming instagrammers and while it was mostly a curiosity for me I imagine it would have been useful to a dispatcher who had to decide where to send officers

We all watched the same thing in our cities. And we watched as the police chose to launch projectiles into crowds of protestors instead of doing anything about the smashing and looting.

On the first night of large protests (May 29), I found myself in my city of Portland, OR, on SW 3rd and Yamhill. On one side of me (to the East), where a small group of matching black-clad people had gone, were the unambiguous sounds of windows being smashed and building alarms going off. In other directions, especially South and West, there were huge groups of protestors, simply occupying the area.

The police engaged, without a single exception that came to my awareness, in the latter group, breaking them up into smaller and smaller contingents as the night went on, while doing nothing about the much smaller group going around smashing.

I described my experience in detail the following morning.[0]

The same story has emerged from streamed video throughout the USA.

So I don't think there's any evidence at this time that the police view stopping rioting or "active looting" as a goal.

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/gtj1zm/what_i_saw...

> police have other duties like maintaining public safety

In the US it is not legally correct to claim that the police have any duty to provide any specific police service. (Warren v. District of Columbia)

But pedantry aside, they could monitor twitter and whatnot for violence outbreak without collecting any identifyable information.

"This method also has the benefit of removing the need to have riot-ready police pre-emptively deployed to zones where everyone is keeping things calm."

Let's take a moment to determine how likely it is that the cops will stop sending small battalions of riot police into situations where they are highly unnecessary. As protests have gotten smaller in many cities, police have started sending riot police that outnumber the protestors. They have shown no interest in measured responses.

It would be nice if the police used data to reduce their use of force, but that appears to be antithetical to their way of thinking.

Imagine, instead, if law enforcement were to stand outside of a marijuana-legalization rally and collect the sort of data effectively collected here: name, address, duration of involvement.

They sort of do, by filming it and using facial recognition to identify people.

Twitter-affiliated is interesting too since the pretend to care so much about the issue. Well, they seem to care on a very personal level.

They care the minimum amount required to shut up their vocal employees on this issue.

When corporations take a stand on an issue, they're just making a bet on who they think is going to win, it's got nothing to do with morals.

I guarantee if Trump got legitimately reelected with 80% of the vote, you'd see every company quickly replacing those "We Stand with BLM" banners with some bright red MAGA flair.

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