Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd murder | Hacker News Reader

Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd murder

technologyreview.com

138 pointstriple_m81 comments

The US always has had groups that threatened the racial status hierarchy under surveillance. Whether it's COINTELPRO or the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, this type of surveillance is a core part of American policing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_State_Sovereignty_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

right - and the US has also always had people who were committed to the opposite. Its a big place with a lot of people.

Completely disingenuous. This is about the US intelligence apparatus being used against domestic dissidents.

Saying "well yeah but there are also domestic dissidents" misses the point entirely

well as a USA citizen, from multiple generations of supporting a plurality of views, it is distressing to see the worst behavior of police and FBI, commented upon as if "that is the way the USA is!" .. and strictly from a word-meaning point of view "disingenuous" means I am trying to deceive or knowingly making false statements, which is not the case at all.. we are likely to agree on several points here.. hard to make comments that do not have enough disclaimers, on these large topics

I mean, if our FBI and police have consistently behaved a certain way than that is literally "the way it is the USA".

When it comes to issues of life and death or liberty, we should use the worse case as the measure. For example: oh this medical intervention kills people 15% of the time. No matter what that can never be understated.

That absolutely is the way the United States is, time and time again. That fact that many of us people aren't malicious doesn't change that.

> this is about the US intelligence apparatus being used against domestic dissidents

This article is about local police surveillance. Not the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

The FBI is/was involved as were the fusion centers which were originally setup as part of a joint taskforce to combat terrorism. The fusion centers were developed to integrate US intelligence with local policing.

NYPD, a "local" city police department, has a huge terrorism counterintelligence department, one that surveils internationally and duplicates a lot of the federal intelligence infrastructure.

And even has its own "black site" in NE Manhattan.

Do u have any proof to substantiate that in the upper echelons of power? For example a document or memo being critical of government overreach. Maybe some one being critical of cointelpro or prism

Further, ur comment is a false equivalency. The guy you are responding is is obviously referring to groups of people in power positions. And you seem to respond with the group the general populace

Would that be enough? I show you one document from a position of power within the government criticizing government overreach, you would then accept OPs position? Or would you just ask for another one, and then another one, and then another one?

Well one would be a start. Let's try that first. I know ur being rhetorical, but from an equivalent seat of power too pls

I'm not interested in doing your research for you, especially without any clear indication that it will have any effect on your viewpoints.

I think the problem with these narratives is that "protester" and "groups that threaten the racial status hierarchy" get casually mixed in with people who burn down buildings, loot businesses, and otherwise destroy cities. The former need to be protected by the police so that they can express their views. The latter need to be apprehended, charged, and tried. In order to have a rational discussion, these classes of people need to be separated in the discussion. The implication is that the police are out to get the former. But what portion of the police's motivation is driven by the latter?

What's being burned down as of late in the last month? Nothing, but these surveillance programs persist. Everyone complains about the riots but never the systems that bring them about. And they never explain that if riots are counterproductive, how come the problem persisted when there were no riots? As a wise man once said, people always seem to be more devoted to "order" than justice and prefer a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

To be clear, I am not defending the action of the police, only the logic of the implication that the police are unjustly conspiring to limit free speech and otherwise peaceful protest.

>>What's being burned down as of late in the last month?>> I would suggest that that is pretty much the definition of being proactive. There was violence in the past, quite a bit, and maybe now actions are being taken to head it off in the future.

>>Nothing, but these surveillance programs persist.>> Yes because it happened in the past.

>>Everyone complains about the riots but never the systems that bring them about.>> "the systems that bring them about"? This is vague. What systems? Assuming we could parse out exactly what you're talking about, are you suggesting that the violence and destruction of private and public property is justified because the "the systems" have a problem?

> What systems?

Unaccountable police that can get away with murder unless the entire country starts rioting for two months.

Those systems. The systems that let an officer strangle a man to death, while all his peers stand by and watch it happen, and then they all file a police report of 'we responded to a medical emergency, patient died on the scene'.

Nothing about these systems has changed since 2020. The police are above the law, and they act to take full advantage of it. That's what people have been protesting about. Most police departments responded to the protests by... Continuing to do the same things that are being protested.

And of course when the talk of violence comes up in regards to protest, it's important to recognize that in many cases that violence is instigated by agents provocateur in order to delegitimize said protest.

Case in point: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/06/02/whats-up-with-umbre...

Currently two posts above this, the person says:

> To paraphrase MLK, riots are the voice of the unheard. When we, as a society, fail to listen to the plight of our neighbors, violence is the result.

And now the post im replying to asserts that the systemic claims are too vague. Asserts this despite the decades and decades worth of detailed discussions on this exact topic.

Asserts it’s too vague despite thousands of songs from every musical genre. Many of them absolute household known top of the chart hits.

Hundreds of plays, series, and movies on the topic.

Despite the libraries worth of books which have been written on the topic—nope, too vague.

Somehow this poster still asserts the problem is too vague for them.

MLK indeed:

> Riots are the language of the unheard.

Hearing is easy enough, if you can be bothered at all.

That would be legitimate prevention.

> I would suggest that that is pretty much the definition of being proactive.

So, now we are surveilling people for precrime? The police are able to track your cell phone and put you on watch lists because you protested or are even suspected of protesting? This is authoritarianism plain and simple, a militarized police force way out of scope. Violence is bad, and surveillance is also bad, and we should not treat people as criminals until - and no sooner - they have committed a crime they have been lawfully convicted of.

Yes the police can and do try to predict crime

That is beyond their remit, if applied to individuals.

They could do a much better job predicting and preventing their own crimes. They have no constitutional limits on that, yet are extraordinarily bad at it.

Can't upvote hard enough

"What's being burned down as of late in the last month"

Give it time. The election isn't until November. If the democrats get the predicted boot, expect the widespread lawlessness to reach "mostly peaceful" 2020 race riot levels.

To paraphrase MLK, riots are the voice of the unheard. When we, as a society, fail to listen to the plight of our neighbors, violence is the result.

We can beef up our policing and surveillance operations in a futile attempt to lessen the impact of violent riots. Or, we can spend that effort or listening and making changes to the systems that cause these riots in the first place.

Yes, rioting is illegal and should remain so. But arresting rioters is treating a symptom, not the disease.

If you re-read your own post, but this time think about the Jan 6th violence at the Capital or the 2014 Bundy standoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff) do you feel the same?

The "voice of the unheard" argument is a nice rationalization when we sympathize and agree with the violent actors, but, at least for me, it doesn't seem to resonate much when I don't. I can listen to the Jan 6 people say the election was fraudulent or I can listen to Bundy say he should be able to graze his cattle on public land for free... but after listening to their plight I still disagree and I still hold them responsible for their violent actions.

Personally, I'd rather we accept that large groups shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of a few affiliated people, while holding individuals responsible for their own actions.

I still disagree and I still hold them responsible for their violent actions.

We're in agreement there. I didn't say we should drop all policing related to violent political protest. I said we need to realize increased policing isn't a solution to violent political protest.

WRT Jan 6, the root cause is complicated (understatement of the year). But, stagnating wages, continued urbanization and globalization, and an out of touch political class all contribute. Those things (plus others) need fixed or we'll get a repeat of Jan 6 next election cycle.

I think you're proving [my interpretation of the] "unheard voice" argument. You're saying that that the rioting/violence is not what makes Jan 6/Bundy or their respective groups bad, it's their "unheard voice". I don't think MLK meant that violence is always okay, rather that we should think about the demands/motivation for the violence when assessing the groups that cause it.

Correct.

Though I'm not convinced Bundy has an unheard voice. He's a rich white rancher. He doesn't want to pay for grazing rights on BLM land. The fact that he can be a giant gun-toting asshole, get media attention, and not get shot or tossed in jail shows me he has a voice. Or at least more of a voice than many other people.

I consider him something wholly different than the Jan 6 mob.

Your statement couldn't be more racist.

Those perps were handled with kid gloves. Had they been black people they would have been mowed down like vermin.

Ok so let's say we take the best possible actions to fix "the systems" that are the cause of illegal and violent activity.

What do we do in the meantime with the illegal and violent activity? Ask the police not to take actions to predict it or otherwise manage it?

Your proposal creates a model where there are now two problems. It sounds like you're saying only one should be allowed to be worked on.

> What do we do in the meantime with the illegal and violent activity? Ask the police not to take actions to predict it or otherwise manage it?

Yes.

American policing has a long, clear, consistent, and violent history of racially and politically motivated abuses of power. “Predictive policing” is a license to continue those practices.

I think you're oversimplifying the argument a bit. Nobody is arguing with your second point, the other poster simply said that increasing police strength isn't a long term solution(or even much of a short term one.) I also don't think the person you're responding to is really casting arresting criminals in a negative light itself, just that it is trying to fix a problem by only solving the second order problem, criminals committing crimes, and not the first order problem, eg economic racism/inequality, gerrymandering in every state of this country, etc, that causes people that face the worst problems of any people in our country to not have any advocates in government because their voices are designed to be drowned out politically and economically.

What do we do in the meantime with the illegal and violent activity? Ask the police not to take actions to predict it or otherwise manage it?

Given police propensity to massively overreach, especially with preventative surveillance programs, I'd prefer we further regulate their ability to rollout and operate such programs. Not eliminate them completely. In this specific case, the program was nominally created to maintain peace during the Chauvin trial. That's over, the program should have died, or failing that, at least undergone external/public review to validate it was legal, fit-for-purpose, etc.

We would best prevent more such crime by preventing the police from committing crimes that provoke them. Such prevention would be cheap and would raise no constitutional or other issues.

It is a disgrace that cities and states are unable to police their own. It needs systemic change until they are doing it.

Eric Adams is uniquely in a position to do that for New York City, and is utterly failing at it.

It is best we ban all foods that aren't healthy because you can't control your eating habits.

Police don't cause crime. Police exist because of crime. If crime didn't exist, we wouldn't need police.

And when the police are the criminals, do we need more of them then, too?

Chicago police, in particular, are no different from mafia.

Police don't cause crime.

There are plenty of corrupt and criminal police. Planting evidence in Baltimore, tickets and forfeitures for revenue in Brookside AL, excess civil forfeiture all over the place, black sites in Chicago. The list goes on and on. Police may exist to battle crime, but they are no angels and it takes vigilance on the part of the public to ensure the police protect the interests of the public instead of their own.

I literally watched these riots from my window. The MLK quote is silly.

The protesters did break windows, painted a lot of graffiti, and took and burned police precinct(!) But it wasn't protesters starting fires and looting.

The looting was entirely opportunistic. At first there were people in the neighborhood but it quickly turned into something else, with many looters literally driving into the neighborhood and parking so they could carry out their loot. During later events, like sentences being announced, people have probed to see if it's possible again. But it never reached critical mass. It's not a protest phenomena, and I think "voice of the unheard" is complete bullshit. It's just people who want to steal things.

It IS revealing: it doesn't take that many people to decide to act with impunity before things break down. And in that sense I suppose the protesters did inspire the looting as they did the unbelievable. But it simply wasn't the same people.

The arson, I just don't know... it doesn't take many people. What little we know from convictions mostly involve people outside the community with little clear purpose. Some people just like to burn things. Given the actual buildings burned down it is nearly the opposite of what protesters with any ideology or connection to the community would do. There are theories of outside agitators, but who knows...

My understanding is that retrospectives on the 2020 civil unrest have found limited, if any, connections between the protestors and damage to businesses. At least in NYC, the majority of the looting (which was, in fact, minimal!) and business damage was done by opportunists[1].

Indeed, the NYPD spent nearly all of its time surveilling and cracking down on peaceful marchers, rather than responding to looting incidents[2]. A conspiratorially minded person might think that the police believe looting to be in their political interest.

[1]: https://citylimits.org/2020/06/09/how-widespread-was-violenc...

[2]: https://theintercept.com/2021/06/01/nypd-looting-violence-pr...

It doesn't take conspiracy-mindedness. Just observation.

What racial status hierarchy? You're comparing it to something that was for supporting segregation. That's nothing to do with this.

I'm comparing it to the pro-Jim Crow systems because they are "a long time ago", but are the same thing we're doing today. And it very much has something to do with this as they actors and igniting causes are pretty much unchanged from that era.

I'm skeptical that the government has learned the wrong lesson. What it should have learned is that rioting needs to be put down — no ifs, ands, or buts. But, apparently, rioting is okay. The state isn't interested in that, so much as it is in setting up a Big Brother infrastructure.

I say this as someone who fully recognizes that a legitimate protest will sometimes attract hotheads. A protest can get out of control. It can turn violent. And then, opportunists may decide to take advantage of the breakdown of law and order and indulge in the impulse to loot. I don't like it, but I recognize this as somewhere within the bounds, or just over the bounds, of normal. What I have a problem with is the following.

When people go home from their riot, have a bite to eat, nap, maybe watch a little TV, and then decide to go out the next night and do it again — and this happens day after day, with the government doing nothing to restore law and order — that is not normal. That's a broken government.

Government's first job is maintaining law and order. That doesn't require pervasive, high tech surveillance. Maintaining law and order in the face of a days-long insurrection is a solved problem.

Our government is broken. This "shadowy surveillance" is not an accident, or an honest mistake.

Having watched this looting and rioting I sincerely wonder if the police wanted it to happen. The first night of looting it was chaotic, but the police showed up and instantly everyone left. There was no confrontation. This wasn't like the LA riots in the 90s, there really was no violence against people. Then the next nights the police didn't show up. The first time I saw police was when neighbors had acquired their own firehose and were trying to put out a fire, at which time the police drove by and shot canisters at us. The Minneapolis police specifically turned down firefighting assistance from the suburbs even as the fires burned for hours after the streets were empty. The MPD despises Minneapolis and wanted the city to suffer. It was Derek Chauvin writ large.

"Protests" in Minneapolis damaged 1,500 property locations, destroyed 100 property locations, and caused $500 million in total damage. 150 buildings were set on fire.

I'd say the surveillance is warranted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Minne...

Given the reports that the majority of incitement and criminal activity was performed by out of state agitators/opportunists, I would agree.

there seems to be an imbalance of reporting about this sort of thing. When state power is used against BLM protests, we get articles about "shadowy surveillance". When state power is used to track down Jan 6 protesters, it's apparently a good thing.

Mostly I think that's because the world isn't black and white and most real problems, preventing terrorism in this case, are too complicated for simple one-size-fits-all solutions.

Was there a cross agency multi-year task force setup ahead of Jan 6 with the specific aim of targeting those involved?

Because not only have I not heard anyone say that’s a good thing I’ve not heard about it at all.

I'm not sure I understand your point. BLM protests are legal while storming the Capitol is not. You'd hope the police would go after breaches of the law and not innocent people.

So then the violence, looting, burning, and destruction of property that occurred at the same time and place as the BLM protests are somehow conveniently NOT the BLM protests?

I’m sure you actually do understand the difference right?

In one case you have a group of people taking advantage of protests to engage in criminal theft that is divorced from the reason for the protest.

In the other the point of the protest was to disrupt the orderly transfer of power. The violence, looting etc were a mechanism to accomplish that goal.

We wouldn’t include looters using the protests at the capital as cover for breaking into a mall in the capital protests anymore than we’d forgive a BLM protest that’s stated goal was disrupting general policing by starting a violent riot.

The point of the BLM protests weren't violence.

The point of the Jan. 6th protest was.

There were between 80k - 120k protesters [1] present on January 6. An estimated 1,200 illegally entered the building. That's 1%. Do you have a credible citation that indicates that the core purpose and motivation of the ~100k was to support the action of the 1%?

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-classified-documents-reve...

The whole reason the protest existed was to convince, through intimidation, our Congress to overturn the results of free and fair election.

Since you repeat your assertion without providing evidence, I'll assume you do not have a credible citation.

Please provide a credible citation that you have to provide a credible citation for something absolutely obvious.

Thieves, looters and criminals always take the opportunity to do their business when people is looking elsewhere. Would you blame New Orleans citizens because some bastards went around stealing stuff during the Katrina hurricane? Right now there are Ukrainians looting empty houses and closed shops; there are reports of people killed and robbed in the streets, and the news comes from EU journalists, not Russian propaganda; would this make the Ukrainian resistance any less worth of support? Regarding fires and destruction, yes, that is very possible and believable. Undercover agents aside, when angry people protest down the street, it is almost certain that some are from borderline or full criminals; it's just that a percentage of the population is made of criminals regardless of color, gender or class. Put enough people together and you soon get a 100% chance that at least one of them is a criminal. A few months ago anti vax protesters vandalized one of our national trade unions offices. They were mostly extreme right wing militants, all white.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/10/25/how-a-covid-pa...

LMAO

Burning down a Wendy's is legal?

WOW

Police work will eventually become akin to farm work. Fewer people will have to work in the field due to automation and mechanization. This will be the norm due to both the resurgence of crime and less new police officers.

To frame this in terms of Stallone movies, do you see the future being more like Demolition Man or more like Judge Dredd?

Stallone movies don’t apply. Minority Report is the future mixed with Robocop.

Why do I associate "anonymous free speech" with trolls?

Self-reflection? But seriously, are you really complaining about anonymous speech while posting under a pseudonym?

My pseudonym isn't anonymous since I've been using it for many years.

A three day old nearly random pseudonym would be much more anonymous.

It may be possible to dox you; that doesn't make you not anonymous until it happens.

As the police are further demonized and defunded (edit: destaffed), I would expect to see a gradual uptick in the number of autonomous measures used by the remaining law enforcement. Think ShotSpotter, Facial Recognition, stuff like this, etc. Eventually we will approach the levels of Minority Report.

The police isn't actually getting defunded, most of the US is increasing policing budgets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-reverse-defunding-the-po...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cities-vowed-2020-cut-po...

Perhaps "defunded" is not the right word, as it will require a lot of funding to implement these systems. Maybe "destaffed". My understanding is that a lot of departments are facing major hiring and retention issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if when you look into it, that's propaganda. It's very similar to the defunding claims.

Most of the retention issues is about retirement. The generation of Boomers are retiring or retiring early. Many civil jobs you can retire at age 55 or 20 years of service. So you have a very large generation of boomers hitting retirement age and a much smaller subsequent generations to fill those open positions.

Not everyone who is older than you is a boomer.

Isn't everyone facing major hiring and retention issues?

And haven't the police been funded enough? We've had police reform bill after police reform bill since the 90s LA Riots and possibly before and it always comes with more funding. It rarely makes things better for the populace. Police departments prefer to spend it on new toys rather than community policing or any sort of reform.

NYC had 1 billion erased from its budget. Yes, police were getting defunded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com