U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr(theintercept.com)
theintercept.com
U.S. Marshals Spied on Abortion Protesters Using Dataminr
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/15/abortion-surveillance-dataminr/
266 comments
> Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you.
Words won't protect you. Precedent won't protect you. Guns won't protect you. If you are in a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted, and you're outnumbered, it's already too late. As you say, for many people already "Constitutional" is just a weapon to be wielded when it suits them and ignored when it doesn't. But the reason why that's bad needs to be much more than "because this piece of paper says so," it needs to be "because these are things we all agree are important."
Words won't protect you. Precedent won't protect you. Guns won't protect you. If you are in a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted, and you're outnumbered, it's already too late. As you say, for many people already "Constitutional" is just a weapon to be wielded when it suits them and ignored when it doesn't. But the reason why that's bad needs to be much more than "because this piece of paper says so," it needs to be "because these are things we all agree are important."
Yes, absolutely. And what's changed is that we now have a massive number of people (on both sides) who no longer agree that these things are important, or at least who think that other things are more important - so much more important that "these things" (constitutional protections) can be circumvented when they get in the way of the "more important things".
Constitutional protections are largely running on institutional inertia at the moment. That's good - the institutions were supposed to do that - but it won't last forever.
Constitutional protections are largely running on institutional inertia at the moment. That's good - the institutions were supposed to do that - but it won't last forever.
It's not that the sides no longer agree that these things are important. They do. The problem is they don't believe they agree that they're important. They believe the other side has abandoned the constitution, and they know that puts their own side at a disadvantage if they stay with it.
The two sides are so frightened of each other at this point that all assumptions of good faith are off the table. So, note for next version of the constitution: Make sure the first amendment establishes strict separation of speech and money.
The two sides are so frightened of each other at this point that all assumptions of good faith are off the table. So, note for next version of the constitution: Make sure the first amendment establishes strict separation of speech and money.
Money vs speech is a good example, I think, of people not agreeing that these things are important or not. And that the "Constitution" part is not the important part.
How would you get a Constitution to separate money when there are so many well-funded pushes for exactly the opposite, resulting in the situation where the courts say money needs to be protected?
Before you can do that you need to get everyone on board with the dangers of money in politics, and then if you can do that, you've solved the problem because now your judges won't interpret "protection of speech" as "protection of buying political influence."
You gotta win the debate either way.
How would you get a Constitution to separate money when there are so many well-funded pushes for exactly the opposite, resulting in the situation where the courts say money needs to be protected?
Before you can do that you need to get everyone on board with the dangers of money in politics, and then if you can do that, you've solved the problem because now your judges won't interpret "protection of speech" as "protection of buying political influence."
You gotta win the debate either way.
> How would you get a Constitution to separate money
Not that I put a lot of effort into this formulation, but how about something like
> A well-informed and reasonable public, being necessary to the security of a working democracy, the right of the people to free and quick access to public information must not be abridged, but protected.
And then back that up with a multi-layer prescriptive dictionary to minimize judicial reinterpretation. The terms "right of the people", "free and quick access", "public information" would defined in layer N, while the terms "right", "people", "free", "quick", "access", "public", and "information" would be defined in some layers N - M.
We've had some centuries now to get better at technical writing, language engineering, and lexicography, to say nothing of IT. We should use them.
Not that I put a lot of effort into this formulation, but how about something like
> A well-informed and reasonable public, being necessary to the security of a working democracy, the right of the people to free and quick access to public information must not be abridged, but protected.
And then back that up with a multi-layer prescriptive dictionary to minimize judicial reinterpretation. The terms "right of the people", "free and quick access", "public information" would defined in layer N, while the terms "right", "people", "free", "quick", "access", "public", and "information" would be defined in some layers N - M.
We've had some centuries now to get better at technical writing, language engineering, and lexicography, to say nothing of IT. We should use them.
It's pretty hard to have good faith to people who have bullied and been deceptive to attain their goal of undermining bodily autonomy.
When you're talking about undermining bodily autonomy are you talking about Republican states banning abortion or Democrat states compelling vaccination?
And I'm certain that only scratches the surface.
colpabar(2)
[deleted]
just scare people enough and they will turn in their family members. Especially if you dress it up in being the right moral thing to do. we were so close during the lockdowns, one step away
Are you suggesting turning in family is never the right thing to do? What act would you draw the line at?
> never
I don't think that's what they're saying. I interpret that they believe the issues being faced during the pandemic hysteria weren't ones worthy of turning in family.
I don't think that's what they're saying. I interpret that they believe the issues being faced during the pandemic hysteria weren't ones worthy of turning in family.
We weren't talking here about the pandemic OR turning in family so it's a confusing thing to bring up unless painting it as some sort of example of something where "government" should always come second?
> We weren't talking here about
This is a narrow framing. We were talking about "a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted" (emphasis mine). Bringing up recent events which exposed this side of society is not so off-topic.
This is a narrow framing. We were talking about "a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted" (emphasis mine). Bringing up recent events which exposed this side of society is not so off-topic.
Have you turned in your family members before? Just curious what it would take for you to do that? Jay walking or murder? I know in Quebec they had a curfew, and neighbours were ratting out neighbours.
I come from the position that lockdowns did more harm than good. The damage to the economy and personal freedom, and eroding trust in government.
You're asking me what crime would be enough for me but not answering my question of if there's one that's enough for you? Cause for sure, murder. Quite likely others. It scales with family distance too of course.
Where's your line?
Where's your line?
Very true. I have my issues with the Netherlands (no country is perfect) but the majority is atheist and religion holds no power here.
You're reaping the dividends of a much, much higher level of public education which I don't know when we'll see in a country as vast, federated, and new worldy as the U.S. :c
If guns will not protect you, why did Stalin, Hitler and Castro go to such lengths of seizing privately owned firearms?
The reality is that guns will protect you because 1) the sheer count of citizens is substantially and necessarily higher than military, and 2) citizens themselves are a critical part of the spoils of war. Poll Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria for more information. Disarming is an essential predicate for coercion.
> If guns will not protect you, why did Stalin, Hitler and Castro go to such lengths of seizing privately owned firearms?
Yeah:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
* https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/08/viral-imag...
Chenoweth et al did a study of over 600 movements since 1900, and found those that used violence/force succeeded about 25% of the time, and those that did not succeeded in their goals about 50% of the time. The list is in Appendix A of:
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44096650
Americans learn the wrong lessons: the War of Independence wasn't won on the battle fields, but in the years leading up to it in the change of thinking (Madison wrote a letter to Jefferson on this; Chenoweth discusses in the above book).
Yeah:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
* https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/apr/08/viral-imag...
Chenoweth et al did a study of over 600 movements since 1900, and found those that used violence/force succeeded about 25% of the time, and those that did not succeeded in their goals about 50% of the time. The list is in Appendix A of:
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44096650
Americans learn the wrong lessons: the War of Independence wasn't won on the battle fields, but in the years leading up to it in the change of thinking (Madison wrote a letter to Jefferson on this; Chenoweth discusses in the above book).
Can this be a case of Simpson’s paradox? A movement will not resort to violence if there are non-violent ways for it to meet their goals. Violence is used in desperation so it would make sense that movements on track to not succeed would resort to it.
> Can this be a case of Simpson’s paradox? A movement will not resort to violence if there are non-violent ways for it to meet their goals.
According to the research cited in the book, the more violence the movement does, the more its chances drop.
If there is a movement where the 'core' is non-violent, but there are some 'adjacent' groups that use it (even against the wishes of the core), the the odds of success drop.
The reasoning seems to be that most movements start small, and the main way to success is to get more and more people on your side (or at least not against you). The moment any kind of violence starts occurring you start turning people off.
According to the research cited in the book, the more violence the movement does, the more its chances drop.
If there is a movement where the 'core' is non-violent, but there are some 'adjacent' groups that use it (even against the wishes of the core), the the odds of success drop.
The reasoning seems to be that most movements start small, and the main way to success is to get more and more people on your side (or at least not against you). The moment any kind of violence starts occurring you start turning people off.
The primary thing that keeps dictators in power is small number of allies, who help them control information (mostly the message "rebellion will be supressed"). Guns are only a tool, without the operators, they are useless.
In contrast, democracy is protected by transparency, not guns. Guns are required only to the point where there are people who suppress transparency with threat of violence, which is usually only organized crime or foreign state actors.
In contrast, democracy is protected by transparency, not guns. Guns are required only to the point where there are people who suppress transparency with threat of violence, which is usually only organized crime or foreign state actors.
There is no basis for the “usually only” assertion and distinction, either historically or in the future.
Additionally, I find it a bit concerning that people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation.
If we identify A, B, C, and D as potential rights, and you and I agree on rights A and B, but we disagree on the principles of C and D, then it’s ok that my side violates your rights A and B because if we can’t agree on all of them, then you deserve none.
It’s the kind of thing that ensures that compromise, understanding, and legislation won’t happen by way of conversation or respectful debate, but instead by name calling and force.
If we identify A, B, C, and D as potential rights, and you and I agree on rights A and B, but we disagree on the principles of C and D, then it’s ok that my side violates your rights A and B because if we can’t agree on all of them, then you deserve none.
It’s the kind of thing that ensures that compromise, understanding, and legislation won’t happen by way of conversation or respectful debate, but instead by name calling and force.
> people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation
It's as if they never heard of or disagree with the sentiment of the ninth amendment . . .
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/
It's as if they never heard of or disagree with the sentiment of the ninth amendment . . .
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/
Its always staggering to think people forget we only have a two party system. You'd think that would keep both parties in check from abusing their powers considering at some point the party you went after and did suspect things in order to win a few elections? Well, they're going to be back in power and what do you think they're going to do? The same thing you did.
I feel like we're currently in this death spiral where its just a never ending war to get the other parties people out of power by any means necessary. While the entire time, its the people who have to suffer through it and pick sides.
It appears the centrist moderate has evaporated from American politics - which to me was the last group of voters who kept both sides honest. There is no compromise either, its just a scorched earth approach now where nobody wins.
I feel like we're currently in this death spiral where its just a never ending war to get the other parties people out of power by any means necessary. While the entire time, its the people who have to suffer through it and pick sides.
It appears the centrist moderate has evaporated from American politics - which to me was the last group of voters who kept both sides honest. There is no compromise either, its just a scorched earth approach now where nobody wins.
>I feel like we're currently in this death spiral where its just a never ending war to get the other parties people out of power by any means necessary. While the entire time, its the people who have to suffer through it and pick sides.
I feel ostracized by both sides. It's maddening. Earlier today someone asked if PBS was left leaning. How low have we come that we watch something like PBS looking for "Left" or "Right" leaning views to confirm our bias and not just watching it to be informed.
PBS news hour is pretty moderate IMHO. But still won't stop people from seeing a story that makes them feel bad and labeling it left or right.
I feel ostracized by both sides. It's maddening. Earlier today someone asked if PBS was left leaning. How low have we come that we watch something like PBS looking for "Left" or "Right" leaning views to confirm our bias and not just watching it to be informed.
PBS news hour is pretty moderate IMHO. But still won't stop people from seeing a story that makes them feel bad and labeling it left or right.
You seem to think two parties means "two sides."
I think it only means "only two parties to buy." They agree whenever the money says to and disagree about real issues that are distractions from what the money wants.
The problem is not a lack of meeting in the middle on culture war issues. The problem is that no one is even allowed to oppose the money. Not really. And when they try to, they're not considered "centrist moderates," but "far right" or "far left."
I think it only means "only two parties to buy." They agree whenever the money says to and disagree about real issues that are distractions from what the money wants.
The problem is not a lack of meeting in the middle on culture war issues. The problem is that no one is even allowed to oppose the money. Not really. And when they try to, they're not considered "centrist moderates," but "far right" or "far left."
In my experience on social media, this sort of thinking is typically classified as "both sidesing" (or an assertion of "false equivalence", etc etc etc), and is considered to be highly inappropriate.
And the people that say these things are often otherwise clearly intelligent, it is less common on HN perhaps, but certainly not uncommon.
And the people that say these things are often otherwise clearly intelligent, it is less common on HN perhaps, but certainly not uncommon.
Yeah, well, knee jerk both sides are the same which completely ignores major differences between those sides is really wrong.
It is mental shortcut that leafs to wrong conclusions and often ends up being a lie.
It is mental shortcut that leafs to wrong conclusions and often ends up being a lie.
I think the bigger knee jerk reaction is the need to assign everybody to one side or the other, to the point that nobody perceives any outgroup moderates; anytime they encounter someone with a moderately out-group opinion, they assume the rest of the opinions held by that person must be the most extreme implied by their leaning. Thus people become entrenched in their position as it appears that the out-group is becoming more extreme, ironically leading to a feedback loop that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of increasing polarization. Or at least, it creates the perception of increased polarization, which is what causes the problems.
I like to suggest that you should imagine the most absurd caricature of a member of the out-group that you can think of - whether that's a "leftist" or a "MAGA republican" - and then ask yourself how many people you actually know who fit that description. Are you creating a scarecrow that's an amalgam of all the viewpoints you oppose?
I like to suggest that you should imagine the most absurd caricature of a member of the out-group that you can think of - whether that's a "leftist" or a "MAGA republican" - and then ask yourself how many people you actually know who fit that description. Are you creating a scarecrow that's an amalgam of all the viewpoints you oppose?
> whether that's a "leftist" or a "MAGA republican"
Funny enough, there are not symmetrical. MAGA republican is a rather specific extreme subgroup with own set of believes and symbols - red Maga hat. Moderate Republicans do not self identify as Maga.
Meanwhile, "leftist" is rather large group with no real definition. It includes people who are vaguely for social system or just democrats or just don't treat LGBT as enemies. It is roughly anyone left of right wing.
But, in a need to create symmetry, you write about these two as if they were the same. And that is exactly an issue with knee jerk centrists. They end up being damagingly and unfairly wrong in their assessments.
Funny enough, there are not symmetrical. MAGA republican is a rather specific extreme subgroup with own set of believes and symbols - red Maga hat. Moderate Republicans do not self identify as Maga.
Meanwhile, "leftist" is rather large group with no real definition. It includes people who are vaguely for social system or just democrats or just don't treat LGBT as enemies. It is roughly anyone left of right wing.
But, in a need to create symmetry, you write about these two as if they were the same. And that is exactly an issue with knee jerk centrists. They end up being damagingly and unfairly wrong in their assessments.
I don't think it's it's just a need, under certain topics many people are simply not able to do otherwise than assume... In these cases, the reality they perceive seems to be almost entirely driven by imagination, and any suggestion that the claims may(!) not actually true is simply rejected outright - if you take them at their word it is literally impossible.
Is the real split in this country between liberals and conservatives?
Or is about whether the political contest we observe is mostly genuine or mostly constructed?
Are we watching UFC or WWF?
UFC gives the impression of an authentic contest with real outcomes while WWF is generally understood and portrayed as a form of theater. People who identify in the liberal cluster tend to take the media narratives quite seriously, and despise people who show suspicion of popular media. They call them "conspiracy theorists" pejoratively.
The conservative cluster types are more widely ranging. Many have no objection to individual freedom and expression around things like abortion, drugs, or sexuality because they believe in individual freedom and responsibility: you can do what you like until it harms others AND it isn't my job to help you execute or recover from whatever silly thing you choose to undertake, I can do it if I choose.
This is likely the dominant conservative ideology, and yet it is virtually never portrayed in the media. What we see instead of a paternalistic Christianity presented as conservativism.
Perhaps that is why conservatives tend to distrust the media?
Or is about whether the political contest we observe is mostly genuine or mostly constructed?
Are we watching UFC or WWF?
UFC gives the impression of an authentic contest with real outcomes while WWF is generally understood and portrayed as a form of theater. People who identify in the liberal cluster tend to take the media narratives quite seriously, and despise people who show suspicion of popular media. They call them "conspiracy theorists" pejoratively.
The conservative cluster types are more widely ranging. Many have no objection to individual freedom and expression around things like abortion, drugs, or sexuality because they believe in individual freedom and responsibility: you can do what you like until it harms others AND it isn't my job to help you execute or recover from whatever silly thing you choose to undertake, I can do it if I choose.
This is likely the dominant conservative ideology, and yet it is virtually never portrayed in the media. What we see instead of a paternalistic Christianity presented as conservativism.
Perhaps that is why conservatives tend to distrust the media?
When was the last time New York went red? Or Mississippi blue?
It seems to me that there may have been some sort of a strange, unrealized cultural change in Americans over the last few decades. I seem to recall that the abstract notion of freedom of speech/assembly/etc was considered a VERY big deal by all or at least most Americans. However, this seems to have morphed into people now holding most of their ideological beliefs at specific concrete, object level issue level.
Assuming there is some truth to this, the rise of the internet and a daily deluge of culture war content seems like it could easily explain the transformation.
Assuming there is some truth to this, the rise of the internet and a daily deluge of culture war content seems like it could easily explain the transformation.
IMO it's because everyone is in a panic about the other side. One side believes that the other side is "grooming and sterilizing children" while the other side believes that they are working to "replace democracy with fascism". In turn both sides get more extreme and work each other more into a frenzy as extremists on each side will in fact say outrageous shit. Abstract values like "free speech" get lost in the war.
Edit: even on here we have a comment openly calling for fascism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813) and I'm sure others attacking the Christian roots of US society in comments here makes people on the other side who see that as the core of their value system feel equally threatened.
Edit: even on here we have a comment openly calling for fascism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813) and I'm sure others attacking the Christian roots of US society in comments here makes people on the other side who see that as the core of their value system feel equally threatened.
People used to be literally killed or beaten for their expressed believes, so that hiatoeical abstract notion has quite a lot of asterisks in it.
It is waaaay too easy to idealized past while ignoring what was actually happening.
It is waaaay too easy to idealized past while ignoring what was actually happening.
You have highlighted the core basis of Foucault's Boomarang: it doesn't matter the target of oppresive technologies and practices. Sooner or later, their scope will be turned on you.
"At first they came for X and I said nothing".
Unfortunately, we are about 10 lines into that, and the election of 1 president and 1 key turn from the rest.
To emphasize this, if Facebook knows who practically everyone is in the US (indirectly or directly), then sure as fucking hell the government does. All it takes is one guy that wants to do the McCarthy "unAmerican" bullshit and has enough to do it and the US Government will know EXACTLY who to target.
Unfortunately, we are about 10 lines into that, and the election of 1 president and 1 key turn from the rest.
To emphasize this, if Facebook knows who practically everyone is in the US (indirectly or directly), then sure as fucking hell the government does. All it takes is one guy that wants to do the McCarthy "unAmerican" bullshit and has enough to do it and the US Government will know EXACTLY who to target.
> If the precedent is allowed to be set, there’s a good chance the power will be used against your cause in the future.
I've become deeply cynical about this argument. The Constitution is a weapon, used by the powerful against the powerless. I think it's pretty clear that in many cases the Supreme Court decides cases on purely ideological grounds, then goes back and creates post hoc justifications from precedent and the text.
Public opinion is useless here - it doesn't matter whether people are "OK" with something. What will you do, elect a new Supreme Court?
I've become deeply cynical about this argument. The Constitution is a weapon, used by the powerful against the powerless. I think it's pretty clear that in many cases the Supreme Court decides cases on purely ideological grounds, then goes back and creates post hoc justifications from precedent and the text.
Public opinion is useless here - it doesn't matter whether people are "OK" with something. What will you do, elect a new Supreme Court?
[deleted]
It is because my side is made up only of good virtuous people who really want to do what's best and only want the power to do good things, and the other side is full of evil horrible people that want to bring about oppression and sadness my favorite media outlet proved it.
Buying data from private companies is not unconstitutional so long as the company selling it to the government didn't break laws.
As with so many american issues, just amend the fucking constitution!
I swear this country needs to stop everything and do a constitutional convention (can be done, never be done before).
As with so many american issues, just amend the fucking constitution!
I swear this country needs to stop everything and do a constitutional convention (can be done, never be done before).
That "just" is doing a lot of work there.
Even with a constitutional convention, you still need 3/4 of the states (38 of them) to ratify anything, which I don't think is feasible today. Hell, I'm not even sure the delegates to a hypothetical constitutional convention could even agree enough on what to propose for ratification.
Even with a constitutional convention, you still need 3/4 of the states (38 of them) to ratify anything, which I don't think is feasible today. Hell, I'm not even sure the delegates to a hypothetical constitutional convention could even agree enough on what to propose for ratification.
Everyone is unhappy. Plenty of middle ground.
I don't think my political enemies need any kind of precedent to piss on my rights. If one doesn't exist before they take power, they'll happily establish it.
Yes and I think alot of people are reading this and thinking "This is very true of the other side but my side is not doing these things".
I get what you're saying, but on the other hand abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions.
> abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions
What’s the prevalence of this occurring? Wikipedia calls out 7 in the US [0] with the most recent in 2015. This this seems like profiling protesters as assassins is about as rational as profiling members of a certain religion as terrorists.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
What’s the prevalence of this occurring? Wikipedia calls out 7 in the US [0] with the most recent in 2015. This this seems like profiling protesters as assassins is about as rational as profiling members of a certain religion as terrorists.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
> What’s the prevalence of this occurring? Wikipedia calls out 7 in the US
Your very own link says 11:
> In the United States, violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eleven people
Also, perhaps not assassination but violence makes things look far worse than you handwaving it as a non-issue:
> there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, 13 wounded,100 butyric acid stink bomb attacks, 373 physical invasions, 41 bombings, 655 anthrax threats, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers. Between 1977 and 1990, 77 death threats were made, with 250 made between 1991 and 1999. Attempted murders in the U.S. included: in 1985 45% of clinics reported bomb threats, decreasing to 15% in 2000. One fifth of clinics in 2000 experienced some form of extreme activity.
> property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid ("stink bombs").
(some overlap between both quotes).
Your very own link says 11:
> In the United States, violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eleven people
Also, perhaps not assassination but violence makes things look far worse than you handwaving it as a non-issue:
> there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, 13 wounded,100 butyric acid stink bomb attacks, 373 physical invasions, 41 bombings, 655 anthrax threats, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers. Between 1977 and 1990, 77 death threats were made, with 250 made between 1991 and 1999. Attempted murders in the U.S. included: in 1985 45% of clinics reported bomb threats, decreasing to 15% in 2000. One fifth of clinics in 2000 experienced some form of extreme activity.
> property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid ("stink bombs").
(some overlap between both quotes).
> Your very own link says 11
Thanks for the correction, you’re right. I miscited the number in the 90s with the total number. 11 seems the most accurate for deaths of abortion healthcare workers.
> hand waving
Not at all. I think this is a serious issue and we should have zero murders. My point is that saying abortion protesters are assassins (or even violent) is not an accurate assumption based on the very low level of violence to protesters.
I think we should use language and logic accurately even if we disagree with the cause. It’s not right to lump all abortion protestors with the criminals who harm healthcare workers just like it’s not right to lump all BLM protestors with rioters who burn stuff down or all followers of Islam with terrorists. The rates of non-violent to violent are different among all three groups but all extremely low. I’ll defend all three groups even though I’m against the first, for the second, and ambivalent to the third.
But I don’t want to fall into the logical trap of getting sloppy with my generalizations because I want to stop a certain behavior.
Thanks for the correction, you’re right. I miscited the number in the 90s with the total number. 11 seems the most accurate for deaths of abortion healthcare workers.
> hand waving
Not at all. I think this is a serious issue and we should have zero murders. My point is that saying abortion protesters are assassins (or even violent) is not an accurate assumption based on the very low level of violence to protesters.
I think we should use language and logic accurately even if we disagree with the cause. It’s not right to lump all abortion protestors with the criminals who harm healthcare workers just like it’s not right to lump all BLM protestors with rioters who burn stuff down or all followers of Islam with terrorists. The rates of non-violent to violent are different among all three groups but all extremely low. I’ll defend all three groups even though I’m against the first, for the second, and ambivalent to the third.
But I don’t want to fall into the logical trap of getting sloppy with my generalizations because I want to stop a certain behavior.
Latest shooting of a Planned Parenthood clinic was in 2021. The fact that they haven't succeeded, doesn't mean that they haven't repeatedly tried.
What's interesting about this branch in the discussion is that assassinating anyone and firebombing anything are illegal criminal acts. The underlying reason should not matter to anyone. We already have laws to deal with this.
The problem surfaces when one ideological faction is in power and chooses not to apply the laws --or be lenient-- to people who happen to be on their side of ideological spectrum.
That's what drives a society into what is sometimes referred to as "banana republic" territory. Tolerating this behavior does not result in regulating society towards good outcomes. It's a feedback loop that gets more and more extreme with time. This is not how you build a society where people with different ideas can coexist in peace.
The abortion debate is tough, and agreement --or a middle ground-- may never be reached. However, criminal behavior from any faction in the spectrum of ideas on this topic should not be tolerated at all. It should be punished to the full extent of current law, regardless of who is in power and who might be committing the criminal acts. And, more importantly, those in power --and the media-- must publicly and clearly characterize all criminal acts for what they are.
The problem surfaces when one ideological faction is in power and chooses not to apply the laws --or be lenient-- to people who happen to be on their side of ideological spectrum.
That's what drives a society into what is sometimes referred to as "banana republic" territory. Tolerating this behavior does not result in regulating society towards good outcomes. It's a feedback loop that gets more and more extreme with time. This is not how you build a society where people with different ideas can coexist in peace.
The abortion debate is tough, and agreement --or a middle ground-- may never be reached. However, criminal behavior from any faction in the spectrum of ideas on this topic should not be tolerated at all. It should be punished to the full extent of current law, regardless of who is in power and who might be committing the criminal acts. And, more importantly, those in power --and the media-- must publicly and clearly characterize all criminal acts for what they are.
Unlike the assassin who showed up outside Kavanaughs door.
Ignoring whether your assertion is true or not for a second, solving this problem doesn't require violating anyone's constitutional rights.
In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things.
> Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.
> Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.
> In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things.
Which is ridiculous, given that there have been two fire bombings claimed by pro-choice groups since 2010, one in NY and another in WI, vs. eighteen committed by anti-abortion groups. That, and the fact that anti-abortion violence is fairly common in the US, compared to pro-choice violence [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Which is ridiculous, given that there have been two fire bombings claimed by pro-choice groups since 2010, one in NY and another in WI, vs. eighteen committed by anti-abortion groups. That, and the fact that anti-abortion violence is fairly common in the US, compared to pro-choice violence [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
While not insignificant overall, they are a drop in the bucket compared to violence against pro-choice.
This is also a report on "vandalism", and I think we could all agree that aggravated battery and murder, are worse crimes, of which none has been committed by pro-choice groups.
This is also a report on "vandalism", and I think we could all agree that aggravated battery and murder, are worse crimes, of which none has been committed by pro-choice groups.
Both sides seem to say the other side only encounters a drop in the bucket. Can you provide some data or source like the other guy did?
I did already [0].
It is not an unknown fact that right-wing and religious violence are a way bigger issue than any other form of domestic terrorism in the US. It has been like this for several decades now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
It is not an unknown fact that right-wing and religious violence are a way bigger issue than any other form of domestic terrorism in the US. It has been like this for several decades now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Can we have another, unbiased source please. That one is state-sponsored and doesn't provide a credible source.
That's not what "state sponsored" means. (I mean, yes, technically the Vatican is a state. It's still ridiculous to label everything Catholic as "state sponsored".)
josephcsible(1)
Which also seems like a reasonable reason for the FBI to get involved. The discussion tends to veer into "this is politically motivated" territory, when the law enforcement angle is more in the "preventing death and destruction" category.
Do you have evidence of that?
> A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be.
When I was young, due to my family's business, I lived in multiple cultures outside of the US. I have personally experienced precisely the kind of political shift you mention in your post as a teenager, living in Argentina. I am referring to the military take-over.
Imagine a world where the police or military thugs can kick down your front door in the middle of the night and take some or all of your family, never to be seen again. Imagine a world where, rock and roll was declared illegal and you could be arrested, tortured or worse if found "guilty" --not by a jury, by a single thug-- of anything remotely associated with it. Or how about being in a bus going somewhere, the bus gets pulled over and they beat the shit out of a bunch of people, just because they can (and justify it in some form).
If you were known to not be in alignment with the prevailing ideology your life was worth nothing. Thousands died. Thousands disappeared.
I had the personal experience one evening of getting pulled over by a couple of police cars while just walking home with friends after going to the movies. They threw us (and I do mean threw us, violently) up against the wall, harassed the shit out of us, slapped a couple of us around, took whatever money we had and sent us on our way. We were LUCKY that it didn't go beyond that.
Americans are alarmingly ignorant of history outside their own borders. Our system of education is so one-sided, in an ideological sense, that kids leaving high school, and, in particular, college, become adults with truly distorted and troubling ideological programming.
You talk to ANY immigrant who came from anywhere where the ideologies promoted by our universities and mass media are the "law of the land" and you are far more likely to get a treatise on how horrific this is rather than enthusiastic support for it. This ideology has proven to be a generational disaster across the world and across time. And yet, we, collectively, have allowed this to happen.
> So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs.
This is a major point that, once again, isn't taught in schools. The consequences will not be favorable over the long term. The idea that you should protect the rights of those you do not agree with is so fundamentally unique that it is rare, very rare, around the world. The US, in that sense, was unique. I say "was" because, today, I believe this is history. The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school is evidence enough of the intolerant society we have manage to "educate" ourselves into.
In this twisted world, the reality is that those espousing such things as tolerance, equity, freedoms, etc. actually, through their actions, actually do the opposite and represent the opposite: intolerance, non-equity, a desire and willingness to curtail freedoms, etc.
We have managed to create an entire generation of adults full of hatred and intolerance.
This is not a good outcome. This is the kind of thing that, in the chess game of a globally competitive world, your enemies absolutely rejoice about. While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty.
> It is genuinely unsettling.
Yes. I'll add, scary, disappointing, unproductive and dangerous. I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads. It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. All you can do is try to lead them out of the shadows. Yet, they have to be the ones open to viewing the world with their own eyes, rather than the shadows they were presented with.
I would highly recommend watching a series on Netflix:
"BREAK IT ALL: The History of Rock in Latin America"
https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953
One of the very interesting things about this series is that they actually explore the political shifts you hinted at in your comment. They, of course, cover this in the context of Rock, but also provide a generalized view. This kind of thing has happened in nearly every Latin American country. It is disturbing that Americans don't know this history well. If they did, many of the political actors and most of the militant academics in this country would be laughed off the stage. There is HISTORY to prove that these people are not only demented, they are actually dangerous to society.
When I was young, due to my family's business, I lived in multiple cultures outside of the US. I have personally experienced precisely the kind of political shift you mention in your post as a teenager, living in Argentina. I am referring to the military take-over.
Imagine a world where the police or military thugs can kick down your front door in the middle of the night and take some or all of your family, never to be seen again. Imagine a world where, rock and roll was declared illegal and you could be arrested, tortured or worse if found "guilty" --not by a jury, by a single thug-- of anything remotely associated with it. Or how about being in a bus going somewhere, the bus gets pulled over and they beat the shit out of a bunch of people, just because they can (and justify it in some form).
If you were known to not be in alignment with the prevailing ideology your life was worth nothing. Thousands died. Thousands disappeared.
I had the personal experience one evening of getting pulled over by a couple of police cars while just walking home with friends after going to the movies. They threw us (and I do mean threw us, violently) up against the wall, harassed the shit out of us, slapped a couple of us around, took whatever money we had and sent us on our way. We were LUCKY that it didn't go beyond that.
Americans are alarmingly ignorant of history outside their own borders. Our system of education is so one-sided, in an ideological sense, that kids leaving high school, and, in particular, college, become adults with truly distorted and troubling ideological programming.
You talk to ANY immigrant who came from anywhere where the ideologies promoted by our universities and mass media are the "law of the land" and you are far more likely to get a treatise on how horrific this is rather than enthusiastic support for it. This ideology has proven to be a generational disaster across the world and across time. And yet, we, collectively, have allowed this to happen.
> So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs.
This is a major point that, once again, isn't taught in schools. The consequences will not be favorable over the long term. The idea that you should protect the rights of those you do not agree with is so fundamentally unique that it is rare, very rare, around the world. The US, in that sense, was unique. I say "was" because, today, I believe this is history. The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school is evidence enough of the intolerant society we have manage to "educate" ourselves into.
In this twisted world, the reality is that those espousing such things as tolerance, equity, freedoms, etc. actually, through their actions, actually do the opposite and represent the opposite: intolerance, non-equity, a desire and willingness to curtail freedoms, etc.
We have managed to create an entire generation of adults full of hatred and intolerance.
This is not a good outcome. This is the kind of thing that, in the chess game of a globally competitive world, your enemies absolutely rejoice about. While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty.
> It is genuinely unsettling.
Yes. I'll add, scary, disappointing, unproductive and dangerous. I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads. It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. All you can do is try to lead them out of the shadows. Yet, they have to be the ones open to viewing the world with their own eyes, rather than the shadows they were presented with.
I would highly recommend watching a series on Netflix:
"BREAK IT ALL: The History of Rock in Latin America"
https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953
One of the very interesting things about this series is that they actually explore the political shifts you hinted at in your comment. They, of course, cover this in the context of Rock, but also provide a generalized view. This kind of thing has happened in nearly every Latin American country. It is disturbing that Americans don't know this history well. If they did, many of the political actors and most of the militant academics in this country would be laughed off the stage. There is HISTORY to prove that these people are not only demented, they are actually dangerous to society.
> I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads.
That stereotypes / strawpersons and dismisses everyone with a different perspective before they even speak (and yet complain about polarization). That's a good sign that you have no idea what they're talking about, not being exposed to other points of view.
The oppression you discuss has long existed in the US: There are groups of people in the US that have long suffered the same treatment you did with police, such as Black people; that's the source of the term 'black lives matter' - it's saying 'our lives actually matter like everyone else's; you can't just take them with impunity'. Now New York officials can summarily declare someone to have mental illness and involuntarily detain them - one person was murdered and much of the country praises the murderer. LGBTQ people are widely denied rights and are subject to lawless attacks and abuse, including by government. Dissenting and critical views are outlawed in many public arenas, such as schools, across large parts of the country.
It's that oppression that many people in colleges and elsewhere are working hard to change. You are actually on the same side, if you wouldn't let the reactionaries (who are simply anti-liberal) divide you - that's how they hold on to their oppressive power.
Edit: Some revision
That stereotypes / strawpersons and dismisses everyone with a different perspective before they even speak (and yet complain about polarization). That's a good sign that you have no idea what they're talking about, not being exposed to other points of view.
The oppression you discuss has long existed in the US: There are groups of people in the US that have long suffered the same treatment you did with police, such as Black people; that's the source of the term 'black lives matter' - it's saying 'our lives actually matter like everyone else's; you can't just take them with impunity'. Now New York officials can summarily declare someone to have mental illness and involuntarily detain them - one person was murdered and much of the country praises the murderer. LGBTQ people are widely denied rights and are subject to lawless attacks and abuse, including by government. Dissenting and critical views are outlawed in many public arenas, such as schools, across large parts of the country.
It's that oppression that many people in colleges and elsewhere are working hard to change. You are actually on the same side, if you wouldn't let the reactionaries (who are simply anti-liberal) divide you - that's how they hold on to their oppressive power.
Edit: Some revision
>> I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads.
> So you pidgeon-hole and dismiss everyone who might have a different perspective before they even speak
Oh, no, you are wrong. They speak plenty. Just try posting even moderate perspectives here on HN and see what reactions you get. Facts are, well, facts.
Try it. Go ahead. Create a throw-away account and comment on this thread with even a moderate view or maybe a slightly right-of-center view. No need to go to the extremes. Do that and then watch what happens. It will be educational.
> There are groups of people in the US that have long suffered the same treatment you did with police
Of course, and that's not even remotely acceptable. That does not mean that a moderate ideological perspective is wrong and one has to go full tilt militant in the other direction.
Do you even realize that probably somewhere around 90% of the people in the US (and likely almost any society), pretty much want the same things?
What are these things?
Without attempting to make an exhaustive list: Provide for their families, have a nice peaceful life, receive and offer tolerance, coexist with everyone else, live in a safe society rules by sensible laws, have a future, have opportunities, care for others in need, be socially tolerant and fiscally responsible, etc.
There's a very small minority (far less than 10%) of society who, well, fuck it up for everyone else by becoming militant at the extremes.
Take college professors.
In round numbers, there are about 300K in the US. That's 0.1% of the population. They have access to around twenty million students. That's about 7% of the US population. That is an incredible force multiplier. If that small group of people is ideologically militant --left, right, it does not matter-- you have the makings of a societal disaster. Just 0.1% of the population has --and tends to exercise-- incredible power with long-term consequences.
Most people are in some middle-of-the-road reasonable stance on most issues. That's the aspect of society that those intensely indoctrinated (on any side) cease to understand. Indoctrination makes people see the world only in extreme terms. Societies do not benefit from this at all.
In other words, your neighbor isn't a hateful, criminal, stupid, fire-breathing monster just because they voted Democrat or Republican. Thinking that way is tragically wrong and seriously misplaced.
> Dissenting and critical views are outlawed in many public arenas, such as schools, across large parts of the country.
Yes, exactly. And that is not acceptable, in any form, whether the ideology leans right or left.
The more you polarize societies the farther they are willing to go when they take power.
I sometimes see it in terms of Control System Theory.
https://roymech.org/Related/Control/Stability.html
This kind of polarization leads to unstable systems. Unstable systems produce violent oscillations, which typically result in failure.
While it is unlikely that society can approach something like a critically-damped system, that should be the (asymptotic) objective. This means balance, not radicalization. When over 90% of the people working at a social media platform (implementing the systems and rules) are ideologically uniform --faction does not matter-- the outcome will not be of benefit to society. That control system will peg to one limit and result in violent ever-increasing oscillations.
The solution to this problem starts with education. That 0.1% of society should not have the power to indoctrinate tens of millions of people over decades.
> So you pidgeon-hole and dismiss everyone who might have a different perspective before they even speak
Oh, no, you are wrong. They speak plenty. Just try posting even moderate perspectives here on HN and see what reactions you get. Facts are, well, facts.
Try it. Go ahead. Create a throw-away account and comment on this thread with even a moderate view or maybe a slightly right-of-center view. No need to go to the extremes. Do that and then watch what happens. It will be educational.
> There are groups of people in the US that have long suffered the same treatment you did with police
Of course, and that's not even remotely acceptable. That does not mean that a moderate ideological perspective is wrong and one has to go full tilt militant in the other direction.
Do you even realize that probably somewhere around 90% of the people in the US (and likely almost any society), pretty much want the same things?
What are these things?
Without attempting to make an exhaustive list: Provide for their families, have a nice peaceful life, receive and offer tolerance, coexist with everyone else, live in a safe society rules by sensible laws, have a future, have opportunities, care for others in need, be socially tolerant and fiscally responsible, etc.
There's a very small minority (far less than 10%) of society who, well, fuck it up for everyone else by becoming militant at the extremes.
Take college professors.
In round numbers, there are about 300K in the US. That's 0.1% of the population. They have access to around twenty million students. That's about 7% of the US population. That is an incredible force multiplier. If that small group of people is ideologically militant --left, right, it does not matter-- you have the makings of a societal disaster. Just 0.1% of the population has --and tends to exercise-- incredible power with long-term consequences.
Most people are in some middle-of-the-road reasonable stance on most issues. That's the aspect of society that those intensely indoctrinated (on any side) cease to understand. Indoctrination makes people see the world only in extreme terms. Societies do not benefit from this at all.
In other words, your neighbor isn't a hateful, criminal, stupid, fire-breathing monster just because they voted Democrat or Republican. Thinking that way is tragically wrong and seriously misplaced.
> Dissenting and critical views are outlawed in many public arenas, such as schools, across large parts of the country.
Yes, exactly. And that is not acceptable, in any form, whether the ideology leans right or left.
The more you polarize societies the farther they are willing to go when they take power.
I sometimes see it in terms of Control System Theory.
https://roymech.org/Related/Control/Stability.html
This kind of polarization leads to unstable systems. Unstable systems produce violent oscillations, which typically result in failure.
While it is unlikely that society can approach something like a critically-damped system, that should be the (asymptotic) objective. This means balance, not radicalization. When over 90% of the people working at a social media platform (implementing the systems and rules) are ideologically uniform --faction does not matter-- the outcome will not be of benefit to society. That control system will peg to one limit and result in violent ever-increasing oscillations.
The solution to this problem starts with education. That 0.1% of society should not have the power to indoctrinate tens of millions of people over decades.
> Facts are, well, facts.
This is funny coming from somebody who said "The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school" is funny. The number of disinvitations is in the tens per year, out of thousands of degree granting institutions and roughly zero riots.
Oh nooooo. Those indoctrinated college students.
You are the one making shit up.
This is funny coming from somebody who said "The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school" is funny. The number of disinvitations is in the tens per year, out of thousands of degree granting institutions and roughly zero riots.
Oh nooooo. Those indoctrinated college students.
You are the one making shit up.
No, I am not. This is real. The other thing that happens is brutally simple to understand: They just don't hold events featuring people with contrasting opinions. That's how you achieve "disinvitations is in the tens per year".
A parallel example having nothing to do with universities: The easiest way for a company to improve their numbers is to fire thousands of people. Their earnings per share metric will improve almost instantly. Yet, it doesn't mean they went out and got a bunch of new business...they manipulated the landscape to create a result.
I am not making shit up. You are ignoring reality and failing to engage in basic critical thinking. If you don't invite anyone from "the other side"...
A parallel example having nothing to do with universities: The easiest way for a company to improve their numbers is to fire thousands of people. Their earnings per share metric will improve almost instantly. Yet, it doesn't mean they went out and got a bunch of new business...they manipulated the landscape to create a result.
I am not making shit up. You are ignoring reality and failing to engage in basic critical thinking. If you don't invite anyone from "the other side"...
> I am not making shit up.
You are.
"The students will riot but I cannot point to meaningful numbers of examples but trust me it's totally a liberal conspiracy" is not a focus on factual discourse.
Conservatives speak at universities all the time.
You are.
"The students will riot but I cannot point to meaningful numbers of examples but trust me it's totally a liberal conspiracy" is not a focus on factual discourse.
Conservatives speak at universities all the time.
> "The students will riot but I cannot point to meaningful numbers of examples but trust me it's totally a liberal conspiracy" is not a focus on factual discourse.
I'm sorry, why do you think you can make up shit I did not say and then use it in support of your claim?
> Conservatives speak at universities all the time.
I am not a Republican (Conservative) or Democrat (Liberal). I try very hard to observe reality from as neutral a perch as possible. I don't always succeed. Most topics of any importance cannot be reduced to single variables, which means they are nearly impossible to treat fairly in the context of these types of discussions. This is particularly true when some choose to resort to attacks rather than seeking to have a respectful conversation and conversation where everyone might learn something.
Saying that our universities are in the grips of leftist ideology isn't making shit up. It's verifiable reality. Has been so for a very long time. The same can be said of our mass media.
You might not like these objective observations. That does not mean they are not real. That also does not mean they are causing harm.
Simple rule: Universities must not identify with political parties, create ideological monocultures and promote/teach ideological extremes.
When this rule is violated, they become centers of hatred and indoctrination. That applies to ANY SIDE. Almost anyone familiar with US universities can rattle-off schools who lean left and right, and even rate them as hard-left and hard-right.
Either universities are centers for ideological warfare, we accept that and hope that balance is somehow magically produced by having equal portions of the population influenced by each side, or we do our best to reform systems in order to create balance.
I think graduating mentally and culturally balanced adults is vitally important. That is not what we do today. The system is solidly tilted in one direction.
One of the most interesting interviews out there on aspects of this subject is with Nial Ferguson, Historian, Oxford and Stanford lecturer (and more):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ
May I remind of you what President Barack Obama said when referring to the incident involving Condoleezza Rice:
"I don't think it's a secret that I disagree with many of the policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or this country would be better served by not hearing a former secretary of state or not hearing what she had to say — I believe that's misguided," Obama said. "I don't think that's how democracy works best, when we're not even willing to listen to each other."
"If you disagree with somebody, bring them in and ask them tough questions. Hold their feet to the fire, make them defend their positions. ... Don't be scared to take somebody on. Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they're not making any sense."
He didn't say that because we don't have this problem at US universities. We do. It's very serious. And it was brave of him to take that position and highlight this is not good for society.
Without much effort you can find dozens of articles, from outfits like CNN, Washington Post, State Bar Associations and more discussing the problem in very real terms.
I'm sorry, why do you think you can make up shit I did not say and then use it in support of your claim?
> Conservatives speak at universities all the time.
I am not a Republican (Conservative) or Democrat (Liberal). I try very hard to observe reality from as neutral a perch as possible. I don't always succeed. Most topics of any importance cannot be reduced to single variables, which means they are nearly impossible to treat fairly in the context of these types of discussions. This is particularly true when some choose to resort to attacks rather than seeking to have a respectful conversation and conversation where everyone might learn something.
Saying that our universities are in the grips of leftist ideology isn't making shit up. It's verifiable reality. Has been so for a very long time. The same can be said of our mass media.
You might not like these objective observations. That does not mean they are not real. That also does not mean they are causing harm.
Simple rule: Universities must not identify with political parties, create ideological monocultures and promote/teach ideological extremes.
When this rule is violated, they become centers of hatred and indoctrination. That applies to ANY SIDE. Almost anyone familiar with US universities can rattle-off schools who lean left and right, and even rate them as hard-left and hard-right.
Either universities are centers for ideological warfare, we accept that and hope that balance is somehow magically produced by having equal portions of the population influenced by each side, or we do our best to reform systems in order to create balance.
I think graduating mentally and culturally balanced adults is vitally important. That is not what we do today. The system is solidly tilted in one direction.
One of the most interesting interviews out there on aspects of this subject is with Nial Ferguson, Historian, Oxford and Stanford lecturer (and more):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ
May I remind of you what President Barack Obama said when referring to the incident involving Condoleezza Rice:
"I don't think it's a secret that I disagree with many of the policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or this country would be better served by not hearing a former secretary of state or not hearing what she had to say — I believe that's misguided," Obama said. "I don't think that's how democracy works best, when we're not even willing to listen to each other."
"If you disagree with somebody, bring them in and ask them tough questions. Hold their feet to the fire, make them defend their positions. ... Don't be scared to take somebody on. Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they're not making any sense."
He didn't say that because we don't have this problem at US universities. We do. It's very serious. And it was brave of him to take that position and highlight this is not good for society.
Without much effort you can find dozens of articles, from outfits like CNN, Washington Post, State Bar Associations and more discussing the problem in very real terms.
> I am not a Republican (Conservative)
It's a matter of definition, but you are taking a conservative position, repeating conservative talking points, in a modern conservative style (aggression, lack of evidence, etc.).
It's a matter of definition, but you are taking a conservative position, repeating conservative talking points, in a modern conservative style (aggression, lack of evidence, etc.).
> Saying that our universities are in the grips of leftist ideology isn't making shit up. It's verifiable reality.
Frankly, all I can do is laugh.
The data trying to argue that there is some threat to intellectual diversity at universities is laughable.
Frankly, all I can do is laugh.
The data trying to argue that there is some threat to intellectual diversity at universities is laughable.
While you laugh, watch the interview with Nial Ferguson and you might learn a thing or two. I don't want to guess as to why reality escapes your conclusions. Are you going to say that places like Berkeley are balanced? Yes, that's an extreme example, of course. Academia, in this country, is decidedly on the left. The people they graduate are deeply influenced by this.
Here, let's use another metric to get a sense of the ideological leanings of our STEM graduates.
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...
Summary of employee political donations:
Here, let's use another metric to get a sense of the ideological leanings of our STEM graduates.
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...
Summary of employee political donations:
Democrat Republican
Netflix: 98% 2%
Nvidia: 93% 7%
Adobe: 93% 7%
IBM: 90% 10%
Salesforce: 89% 11%
Google: 88% 12%
Microsoft: 85% 15%
Apple: 84% 16%
PayPal: 84% 16%
Cisco: 80% 20%
Amazon: 77% 23%
Facebook: 77% 23%
Intel: 68% 32%
Broadcom: 68% 32%
Oracle: 67% 33%
TI: 60% 40%
Qualcomm: 50% 50%> While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty.
This is how it's always been, it's not new. Just look at the 1960's in America. I'm also not even sure how much of it's the systems in question and how much is the people in question using extreme confirmation bias to polarize themselves, in some cases.
Much of this is the age of the people in question, IMO. Whether they're at college or diver deeper into some social media, youth (late teens and early twenties) is when radicalization happens, whether they're been taught be an institution or not. That leads me to believe that while institutions may be part of the problem, there's something larger that goes on at that age which many different competing interests capitalize on to their own benefit.
Edit: That said, while it's not new, it does appear to be cyclical, and I'm not going to argue against it seeming to have a resurgence.
This is how it's always been, it's not new. Just look at the 1960's in America. I'm also not even sure how much of it's the systems in question and how much is the people in question using extreme confirmation bias to polarize themselves, in some cases.
Much of this is the age of the people in question, IMO. Whether they're at college or diver deeper into some social media, youth (late teens and early twenties) is when radicalization happens, whether they're been taught be an institution or not. That leads me to believe that while institutions may be part of the problem, there's something larger that goes on at that age which many different competing interests capitalize on to their own benefit.
Edit: That said, while it's not new, it does appear to be cyclical, and I'm not going to argue against it seeming to have a resurgence.
robomartin(2)
I don't find scraping publicly accessible data nearly as bad as when they circle planes over protests and track people. Not just the marshals service, but FBI[1] and even the US Air Force[2], etc. A prime example of this was during the riots in Kenosha, WI in 2020, and the subsequent trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. A good deal of the footage they used in the trial was from the FBI surveillance plane[3], and they supplied low resolution footage, but had all persons involved clearly marked and tracked. What they actually have is much clearer than what they provided to the lawyers under subpoena. Combine that with cell phone data, and trackers they manually place on "suspects" and their cars[4].
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flying-s...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/air-force-surveillance-p...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/03/us/kyle-rittenhouse-trial/ind...
[4] https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/mysterious-p...
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flying-s...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/air-force-surveillance-p...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/03/us/kyle-rittenhouse-trial/ind...
[4] https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/mysterious-p...
Monitoring an active riot seems pretty much what I’d expect the FBI to do.
It doesn’t seem that there was any intimidation of peaceful protesters, which obviously would be concerning.
It doesn’t seem that there was any intimidation of peaceful protesters, which obviously would be concerning.
> Monitoring an active riot seems pretty much what I’d expect the FBI to do.
What - if any - is the difference between a riot and a protest?
What - if any - is the difference between a riot and a protest?
If you're starting buildings on fire, that's probably a riot.
"You" is a nebulous term during any mass action. If provocateurs[1] can unilaterally turn a legitimate protest into a "riot" in a way that materially changes the rules of engagment, i.e. if a single anonymous person among thousands can instantly change a constitutionally protected activity into a crime for everyone present, then having a legally defined distinction that is easily subvertible may not be a great idea.
Nevermind the fact that guilt-by-physical-proximity-to-a-criminal is a legally-dubious concept.
1. Embedded counter-protesters or undercover law enforcement
Nevermind the fact that guilt-by-physical-proximity-to-a-criminal is a legally-dubious concept.
1. Embedded counter-protesters or undercover law enforcement
> What - if any - is the difference between a riot and a protest?
Whether people are being intentionally injured and property is being intentionally damaged/stolen.
Whether people are being intentionally injured and property is being intentionally damaged/stolen.
> Whether people are being intentionally injured and property is being intentionally damaged/stolen.
If this sufficient to revoke 1A rights, does it also apply to 2A?
If this sufficient to revoke 1A rights, does it also apply to 2A?
I don't think that's sufficient to revoke 1A rights. I think the people who do those bad things should get locked up in jail, and any remaining actual peaceful protesters should get to continue protesting.
Which side you’re on.
If they’re for what you support, they’re freedom lovers protesting the evils of the totalitarian government.
If they’re against what you support, they’re evil thugs rioting to overthrow the rightful government.
If they’re for what you support, they’re freedom lovers protesting the evils of the totalitarian government.
If they’re against what you support, they’re evil thugs rioting to overthrow the rightful government.
In the US, a protest is organized, but not violent and doesn’t disturb the peace.
In a group of 100 - if one person is violent, and the other 99 are peaceful would that be a protest or a riot? What is violence? Throwing an egg? Ice cream, rocks?
That would be a protest. There are crimes called assault and battery in the US that are for individuals acting violently, and they can be committed with a pretty wide variety of items.
There is also a crime called 'inciting a riot' that can get you in trouble for trying to turn a protest violent even if you didn't try to hurt anyone yourself.
What is violence is definitely an interesting question, but the decision-making process used by police keeping a protest peaceful, and the charges that can be applied afterwards when a protest goes wrong, have a lot of case law and precedent established.
There is also a crime called 'inciting a riot' that can get you in trouble for trying to turn a protest violent even if you didn't try to hurt anyone yourself.
What is violence is definitely an interesting question, but the decision-making process used by police keeping a protest peaceful, and the charges that can be applied afterwards when a protest goes wrong, have a lot of case law and precedent established.
> That would be a protest. There are crimes called assault and battery in the US that are for individuals acting violently, and they can be committed with a pretty wide variety of items
So if a building is burnt down, it could be an arson at a site of protest, rather than automatically becoming a riot?
Is it criminal for police to try and incite violence at an otherwise peaceful protest? If they are successful in provoking violence, can they then legally disperse everyone?
So if a building is burnt down, it could be an arson at a site of protest, rather than automatically becoming a riot?
Is it criminal for police to try and incite violence at an otherwise peaceful protest? If they are successful in provoking violence, can they then legally disperse everyone?
An individual act of arson not disrupting or a protest or turning it violent is possible, sure.
It's illegal for police to deliberately ruin a protest. The right to protest is ultimately defended by the US constitution's first amendment (free speech) and there are federal, state and local laws and policies that stem from that.
It's illegal for police to deliberately ruin a protest. The right to protest is ultimately defended by the US constitution's first amendment (free speech) and there are federal, state and local laws and policies that stem from that.
The quantity of violence involved. A protest should have rounds-to-zero of it.
While I agree with some others here that the idea of the government watching public tweets is generally fine, I think the concern here is that there's various legal restrictions on how the government can conduct surveillance, and by using a willing private company to do the surveillance instead, they can avoid oversight and bypass some (most? all?) of those restrictions.
Another concern is the perverse incentives setup by private surveillance tech like this, where you very easily get into ShotSpotter situations where the ability to deliver perceived value to the government is more important that not fabricating evidence to ruin people's lives: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/its-time-police-stop-u...
I know Palantir will work with your data, but do they also offer any sources of data themselves? If so, this sounds more or less the same as that (or at least that part of their offerings).
I'm very ignorant of the legal context for this sort of thing, so I really don't know if it'd be trivial (legally) for the government to try to get this information themselves.
As an analogy, I think this is (ethically) similar to parallel construction. But rather than hide the illegal activity outright, you tunnel it through a private company. That way you get the same derived value as you would if you had broken the law to do it for yourself, but without the law breaking. I guess something like Room 641A is the best of both worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Another concern is the perverse incentives setup by private surveillance tech like this, where you very easily get into ShotSpotter situations where the ability to deliver perceived value to the government is more important that not fabricating evidence to ruin people's lives: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/its-time-police-stop-u...
I know Palantir will work with your data, but do they also offer any sources of data themselves? If so, this sounds more or less the same as that (or at least that part of their offerings).
I'm very ignorant of the legal context for this sort of thing, so I really don't know if it'd be trivial (legally) for the government to try to get this information themselves.
As an analogy, I think this is (ethically) similar to parallel construction. But rather than hide the illegal activity outright, you tunnel it through a private company. That way you get the same derived value as you would if you had broken the law to do it for yourself, but without the law breaking. I guess something like Room 641A is the best of both worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Bulk, high-resolution activity tracing by the government should be illegal. There is no justification for employing warfare-grade surveillance as standard operational protocol for non-combatant citizens. There is no basis for collecting and examining such data in search of criminality.
Results are highly subject to political whimsy. The government is inadvertently creating a platform for turn-key intimidation and extortion. The individuals broadly identified and targeted are those who are least likely to be engaged in crime.
This is the wrong approach. It is time to force our leadership back to the drawing board to identify and develop more sound approaches.
Results are highly subject to political whimsy. The government is inadvertently creating a platform for turn-key intimidation and extortion. The individuals broadly identified and targeted are those who are least likely to be engaged in crime.
This is the wrong approach. It is time to force our leadership back to the drawing board to identify and develop more sound approaches.
They keep going back to the drawing board and coming up with 2 cases:
1. Bulk surveillance for pattern recognition
2. Breaking cryptography so they can go directly to the source/plaintext
Perhaps we need to figure out some other ways to make the population resistant to crime. For example reducing poverty and increasing opportunity often leads to reduced crime, why not spend billions on pursuing lasting changes on that front?
1. Bulk surveillance for pattern recognition
2. Breaking cryptography so they can go directly to the source/plaintext
Perhaps we need to figure out some other ways to make the population resistant to crime. For example reducing poverty and increasing opportunity often leads to reduced crime, why not spend billions on pursuing lasting changes on that front?
A point of context: Dataminr == Tweets, with ML and human filtering. They're one of the few remaining firehose consumers.
If this is true, how can someone claim that collecting public information, like tweets, is "spying"?
It's not exactly unusual that people consider too-detailed and/or large scale attention paid to technically public things "spying" or similar to it. E.g. if the government were to have agents follow members of a group anywhere and watching their homes, without breaking into private spaces, that'd probably be labeled as such too. Even though they are just collecting publicly visible information and report "Mr Smith is getting close to the court house. Mrs Smith spoke to the lawyer again." Social media just makes automating that a lot easier.
> Even though they are just collecting publicly visible information and report "Mr Smith is getting close to the court house. Mrs Smith spoke to the lawyer again.
If this observation was made done from a public area or from a publicly visible vantage point, how would you're describing be any different from news coverage?
If this observation was made done from a public area or from a publicly visible vantage point, how would you're describing be any different from news coverage?
Basically every way? If the government was tracking everywhere you went via cameras, people would also call that spying. Are you arguing that when a spy follows someone in public and watches everything they do, that isn't spying?
While they don't track other people everywhere at once, the media does record what people say or do and you as an individual have little control concerning what's published about you and how and to what degree other will react. But this form of recording isn't generally called spying, even if the circumstances are disadvantageous or even dangerous to the subject being recorded. When it comes to the media, the general understanding is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public area. I don't see why it would be different for government. In addition, the government needn't set up these cameras when it can simply request footage from third parties such as Nest and/or its end-users. The person "violating" your expectation to privacy in a public setting is your fellow private citizen whether for occupational or security-related reasons. The same is true for public posts on the Internet. There is nothing that forbids the government from copy and compiling information that's publicly available to all.
Context and scale matter. Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is. It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone.
> Context and scale matter.
Who determines context in this case? On what basis?
I disagree that scale matters. A right doesn't disappear simply because multiple people exercise it in a way others find unpleasant. Either a liberty exists on its own merits to it doesn't.
> Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is
Forgery requires a mens rea; in particular there must be an intent to deceive or profit from deceit.
> It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone.
In a number of cases, stalking statues have and do implicate rights. There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-co...
Who determines context in this case? On what basis?
I disagree that scale matters. A right doesn't disappear simply because multiple people exercise it in a way others find unpleasant. Either a liberty exists on its own merits to it doesn't.
> Drawing a picture of a dollar bill is not illegal, but forgery is
Forgery requires a mens rea; in particular there must be an intent to deceive or profit from deceit.
> It's not illegal to call someone, or to ask them a question, or to follow someone. It IS illegal to stalk someone.
In a number of cases, stalking statues have and do implicate rights. There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-19/supreme-co...
> Who determines context in this case? On what basis?
In general, you'll be sorely disappointed if you expect law to justify itself rigorously. That's not the point. The reason we use phrases like "beyond a reasonable doubt" is because that phrase should be interpreted personally by each juror. It is intentionally divorced from an objective standard.
The technical standard in US law in this case would be (afaik) rational basis review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review
> There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such.
That's really not relevant to what I'm saying. Whether it's legal or not isn't really even relevant since I'm just trying to show you something that you think should obviously be illegal.
There are many other examples where scale changes the nature of the action. Sending a GET request is fine. DDOS is not. Sharing someone's address is fine. Putting their personal information everywhere is not. Doing something once may have much less or much more than 1% of the harm of doing it 100 times.
In general, you'll be sorely disappointed if you expect law to justify itself rigorously. That's not the point. The reason we use phrases like "beyond a reasonable doubt" is because that phrase should be interpreted personally by each juror. It is intentionally divorced from an objective standard.
The technical standard in US law in this case would be (afaik) rational basis review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review
> There isn't a consistent corpus of case law or statute to make a clear distinction between merely undesirable contact and stalking as such.
That's really not relevant to what I'm saying. Whether it's legal or not isn't really even relevant since I'm just trying to show you something that you think should obviously be illegal.
There are many other examples where scale changes the nature of the action. Sending a GET request is fine. DDOS is not. Sharing someone's address is fine. Putting their personal information everywhere is not. Doing something once may have much less or much more than 1% of the harm of doing it 100 times.
The same way that following someone around every time they leave their house is "spying".
[deleted]
Are you suggesting that theintercept.com has a headline that uses a word inaccurately to generate outrage?
Can someone explain the legal theory that diffentiates using something like Dataminr to monitor tweets vs simply having an army of agents manually searching for them? I agree that it feels like the scale of the former makes it different, but is there a principled reason why that is the case?
The legal choices and mechanisms we have are based on built in assumptions about how easy and expensive something is, and this is especially true for monitoring of public spaces. The decision to say that stuff you say/do in public can be monitored without oversight was made when that would be fairly rare accidentally or require a lot of resources to deliberately use. If we suddenly find ourselves in a world where every single public moment can be recorded and surveilled, the risk to rights is much large for the same state interest. So with the balance shifted, the legal decision could shift.
The law (thankfully) is not some hard coded machine that follows cold logic ignoring all context. (Good) judges are able to look at changes in context and recognize that the underlying factors have shifted and so change rulings.
The law (thankfully) is not some hard coded machine that follows cold logic ignoring all context. (Good) judges are able to look at changes in context and recognize that the underlying factors have shifted and so change rulings.
Sufficient quantitative change in capability causes a qualitative difference to outcomes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United...
You are entitled to privacy even for certain public situations. Even if you can see through a window, the government can't go training telescopes inside your home without a warrant. It's an active battle for things like location data.
You are entitled to privacy even for certain public situations. Even if you can see through a window, the government can't go training telescopes inside your home without a warrant. It's an active battle for things like location data.
I don't know, but Congress passed legislation to prevent the digitization of gun records. So they have massive paper files and a small set of agents to match guns to crimes.
You would think with AI we could track all guns and bullets to crimes eventually.
You would think with AI we could track all guns and bullets to crimes eventually.
> You would think with AI we could track all guns and bullets to crimes eventually.
Not sure how that would be achieved since you can make your own guns and bullets in the majority of states.
Not sure how that would be achieved since you can make your own guns and bullets in the majority of states.
"Congress passed legislation to prevent the digitization of gun records."
Funny thing about that which could also apply to data/AI/etc, is that I understand the ATF is ignoring that law anyways.
Funny thing about that which could also apply to data/AI/etc, is that I understand the ATF is ignoring that law anyways.
My reasoning is the latter requires significant resources thus agencies would exercise discretion in what they monitor. With automated systems they can monitor larger swaths of people without much effort at all.
I think the contrast is supposed to be the difference between always monitoring people who post about protesting FOR X and/or protesting AGAINST X versus searching for posts of people who were near some incident related to some protesting or some crime. It is similar to the geo-fence search warrants that were recently discussed here.
tl;dr: I see it as the difference between using search tools to monitor for potential suspects vs search tools to implicate already identified suspects.
tl;dr: I see it as the difference between using search tools to monitor for potential suspects vs search tools to implicate already identified suspects.
I'm struggling to understand the outrage here. It's quite possible I'm missing the point and am open to being educated, but what's being described here is essentially running data analysis tools on the public postings people are making on Twitter right?
Everything described in the anecdotes, unless I missed it, was basically someone going on Twitter, a global media platform designed to convey your postings to a mass audience, and then reading the things people wrote. Right?
I can think of a variety of things that could have been done after that which would be bad, oppressive things. But are they alleging that?
The headline here is "U.S. Marshals spied..."
Did they? Like if I post something WITH THE VISIBILITY SET TO PUBLIC VISIBLE BY EVERYONE WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION EVEN NON-LOGGED IN PEOPLE and then someone reads it, then I can claim someone is spying on me?
Everything described in the anecdotes, unless I missed it, was basically someone going on Twitter, a global media platform designed to convey your postings to a mass audience, and then reading the things people wrote. Right?
I can think of a variety of things that could have been done after that which would be bad, oppressive things. But are they alleging that?
The headline here is "U.S. Marshals spied..."
Did they? Like if I post something WITH THE VISIBILITY SET TO PUBLIC VISIBLE BY EVERYONE WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION EVEN NON-LOGGED IN PEOPLE and then someone reads it, then I can claim someone is spying on me?
That's true. It would be more appropriate if the headline was "U.S. Marshals stalked Abortion Protesters" or "U.S. Marshals are creeping Abortion Protesters out".
People don't communicate well. They use the word "spying", when "surveillance" would be more appropriate.
How would you feel if you found the past three weeks, there was someone parked outside your home, who followed you to work, and logged when and where you left?
I mean, it's all public information, right?
How would you feel if they did this, specifically because of your political beliefs?
How would you feel if you found the past three weeks, there was someone parked outside your home, who followed you to work, and logged when and where you left?
I mean, it's all public information, right?
How would you feel if they did this, specifically because of your political beliefs?
I get the concept. But there's a pretty obvious difference between just sitting in my home and going to work and posting on a global media platform that is literally intended to reach every other living human as its core reason for existing.
The argument seems bizarre to me. A much better pre-technology analogy would be if I wrote lots of letters to the editor of a newspaper and people read them.
Maybe it would even be a little creepy if the government had an FBI agent in every small town that read letters to the editor and sent them to be filed by topic in Washington or something.
But it wouldn't be spying right?
The argument seems bizarre to me. A much better pre-technology analogy would be if I wrote lots of letters to the editor of a newspaper and people read them.
Maybe it would even be a little creepy if the government had an FBI agent in every small town that read letters to the editor and sent them to be filed by topic in Washington or something.
But it wouldn't be spying right?
It doesn't really matter what label you put on it. The fact that you say it'd be a "little creepy" should start setting off alarm bells. Do we really want people with guns and the force of the state behind them doing creepy things to the populace, routinely?
Who cares whether it's "spying" or "surveillance"?
Here's the real issue, which this semantics argument is derailing. Several times, a shooting spree has occurred, and all the government agencies say, "Oh, yeah... We knew about them! Anyways, the mass shooter's community is very much under attack..."
Pretty hard to swallow when the federal agencies are spending time and resources holding a magnifying glass over political opponents (with a long, LONG track record of nonviolence).
Here's the real issue, which this semantics argument is derailing. Several times, a shooting spree has occurred, and all the government agencies say, "Oh, yeah... We knew about them! Anyways, the mass shooter's community is very much under attack..."
Pretty hard to swallow when the federal agencies are spending time and resources holding a magnifying glass over political opponents (with a long, LONG track record of nonviolence).
I wouldn't be fine with that, but:
1) I would at least have a chance of knowing about it, and could lodge a complaint with the relevant agency, or take them to court, if necessary. This may not work, but there's at least some level of recourse and accountability.
2) The chilling issue is that of mass surveillance. The kind of surveillance you describe is time- and resource-intensive, and doesn't scale. If agencies can collect and analyze data on a vast number of people with a few clicks of a mouse, that's a danger to everyone's freedom.
1) I would at least have a chance of knowing about it, and could lodge a complaint with the relevant agency, or take them to court, if necessary. This may not work, but there's at least some level of recourse and accountability.
2) The chilling issue is that of mass surveillance. The kind of surveillance you describe is time- and resource-intensive, and doesn't scale. If agencies can collect and analyze data on a vast number of people with a few clicks of a mouse, that's a danger to everyone's freedom.
That's what Google does, pretty much. People seem OK with ubiquitous surveillance these days. "Hey wiretap, got any good recipes for risotto?"
Unfortunately we ended up in a world where corporate spying/survelliance is out of sight and out of mind. Never mind the fact corporate spying has achieved something dictatorships of the past could only dream about in their wet dreams.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-des...
https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-des...
From the article, "the agency had cast such a broad surveillance net that large volumes of innocuous First Amendment-protected activity regularly got swept up as potential security threats."
This is funded by unlimited federal deficit spending. Let's reduce their budgets.
This is funded by unlimited federal deficit spending. Let's reduce their budgets.
I was going through the white house proposed budget this weekend and there are more than a few call outs (10-20%) that seem superfluous or like they should be handled by private industries as they seem constrained to benefit those private businesses.
Government money also tends to raise all ships^H^H^H^H^Hprices, so many of the social welfare programs - tuition and home buying loans and assistance, for example - have had the effect of raising prices to the point that most people couldn’t afford them without that assistance. That seems like a good indicator that the program has lost its purpose and should be scrapped for a new idea. Getting rid of those would be immediately deflationary for several sectors (good, imho).
As someone on the hook for $116k in deficit, I’d be much happier to direct my tax dollars to eliminating debt and interest payments and reducing inflation than a great deal of what public money is being spent on.
Government money also tends to raise all ships^H^H^H^H^Hprices, so many of the social welfare programs - tuition and home buying loans and assistance, for example - have had the effect of raising prices to the point that most people couldn’t afford them without that assistance. That seems like a good indicator that the program has lost its purpose and should be scrapped for a new idea. Getting rid of those would be immediately deflationary for several sectors (good, imho).
As someone on the hook for $116k in deficit, I’d be much happier to direct my tax dollars to eliminating debt and interest payments and reducing inflation than a great deal of what public money is being spent on.
> As someone on the hook for $116k in deficit, I’d be much happier to direct my tax dollars to eliminating debt and interest payments
Our tax returns have a field at the bottom where you can offer to do just that with your tax refund. I suspect it costs them more in ink than the value of any takers.
Always seemed like a “nonono, I didn’t mean to pay down the debt with my money!” kinda thing.
“Ontario opportunities fund
You can help reduce Ontario's debt by completing this area to donate some or all of your 2022 tax refund to the Ontario opportunities fund. Please see the provincial pages for details. ”
Our tax returns have a field at the bottom where you can offer to do just that with your tax refund. I suspect it costs them more in ink than the value of any takers.
Always seemed like a “nonono, I didn’t mean to pay down the debt with my money!” kinda thing.
“Ontario opportunities fund
You can help reduce Ontario's debt by completing this area to donate some or all of your 2022 tax refund to the Ontario opportunities fund. Please see the provincial pages for details. ”
The government is already wasting half my paycheck, I'm not going to donate more money and hope its spent wisely.
The issue is an inability to budget. If we doubled tax revenue, we would double spending and increase the deficit further.
The issue is an inability to budget. If we doubled tax revenue, we would double spending and increase the deficit further.
Indeed, we haven't had a "budget" in years. Now we have "spending bills" instead.
are you in Ontario?
adfgionionio(2)
In the US, you can give extra money to reduce the deficit. You cannot redirect what you already owe so that it all goes towards reducing the deficit.
So I think your point "nonono, I didn’t mean to pay down the debt with my money!" is moot.
So I think your point "nonono, I didn’t mean to pay down the debt with my money!" is moot.
That sort of direction wouldn't be meaningful anyway, since money is fungible.
It would be if federal budgets were determined by the allocations people indicated on their tax filings. But that would be a mess if unrestricted.
It’s not like money that was previously allocated for debt service could then be moved to something else. In AZ we can direct about $4k to specific organizations and receive a 1:1 tax credit. That impacts revenues, but not how much those programs would receive otherwise.
They could obviously just issue new debt, though.
You can make tax-deductible donations to certain organizations. This results in them getting more funding than they otherwise would. Sure, redirections may not modify the budget of the US government programs directly, but it does have meaningful impact on the world.
If the tax return said: repay your portion of the debt and you’re off the hook for any future deficit spending or moneys collected to service national debt, I would be tempted to take that offer.
Unless there is default, there’s no reason for the government to not to keep accumulating debt.
Unless there is default, there’s no reason for the government to not to keep accumulating debt.
Saying that the government is spending too much money is such a triviality. The facts are that there is no serious appetite in U.S. politics today to reduce law enforcement budgets[0], and that reducing the budget of the U.S. Marshals would be unlikely to stop them from using these tools (which they see as a less expensive way to accomplish their objectives).
If you want to stop this kind of surveillance, your best bet is to advocate that it be illegal, with accountability. You can also advocate for a reduced budget, but it's not going to get you very far. If anything, it would tend to lead to more use of this kind of tool.
[0]- There are some agitators on the fringes of both parties for specific reductions to parts of law enforcement that those agitators have a problem with. Whether correct or not, the fact is that these are two disjoint proposals from elements that have no interest in compromising with each other. Neither proposal covers the U.S. Marshals, and neither is going to amount to anything at the federal level.
If you want to stop this kind of surveillance, your best bet is to advocate that it be illegal, with accountability. You can also advocate for a reduced budget, but it's not going to get you very far. If anything, it would tend to lead to more use of this kind of tool.
[0]- There are some agitators on the fringes of both parties for specific reductions to parts of law enforcement that those agitators have a problem with. Whether correct or not, the fact is that these are two disjoint proposals from elements that have no interest in compromising with each other. Neither proposal covers the U.S. Marshals, and neither is going to amount to anything at the federal level.
> advocate that it be illegal, with accountability
I am interested in how that would work on an individual basis, as feds have to agree to be sued and lawsuits typically need to show specific harm. USSC doctrine of qualified immunity knee-caps accountability.
I am interested in how that would work on an individual basis, as feds have to agree to be sued and lawsuits typically need to show specific harm. USSC doctrine of qualified immunity knee-caps accountability.
>> your best bet is to advocate that it be illegal,
How does one make reading publicly posted tweets illegal?
How does one make reading publicly posted tweets illegal?
One can't, but one can make it illegal for the government to use any product that relies on any sort of social media "fire hose." There can be specific requirements that LEOs are only allowed to use the publicly available websites or apps to find posts on these platforms and can't use a contractor as a loophole.
The police are allowed to "surveil" protected speech, unless you want to ban them from reading the newspaper.
I really don't see the issue. This is information people knowingly release to the public, so the cops are not spying on anyone. A protest is a potential security threat, which is why the cops always show up. I see no evidence this information was abused to try to prevent people from expressing their opinions. What am I supposed to be upset about?
Also, as you very well know, the large majority of the Federal budget goes to social services like healthcare and social security. The entire DoJ budget is a drop in the ocean. Slashing federal budgets will do nothing to eliminate this sort of program but will result in Granny living on the street.
I really don't see the issue. This is information people knowingly release to the public, so the cops are not spying on anyone. A protest is a potential security threat, which is why the cops always show up. I see no evidence this information was abused to try to prevent people from expressing their opinions. What am I supposed to be upset about?
Also, as you very well know, the large majority of the Federal budget goes to social services like healthcare and social security. The entire DoJ budget is a drop in the ocean. Slashing federal budgets will do nothing to eliminate this sort of program but will result in Granny living on the street.
I think we need a term for 'taking public information and deriving nondisclosed information from it'. It isn't really spying, but it's more than just access.
It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, but I think a lot of the debate here is just people arguing the semantics of what's going on.
It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, but I think a lot of the debate here is just people arguing the semantics of what's going on.
> I think we need a term for 'taking public information and deriving nondisclosed information from it'. It isn't really spying, but it's more than just access.
Sure, but I don't think that was done here. People were organizing protests by Twit. All the relevant information was made public because the protesters wanted people to show up.
I can imagine similar scenarios that would be a problem, but this seems about as benign as I can imagine.
Sure, but I don't think that was done here. People were organizing protests by Twit. All the relevant information was made public because the protesters wanted people to show up.
I can imagine similar scenarios that would be a problem, but this seems about as benign as I can imagine.
The cost of adding irrelevant data to relevant data is minuscule. Trying to use a "Rod from God" that is the deficit spending limit to set a finishing nail will only destroy the entire city.
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A lot of other more important things would get cut before the marshals felt the squeeze (c.f. other current events like what NYC does with the police and what they cut in order to have more cops)
That's correct. It's a longer term, monster cultural problem in the US.
We're spending plenty of money to have the nice things our society should have (eg universal guaranteed healthcare; better public transportation), and we're spending it wrong (eg paying way too much for healthcare) and or in many of the wrong places (eg the decades-long war on drugs and its consequences).
Nobody does inefficient government spending (and general spending, our consumers are fiscal idiots too) like the US. We spend more and get less for it than any affluent peer nation.
We're spending plenty of money to have the nice things our society should have (eg universal guaranteed healthcare; better public transportation), and we're spending it wrong (eg paying way too much for healthcare) and or in many of the wrong places (eg the decades-long war on drugs and its consequences).
Nobody does inefficient government spending (and general spending, our consumers are fiscal idiots too) like the US. We spend more and get less for it than any affluent peer nation.
> fiscal idiots
Ignorant concerning tax policy? I don't think that's what you meant, I think maybe you meant "financial idiots".
Ignorant concerning tax policy? I don't think that's what you meant, I think maybe you meant "financial idiots".
Then follow the law and penalize already illegal misuse or already illegal collection of data. Any administration that says it’s for civil rights cannot also be for mass surveillance.
Repeal the patriot act.
I wonder how far you'd get issuing a CCPA deletion request against Dataminr? If your twitter account is linked to your public identity (and you live in CA), presumably you can require them to delete all your tweets from their system?
Dataminr and others have been selling this service to corporate and government customers for years. Activists should all be well aware of this and use protocols not easy for Dataminr to buy, scrape, or identify persons of interest.
Using another protocol is the easy part. Getting everyone else to use it is a problem. If they're organizing rallies they want to have the greatest reach possible.
This discussion might benefit from distinguishing several issues:
(1) the propriety of protesting abortions at all
(2) the propriety of protesting anything in a manner that seems to threaten violence
(3) the government's use of Dataminr
(1) the propriety of protesting abortions at all
(2) the propriety of protesting anything in a manner that seems to threaten violence
(3) the government's use of Dataminr
FWIW, the abortion protesters mentioned in the article were not anti-abortion, they were pro-choice protestors. This was after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Is "seems to" a legal term? That's a pretty wide open subjective gap there. One that "seems to" sound good, but is actually all inclusive depending on who's interpreting it.
1984 and A Brave New World were written as warnings, not how-to manuals, but that's what the governments of the world are clearly doing.
Authoritarianism is the path of least resistance, no how-to manual required. Democracy requires constant care and course correction or it slowly trends towards authoritarianism. Unfortunately "constant care and course correction" equates to people getting out, voting, participating in their state and local governments, etc. Most people don't like to think about that stuff so they just leave it to others.
I'm sure there's some underlying universal principle related to entropy. You see the same with code bases. Unless you are diligent about caring for and correcting things, every large code base will eventually become a steaming pile of tech debt after a few decades.
I'm sure there's some underlying universal principle related to entropy. You see the same with code bases. Unless you are diligent about caring for and correcting things, every large code base will eventually become a steaming pile of tech debt after a few decades.
pfffr(1)
It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent is allowed to be set, there’s a good chance the power will be used against your cause in the future.