Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests
107 comments
·March 17, 2025blorkusmelorkus
JumpCrisscross
> Twitter started as TXT2MOB for organizing protests, and now it and social media have become surveillance tools
Propaganda, communication and surveillance vary inasmuch as the sender and/or receiver are coöperating. When done in public, communication almost necessarily empowers the other two uses.
whatshisface
Here's an interesting thought about how preferential surveillance can lead to repression even when it's public and not itself acted on:
1. Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate (things like parking violations and music piracy).
2. However, people who are being watched will be caught more often.
3. The end result is that people in the "wrong" crowd on average are punished more than people in the "right" one at an equal level of misbehavior.
coolspot
> Every demographic commits petty crimes and code violations at about the same rate
Do you have data backing this claim? For example, homicides (that are not a subject for reporting bias) don’t follow a uniform distribution, so I would expect other crimes to also be non-uniform.
amarcheschi
Just today I was preparing some slides for a course that makes the student participate and show some topics we're interested in regarding social and ethical issues in compsci
I googled a bit and I found a hn comment that talked about an article which explains what you say
Basically, they estimate drug use in the population, and they draw a map, and black and white people more or less have the same habits in drugs use. They draw a map of the past arrests by the police for drug crimes and they're skewed towards the black neighborhood. There's a bit more about it since the article dealt with predictive policing and Ai but the gist is what you're saying, and this causes a self reinforcing feedback for the police (which in turn arrests more black people and the loop goes on)
https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...
eastbound
[flagged]
pesus
What exactly is a "good demographic"? This sounds an awful lot like judging people based on their inherent characteristics.
blorkusmelorkus
If your going to spout fallacies maybe fix your slippery slope first.
lenerdenator
Is this really surprising to anyone?
If you're out in public and using public websites to organize protests, it's a given that data will be mined about that.
The trick is to make it unattractive for those doing the enforcing to act upon their analysis of that data.
prophesi
It's not surprising to me because The Intercept regularly reports on the use of Dataminr by various US agencies.
https://kagi.com/search?q=dataminr+site%3Atheintercept.com&r...
tdb7893
I think that while not surprising it's still interesting and useful to know exactly how they are doing it and what tools they are using. In the US protests are a constitutionally protected right and visibility into how they are monitoring and reacting to them is important.
shadowgovt
If we remove the tech from the story and consider the old "colonial village test":
A man walks up and down the street either shouting about, or handing out flyers, that say "We should get together and blockade main street in protest of the illegitimate taxes Congress has passed on our whiskey." Is it legal for the cops to stop him? Probably not.
Is it legal for the cops to move their plans around to show up on main street that day? I can't see why it wouldn't be.
tptacek
It's more than legal for the cops to do that; it's a longstanding norm. In fact, at many protests, it's something you actively want to see, because counterprotests can get rowdy and dangerous.
CalChris
This is surprising. Why are the police monitoring constitutionally protected activity?
imperfect_light
Police in my city go to pretty much every protest and take video and photos (with big zoom lens) from the roofs of nearby buildings. It's always surprising to me that more people don't notice.
lenerdenator
They do it more than you'd think. There're a ton of pictures of La Cosa Nostra members walking around in Brooklyn taken by FBI agents. They even made sure to get the good side of Casso and Gotti.
Walking around and talking to each other? Constitutionally protected.
tptacek
When the police watch you walk down the street they are also monitoring constitutionally protected activity.
text0404
a police officer observing you briefly with their eyes is quite different than an entire police department outsourcing surveillance of protected activities to a third party which monitors your online activity over time.
CodeWriter23
Acts in public are not protected. This, however is:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
stvltvs
Posting on a publicly accesible website is the legal equivalent of standing on the street corner having a conversation. A police officer doesn't need to search anything because it's out in the open.
shadowgovt
For the same reason they use ancestry databases to narrow the field of potential serial killers to a few that can be investigated through legally-admissible means.
There is a vast gap between what the cops can do in general and what holds up in court, but to a first approximation: the things they aren't allowed to do because it would taint the case are in general explicitly spelled out, and if it isn't spelled out it's legal to use as a stepping stone to conventional, more-understood-protections police tactics. Thus arresting someone for a general Twitter post is probably off-limits (the incitement-to-riot or sedition laws are narrowly tailored), but taking someone online who says "Hey let's all get together and do a riot" seriously, and allocating police resources to prepare for it as if they're telling the truth about their intentions, is almost certainly legal.
(This is the battleground that the ACLU fights on in this day and age).
Mountain_Skies
Because protests, even over mundane things like being able to turn right on red, can quickly turn into something ugly. Protests over issues like Gaza have a high probability of turning violent, even if the protesters themselves are peaceful. Keeping protests from turning into destruction is one of the responsibilities of the police. The trick is for them to do it in a way that doesn't favor or stifle any group's ability to be seen and heard.
skrtskrt
[flagged]
giraffe_lady
How many gaza protests have there been in the US alone in the past two years and how many of them had any violence at all? I wouldn't call it a "high probability."
Teever
It is unfortunately surprising to a lot of people.
For what ever reason many people lack the ability to understand the casual connections between things that happen online and in the real world.
delichon
Imagine the reverse: A police department vows not to use social media to help predict where to deploy their forces to protect public safety. That sounds like malpractice. A commitment to civil rights doesn't restrict them from gathering real time public intelligence, a.k.a. situational awareness, to do their job.
jeffbee
It is not "surveillance" when the cops see your tweets.
tptacek
It technically is! The ACLU has a model ordinance called CCOPS, which it encourages municipalities to pass (I got my own muni to pass a version of it last year), and it includes an expansive definition of "surveillance" that definitely includes tools that read public posts on social media.
Importantly, CCOPS doesn't forbid surveillance; it simply requires new instantiations of it to be approved at an open board meeting. Things like Dataminr would almost certainly pass.
jeffbee
As you say, expansive. As in: it expands the definition of surveillance in a way that isn't widely accepted.
unethical_ban
Does surveillance need to be covert? Historically, if the police are observing you or your event specifically, that's surveillance.
nickff
I mostly agree with you, but there’s a difference between using a non-covert method of communication like telephone or SMS, and a social media post, which is designed to be relayed and amplified.
Tostino
What legitimate reason would the police have for monitoring everything on social media that is protected by the Constitution?
giraffe_lady
Judging by the cops I see around chicago their main responsibility is reading tweets actually.
bavent
Or eating Portillos. Or napping in their cars.
ryandrake
Headline is kind of clickbaity. They could have just as easily used "LAPD Surveilled Gaza Protests Using A Tool Called Dataminr". Bonus: The tool name is in the URL itself!
xmprt
I'd change it to "A Social Media Tool called Dataminr". On its own, the name of the tool is meaningless.
null
rqtwteye
Unless there is a massive rethink of a lot of laws we are running into a surveillance state worse than Orwell could have come up with. "No expectation of privacy in a public space" made sense when there were no databases that could record and analyze everything that's going on and people didn't live half of their lives on the internet. And tech is only going to accelerate the ease of total surveillance.
I think Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there. Instead of viewing the "Founding Fathers" as the ultimate source of wisdom we should accept that they made decisions that made sense during their time but times have changed so some decisions should change.
JumpCrisscross
> Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there
You want every state to come up with its own way of determining how to send delegates to a convention literally unbound by any law?
_bin_
> Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years.
This is a terrible idea, actually. The risks of opening the door to majorly modifying the Constitution are very, very high. There are a lot of core freedoms (speech, arms, press come to mind) that would likely come off worse, not better, were we to do so. Which get hit hardest would depend mostly on who's in office at the time, which is extra bad.
johnisgood
You could always make sure it could only increase and not decrease privacy or what have you.
Similarly, the "expire every 19 years" must always be included and must never be removed.
Gotta keep this small though, because then what's the point...
krapp
>You could always make sure it could only increase and not decrease privacy or what have you.
How could one "make sure" of this, and with what authority?
>Similarly, the "expire every 19 years" must always be included and must never be removed.
Again, says who? The constitution has expired, and with it any legal basis for such a requirement.
Aurornis
> I think Jefferson proposed to let the constitution expire every 19 years. I think he had a point there. Instead of viewing the "Founding Fathers" as the ultimate source of wisdom we should accept that they made decisions that made sense during their time but times have changed so some decisions should change.
These ideas sound great when you imagine ideal politicians doing exactly what you want.
They're not so appealing when you remember that on a long enough timeline you'll get some political leaders who would abuse such a power to no end: Rewriting the constitution to give the president unchecked power or remove term limits would be more likely targets than anything you're imagining working in your favor.
krapp
...and simply not including the 19 year expiration in the new version because why would you?
eej71
While Jefferson is an understandably venerated figure in the foundation of America, he was not active in the creation of the constitution. He of course wrote The Declaration of Independence and while having misgivings about the strength of the executive branch, he went on to become a hugely influential president.
On the filp side, it took him a while to come around to see the folly that was the then French Revolution whereas his political critics - notably Adams, Washington, and the frequently maligned Hamilton, were quick to keep their distance from it.
I like Jefferson but he sometimes seems to have an overly rosy and romantic view of revolutions. Tearing down is easy. Building up is very hard.
geodel
Why wait for 19 years? Lets change constitution along administration change in DC.
gs17
Jefferson wanted 19 years to make it something each generation gets the chance to do, based on life expectancy at the time.
>And the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt.
>[...] On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. [...] The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
baggy_trough
You can! Just have to get the votes.
null
bastardoperator
LAPD and LASD are going to bankrupt Los Angeles. They're more concerned with being a paramilitary police force versus stopping or preventing neighborhood crime.
dragonwriter
> LAPD and LASD are going to bankrupt Los Angeles.
LAPD and LASD aren't both part of any single entity called "Los Angeles" (the city and county of that name being separate entities).
> They're more concerned with being a paramilitary police force versus stopping or preventing neighborhood crime.
That's pretty much true (and foundationally so) of all American local general-jurisdictions police forces.
LASD and LAPD may have problems beyond those endemic to American police agencies, but that isn't one of them.
tharne
> They're more concerned with being a paramilitary police force versus stopping or preventing neighborhood crime.
Didn't they pull back on enforcement of quality of life crimes when the previous DA stopped prosecuting criminals? You can't expect the police to arrest criminals knowing full well the DA is immediately going to drop or reduce charges and let them loose.
MegaButts
> You can't expect the police to arrest criminals knowing full well the DA is immediately going to drop or reduce charges and let them loose.
You can't expect the police to do their jobs?
tharne
> You can't expect the police to do their jobs?
Imagine you're a programmer, or a chef, or a carpenter, really anything. Now imagine you go to work every day, put in 8-10 hours a day working hard, and at the end of each day someone in a more powerful position than yourself throws out, ignores, or otherwise destroys all of your work for that day.
And this happens every day, day after day. No matter your work ethic or how much you care about your job, sooner or later after enough of your work is sabotaged, you're going to give up.
So no, I do not expect the police to "do their job" as you put it, when a chief prosecutor publicly and vocally undermines that work each and every day. If you can't understand that very fundamental human reaction, then I don't know what to tell you.
skrtskrt
LAPD has never been anything but a violent gang, and the DA didn't "stop prosecuting criminals"
tharne
> the DA didn't "stop prosecuting criminals"
The voters of California certainly think he did: https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/11/george-gascon-pamela-...
null
honeybadger1
[flagged]
giraffe_lady
Remember that actual literal swastika-wearing nazis were average law abiding citizens. If nazis are scared to come in contact with you you're doing well.
honeybadger1
[flagged]
arrosenberg
You make a really good point! The average law abiding citizen is much more afraid of petty crime against Elon Musk, a man who does the Nazi salute, than they are about losing their constitutional rights. That is how we wound up with a militarized police force in the first place, with the average person being more afraid of terrorism than encroaching totalitarianism.
> i would argue the people in these protests are likely the people committing street crime.
evidenced by?
honeybadger1
> evidenced by
i already stated this, the people busted on video had priors, they are damaging persons property(a crime, in case you forgot) in protest to musk.
it all reminds me of the rittenhouse situation where the three people shot were by chance(or highly likely depending on your lens)all were criminals: 1. sexual misconduct with minor(a child rapist) 2. history of domestic violence and disorderly conduct, 3. intoxicated use of a firearm and pointing a weapon at someone claiming outside of court on more liberal tv commentary he didn't, and in court that he did(so hes a liar and a coward).
seethe
throw9383839
Those were not "Gaza Protests"! Those were anti-Israeli and anti-genecide protests!
VoodooJuJu
[dead]
jmyeet
Consider this your daily reminder that over 2800 people were charged or cited for protesting genocide [1], most of those charges being thrown out or dismissed, whereas 1575 people were charged for storming the capital on January 6, 1270 were convicted and all but 14 of them were pardoned [2].
In the roughly 20 years of the US military action in Vietnam, 63 journalists were killed or otherwise assume killed (as they were missing) [3]. There have been at least 170 journalists who have been killed in Gaza since October 7 [4]. This continues a decades-long campaign of Israeli targeted assassintion of journalists such as Shireen Abu-Akleh [5], who despite wearing a blue press helmet and vest was killed by a single sniper shot behind her ear.
And how does our government respond? By passing laws saying that the criticism of Zionism (being setter colonialism) is inherently anti-Semitic, the so-called IHRA definition [6].
My point here is the US law enforcement exists to protect the interests of capital and those who own it. The FBI used to wiretap and surveil MLLK, for example.
All of this, including the LAPS monitoring social media, is intended to silence dissent. The clearly illegal attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil without being charged let alone convicted, is a clear First Amendment violation.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/11/gaza-protest...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_the_January_6...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_and...
[4]: https://cpj.org/2025/02/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-...
[5]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/16/israeli-forces-kil...
[6]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/nov/29/palestinian-rig...
loeg
> Avoid generic tangents.
YZF
[flagged]
parsd
[flagged]
latentcall
Dude I saw at least 50 different videos on Instagram of aftermaths of Israeli air strikes, seeing fathers trying to piece their infant daughter back together after being blown up. I have a 10 month old daughter myself.
Do not even make that false equivalence of the 1930s. Israel is a rich nation who gets free gifts of weapons to test out on Palestinians. So you just repeat whatever state department BS they put out?
Calling for Israel to stop the genocide is NOT anti-semetic, “most” of the protesters did not say that, you are knowingly lying through your teeth. Please learn to read and critically think. Disgusting.
text0404
do you have citations for any of this ("most protestors", "calling for destruction", "extermination", "misinformation", etc)? you may also be surprised to find that much of the world doesn't consider the opinions of the USG to be reliable, including the claim that Israel is not committing genocide - other organizations such as the UN and human rights groups like Amnesty and HRW disagree.
YZF
You're the one making the original claim. Why is the burden of proof on the parent? The Guardian also does not share its raw data with its readers and is extremely anti-Israeli in its editorial position.
“It is against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest,” the president said. “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest, it is against the law.” [3]
"In the two months between the start of the Fall 2023 semester and early November 2023, 73% of Jewish students had witnessed or experienced antisemitism. A plurality of Jewish students reported feeling physically unsafe on campus; and even more reported feeling emotionally unsafe. Anecdotal reports by students, faculty and staff underscored and confirmed the data – our campuses were becoming less safe and welcoming for the Jewish community." [4]
[1] https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/anti-jewish-campus-protests-reve...
[2] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/anti-israel-protests-are-ex...
[3] https://nypost.com/2024/05/02/us-news/biden-addresses-anti-i...
[4] https://notoleranceforantisemitism.adl.org/resources/article...
jedimind
Anyone who still falls for your Zionist propaganda at this point is not just gullible but just wilfully ignorant. It's impressive how you managed to squeeze that many lies into such a short comment. The classic "no it's actually them wanting to commit a genocide" while you have been committing a genocide[1] for more than 16 months. The classic "everybody lies except for Israel". Quoting Biden, who aided and abetted Israel's genocide, as if he is some sort of neutral 3rd party when he's the opposite. All time classic "it's blood libel" and comparison to 1930s Germany, when in fact many jewish intellectuals and even ex-idf officers, including Einstein, Yeshayahu Leibowitz and more, in the past and in the present have described Israel's behavior as nazilike[2][3]. Your whole comment is drenched in lies and misinformation while you're accusing others of spreading misinformation, it's peak projection.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-idf-general-likens-military...
myth_drannon
[flagged]
Twitter started as TXT2MOB for organizing protests, and now it and social media have become surveillance tools. The irony.