Dataminr tracked Gaza-related protests

Headline and Framing

• Several commenters call the article headline clickbait, arguing the focus should be on LAPD’s use of a social media tool rather than Dataminr’s brand.
• Some suggest “social media monitoring tool” in the title, since the name Dataminr is meaningless to most readers.

Constitution, Law, and Changing Context

• One thread argues modern mass data collection has turned “no expectation of privacy in public” into a route to total surveillance, beyond what earlier legal doctrines contemplated.
• Jefferson’s idea of a constitution expiring every 19 years is debated: some see it as a safeguard for each generation; others see it as a disaster scenario where rights (speech, press, arms, privacy) would be easily weakened.
• Attempts to “lock in” only pro-privacy changes are criticized as unenforceable once a constitution expires.

Public Social Media vs. Surveillance

• One camp views reading public tweets about protests as normal situational awareness, not “surveillance,” analogous to reading flyers or press releases.
• Others say that when police systematically ingest, store, and analyze public posts—especially via third-party tools—that is surveillance, regardless of openness.
• The ACLU-style model ordinances are cited as explicitly defining such tools as surveillance, mainly to require public approval, not to ban them.

Technology, Scale, and Privacy Expectations

• Repeated emphasis that scale changes everything: continuous, automated, searchable tracking of people’s activities is not equivalent to a lone officer briefly watching a street.
• Carpenter v. United States is mentioned as an example of courts recognizing that cheap, pervasive electronic tracking undermines traditional “reasonable expectation of privacy” logic.
• Some push back, arguing that the expanded reach of police monitoring merely matches the expanded reach of modern communication.

Why Police Monitor Protests

• Defenders say monitoring protests is necessary for crowd control, preventing clashes with counter‑protests, and avoiding public safety failures.
• Critics ask why police are focusing resources on constitutionally protected assembly instead of crime, and warn of chilling effects, watchlists, unknown data retention, and false positives.

Bias, Selective Enforcement, and Dragnet Risks

• A key concern: preferential surveillance of certain movements (e.g., Gaza protests) can produce unequal punishment for similar levels of petty misbehavior.
• Examples raised include drug use vs. drug arrests by neighborhood and demographics, predictive policing feedback loops, and how biased datasets make future policing more biased.
• There is debate over whether “every demographic commits petty crimes at about the same rate,” but many agree selective attention amplifies disparities regardless of exact rates.

Local Policing, Politics, and Incentives

• Separate subthread: criticism of LAPD/LASD as paramilitary and lawsuit-prone versus defenders blaming “soft” district attorneys for demoralizing police.
• Others respond that refusing to enforce laws because prosecutors might not act is itself a dereliction, normalizing dysfunction on both sides.

Tech Industry and Surveillance

• Some argue this is the inevitable trajectory of tech: tools built for open communication and even protest organizing (e.g., early Twitter) now double as surveillance infrastructure.
• Broader critique: wealthy founders align with state power, and tech firms drift into defense and repression; transhumanist or elitist ideologies are mentioned as part of that mindset.

International and Normative Perspectives

• Non‑US commenters say it seems normal for police to track protest times/locations and maintain a visible presence, seeing that as part of democratic crowd management.
• Others counter that the real issue is how such tools are targeted, how data is stored and used afterward, and the potential for repression even when activity is formally legal.