[deftnerd]

One useful tactic that I use to give something "the smell test" is to reverse the targets. There have been cases where police acted improperly or illegally, so if this company was using cellphone data and aggregated social media data to let propestors know the identity and social media posts of all the police, would that be improper?

That feels wrong, so my "smell test" makes me also think that the other way around is wrong. Police should be acting on immediate actions of protestors, not potential actions based on some black box social graph algorithm that tells them who to arrest.

[weberc2]

> if this company was using cellphone data and aggregated social media data to let propestors know the identity and social media posts of all the police, would that be improper?

Yes, but only because the protesters aren't imbued with any special authority over the police (besides participating in a representative democracy) nor trained to use such a power responsibly. The impropriety has nothing to do with the corporation or the technology.

[sesqu]

So you argue that aggregating public data is still wrong, iff the publicizing party is an agent of an authority?

Would you then limit the impropriety to only those times when the agent is acting in official capacity upon that aggregating party, or do you think gathering social data about authorities should be blanket-banned until the aggregators take a class first?

In essence, I'm trying to figure out the implication of your use of the word "only". I suspect you intended it to qualify surveillance as a sanctionable, active operation, ignoring unordered or time-sensitive relationships and profiling.

[weberc2]

> So you argue that aggregating public data is still wrong, iff the publicizing party is an agent of an authority?

No, that's not my argument. My argument is that the test would always fail; the technological aspect is irrelevant.

My personal sentiment is that the police are probably using this technology appropriately, but I fear the slippery slope this precedent could set for federal agencies. I think that slippery slope is more dangerous than these protesters.

[sesqu]

To me, it seems like you and deftnerd both have similar opinions. Where you fear the abuse of power, they fear a power imbalance. The social contract includes a distinct power imbalance to ward off a general power imbalance, which I construe as abuse, and I take it for granted that deftnerd accepts this contract. So while it seems that you lean more towards oversight and they lean towards preventative measures, you both seem to agree that this power of tracking malcontents is too damaging in a bad faith scenario to be vouchsafed.

That's why I stuck to your use of "improper only because of lack of good faith", to paraphrase. It seemed to me that you were willing to ignore not only the slippery slope argument, but also other forms of abuse such as harassing protesters at home, arresting bystanders, or identifying up exes' current companions.