[RektBoy]

I don't think, if you want arrest somebody, you would crawl everything as a part of acquiring evidence before it.

[bzbarsky]

In some countries, you arrest people first, then find/manufacture evidence later.

[toni]

The arrests are not premeditated. They arrest you first, then ask questions

[kjkjadksj]

How do they even know who to arrest if they supposedly collect evidence after the fact?

[buscoquadnary]

If you are an authoritarian state you don't give too much worry about that, if you grab the wrong person "oh well another day another murder."

It's about terror and control, not about justice. If you think that's bad wait till you see what the Khmer Rogue did in Cambodia. The precious framework of individual rights, a relatively functioning justice system, and constitutional guarantees may not be perfect here in the US of A, there are issues, and those rights are still being eroded, and we have work to do, but people who draw comparisons between places like the US and China or Iran clearly have no idea what they are talking about, and it's a decent chance they may in fact be part of state sponsored psychological warfare apparatuses.

[TremendousJudge]

There is no due process in authoritarian states. Being suspected by someone on the police that you might hold subversive views is enough to get you arrested, tortured, and murdered.

[kjkjadksj]

Right, but as soon as they suspect someone they probably run tools like these. They can be ran faster than it takes to find someone and throw then in a van for sure.

[iampuero]

This is probably a very US-centric (or insert-your-country-here-centric) viewpoint that does not hold true everywhere else in the world. Even if it does, it would be idealistic to assume these things continue to hold true during moments of crisis for a state..

[lupire]

It's not idealistic, it's basic spycraft. Grab what you can before people know they need to hide it.

[paranoidrobot]

I believe suspending their account also blocks access to private messages.

It would also prevent their account being used to access any private accounts they may follow.

[slim]

we (activists) actually ask social media platforms to suspend the account and publicize it. to avoid the activist being tortured to extract passwords. twitter is doing the right thing

[andrewinardeer]

Do you have intimate knowledge of Iranian policing playbooks or intinate knowledge of Iranian activists playbooks or are you guessing?

[registeredcorn]

I'm not sure why your being downvoted (or whatever it's called on here). It's a legitimate question. It looks like one person in here claims to have some amount of knowledge on the matter, but it would be good to get some kind of confirmation in either direction before endorsing one tactic, or another.