[adfgionionio]

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.

[Gunax]

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.

[adfgionionio]

> 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.