> “It’s hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did this,” [Mobilewalla CEO Anindya] Datta said. “But over time, a bunch of us in the company were watching with curiosity and some degree of alarm as to what’s going on.” He defined those sources of alarm as what he called "antisocial behavior," including vandalism, looting, and actions like "breaking the glass of an Apple store.” He added that they were attempting to test if protests were being driven by outside agitators.
Probably not the best defense to be made when people are concerned that this technology is being used to suppress and monitor protestors...
Not sure "defense" is a good characterization. Doesn't sound to me like they felt accused or guilty. Sounds like an explanation. They felt some amount of civic duty in publishing their findings, or they'd have kept this to themselves.
They're examining the data to determine how to market it. Just a normal internet business trying to get by and expand their market. This article is excellent advertising.
Look on their web pages:
"Why Partner with Mobilewalla?
Our partners are always looking for rich, comprehensive data and profiles to provide to their clients. Likewise, Mobilewalla is always looking to increase the quality of our data through partnerships with companies like Oracle Data Cloud.
Mobilewalla provides brands from any vertical or industry with the insights and long-term needs to personalize, target, and scale their marketing initiatives - from basic demographics like gender, location, and device type, to highly nuanced and detailed profiles...Mobilewalla provides insights into customer behaviors as they exist in the real world, all based on mobile-app usage and location-based intelligence."
> Probably not the best attack to lump together rioters and protestors. And I thought all the rioters at the protests were white supremacists trying to start shit anyway; don't you want to track them?
What exactly are you going to do with information about who is starting the riots, turn it over to the police? Are they going to arrest the white supremacists who are more or less on their side in this debate?
> Are they going to arrest the white supremacists who are more or less on their side in this debate?
Please don't talk out of your rear end. There are plenty of good cops out there: I know and have worked with a bunch. In fact, some of them go after white supremacists.
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's against the rules, it helps nothing, and it detracts from your point. Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.
> There are plenty of good cops out there: I know and have worked with a bunch. In fact, some of them go after white supremacists.
There are, I'm not a "All Cops Are Bad" kind of guy. But there are absolutely bad cops, and since cops get punished severely if they report other cops bad behaviors, it's impossible for outsiders to separate the bad from the good.
Cops need to fix their own shit or this will continue.
My friends try to. The broad paint-roller treatment the very folks that can prosecute civil rights violations get here on Reddit disturbs me.
There are exceeding decent people working in law enforcement. I have worked with more than one, to say the least. The people I've met who expressed openly racist sentiments were gone relatively quickly. I can't speak for everyone, but I can say there are actually a whole bunch of people who aren't like what you posit. Perhaps together everyone can center in and eliminate the malcontents instead of this insane "All cops bad" narrative.
I can't say this about everyone I know in law enforcement, but for some (real, not racist) justice is one of their missions in life. There are those who care out there.
Probably not the best defense to be made when people are concerned that this technology is being used to suppress and monitor protestors...