Google and ProPublica Team Up To Build a National Hate Crime Database (techcrunch.com) 310
In partnership with ProPublica, Google News Lab is launching a new tool to track hate crimes across America. The "Documenting Hate News Index" is being powered by machine learning to track reported hate crimes across all 50 states, collecting data from February 2017 onward. TechCrunch reports: Data visualization studio Pitch Interactive helped craft the index, which collects Google News results and filters them through Google's natural language analysis to extract geographic and contextual information. Because they are not catalogued in any kind of formal national database, a fact that inspired the creation of the index to begin with, Google calls the project a "starting point" for the documentation and study of hate crimes. While the FBI is legally required to document hate crimes at the federal level, state and local authorities often fail to report their own incidents, making the data incomplete at best.
The initiative is a data-rich new arm of the Documenting Hate project which collects and verifies hate incidents reported by both individual contributors and by news organizations. The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives (casual uses of the word "hate" for example), striking a responsible balance between machine learning and human curation on a very sensitive subject. Hate events will be mapped onto a calendar in the user interface, though users can also use a keyword search or browse through algorithmic suggestions. For anyone who'd like to take the data in a new direction, Google will open sourced its data set, making it available through GitHub.
The initiative is a data-rich new arm of the Documenting Hate project which collects and verifies hate incidents reported by both individual contributors and by news organizations. The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives (casual uses of the word "hate" for example), striking a responsible balance between machine learning and human curation on a very sensitive subject. Hate events will be mapped onto a calendar in the user interface, though users can also use a keyword search or browse through algorithmic suggestions. For anyone who'd like to take the data in a new direction, Google will open sourced its data set, making it available through GitHub.
Yay for censorship technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonder how they train this pseudo-AI to recognize what hate crime is. Humans can't really reliably do it, it's always a judgment call very much biased by the individual person's view, especially political views.
And when this AI then can reliably reproduce the views of the one paying for it, Google, then it's awesome to filter pretty much the whole internet the way they want.
The future is a brave new world and I'm very happy to be a part of it!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
All with equal standing to have terms and words added, tracked and reported on.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand there's plenty of room for ambiguity for things like this but anyone who describes someone as the lesser because of race/religion/sexuality/etc pretty easily falls into a category of undesirables by any part of society I have any respect for.
Maybe you're a Nazi, maybe a hardcore Christian, maybe a hardcore Muslim, maybe some sort of other extremist. I don't care. They're all scum to me.
On the other hand if you're for a free and open society where everyone lives their lives according to their ow
Re:Yay for censorship technology (Score:5, Insightful)
...anyone who describes someone as the lesser because of race/religion/sexuality/etc pretty easily falls into a category of undesirables...
Maybe you're a Nazi, maybe a hardcore Christian, maybe a hardcore Muslim, maybe some sort of other extremist. I don't care. They're all scum to me.
You just described hardcore Christians and maybe hardcore Muslims as scum due to their religion. Does this not make you an undesirable by your own reasoning? Perhaps the world is more nuanced than you allow for in your reasoning and perhaps degenerating an entire group due to either stereotypes or lack of understanding of a group's beliefs is not wise nor fair.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Here, let me help you.
if (hardcore_attitude &&
(Christian || Muslim || yadayada))
denounce();
If I presented that block to you in code review, you'd make the same observation?
Here, let me help you again.
if (hardcore_attitude) {
Re: (Score:2)
You too are falling into the same self denunciation. The idea that denouncing someone for having a "hardcore attitude" without nuance is in my mind also a hardcode attitude and adding "extra_denounce" for a person's religion is also repugnant.
The last time I checked, the judge does not add extra time to a prison sentence during sentencing due to the defendant being Christian, Muslim, or "yadayada". However I do believe that the judge usually has some leeway in terms of the sentencing depending upon the nua
Re: (Score:2)
By hardcore I mean those who seek to impose their beliefs on others. A belief that people should not impose their beliefs on others is not the same as one that does any more than some one who believes freedom of speech is not trying to subvert the speech of those who don't.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem here is including religion on the list of protected classes.
Hardcore Christians and Muslims do discriminate on the grounds of sexuality and gender. Their religion should not afford them any protection.
But that would be discriminating on the grounds of religion.
Can't people just be tolerant of discrimination? You discriminate, they discriminate, we all discriminate. You can't say one form of discrimination is wrong and yours is right. Well, you can but it would just reveal how small minded you are.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with being tolerant of discrimination is that you are then in favor of limiting the opportunities of said class being discriminated against. Being tolerant of discrimination would have meant letting segregation and all of its negative effects on black people stay in place in America. After all, these policies were all properly voted in at the state level.
I would certainly agree that tribalism is inherent to humanity and something we all engage in even if it is sometimes unconscious. On the other
Re: (Score:2)
But that would be discriminating on the grounds of religion.
Can't people just be tolerant of discrimination?
You say I discriminate on the grounds of religion, and then ask why I don't tolerate discrimination.
I'm not even going to bother.
Do you think that people should only be allowed to believe things that have been approved, perhaps by some kind of committee or panel?
Re: (Score:2)
No. I'm not even sure why you would ask me that. Do you believe it?
I think thats where your society is headed.
Re: (Score:2)
>They're all scum to me.
And you are scum to me.
Re: (Score:2)
And you are scum to me.
In the long run, we're all scum. If that's all you have to add to the conversation, you have nothing worth adding.
Re: (Score:2)
You seem very catholic in said opinion. As some one of a Catholic background I reject such things as original sin. One only has to look at the plethora of studies done on young children playing amongst themselves. They could give a rats ass about ethnicity or anything else unless they were told to believe otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there any evidence to support this? Seems like some groups have been demanding things like blasphemy be banned forever, but Google hasn't done much for them.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Some people conflate Islam with race. In fact a lot of people do when it comes to discrimination. So there is some desire to protect people from a kind of racial discrimination, but stuff like blasphemy laws can fuck right off.
Re: (Score:2)
Wonder how they train this pseudo-AI to recognize what hate crime is
It's a pretty simple algorithm actually:
IF Victim = ("black" OR "woman" OR "gay" OR "Muslim") AND Perpetrator = "straight white male"
THEN HateCrime = TRUE
ELSE HateCrime = FALSE
Re: (Score:2)
Remember Microsoft's racist AI? [theverge.com] Or how about the racist algorithms being used in criminal sentencing? [lawnewz.com]
The problem with developing an AI to detect "hate crimes" is "garbage in, garbage out": you can never create a race-free AI if you train it using bad data which may be racially biased. And because we cannot train AIs without input data, and because the input data is all bad--all we would be doing is hard-coding bad assumptions into inscrutable and unaccountable algorithms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wonder how they train this pseudo-AI to recognize what hate crime is. Humans can't really reliably do it, it's always a judgment call very much biased by the individual person's view, especially political views.
The problem has been solved long ago; all Google has to do is to follow the lessons of their illustrious predecessors in the promotion of right thinking:
There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.
Nikolai Yezhov, People's Comissar for Internal Affairs and head of the NKVD
Just flag it as hate anyway - you can be sure somebody somewhere will be offended.
Re: (Score:2)
The AI probably will learn it quite well.. but then the owners of the AI will not like the opinion of it, and will force the AI to do what they want with blacklists and filters on top of it, like blocking the AI from acting when its a case of "hate against white people".
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, describing some one else as the lesser because they are of another race/religion/sexuality/etc is hard to pick out.
Perhaps, but is that a crime?
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of things that aren't a crime but are undesirable and warrant keeping an eye on. Is it a crime to work on sensitive data but maintain constant contact with the Chinese government? Not at all until you transmit some of that data to them. Likewise with members of hate groups, be they white supremacist, Muslim extremist, or anything else.
Whats next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ag-gag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ?
Governments who don't like dissidents?
Authors?
Negative movie reviews?
Books?
Statues?
History?
Tiananmen square?
Whistleblowers?
Whats next for tracking and sorting for contextual information?
Re: (Score:2)
> Cartoons and animations about faith need to be tracked too?
Cartoons are already properly dealt with in the only right way.
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
We already HAVE crime statistics reported by the police and the FBI as they document crime.
This is just a VOLUNTARY database (which I'm sure won't be abused) to build up a list of crimes, many of which aren't even legally defined as a crime and charges that were never investigated or go to trial but people's names will be tracked in the database anyway.
We've moving to the next stage of thought crimes where you will be ostracized and penalized because you said she instead of xhe (which is now a punishable crime in California) or because you state anything that's not in step with the gestapo of politically correct thought.
This is not a good thing, these are not enlightened times. We have abandoned objective truth and free speech for a political, nearly religious ideology.
Dark times for the world.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Start moving the Overton window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Precrime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Dangerous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a dangerous idea. Some group, not answerable to anyone, gets to put people into a database of "wrongthink". TFS and TFA talk about "hate crimes" - one would like that to imply that they would only collect law enforcement data, ideally restricted to actual convictions. That might be ok, but that's not what they're doing.
In fact, the "hate crime" collection apparently involves becoming a central repository for any sort of article, blog post, or whatever that talks about supposed incidents of "hate". That would be bad enough, since the criteria are entirely subjective.
But it's worse than that. If you go to the actual project page [propublica.org], they want to document hate crimes and "bias incidents". For the latter, they are happy to accept individual stories. Who gets to define what constitutes a "bias" incident?
At best, this is just another SJW right-think project, giving the long list of corporate sponsors a wonderful opportunity to virtue signal. At worst, if individual people are named in the individual stories they intend to collect, it will become a form of arbitrary, non-judicial punishment with no recourse to the people named.
Re: (Score:3)
Where do you draw the line? Wikipedia has a list of people associated with the alt-right, for example, with articles documenting the stuff they have said and done.
swjlist.com has a list of alleged SJWs. Is that okay? Do you still think it's SJWs compiling lists of themselves?
Re: (Score:2)
What would be funny to me is if they accept all stories based on "being struck or physically assaulted based on my own personal beliefs."
I guarantee the database would then be overran with a million stories of folks on the right being attacked by Union members or Antifa marchers attacking reporters. Worse, we may even incentivize idiots like the person who went to the Durham NC left-wing protests organized by the communist Workers World Party with a pro-Trump message, just so they can become a right-wing m
Re: (Score:2)
current purge on Youtube
wtf is up with that? I watch about the most bland/nerdy/geeky/instructional videos on youtube and some of them have been removed????
Stuff like - soldier a jumper across these two pins shorting out diode protection and increasing performance saving 15w if you really know what you are doing stuff. Warning, you will fry your last 3 weeks of work if you plug it in backward after this.
The project description (Score:2)
Hate crimes and bias incidents are a national problem, but there’s no reliable data on the nature or prevalence of the violence. We’re collecting and verifying reports to create a national database for use by journalists, researchers and civil-rights organizations.
The 2016 election left many in America afraid – of intolerance and the violence it can inspire. The need for trustworthy facts on the details and frequency of hate crimes and other incidents born of prejudice has never been more urgent.
At this point, there is simply no reliable national data on hate crimes. And no government agency documents lower-level incidents of harassment and intimidation, such as online or real-life bullying. Documenting and understanding all of these incidents – from hate-inspired murders to anti-Semitic graffiti to racist online trolling – requires new, more creative approaches.
Who appointed them arbiters of free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
They appear to be self appointed arbiters of freedom of speech. This is what happened early on during the Wiemar Republic as Hitler's Brown Shirts stated govern the public discourse with violence and coercion.
More recently in the US I remember the censorship of pornography. The standard was, "I'll recognize it when I see it." It took us a long time to get rid of that censorship. And now we have Google and Pro Publica starting to do the same thing themselves in the name of hate speech, which they refuse to define. "I'll recognize it when I see it." The basic problem is the designated hate speech can be and often is carefully documented taken from primary sources available to everybody. We have somebody going around collecting information, documenting it, and presenting it accurately being censored because the resulting document somehow is this undefined thing called "hate speech."
This action of censorship is purely a symptom of their participating in what they claim they are trying to stop, Fascism in all its odious putrid excrescence.. You can see this if you read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." This is a heavy read. It is a scary read. It reveals how "movements" such as Antifa are doing exactly what the Germans did leading up to the collapse of the Wiemar Republic and WW-II.
Please, Google, go back to your roots, "Do no wrong."
{^_^}
Re:Who appointed them arbiters of free speech (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what happened early on during the Wiemar Republic as Hitler's Brown Shirts stated govern the public discourse with violence and coercion.
Just clarifying here, you are using nazi atrocities to justify why we should now be tolerant of nazis?
This is a heavy read. It is a scary read. It reveals how "movements" such as Antifa are doing exactly what the Germans did leading up to the collapse of the Wiemar Republic and WW-II.
If you are so familiar with the rise of the nazi party why are you not freaking out at what is happening right now in the US? If we say, "oh they are a small group of crazy people, just ignore them and they will go away," that is exactly what happened in Germany before the nazis managed to pit everyone against each other and wrest control of the government. What do you think we should do to prevent that from happening here? Because allowing them a platform didn't work very well last time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Who appointed them arbiters of free speech (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you wanted to be honest though, you'd mention that AA was just one of many groups that came and went in that era, which most people today would have a hard time telling apart from one another if not for the different names. They all had the same goals - preventing non-Communists from organizing politically, and the same tactics - violence.
The SA was organized to prevent those disruptions in general, regardless of the banner the disruptors flew that week - be it SPD, KPD, RFB, AA or any of the others.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet you can't figure out the part that the other poster told you. The KPD(german commie party), created a violent organization with the purpose of stopping any organization -- any -- from doing something politically.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you study history at all? No? I guess not. If you did, then you'd know why AA's founding 10 years after it, wasn't just a counter to it. The KPD used them to stop anyone from organizing any form of opposition. The KPD held 100 deputies when they formed them, they directly paid and funded AA and gave them direction. That's all historical fact.
In other words: A political party who couldn't win elections, formed a violent off-shoot group to go after any political opposition. Especially the SA, but any
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Too Much Information...... (Score:5, Insightful)
And they could afford to pay people to generate LOTS of records, so there ended up being so many records on paper that they became difficult to use.
Much of the information retained turned out to be ultimately worthless. And of what little of it would have been valuable, there was no way to search or access it efficiently, so it often turned out to be worthless as well.
When computers came along, it was said that they would fix that problem...... And for a while the computers did... But maybe even that tide is now turning?
What this basically amounts to is a special project to discover and sub-index results that are already in Google's database system, but that cannot be searched or accessed conveniently by the normal means.
?
So what is the next stage in search engine design?
Is it to selectively forget results that people click on the least? (not just push them down in the results, but remove them entirely?)
Do a search engine's indexes regularly need to be pruned to improve results?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the CEOs of companies like Google and Apple and Amazon have become modern-day Robber Barons, seeking to control governments and culture without being accountable to anyone, even going so far as to suggest laws that lock in their power?
Huh. Odd how power corrupts even the most "woke" folks. Almost like it'd be nice if we had things like checks and balances or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is Google going to list itself? (Score:2)
Or Twitter? After all, they aid and abet this shit in the first place, and their behavior shows it. Aiding and abetting a hate crime is part of hate crimes, IIRC.
Just one litmus test (Score:2)
Did they include the Facebook Live Torture case as a hate crime?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/... [cnn.com]
Black on white crime is hateful too.
i am getting tired of bloody sleight of hand (Score:2)
surely, "hate news database" is much less menacing and Orwellian than "hate crime database"
Hopefully I will be on it (Score:2)
ProPublica and the subprime mortgage scandal (Score:2)
Hate is an emotion, not a crime. (Score:2)
Don't you think that the concept of "thought crime" is already bad enough?
Hate Crime (Score:2)
Hate Crime.
What is the purpose? (Score:2)
Whenever collecting data and visualizing it in various reports, there usually is an intended purpose, i.e. who's going to be looking at the reports and what actions and/or decisions will be made based on those reports. Those actions/decisions should in turn change the next iteration of the report, closing the control loop.
Can I someone enlighten me what exactly is this hate reporting expected to accomplish? Who is the intended audience and what decisions are they expected to make based on this report?
I hate Google. (Score:2)
So put me on the list.
Nonsense. (Score:5, Interesting)
Trolling? What the hell are you talking about? I'm all for freedom of speech but as a society committed to freedom and openness we do need to keep an eye on our least desirable elements.
Re:Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean how else can you round them up and properly shame them?
Re: Nonsense. (Score:2)
Unmutual! [youtu.be]
Re: Nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
get special treatment for doing nothing but being born a skin color?
You mean like affirmative action?
But forget about trying to Google about much more than that. It's results have been scrubbed of anything 'negative' about 'minorities' and just for entering the search terms 'how do minorities benefit from government programs' has most assuredly just added me to the database mentioned in this article.
There's a few crisis-generating problems the article helps bring to light.
1. We pretty much use one global search engine that has the power, the willingness, and has actively demonstrated censure to the point of firing employees that don't tow the party line.
2. This same search entity has the ability and has announced the intention of creating a database of individuals that don't tow the party line.
3. This censure includes the results of data mining and has a tremendous affect on the decisions of people that use the Internet as their main source of Information.
Surely this technology won't be abused. Not by Google or Alphabet! (/sarcasm)
As a side note, every 'supremacist group' whatever their color is made of sad lonely individuals that feel they have no power of their lives and that their problems are caused by someone else. Looking at both the KKK and the Black Panthers as well as many others. Just turds wanting attention and getting it.
Re: (Score:2)
Trolling? What the hell are you talking about? I'm all for freedom of speech but as a society committed to freedom and openness we do need to keep an eye on our least desirable elements.
Some people seem to have an issue with people collecting their opinions. It's the internet folks, its a criminal records and other easily collectable data sources.
I remember when the get tough on crime crowd used to be all for this stuff. It was really easy to support a registry of sex offenders,- if you oppose this, you must be a child molester. It was real easy to agitate for taking sentencing decisions out of the hands of judges - damn activist judges! It was really easy to support a similar setup ag
I'm concerned over definitions. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I have with the data sources that may then be used by organizations like Google is that they inherently become subjective as all hell.
For example, if we were to use the definition of a "hate crime" as one where a group or organization engages in violent actions in order to create social change, you not only scoop up White Separatists, but you also scoop up many in the Civil Rights movement, who used violence to get change. You also scoop up the labor rights activists of the early 1900's who engaged in violence in order to promote social change.
So inherently the definition of a "hate crime" becomes inherently tied up in who is doing the hating and what is being hated.
A Westboro Church member punches a homosexual because of who he is, and of course it's a "hate crime." But a homosexual punches a Westboro Church member because of who he is--well, the fact pattern is exactly the same: A punches B because of who B is. But should that be classified as a hate crime?
It's why I'd like to see us do away with the whole concept of "hate crimes" and prosecute the underlying crime instead. And if you want social change badly enough you are willing to sacrifice your life (and become a prisoner for your actions) then so be it. The public can then judge if you're a martyr or a murderer based on the social currents rather than by overt definition.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference between Neil deGrasse Tyson [wikipedia.org] punching Weev [wikipedia.org] for being a neo-Nazi and Weev punching NGT for being black is pretty simple: Tyson can't change the fact he's black. The sooner Weev wants to stop being a neo-Nazi the better.
You can hate Democrats, Republicans, Nazis or Antifa and these are entirely different from hating ethnic groups precisely because the former is a CHOSEN identity while the latter is a BORN AS identity.
Re: (Score:2)
If I'm permitted to punch someone for aspects they can change, then I can punch a Democrat for being a Democrat, or a Muslim for being Muslim, or a Liberal for being Liberal, or--if we assume homosexual behavior (as opposed to internal feelings or desires) is elected behavior (you can choose not to kiss someone, for example)--I can punch a homosexual for acting gay. Is that the world you wish to live in?
I suspect not.
Which takes us right back to the problem with 'hate crimes', in that, at the bottom of the
Re: (Score:2)
Punching people is already illegal -- the point of a hate crime is a charge on top of an already committed crime.
So yes, you could punch your political opponents without it being a hate crime (still not "permitted"). However, religion is largely familial almost everywhere in the world, meaning that if your parents are Jewish, you're going to get a bris and if you're parents are Christian, you're going to get baptized -- and there's nothing you can do about it. Leaving the religion you were brought up in can
Re: (Score:2)
No, of course not. Until someone cuts off your Internet access [eff.org] and starts controlling the content you are allowed to post on the Internet in general. After all, as we all know, the Great Firewall of China is no big deal. Right?
Seriously I don't think we're going to go down that path, but only because in the weeks or months to follow, all this virtu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even worse, this is already being used to track incidents of "intimidate, harass, humiliate", i.e. not actual crimes.
And then there is how the ProPublica reporters are conveniently now relying on bogus SPLC classifications to work towards blacklisting/removing Internet utilities from bloggers they don't like [pjmedia.com], because obviously someone who is anti-Muslim-extremist terrorism should have their Paypal account cancelled, etc... but ISIS? They're ok with those guys as not "hateful".
Re: (Score:2)
I once met someone (a then-fiancé of an acquaintance), let's call him Joe, who got himself into a situation about a decade back. From what I gathered, some guy at a bar, let's call him Bob, was giving Joe's buddy a hard time. One thing led to another, and pretty soon they were taking things outside. By the time it was done, Bob had received a pretty significant beating, though he thankfully didn't suffer any permanent damage. Even so, the beating went beyond what I would imagine is typical of a bar fi
Les Misérables (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How can you keep an eye on them if they've been silenced and driven underground??
Me, I would face that all-seeing eye the other way.
Re:Nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have this sick feeling in my guts because of this. Not because I hate people so much (I have a list of individuals and ideologies of course as apparently everybody else). but because that is exactly what I was running away from when I chose to leave my communist society behind. The good thing is the shops are full of goods today. So there are differences. The political taboos have been reintroduced tho. I only hope that this goes away as any mass hysteria eventually does. The problem is - they tend to last shorter only if they are very brutal. Let us see however.
A side thought - if somebody needed to have an argument against google's almost monopoly then this one is best so far.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That would be Bush II who almost bankrupted the company, idiot.
Are you such a partisan that you have to post obvious falsehoods?
Re: (Score:2)
*country.
I meant country, not company.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Tracking actual crimes is the same as tracking people by ancestry? Law enforcement has always tracked crimes. They used to do it on paper, then on computers, this is just yet another tool for them to use.
Re: (Score:2)
In the interest of putting an end to scenarios like the first two, yes!
Re: (Score:2)
A disingenuous oversimplification. In order to prevent use of [x] by [y], we much collectively agree to allow [z] to use [x] in a controlled manner.
Here are some examples:
x=violence, y=criminals, z=police
x=watchlists, y=ethno-nationalists/fascists, z=government
Re: (Score:2)
The FBI has been tracking white supremacist groups for decades. What are you blathering on about? Being a Nazi is not the same as being a Jew.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, mate. You say racist things in public, then you take the chance that someone is going to capture those utterances.
Re: (Score:2)
Trolling? What the hell are you talking about? I'm all for freedom of speech but as a society committed to freedom and openness we do need to keep an eye on our least desirable elements.
Once upon a time that meant a registry of people with Jewish ancestry. At other times it was McCarthyism.
Should we really go down that path?
So because at two times (or more) Fascists were using lists of people to suppress, we shouldn't keep track of all the Fascists. Yeah, makes sense.
Re: (Score:2)
* "Least desirable elements" to only include conservatives, Trump voters, white males, old-school liberals, and anyone else who disagrees with the SJW agenda.
What does "old-school liberal" mean to you?
Re: (Score:2)
You've just convinced yourself that it's acceptable to dehumanize others to justify violence. (You know... A Nazi.)
It's funny you mention Nazis, because they are going around openly calling for genocide. Last time they did that, they then went forth and tried to kill all the Jews. Maybe we should pay attention when they do it, in case they go try to kill all the Jews again, or maybe just expand their pogroms to cover anyone who isn't white and right enough. If they don't want to risk violence, those poor babies, then perhaps they should cease calling for extermination of entire species. I don't buy that bullshit about m
Re: (Score:2)
Someone who cares about civil liberties they themselves don't personally need or use, because they understand the value of other people having freedom of choice, even if they themselves don't.
I'm pretty sure that a liberal is someone who favors civil liberties for all, but also regulating business to prevent it from committing abuses. I mean, if we're trying to use the classical definition. I was hoping for something more pithy, because "old school" is usually attached to some kind of negative behavior, but this works fine, too.
Basically, neither the dems nor the pubs.
There, we are in agreement. The dems are centrists. They have left off speaking for the people, in the main part, if ever they did.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm about as left leaning as left leaning one can be, but this continous trolling by the editors really needs to stop. Please stop it now.
Just so our slahdotter bretheren understand who they are supporting - Chris Cantrell, https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Hate reading a negative review of a movie expected to make money? A negative movie review could be a crime.
Blasphemy? Thats a real crime in a few nations. To protect trade and investment comments on faith is a crime.
Fraternities and the security services hate seeing their once hidden documents been made public. Publication is a crime.
Hate reading about history and facts? Talking about history becomes liable.
Hate been censored? A na
Re: (Score:2)
"hate crime" has a specific messing: crime motivated by hatred a protected class.
Re: (Score:2)
The definition includes "race", "gender", and so on, not "black", "woman", and so on.
What you think it means is clearly the later, but you have clearly shown time and again that you arent very good as a thinker, let alone as a good fact checker (such as just now)
White men are a protected class in at least 2 ways that make a class protected, which are race and gender. Not sounding like a "specific meaning" any more, does it? Yeah.. becau
Re:Love Crimes, anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Protected class" does NOT have a "specific meaning" as you claim.
Yes it does!
The definition includes "race", "gender", and so on, not "black", "woman", and so on.
There you go, that's the specific meaning.
If you murder someone because of his or her race or gender it's a hate crime. If you murder someone to steal their wallet it is not.
Not very hard to understand.
Re: (Score:2)
When a "specific meaning" has a non-specific definition, it is merely a hand waving assertion that a specific meaning exists.
You can wave your hands all day long about this, but you will still be dead wrong. This "dont look at the flaws of my argument" mentality that you have is very stupid and dumb. its kind of sad, really.
Re: (Score:3)
So what happens when a crime is motivated by a hatred of an unprotected class? Not a hate crime, just an ordinary crime?
I'm willing in principal to buy into the idea of a hate crime as a crime motivated by bias against some kind of identifiable group, but I have to balk at the "protected class" distinction because it seems to rather arbitrarily consider crimes motivated against "unprotected" classes as less serious.
I also question how you determine this bias motivation. Is it strictly limited to the circu
Re: (Score:2)
So what happens when a crime is motivated by a hatred of an unprotected class? Not a hate crime, just an ordinary crime?
Yes.
"Hate crime" is just the name of a type of crime that society has judged to be slightly more bad because of the motivation behind it. Like premeditated murder is worse than killing someone in a fit of rage with no prior intent to do so, in the eyes of the law.
Don't try to read anything into the name.
I have to balk at the "protected class" distinction because it seems to rather arbitrarily consider crimes motivated against "unprotected" classes as less serious.
The reason for it is that certain attributes, things like gender and race, are things people have no choice over. Political views are a choice, which football team you support is a choice, being born with a
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, aren't all crimes motivated by hatred?
Nope, a lot of crimes are motivated by material gain. Sociopaths don't hate their victims, they just don't regard costs (emotional, physical, or material) to their victims as important.
Re: (Score:2)
i can see a near future where background check companies consult this database, and as applicants have no idea why they were rejected, false positives will persist and a small group of people paying the price until they die.
Re: (Score:2)