It's not an issue of where the protesters are, it's who the protesters are.
I'm getting increasingly concerned that (USA in particular) police focus on staying out of the way and, so long as things don't escalate much, letting the situation run its course ... while documenting the participants by any means, so they can be individually & quietly apprehended & prosecuted later. Cell phone metadata, face recognition from video recordings, license plates, etc - all can be applied to identify who was involved, accusing them of all sorts of crimes just for being present if not for particular documented transgressions.
Much easier to apply the baton later when the mob can be handled as lone individuals. Gotta know who though, and that's not hard now.
It's certainly known that they do the tracking part - in the UK as long as a decades ago you'd see police at demonstrations with cameras catching as many faces as possible (and weren't secretive about their purposes). What they then did with that information could range on a scale from nothing to conspiracy theory level, I'm not sure.
I don't know per se. I've heard some vague references to it. Main point is it's so possible & compelling I'm having a hard time believing it's not happening. Some things are, in fact, not well known despite our firehose-style media.
I'm getting increasingly concerned that (USA in particular) police focus on staying out of the way and, so long as things don't escalate much, letting the situation run its course ... while documenting the participants by any means, so they can be individually & quietly apprehended & prosecuted later. Cell phone metadata, face recognition from video recordings, license plates, etc - all can be applied to identify who was involved, accusing them of all sorts of crimes just for being present if not for particular documented transgressions.
Much easier to apply the baton later when the mob can be handled as lone individuals. Gotta know who though, and that's not hard now.