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The defenders and promulgators of data-driven, predictive policing - which is meant to anticipate crimes before they happen - face a PR problem: reassuring the public against fears that such methods are ushering in a totalitarian future reminiscent of the science-fiction film
Minority Report.
Concerns about preemptive crime fighting through data hoarding and analysis are hard to assuage, however, because they are perfectly valid.
A
lengthy feature published in the
Guardian on Wednesday looked at the permeation of data-driven analysis in the LAPD and other municipal police forces. "As the ability to collect, store and analyze data becomes cheaper and easier, law enforcement agencies all over the world are adopting techniques that harness the potential of technology to provide more and better information," it noted. "But while these new tools have been welcomed by law enforcement agencies, they're raising concerns about privacy, surveillance and how much power should be given over to computer algorithms."
The
Guardian's report describes an LAPD war room full of video screens. They show incidents of crime in real time; multiple newscasts; the seismic effects of earthquakes; and sections of the city as small as 500 square feet where algorithmic data-crunching indicates that crimes are most likely to take place.
At first glance, such systems seem benignly empirical. Why wait for a robbery or a shooting when algorithms working beyond the capabilities of human intuition can help prevent these incidents in advance? But such an understanding wrongly assumes the neutrality of information. The picture of crime to come is based on pre-existing police data, which we know to be biased and flawed.
Comment: Putin must be laughing and saying "I told you so"!