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Geoprofiling Moves Into The Limelight
circletimessquare writes "Interesting and timely. A short piece at CNN talks about the software helping to track down the sniper currently terrorizing the Washington DC area. It was the doctoral thesis of a cop, Kim Rossmo, who developed it while walking the beat in Vancouver and reading about the hunting patterns of African lions. Googling, I found an older but deeper piece which mentions more of the tech behind the software, called Rigel. That led me to the website of ECRI, the company that makes Rigel. More good tech there."
I'd be somewhat curious if letting the media know that they're currently using this technique to catch the sniper is a good thing. It seems like this guy (or gal) loves the media attention and would certainly hear of this-although given how many times he has shot people in the last few days, I'd imagine it would still be very helpful. Would "security through obscurity" be a good thing here?
but don't brag about it until/unless it helps you crack the case.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Actually this isn't new, nore is it all that freaking scary.
It's a technique that's been in use for a long long time by police departments, only with a less quantitative aspect. But they dind't call it 'geographic profiling' they called it 'sticking pushpins into the map'...
They're not *tracking* people, they're entering crime data into a GIS.
No. This is based on the theory that most criminals (this technique is most often used with property crimes like burglary or armed robbery) like to work in familiar territory.
Forcing them into unfamiliar territory to screw up the profiling them loses them the advantages of commiting crimes on known ground and makes it more likely they'll be seen/caught.
There has been alot of talk and show these days about all those new computerized profiling technologies. (Face recoginition, et al.)
Finally, here is one that I think is right on the money.
Here is one that makes the computer just another tool in the policeman's tool box. This is in sharp contrast to present trends. For now the computer is helping solve the crimes and prevent future crimes, but it's not laying the blame on people who have yet to commit a crime.
I know this is mostly due to how the creator uses his experience, but (IMHO) that's what makes this soo nice.
Thats exactly the point, who in there right mind would go on a killing spree?
Same when someone wants to commit suicide, they dont go to the observation deck on the Sears Tower then jump off, they dont care how they die, they just wanna die fast!
Slash-for-Thought
I'll paraphrase an expert I saw on tv (god, I feel ignorant saying that!): "There is a balance between the criminal's desire to remain anonymous and his desire to operate in his comfort zone." A knowledgeable criminal may try to "game" the profile, but it seems to me that he would still need to operate within his comfort zone. If he strays too far away, that causes other problems for him: he's an outsider, he generates hotel bills, he misses work, he's away from his family, etc.
Evil is the money of root.
Perhaps its because security cameras aren't as pervasive as everyone likes to think they are.
I hold a patent on sigs...
Well, geoprofiling narrows it down to a few blocks.
Pushing stickpins into a map rarely allows such insight.
When one has already shown them self to be a anomaly how effective is any given method of prediction/profiling?
Let's face it, you don't go killing people as a habit. Any results from a given "profile" are not the best answer, they are merely a suggested solution to a given set of criteria, some of which we've yet to know.
If the person meets the criteria of a given profile, then yes, they are more likely to be in X place or be X person.
But we *must* keep in mind people can do other than what they would be expected to, even if we know nearly everything about them. And if they've already broken the social and moral bounds of killing their fellow man, seemingly without cause I'd say then that they are even less likely to fit a given profile.
True, they are likely to meet some criteria and be "standardized" in that aspect, but we can never know which criteria are the ones that fit their profile.
With that said we can *never* rely on just one method for a single case. We need to use many methods, often contradictory, in the hopes that one of those profiles is the correct one.
In this kind of case over confidence in our methods literally becomes a killer.
*shrug* look at people like the Uni-Bomber. If I recall correctly, the only reason he was eventually found was because his brother turned him in after recognizing his style of witting reading the manifesto.
Sorry if this isn't more eloquent. This case is actually pretty close to home for me (both geographically speaking and emotionally.) People who go out of their way to try and kill children... I really want this person gone.
I know it's human nature to find patterns in random data, but this seems just a wee bit far fetched to me.
Chances are s/he just wanted to say that s/he's god, and because of that has power over life and death (with no way for them to stop s/he).
Sometimes a nutjob is just a nutjob.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
My theory on the criminal mind is that people who would be smart enough to indefinitely outsmart detectives in a crime are generally smart enough to reason themselves out of committing the crime in the first place. And most of the "criminal geniuses" become to cocky for their own good.
This sniper's weakness is that he is going to do it again. And every time he does, we will get closer to catching him. People without the willpower to stop themselves from doing it the first time certainly don't have the willpower to stop themselves subsequently.
Unplanned murders are generally messy and planned murders are done by people not entirely in their right mind. That is why this guy is going to be caught.
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Can someone with a reasonable knowledge of US geography tell me if the guy in this article is from around there? From my quick search it seems their both near/in Washington. If so it's an odd coincidence if nothing else..
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> How many of those would have been solved
> without the program? I'd like to see a
> head-to-head, although I assume most
> police forces don't have the manpower to
> devote 2 seperate teams to the same
> crimes.
I don't think an increase in the proportion of crimes solved is neccesarily the goal. The goal is to solve crimes more quickly. After all, this is just a more sophisticated version of the pegboard shown on every cop show.
Faster solutions to serial murder and rape cases mean fewer victims, which is a good thing. They also mean that the same detectives can solve more crimes in a year, even if the rate of closed cases stays the same. So this software makes a city safer, and makes its police more efficiant; even if the proportion ofr crimes solved remains the same.
There's no holy grail of purchasing patterns to be discovered that would increase Walmart's revenues by another 100%
.more $PROFIT!!
Sure there is. The holy grail is "how do we get more people to buy stuff they don't need." Example: the laser pointer keychain. If you don't think that there is a way to discover through some sort of data mining a better place(s) to display those things in a store that would increase the sales of those particular items, you are naive. Now just think if they knew exactly how to group products in a retail setting to maximize impulse buying. .
Federally, they're very tightly restricted under the 1934 National Firearms Act. However, it is theoretically possible for private citizens to own them.
State laws may be more restrictive. I'm willing to bet that the state/local laws in DC and Maryland are a LOT more restrictive.
Someone with evil intent can probably make one easily enough. Most of us already have one on our cars: What do you think mufflers do?
Shooting old men and children and women.
Something I've wondered in this case... why is it worse to shoot "old men and women and children" than it is to shoot anyone else? Are 35-year-old men some sort of second-class citizen, not worthy of sorrow? Sure, they may be more able to defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat, but that's not going to do them a lot of good when a sniper shoots them in the middle of the suburbs...
deus does not exist but if he does
I was part of the team that implemented an early version of the Rigel software used by Kim Rossmo.
At least in the early version, the algorithm was very simple. It was so simple you would have though it would never be useful. The beauty is that the algorithm doesn't need to pinpoint the house, just the neighborhood. It was much better to have a simple and easily provable algorithm than get another half a block of accuracy.
The available databases to convert from street address to spatial locations sucked. To me a big part of the magic was converting addresses where a crime occured to a UTM coordinate.
Most importantly, the magic of Rigel and Kim Rossmo is not the geoprofiling algorithms, but the marketting and public relations.
But you missed it! "Dear policeman, I am god" is an anagram of "A calendared gimp, I moo!" Clearly the bugginess and slowness of Apple's iCal sent this lunatic over the edge!
And "recalci" is an anagram of "Clarice." What are you trying to tell us, here?
I write in my journal
the fact seems to be that our culture-- maybe all cultures for all I know-- places a higher value on the lives of the very young, the very old, and women than on the lives of adult men.
I can understand that... I just noticed this when the police chief said that shooting children was "crossing over the line". I'd like to think that I'm on the same side of the line as the children, i.e. that shooting at me is unacceptable. (I don't live in the US... maybe common-or-garden public shootings occur often enough over there that this is no longer a reasonable expectation?)
35-year-old white man
I wasn't talking about colour here -- that would fall into that standard pro/anti-reverse discrimination line of argument, and I'm more interested in discussing people's ingrained notions of degrees of fairness/unfairness.
The average serial killer profile in the US is often white middle-class male, isn't it? Are there any useful statistics on this?
deus does not exist but if he does
That is a good point, This guy hits reliably and doesn't freak out. My own take is that this is someone with military sniper training.
I don't know about that as his kills have been in the chest AND head not to mention he has also wounded his last two victims, one of them by an abdominal shot. Formal training would provide for far better accuracy and the wounding of the last two might indicate he is getting more nervous.
My guess is that this is an emotionally immature individual without any strong emotional attachments who has spent far too much time involved in fantasy and the movies and television. (thus the overly theatrical death card). This individual does not have military training as his shots have actually not been that accurate and he is not killing for the sake of killing. Rather he is doing it for the attention and the power trip that this is providing via the media. He will not have a professional job as his emotional immaturity will not allow for it and the crimes have happened when most professional jobs would be taking place. My guess would be this is a white male with some post high school education but no formally completed degree and he is most likely in his thirties with an emotionally adjusted age of twenty or so. He probably has an fascination with guns, but cannot afford the higher end so he is doing the killings with a commonly available shorter barrel AR-15 derivatives and has most likely spent some time on the internet at the various sniper websites that I am sure are out there possibly even contributing to the discussion groups. As such, that may be a good place to look for clues to anyone in the D.C. area. Additionally, this person most likely has spent some time at local shooting ranges (if there are any. Anyone?) and would most likely be known there. He is likely somewhat talkative to others about guns and technique, but somewhat unidimensional and unimaginitive in his interactions.
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An informative post, but this is just plain wrong:
Force=Mass*Velocity
Maybe you meant that momentum=mass*velocity? Or that force=mass*acceleration?
>He deserves to die in ways more horrible than humans can imagine.
Nobody deserves that.