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Police Agencies Using Software To Generate "Threat Scores" of Suspects (washingtonpost.com)
Koreantoast writes: It's no secret that governments across the globe have been taking advantage of new technologies to create stronger surveillance systems on citizens. While many have focused on the actions of intelligence agencies, local police departments continue to create more sophisticated systems as well. A recent article highlights one new system deployed by the Fresno, California police department, Intrado's Beware. The system scours police data, public records, social media, and public Internet data to provide a "threat level" of a potential suspect or residency. The software is part of a broader trend of military counterinsurgency tools and algorithms being repurposed for civil use. While these tools can help police manage actively dangerous situations, providing valuable intel when responding to calls, the analysis also raises serious civil liberties questions both in privacy (where the data comes from) and accuracy (is the data valid, was the analysis done correctly). Also worrying are the long term ramifications to such technologies: there has already been some speculation about "citizen scores," could a criminal threat score be something similar? At very least, as Matt Cagle of the ACLU noted, "there needs to be a meaningful debate... there needs to be safeguards and oversight."
Please, step into your designated cell. Your imprisonment for things you might do will begin in a second you potentially violent scumbag!
*BANG*BANG*BANG*BANG*
Sorry! We determined you were too much of a risk to our safety. You have been eliminated. Good bye!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How much do you love the Computer?
The Computer is your Friend.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
it's over there, out of sight, safely guarded.
Facebook, twitter, here I come. Not having an internet persona is probably going to rank you high on this list. Also do not forget to make sure you are a registered member on a pornsite or something, having no vices at all will also stick out.
And I guess this will be my last AC posting as well. Sorry for that, I know you will miss me.
I was unaware that carrying a suitcase full of cash was usually illegal... the same cannot be said for a suitcase full of crack.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Being tagged as "socnet non-user" (as opposed to "still indeterminate") is probably not a good flag, but I'll take it.
We desperately love to disregard complex multivariables. We want one-line evaluations of job candidates, one-number GPAs to represent an education. Take a moment to imagine that you could convince everyone a "relationship/marriage compatibility score" was a sound, valid determinate and not wildly meaningless and dynamic - you'd make millions.
Anyway, my point is the headline was basically inevitable, they're as bad as everyone else, it was only waiting for enough tech and bigdata.
....and probably a lot they just don't understand.
That's what this sounds like. They have metric assloads of data, so much they don't really know what to do with it all and maybe some of it they don't know what it means. But that's what correlations are for, isn't it? To manufacture causation?
I was unaware that carrying a suitcase full of cash was usually illegal...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
Welcome to America.
Why wouldn't you want this? It just sums up public information.
Maybe we could check ours (like getting our FICA score)?
but the other 35 don't rate!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
and even I think this stuff is bad ju-ju. The Extra Creditz youtube blog did a good piece on the Chinese version of this called Sesame Credit.
For those of you wondering how I can stay pro central gov't, I don't see how you can have a world without one. We're going to have a big military to protect us from other countries with big militaries. If you're going to have a big military then you better have a big, strong civilian gov't to counter balance it or you're just asking for a coup de eta. Besides, what else besides a strong central gov't can possibly stand up to a large multi-national corporation?
Think of it this way: It's like there's a box of loader firearms out in the open and somebody picked up a bunch of them and starts waving them around demanding things. Are you gonna sit there and do what they say because you might shoot your eye out or are you gonna pick up a gun and defend yourself? Yeah, you might shoot yourself (heck, it's statistically likely) but it's either that or spend the rest of eternity doing what they guy with the gun says. Gov't is that gun. It's a dangerous tool we're all stuck with...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Only if you're suspected of being a drug dealer under asset forfeiture laws. The police can arrest you, take your cash and don't have to give it back. Some police departments do it as a matter of policy because it easier to shake down the community than ask for a tax raise to pay for new equipment.
http://www.offthegridnews.com/current-events/police-seizing-cash-and-property-from-citizens-without-charges/
I remember in the 80s, rottweilers were the "dangerous dog" to avoid. my neighbor had one and it was a big ol teddy bear.
its all about the owner
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Considering that programmers (in the U.S.) skew heavily in that direction, you'd probably be correct, but you should also consider the possibility that it was contracted out to a group of brown Hindu males.
Of course the current algorithm used by the police is pretty damned biased, so I can't imagine this one being any worse. Hell, you could probably just feed a generic machine-learning algorithm data from previous offenders if you wanted to be really lazy and bilk the government for a bit of dosh.
When they conducted actual temperament testing, 'Pitbulls' tested in the top quartile for passing rate. That's not to say that it couldn't be improved, first by getting them out of the hands of 'bad' owners, followed up by a directed breeding program for good temperament.
I don't read AC A human right
Look at how well Facebook, Twitter, Apple Music, and Pandora do at curation to determine which is good and which is bad in the eyes of the beholder, that the devote millions of dollars to these technologies, and note their failure rate is high.
Now imagine someone's entire quality of life being decimated because of some poorly designed algorithm rushed to meet government accountability standards.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
SELECT Name, Address FROM Public WHERE Race = 'Black';
Have gnu, will travel.
Isn't this a euphemism for profiling? We're just automating stereotypes.
Threat Score (sum of all that apply):
Dark Skin +100
Speaks language other than English or Arabic + 500
Speaks Arabic +1000
Wears funny hat or turban +700
Likes big screen TVs +100
etc...
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
That the big one. The gov's are be sold ideas that worked so well in East Germany. Updated to sell to Western nations who have very few skilled clandestine officers but have been mastered signals intelligence.
:)
A lot of nations now use mandatory government ID photo records to look back over everything the gov and private NGO's, other private groups collected on the net.
Facial recognition: Privacy advocates raise concern over 'creepy' system Government says will enhance national security (2015-09-09)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Add in mil grade cell phone tracking and long term mapping.
The "manage actively dangerous situations" is government terms for taking away your freedom of assembly and freedom of association.
No peace protesting, anti war protesting. No questioning big agriculture, pharma. No walking around in public on public land with out an official chat down.
Journalists need to be really aware that their driving, walks to meet whistleblowers can and will be mapped every day. Slow down and talk for a few mins, sit with another phone owner, then change direction to walk away... all that shows a meeting. Your story just got discovered by a few different gov's and the mil.
With live mic gov ready cell phones that random conversation in a park or cafe is now very easy to collect.
Be aware of public and private CCTV. It all feeds into public private partnerships for realtime facial recognition and movement (gait analysis).
How to have fun with your citizen score? Download different onion routing software from varied websites with every new IP you get. Be seen in public by CCTV with a DSLR a lot. When confronted by an official ID yourself or walk back to your car to ensure your licence plate can be observed by the official.
Buy a drone and ensure the required registration number is requested and you always get a few chat downs. Be seen near or with all different types of protesters.
Walk into their gatherings with your phone on. Park your car near their events for hours.
Buy a few political books gov's and mil's like to watch for online in one order with a credit card.
Grow that gov electronic file for many random reasons. In some areas your might get a chat down request at your front door. Usually two officials with federal ID or a state based task force trying to pass working with federal funding as been a federal investigator. The chat down and card offer makes for a great "first amendment audit" video on social media further adding to your citizen score
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The police can arrest you, take your cash and don't have to give it back.
Actually, they don't even have to do the first step. They just take the money, saying they have 'probable cause' to believe that it's involved in drug trafficking.
Can't prove where the money came from? You just sold a bunch of drugs.
Can prove where the money came from? You're looking to buy drugs.
"What about my right to a trial?" - Oh, we know that would fail, so we're not charging you with anything, just your money, and because money isn't a person, it doesn't get rights!
"What about MY rights to MY property?" - Oh, you're so silly!
I don't read AC A human right
A better test of sw quality would be to show that the scores for leos are the same as for drug cartel members and serial killers.
if you are using military counterinsurgency tools and algorithms on the general population, you are just preventing any change that might upset the status quo. the military industrial complex is going to cannibalize the country if shit like this continues.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That's probably because there is no known risk with Pitbulls; only with Pitbull owners.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
My neighbor has a Rotty named Brutus. It is one of the most ironic names ever. That big bastard wouldn't hurt a fly.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That really isn't true. The average pitbull owner is just like you or me. It's just that 500,000 pitbulls didn't attack anyone today, but instead greeted their "owners" with love and affection doesn't sell. When all you hear about is the shady motherfuckers it is easy to get the impression that they are in the majority.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
And you seem to still be unaware of the fact, but try walking through the wrong neighborhood with one and see how long it takes you to get arrested.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I came across two pit bulls tearing a German shepherd apart today... ugly mess. Pit bull owner was a 70 year old woman who was helpless. Shepherd finally got free and headed for the hills.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Considering that programmers (in the U.S.) skew heavily in that direction
Let's see:
* Current job: 5% while male
* previous job: 20%
* previous job: 1% (just me)
* previous job: 3%
I work on the West coast, and almost everyone I work with is from India or China. Where do you work?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Great. Let us know when you come across two pit bulls tearing a German apart, so you can at least ask what the back story is. You don't know what happened between the shepards and the pitbull. The pitbull may well have had his reasons.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
DUDE. Hello, racism? Since when did that become acceptable!?!?!? Everyone click the flag on the post above and get it off this site, trash like this doesn't belong here.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Prostitution Precrime just for driveling down a road
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
I have no idea if this still applies, but I've read that when pit bulls were bred for fighting they were also selected (intentionally or not) for not attacking people as "man biters" were a risk to handlers.
I think any dog breed with a strong dominance trait could potentially become a problem if it wasn't trained or socialized, and I think mostly this risk goes up with the size of the dog in question.
(Disclaimer: I have a pit bull / Great Dane mix, an he's great with people, but not so good with other dogs, partly due to being attacked when he was younger by a neighbor's unleashed lab and a golden retriever. Bad choice by those two dogs, if their owner hadn't intervened, the lab would have been dead, and that was with me putting all of my 6'1, 240 body into the leash and pinch collar to pull my dog away.)
To the extent that it scores data the police already have, such as arrest history, etc., I think it will be more fair than the traditional subjective "the usual suspects". Cops often know who the bad guys on their beat are. They use that knowledge in a very fuzzy, subjective way.
In some cases, a cop decides that someone "seems shady" based on extremely poor "evidence". A numerical score would be much more objective and therefore more fair, representing the ACTUAL risk based on the information available.
Factoring in social media posts and connections feels pretty creepy, though. If on Facebook you're friends with some bad guys, does that actually mean police should consider you more suspicious? On the other hand, for centuries cops have noticed who hangs out with who. If you hang out with gang-bangers, and you talk like a gang-banger, you might be a gang-banger, they think. Applying actual objective numbers to that may not be as bad as it first sounds.
The same could be said for 60 million gun owners. But it never seems to get any traction. We need to ban pit bulls.
We had a Brittany. He pointed all the time. It was a breed trait. Daschunds are ferocious tunnel fighters. They have breed traits of aggression. Pits were bred for generations as fighting dogs, and have breed traits. Anecdotes of individual dogs are just that. Anecdotes.
which is that it's pretty much inevitable. The question isn't are we going to have a big central gov't, the question is: Are you going to take part in it?
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I'm 100% percent on board with you with regard to gun owners. It is indeed exactly the same situation, and the only people who are for laws banning guns are morons who lack the capability to understand this simple concept. In short, someone who is about to kill 12 people and then turn the gun on himself is more than happy to acquire it through illegal channels. Not a single one of them ever said "I was going to commit mass murder, but then I found out it would be illegal to posses the gun!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
automatic bump-up on the threat score list. Maybe ACs aren't so lame after all?
I remember in the 80s, rottweilers were the "dangerous dog" to avoid. my neighbor had one and it was a big ol teddy bear. its all about the owner
That's exactly what that guy said about his Pitbull before it ate his kids.
No-one ever got killed by a Chihuahua or Pug, so maybe the breed of dog also plays a part...
That really isn't true. The average pitbull owner is just like you or me. It's just that 500,000 pitbulls didn't attack anyone today, but instead greeted their "owners" with love and affection doesn't sell. When all you hear about is the shady motherfuckers it is easy to get the impression that they are in the majority.
No, it's the fact that number of Chihuahuas that killed anybody is zero, yet most major dog attacks are (strange I know) the fighting style dogs.
Dear douchebag. When people want to train a dog to fight they typically pick ones that can fight.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Having some experience with doing software based human risk profiling (not me, but where I worked), the dev team we're mostly white with a couple of Asians. But all were PhD's in Statistical modelling, so I'm pretty sure there's a little more to the algorithm than simple cultural prejudice.
funny you bring up chihuahuas being that they are actually one of the most aggressive breeds (ive not once met a friendly one, they all have Neapolitan complexes)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
really? I have a friend whos baby was mauled by a chihuahua, the baby was about 10 months old and just started crawling, i dont know if it thought it was a competitor or what but my friends son lost an eye over it before he was old enough to talk.
you are right, breed plays SOME part, but its the owners most the time (and for the record pound for pound chihuahuas are probably the most aggressive dog)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
"Just out of interest, what other scenario can you think of that is reasonable?"
Not being poor?
But civil asset forfeiture is usually used against stuff not money:
The District of Columbia state prosecutor took them to court and recovered 375 cars that had been seized with no charges pressed against their owners. Gold jewelry, pearl necklaces, if its valuable its seized.
And the shakedown aspect is also clear:
"When Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson complained to the county in the hope of retrieving their savings, they got another surprise. Lynda Russell, the district attorney, told them she had warned “repeatedly” that they did not have to sign the waiver, but, if they continued to contest it, they could be indicted on felony charges. “I will contact you and give you an opportunity to turn yourself in without having an officer come to your door,” she wrote in a letter mentioning the prospect of a grand jury. Once again, their custody of the kids was threatened. Boatright and Henderson decided to fight anyway."
So give us your stuff or we try to take your kids from you.
"In August, 2007, Tenaha police pulled Morrow over for “driving too close to the white line,” and took thirty-nine hundred dollars from him. Morrow told Guillory that he was on his way to get dental work done at a Houston mall. (The arresting officers said that his “stories of travel” were inconsistent, as was his account of how much money he had; they also said they detected the “odor of burned marijuana,” although no contraband was found in the car.) Morrow, who is black, was taken to jail, where he pleaded with authorities to call his bank to see proof of his recent cash withdrawal. They declined."
“They impounded my car, and they impounded me, too,” Morrow told me, recalling the night he spent in jail. When he finally agreed to sign away his property, he was released on the side of the road with no money, no vehicle, and no phone. "
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
There is one aspect of this that's just begging to be misunderstood by authorities that I'd like to preemptively explain to everybody. Once such a scoring system is in place, there will be some value X for which "an innocent person only has 0.1% chance of scoring higher than X" and that X will become a threshold for suspicion, a threshold that authorities think warrants special treatment and going on various lists as a likely terrorist.
This is analogous to a p-value in statistics. In this case the p-value of an innocent person scoring higher than X by chance is 0.1%.
This will instantly be translated into the completely wrong statement that "there's a 99.9% chance that a person is guilty if they score over X". Those two statements sound really really similar, but they're seriously not the same thing, and in statistics it's an error known as the base rate fallacy.
It's most easily seen by example: suppose only 5 people in a million are actual terrorists, and suppose we run one million people through our test. There are only about 5 terrorists then in our group. Using X as our threshold with its p-value of 0.1%, our scoring system identifies 1000 people as a likely terrorist. So what are the odds that one of those 1000 suspicious people is actually a terrorist? In this example 1000 people were flagged, only 5 were actually terrorists, so despite the fact that "there's only a 0.1% chance that an innocent person will score over X" there's only 0.5% that one of our people who scored over X is actually a terrorist.
Fwiw, this is largely info from http://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/ which gives a great discussion of the p-value and what it does and doesn't mean.
(they all have Neapolitan complexes)
Napolean, you idiot. Napolean.
First is that some people will end up scoring so high that the police will find themselves justified in just going after them then and there. Except that it will be a very slippery slope when they go to the judge and ask for a warrant saying that there is an 89% probability he has guns, 72% probability that he has drugs, 38% probability that there will be evidence of past crimes on his person, 47% that he will have evidence of a crime being planned, and a 24% chance that he will be harbouring a fugitive. The judge will grand the warrant even though not one shred of evidence will be presented.
The other is that if you use this to arrest a few hundred people in a bad neighbourhood it is in all likelihood that a few really nasty crimes will be discovered. They will be dissolving someone in acid or something gruesome. Except that when any news investigators ask for the records of all the innocent people rounded up, those records will be denied over "privacy issues."
But I work with ML and the horribly named big data. Often it can make interesting lists that are mostly good. Except that it will do things like suggest whoppers of terrible conclusions. On a list of major customers most likely to leave it will add a minor customer who used our company once. Why?, who knows. So my prediction is that this software will be ever more tuned to simply letting the police do what they really want to do and then be able to point to the software and say, "I was just following the computer's orders." Things like racial profiling, no knock warrants because the computer now labels everyone as basically a terrorist ready for a waco level shootout. I also suspect the police will all know how to game the system. For instance one data column might be how many times the police look the person up in the records. So they will look the person up 20 times and boom that will be enough to get a warrant.
Take drug dogs. It is part of the dog's training to "signal" when the handler wants them to. Thus any time the police want to search your car they will bring a drug dog and it will "signal" the only way it won't signal is if the handler is busy and wants to get back to his hooker girlfriend who likes dogs. Then the dog will not find anything even if the car is a mobile drug lab actively producing the final product as the dog walks around. The whole time around it is watching its handler for clues as to what to do and where to signal. If the police can create a magic legal system where a dog is used as a judge issuing search warrants, then a computer will be that much easier.
No-one ever got killed by a Chihuahua or Pug, so maybe the breed of dog also plays a part...
Maybe it's the size of the dog that plays a part, regardless of breed? Small dogs bite regularly (I've been bitten many times), but because the damage is so small no one cares enough to put the dog down. Large dogs, OTOH, will get put down if they even once have a bad day.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I remember in the 80s, rottweilers were the "dangerous dog" to avoid.
They *are* dangerous dogs. I've got two. You *should* avoid them if you're a stranger! They are big, they are powerful and they are fearless (seriously, even the sound of a gunshot doesn't stop my dogs when they charge). They can do a ton of damage in a *very* short time.
my neighbor had one and it was a big ol teddy bear. its all about the owner
My kid, niece and nephew all play with my dogs without incident. They are one of the best breeds I've ever owned; my cats regularly share the dogs baskets *while the dog is in it*. Think about that for a minute - these dogs are so passive with familiar faces that you can share their beds. However they will charge strangers, and they are very protective over their family.
That being said - see my earlier warning - steer clear of these dogs if you are not part of their family.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Feel free to run the scoring system against your own employees, often referred to as 'Law Enforcement Officers' without intentional irony.
Requiem for the American Dream
Mmmm ice cream
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I think you may have misunderstood my post... I was drawing a parallel between police assigning a threat score to suspects, and people assuming that certain breeds of dogs are inherently more dangerous... I'm not making a statement about dogs... I'm making a statement about profiling, and the fact that people won't accept it. You watch, the first guy to get a bum rap due to this "threat score" is going to take it to a judge and have the law euthanized. It just won't stand. That's all I'm sayin'.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Hey those dogs are horrible. In college I had to deal with one that was a buddy's that thought it was a fucking lap dog. If it saw someone it knew it would take off in a full bore sprint and leap into your lap. Hopefully you were sitting otherwise it would knock you on your ass and would always attempt to lick your face off. Vicious as hell, I got a number of bruises from that dog.
Seriously just I wish that dog didn't think it was a lap dog. It was one of the friendliest dogs ever but was very protective and I would frequently borrow it when working security at college and had to take someone to the crack stacks. It seems that a lot of a dog's personality has to do with the owner but there is some part genetics play in it too.
Time to offend someone
have you SEEN one eat ice cream? I stand by my autocorrect mistake!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This is a business opportunity!
Just start another "Service Agency" with a toll-free number website and profligate the airwaves with radio and TV ads with promises to lower your "Threat Score"!
You'll rake in the big bucks!
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Dear douchebag. When people want to train a dog to fight they typically pick ones that can fight.
Dear douchebag. So it's the owner then? Make up your mind...
funny you bring up chihuahuas being that they are actually one of the most aggressive breeds
But have you ever heard of one killing someone? I have some very aggressive cockroaches around here too, but I don't have to worry about them chewing my kid's faces off. That is the difference.
Maybe it's the size of the dog that plays a part, regardless of breed? Small dogs bite regularly (I've been bitten many times), but because the damage is so small no one cares enough to put the dog down. Large dogs, OTOH, will get put down if they even once have a bad day.
Which is how it should work. No-one cares if you get bitten by a mosquito, but they will if you get bitten by a tiger. It's about harm minimisation, and some animals need to be controlled. Pitbulls and similar fighting dogs are over represented in the death-by-dog-attack statistics, so reason says that they need to be controlled.
Of course genetics play a part, but what you're describing is a sweet dog whose owner never bothered to properly train.
That was mostly tongue in cheek , that dog would just get so exited to see friends. It was a really nice dog but it never did learn to not jump up on people. I love those big powerful dogs and everyone I have ever met has been about the nicest dog ever. One friend had a boxer/bulldog mix that just wanted to be pet all the time, another had a boxer/pit bull mix who apart from a gas problem loved to just lay next to people, currently one of my friends has a bull-mastiff who's worst attribute is like likes to chase squirrels which I gather really sucks when taking it for a walk. Even on guy in my neighborhood has a couple of old English bulldogs and the worst thing about them is they like to lean in when getting pet.
Time to offend someone
I have been saying that it is the owner and not the animal the whole time. Apparently you have a reading comprehension issue
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Thank you for that accurate elaboration! It is so absurd to hear these people, who clearly have no experience with these dogs whatever (or a single bad experience that is highly atypical), making absurd claims that these loveable dogs such as pit bulls and rottwielers are dangerous by nature.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I have been saying that it is the owner and not the animal the whole time.
I know.
Apparently you have a reading comprehension issue
Or maybe you have a writing comprehension issue...
Holy shit you are a fucking idiot. It is as if you took a special college course teaching how to be a complete moron in every way.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun