The future of policing may be here, and it’s more than a little intrusive.
Technology companies are marketing increasingly sophisticated systems to police forces to help them quickly compile information on potential suspects, according to Reuters blogger Brent Skorup. Some of this is information they already access when investigating someone, like criminal records, phone numbers, cars registered under an a certain address.
But these programs can also search social media profiles, purchases, and other online activity, allowing police to peer deep into the private lives of residents. Through an algorithm, police can tailor the program to assign particular “threat ratings” to individuals based off this activity.
According to a write-up earlier this year in Illinois’ Daily Herald, this algorithm “mines criminal records, Internet chatter and other data to churn out the profiles in real time.”
Each police department could choose certain activity that would trigger the algorithm as threatening or suspicious.
This can include, according to the vice president of software company Intrado, “any comments that could be construed as offensive.”
Intrado’s Beware program, which boasts such an algorithm, bills itself as “tool to help first responders understand the nature of the environment they may encounter when responding to a 911 request for assistance.” It has been on the market for police departments since 2012.
Widespread use of this technology would pose countless problems for privacy rights and police practices. It would grant law enforcement unprecedented ease of access to personal data, and permit potentially arbitrary designations of “threatening” behavior to flag. Information culled from online resources also risks incorrect identifications and misunderstandings, and raises the likelihood of unjustified probes.
Read more at Reuters.
