Chicago PD Believes It Can See The Future, Starts Warning Citizens About Crimes They Might Commit
from the buttle/tuttle dept
We've talked a lot over the years about the attempts to get out "ahead of crime" by using computer programs and algorithms to try and predict who might commit a crime. Predictive computing can then either target specific areas or specific people that might be in need of some extra law enforcement attention. Except as we've noted repeatedly, these programs are only as valuable as the data they use. Garbage in, garbage out, but in this case you've got a human being on the other end of the equation whose life can be dramatically impacted by law enforcement holding what they believe is "proof" that you'll soon be up to no good.With that in mind there's growing concerns about efforts in Chicago to use predictive analytical systems to generate a "heat list" -- or a list of 400 or so individuals most likely to be involved in violent crime. The Chicago efforts are based on a Yale sociologist's studies and use an algorithm created by an engineer at the Illinois Institute of Technology. People who find themselves on the list get personal visits from law enforcement warning them that they better be nice. The result is a collision between law enforcement that believes in the righteousness of these efforts and those who worry that they could, as an EFF rep states, create "an environment where police can show up at anyone's door at any time for any reason."
Law enforcement and the code creators, as you'd expect, argue that it's only the bad guys that need to worry about a system like this:
"A press liaison for the NIJ explains in an email: "These are persons who the model has determined are those most likely to be involved in a shooting or homicide, with probabilities that are hundreds of times that of an ordinary citizen." Commander Steven Caluris, who also works on the CPD's predictive policing program, put it a different way. "If you end up on that list, there's a reason you're there."Unless law enforcement makes a mistake, your data is wrong (which it often will be), or we decide to expand the program significantly, right? Another concern bubbling up in Chicago is that the programs are effectively using racial profiling to target already-troubled areas where crime naturally would be greater due to poverty, without anybody bothering to perform a deeper analysis of why those areas might be having problems (aka targeting symptoms, not disease):
"...how are we deciding who gets on the list and who decides who gets on the list?" (EFF staff attorney Hanni) Fakhoury asks..."Are people ending up on this list simply because they live in a crappy part of town and know people who have been troublemakers? We are living in a time when information is easily shareable and easily accessible," Fakhoury says. "So, let's say we know that someone is connected to another person who was arrested. Or, let's say we know that someone's been arrested in the past. Is it fair to take advantage of that information? Are we just perpetuating the problem?" He continues: "How many people of color are on this heat list? Is the list all black kids? Is this list all kids from Chicago's South Side? If so, are we just closing ourselves off to this small subset of people?"Chicago PD denies that there's any "racial, neighborhood, or other such information" being used in their heat list calculations, but a FOIA request to actually confirm that was denied, under the pretense that releasing such information could "endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel or any other person." So yeah, there's great transparency at work here as well.
Predictive computing is excellent for a good many things, from improving traffic congestion to designing sewer networks, but calculating the future movements of highly complicated and emotional human beings is a bridge too far. It's not particularly difficult to imagine a future where law enforcement (not always known for nuanced thinking or honest crime stat record keeping) starts using their belief in the infallibility of mathematics as the underpinnings for bad behavior, with the horrible experiences of the falsely accused dismissed as anecdotal experiences ("well shucks, most of the time the system is right, so its existence is justified"). It might just be time for a re-watch of Terry Gilliam's Brazil with an eye on reminding ourselves what a simple clerical error can do to the Archibald Buttles of the world.
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Filed Under: chicago, data, police, sociology, statistics
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I got a GREAT idea!
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Re: I got a GREAT idea!
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Re: I got a GREAT idea!
Actually, it's the laziness idea. Go for the low hanging fruit instead of doing proper investigative work. Pretty much the default for law enforcement these days.
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Those computers do not compute well for LEOs getting away with murder.
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And of course, EVERY police organization will assure us that the fall under the "TOO BIG to fail" umbrella. If we disband them or even just cut back on their military weaponry the "Lives will be lost !!!".
Watch for some idiot to propose being on the list automatically labels you a felon so you can no longer own a gun.
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You are confusing Tom Cruise with Resident Evil.
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No "math" was at fault in that crash. The fact is, the math was applied to financial instruments that contained wildly over-valued components (and some fraudulently mis-valued). Now, was there some kind of math error involved there? No.
It was fraud. Too many 1%ers making too much money off the overvaluation of homes, and when the only way to maintain the impetus of the bubble was to find new buyers...well, the government, under the guise of "helping the poor" was perfectly willing to front your tax dollars to MAKE new buyers out of people who really couldn't afford homes.
Those ridiculous mortgages, lumped together, were the "rotten apples" (or 'tranches', I believe they were called) of the derivative market.
The math itself, and the fallibility thereof, had nothing to do with it.
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it would be much easier for the people to watch each party or each agency ,so bring it.
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All the Troubles of the World
If that includes being shot by police in their own homes in the middle of the night, those computers might just be onto something.
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Re: Minority Report
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ITM No Agenda producers! ;)
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 26th, 2014 @ 6:07am
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The only thing this profiling system is good at, is adding people who have yet to commit a crime to a list. I hope this list isn't available for employers, otherwise this system will simply compound crime, by making it hard for people to find jobs. Which pushes them towards crime!
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Obvious question, considering it's Illinois
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Minority Report Redux
Thanks to grants to small cities and towns, they have military force available to carry out their threats. Deep Politics is coming to the surface, or at least is beginning to show its fa�ade. Keep in mind: this is only the tip of ice burg. They are scared. Their mass has become too big and is out of balance. Be cautious around scared creatures; you don't know what they will do when frightened.
You need to extricate yourself from the system: stop feeding it. Stop using credit. In fact, avoid using federal reserve notes. This is the blood. The future is neighbor to neighbor.
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Idiots with Statistics
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Social Workers
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Re: Social Workers
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Re: Social Workers
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Idea stolen from Futurama
http://www.comedycentral.com/episodes/2hgv6c/futurama-law---oracle-season-6-ep-616 (1:50 is where the Future Crimes Division is introduced)
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Re: Idea stolen from Futurama
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This will occur only when the Future Crimes Division learn how to predict future ideas and who would have really thought of them, then they can know whom to arrest when that person comes up with an idea they couldn't have possibly come up with on their own in a million years.
Ideas stolen from the past will still only be investigated by the Past Crimes Division. For what purpose, no one knows.
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"Knock, knock - it's the police. We've been alerted by our software system that you have an 80 percent chance to punch someone this week. We're here to arrest you."
This stuff WILL happen, if we LET IT happen. But it's going to be a trend, not something that happens all of the sudden. That's why it's important to kill it before it becomes too strong of a trend, and before the lobbying for such technologies becomes too strong in Congress, whether from law enforcement themselves or from companies making money off it.
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If the "prediction" hits then it is proof of its greatness.
If it misses then "something got left out" so they need more surveilance.
Rachets just like Copyright.
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It beats working
But this -- hey now, THIS is sexy and fun. Much better than pulling out an old file and trying to find a fresh insight in it or attempting to chase down a lead. Never mind all the actual real live crime victims and all the actual real live criminals on the streets, no no no, they're not important. Let's worry about theoretical possibilities, about hypothetical situations, about could-be maybe futures that may never come to pass.
slow clap Congratulations, Chicago PD. Well done.
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Watching too much TV
They usual trope comes out:
"Law enforcement and the code creators, as you'd expect, argue that it's only the bad guys that need to worry about a system like this:"
And I provide the usual response:
So what constitutes a crime? Say, at sometime in Dearborn MI, walking around with your head uncovered if you are a woman becomes a punishable offence. You can no doubt think of other behaviours that are not criminal now, but could be made criminal in the future. And given that there is a new federal regulation about every 3 hours (I really don't know on this--could be every 3 min) crime becomes a creeping thing.
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Bad apple analogy...
jeez... very discriminating for the whole group of people for a few who are REALLY the cause of the problem....
I say... They are TOO LAZY to do investigation and wanted to clean up in the fastest way possible with greatest rist in it... -_-
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Maybe they need to change their Motto
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I'm reminded of a TED talk
The police report was terribly confused, mixing up the two people and cars in a way that obviously made no sense. However, the cop made a single mistake that screwed the speaker: he checked the wrong box for who was at fault, and so the speaker was facing a bill of around $10,000 to repair damages to the drunk driver's car.
The speaker obsessed over this and tried to rectify it -- to no avail. His insurance company said nothing could be done unless the report was corrected, and the police were totally unwilling to revisit the issue, telling him "do the right thing and pay for the guy's car."
If there are such extreme problems with correctly handling crimes that have already been committed, just imagine how accurately predicting crimes that haven't been committed will work. It's all coming from the same data, after all.
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Re: I'm reminded of a TED talk
Here is that entire story in his own words: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/379/return-to-the-scene-of-the-crime
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Re: Re: I'm reminded of a TED talk
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Well, it's not the police's job to prevent poverty (or the disease as we use in the analogy), their job is supposed to be treatment of the symptoms. Their local legislature is supposed to "regulate" away the disease through social programs.
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one might be -if one were not obeisant to authority- curious as to why that is so...
well, i'll tell you why: IF the piggies went no-knocking in more affluent and/or whiter neighborhoods and picked up all the white people with coke/etc, there would be such screaming and kvetching that you would have thought some sort of real injustice was going on...
so, IF the piggies were actually doing their jobs without fear or favor, instead of picking on the poor and benighted who can't get out of the way of piggies, you would find equal numbers of drug crimes in each of the neighborhoods, and thus their 'predictions' should present them each as being equivalent...
they do not...
they will not...
they dare not...
they are picking on the poor and weak because they can; EVEN IF the donut eaters *wanted* to go after wealthier/whiter people, they will not do so for fear of losing their jobs...
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OBJECTION! No Foundation!
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Don't want to burst this guys bubble.. But as far as I know the police can show up at anyone's door any time for any reason.. You don't have to answer, but I'm pretty sure they are allowed to knock
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Move along, move along. Nothing to see, move along.
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Garbage in, garbage out... but what about the algorithm itself?
Are you assuming the algorithm itself is scientifically sound? Even if it is, what if the police have more confidence in the algorithm's output than is statistically warranted?
Consider how such a system would work if it were fed all the metadata NSA is routinely collecting and search warrants were issued based on its output. We'd end up with a police state propped up by questionable science. We'd find a lot of bad guys, to be sure, but we'd also harass and invade the privacy of many innocents.
Even if the system were 99% effective, its output should not be taken as evidence of future wrongdoing. Being considered likely to commit a crime in the future is not probable cause for anything.
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Re: Garbage in, garbage out... but what about the algorithm itself?
This should read "likely to commit *some* crime in the future". If there's reason to believe a specific crime is about to be committed in the very near future, greater suspicion is warranted. If it's merely likely that some kind of crime is likely to be committed in the future, then the confidence is poor, no matter the statistics.
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Re: Garbage in, garbage out... but what about the algorithm itself?
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Re: Re: Garbage in, garbage out... but what about the algorithm itself?
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-Captain Renault, Casablanca
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No-Fly List?
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Furthermore...
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Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
I'm sure he is on the terrorist watchlist and no-fly list with no way to get off (because "government secrets") by now.
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Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
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A program like this shouldn't be used as evidence in a prosecution or justification for a search, but I don't think there's anything preventing police from randomly talking to people (much less talking to people based on data analysis).
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Another Biased Journalist?
Listen, I'm not advocating for this system. But don't tell me that the data the police have is wrong unless you have some proof and can show it. Otherwise you are just one more biased journalist.
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Re: Another Biased Journalist?
*mind blown*
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Re: Another Biased Journalist?
2. Do you understand what is meant by "hypothetical proposition"?
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Re: Another Biased Journalist?
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"If you end up on that list, there's a reason you're there."
He believes that a computer system, that by it's very nature cannot be perfect, is in fact perfect. Either that or he doesn't care about when it is not and an innocent person is affected.
That is a BIG problem.
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For a lot of reasons, but let's just start with all the people who mistakenly assume that if they're watching you, you must be guilty...
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Of course this system *could* be used poorly, but is there any evidence that is *is* being used poorly?
Talking to people is not an arrest/search/charge. Talking to people is not a violation of their rights.
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If you fit the "profile" of a guy running down the street with a gun and one hand and a bank bag in the other, it's completely reasonable to stop you on suspicion that you may have committed a crime.
If you are "profiling" someone based on a prohibited bases (e.g., race), that's a different question. Even then, though, it still depends on that actions the "profiling" is used for. You want to talk to "community leaders" on an issue, maybe you want to make sure you talk to leaders that racially/ethnically represent the community, for example.
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Nice argument, but like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, it fails to hold water.
With law enforcement sharing access to all kinds of databases these days, it's not so hypothetical after all:
Parallel Construction Revealed: How The DEA Is Trained To Launder Classified Surveillance Info
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Re: Re: Re: Another Biased Journalist?
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pot, kettle, etc.
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But he doesn't actually say that. He says they must have some "reason" to be on the list. That's not necessarily a criminal act.
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Re: Another Biased Journalist?
Hell, we even have innocent people on various death rows across the nation.
What more proof do you need?
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Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
2. um, i call 'bullshit' on the 12 'active shooters' (whatever, when LEO start in on their own lingo, perverting and changing the meanings of normal words, you know they are hiding shit they are up to)...
and the feebs have 'foiled' a dozen 'terrorist' plots, too, doncha know ! ! ! /sarc off
3. simply put: an academic who is 'selling' (whether literally or not) a system ('his' system?) which predicts stuff and he says others say it did and stopped 12 shooters ? ? ? well, by gosh and by golly that surely must be true, then...
4. not only does LEO and the (in)justice department have a license to kill, they have a license to lie; i don't trust ANY OF THEM, EVER... (they have earned that distrust)
5. you know what, i spy on 100% of the pre-criminal citizens, maybe i can stop a few crimes too...
BUT AT WHAT COST ? ? ?
they lose their souls, and we lose our freedom...
NOT a 'trade-off' i want to make...
even remotely...
our brief *SHOULD* be to maximize freedom, not minimize it... we are going the wrong way...
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They can follow that up by using to it to predict which police officers, prosecutors and other members of the justice department are most likely to accept bribes, manufacute evidence, torture suspects, etc...
After that, if there is anyone left to manage such a program they can direct it at "potential criminals"
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Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
In other words, the definition is: an active shooter is one that has been designated as such by this system. It'd be more impressive if they were, you know, actually active shooters.
This is a mischaracterization. I doubt that a sizable percentage of people using social media are voluntarily donating their data for this use. It's more likely that they don't really understand that they're being actively spied on.
By the way, this reads like you're saying that everyone who uses the internet is voluntarily donating data for this use. That can't be what you mean, but I wanted to double-check.
You and I are diametrically opposed in our reactions to this. I am the exact opposite of comforted by this effort. In fact, it's pretty terrifying. Certainly scarier than terrorism or random nutcases shooting up schools.
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Re: Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
As to people 'voluntarily' providing information, it is considered open source in that when we comment - like now, there is no expectation of privacy and we voluntarily participate on the internet in so many ways. No one is forcing us to to do. That the majority don't understand the lack of privacy doesn't change the voluntary nature of the participation.
The video tapes mention the open source intelligence as social media. I also read the post and the comment 'comforted' was part of the response. The other part was the author was less than comforted by the reality it could go too far.
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Re: Re: Re: They've already stopped 12 active shooters....
Yes, but one the commenter accepted and embraced in her essay.
"I'm getting the vibe they mean people who clearly were in the stages of putting together some terrible event and just short of acting the event out."
You don't need to go with a "vibe". They specifically defined the term, and I quoted their definition.
" it is considered open source in that when we comment - like now, there is no expectation of privacy and we voluntarily participate on the internet in so many ways."
In a venue like this, yes. But not on the internet as a whole, which is what it sounded like she was saying -- thus my request for clarification.
"That the majority don't understand the lack of privacy doesn't change the voluntary nature of the participation."
That's a different thing. Not understanding that you're being spied on absolutely does change the voluntary nature of "donating your data" to the spies. Nobody is volunteering to donate their data to the NSA, for example.
"The video tapes mention the open source intelligence as social media"
Yes, my question was about the commenter's inclusion of "the internet" along with social media. "The internet" is a much larger sphere and includes lots of things that are unambiguously private.
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Ask Rahinah Ibrahim about that. Sure there was a reason she was on that list. Someone fucked up and everyone believed that she was there for a good reason. And when it finally became obvious that it was because someone fucked up, they did everything they could to avoid accountability.
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Start now!
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If they can see into the future in Chicago,
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I wonder what the algorithm would say
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serious question
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serious question
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Crime prevention doesn't work through threats and punishment.
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Re:
I really, really wish that law enforcement officers and legislators understood this truth.
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Whoever is championing the code should be taken out back and given some wall-to-wall therapy before being tied to a chair at the university's "Programmer Ethics" equivalent. And probably a basic class on algorithms, heuristics and the like.
And if their university doesn't cover such material... then that explains the problems, I suppose.
Computer decision-making should only be an *adjunct* to human decision-making in non-trivial circumstances. An algorithm is only as good as the worst of the people who created it AND the people who implemented it.
And while human decision-making, with on-the-fly application and development of new heuristics as needed, can generally adapt to situations with incomplete or incorrect information at least reasonably well (all things considered), computer decision-making just sits there and craps itself.
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Now, using it to predict future lawbreaking and then comparing to future data (ie, do they commit violent crimes) could lead (assuming the model is clean) to pinning down innocuous causal factors that can be fixed without human risk or cost, but the way they're using it is most certainly Doing It Wrong.
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Poverty = Crime?
Has this link really been established? If so, please show me the research that proves it.
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"Slippery Slope" is usually a fallacy...BUT
So yeah, everything about this "It's just to give those people a warning." system is just teetering on a steep, greased hill. Combined with militarization of PDs across the country and an ever intensifying 'us against them' mentality, I don't think the citizenry will be well-served (or protected) by these pre-crime efforts.
That said, a couple of points:
a) I very much doubt a single person on the list is without previous violent violations. They are NOT going to anticipate someone's first crime.
b) IF we were to allow for the possibility of good intentions from the CPD (not a given), whatever the underlying causes (or 'disease' in the analogy) of crime, if the 'symptom' is murder or violent assault, the police are obliged to deal with it, without any obligation to make sure every demographic is happy, prosperous, well-educated and non-violent.
Just sayin'...
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cops and robbers
Cops are the purported repairmen of societal fray. But since all municipal police departments ultimately become unionized, they are also intent on making sure that their livelihood is maintained and expanded. They do this in tandem with the bureaucratic/political unions, whom also use crime as a platform for the justification of their existence, to a partial extent.
Show me one police officer that wants crime to end, and I'll then show you an axeman that wants the forest to die.
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algorithm
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