Forecasting software for the police: fluoroscopy and scoring of people – Netzpolitik.org

In Fresno, in the US state of California, a new software called “Beware” is used, which evaluates personal data and verdatet people’s behavior for police purposes and to calculate investigated. The reports the Washington Post in the readable article by Justin Jouvenal: “The New Way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat, score ”.

The trend is not new: Police personnel will advise and replaced by software, predictive software for the police applies to manufacturers as a market of the future. Once again was begun after the start of the use of “Beware” to discuss privacy issues, such as the ACLU criticized. What algorithms according to which criteria are working in the software product, also is in the dark. In recent years, it is observed that as a matter of course expressions of social media contexts is included in the report -. So even with “Beware” by the manufacturer “Intrado”

Have the police in Fresno fabled 600,000 US dollars shelled out for a “nerve center” designated data center, which description is somewhat reminiscent of science fiction:

On 57 monitors did cover the walls of the center, operators zoomed and panned to the array of Roughly 200 police cameras perched across the city. They Could dial up 800 more feeds from the city’s schools and Traffic Cameras, And They soon hope to add 400 more streams from cameras worn on officers’ bodies and from Thousands from local Work thathave Surveillance Systems.

“Beware” calculates a sort of risk value (“threat score”) for people, which will raise sooner or later the problem is that the score value will draw decisions on these people by himself. If the score value a say along with socio-demographic data in the future, whether an apartment searches, a prioritized emergency or an indication is processed more slowly? And what about saying the data of social media monitoring really look like? The article is for a fairly obvious example of a woman who tweeted about a game called “Rage”, which has raised its threat level.

Even in Germany run experiments with so-called forecasting software, however, by another caliber, since the aspect of the fluoroscopy and the scoring of people missing. But again the idea is in this country no longer.