‘Minority Report’ technology used by police to predict crimes
TruthSlave
Software that can predict when and where future violent crimes
will be committed is being used in Britain for the first time.
Two police forces have begun trialling the sophisticated
programme, which has echoes of the Tom Cruise film Minority
Report, where psychics are used to stop criminals before they
commit a crime.
The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilizing
Statistical History) evaluates crime records, intelligence
briefings, offender profiles and even weather reports, to
identify potential flash points where a crime is most likely
to occur.
The “predictive analytics” technology has been credited as a
key factor behind a 31 per cent fall in crime and 15 per cent
drop in violent crime in Memphis, Tennessee, according to
The Observer.
John Williams, of the Memphis Crime Analysis Unit, said: “This
is more of a proactive tool than reacting after crimes have
occurred.
“This pretty much puts officers in the area at the time that
the crimes are being committed.”
The software has been developed by IBM which has invested
$11 billion in analytics over the past four years.
Mark Cleverley, the company’s head of government strategy,
said: “What the technology does is what police officers
have always done, sometimes purely on instinct – looking for
patterns to work out what is likely to happen next.
“What is different is the scale on which the systems operates
and the speed at which the analysis takes place.”
--
[Your thoughts please ]
Andy F
It's not really anything like 'Minority Report.'
Daniel T.
[article on crime prediction software snipped]
> [Your thoughts please ]
I recall a few years ago, a city in Europe (I think in one of the nordic
countries) developed a traffic jam prediction program and they were able
to get its accuracy into the 95% range... until they made its
predictions public. Once that was done, people changed their patterns
and a negative feedback effect made it impossible for the program to
predict traffic jams after that.
I expect this crime system will have the same problems. The more the
police come to trust it, the more they will change their behavior, and
the worse its predictive ability will be.
TruthSlave
It might just be me, but i find the prospect of this technology
scary!
Its not such a big step from predicting the crime, to predicting
the criminal, and then the question is what steps do you take to
prove that forecast? In fact i wonder what has already been done
in the name of this technology, to prove this technology?
Irresistible technology as who wouldn't want to prevent a crime?
Then there's the prospect of an industry centered around
suspicions and predictions. Its Morality, informed by greed.
With the prospect of millions, if not billions of dollars riding
on this clever expedience, what steps might you take to prove the
technology works? How exactly do you prove the prevention of a
crime? Would statistics alone make this point?
Garbage in, Garbage out. The machine churns out its predictions
as hapless plods obeys. Vested self interests - might prevent
the lesser professionals from acknowledging any paradox in the
service of this machine. Human error, human judgment, which we
never seem to see, would be lost in a system without feedback,
since who ever hears from the person treated before the facts,
as a criminal. Its the absence of feedback which i find the
scariest, no way to identify Cause and Effect.
I wonder what the psychologist would say about the person
treated as a criminal. Is response on this level, innate, or
shaped by circumstance? And what of the day-to-day front-line
human factors, as suspicion coupled to Dissonance became the
principle determination for motives and behavior. Let's not
speak of bias, as it infects the model and poisoned our
expectations.
Incitement, temptation, entrapment. Such games would follow
naturally on the back of this prediction by the machine. A
system of improbable goals and targets, leading to an escalation
of crime in the mind of the beholder, all leading to more crimes
not less.
Something about being caught up in any industry,, seeing what
any self centered individual needs to see,, occupied with what
one needed to claim was a useful expenditure of time. On
automatic with no room for thought... as this technology became
like any other, a matter of routine.
Data in, Data out. On the face of it, the acceptance of such
a technology would provide a reason for more and more Data
gathering. A justifiable reason for the data we already hold,
leading to an escalation in the covert abuse of civil liberties,
all under the guise of crime prevention. You might as well bring
back the Witchfinder General, since that psyche, with all its
history, is also who we are. Circumstance would conspire to do
the rest.
Then there's the Data, a question on the veracity of the
information used to feed this machine. Who decides? Assuming
people and not more machines. Who would be accountable for
their judgments. Information farmed from the most unlikely
sources, so that our infotainment was made to serve other ends,
all on automatic with our worst fears to justify this en devour.
All this would take place in advance of any facts, outside
of any court of law. Judgments, actions and automated reactions,
with their foundations rooted in the technology of forecasts
and predictions, profiles and modeled expectation... There's
also a point about the profile which presumes to say 'what is',
before it ever says 'what is not'.
Waiting in the shadows, as a twin of this technology, one
also has the psychology of persuasion, used to force our
'criminals' to conform to their designation. Since having
identify that potential, there is still a question of what
you do with that potential.
'According to our profiles, there's a crime out there with
your name on it'. Now what can we do, to have you fit the
available facts, and prevent[] that criminal from occuring.
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
> --
>
> [Your thoughts please ]
We always empower what we deny the most. We used to 'lock up' psychics
for making predictions. It is still against the law if it is done for
monetary gain.
I remember an old joke about a guy who was found walking through a
neighborhood with a crowbar under his jacket. He was arrested for
being equipped for house breaking. His response was 'then you better
arrest me for potential rape"
At least it 'used' to be a joke !
Movies can often open up the next stage of cultural manipulation,
which seem to apply in this case.
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
Add to that, the fact of endemic corruption in some police forces. So
often the dog chases its own tail.
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
It wasnt so long ago that someone at Harvard discovered what they
described as 'the criminal gene'.
Cultures dont usually 'shift' bcause of one or two factors, but
usually a whole package deal.
India is on the 'up'. Their caste system used to prevail, where your
propesects were dominated by your birth situation.
This is just a technological advanced version for a culture who, by
all accounts, is on the 'down'.
BOfL
Immortalist
> ‘Minority Report’ technology used by police to predict crimes
>
> Software that can predict when and where future violent crimes
> will be committed is being used in Britain for the first time.
>
If lie detector technology cannot be used as evidence in a court of
law, how could the pigs make these technologies legal? Beside George
Dickhead Bush tried this pre-emptive strike abuse and look what that
got us based upon lies. Also the entire idea of "individual rights" is
based upon stopping majorities or minorities from abusing individuals
based upon favored methods.
TruthSlave
> On Jul 30, 6:21 pm, TruthSlave <T...@home.com> wrote:
>> ‘Minority Report’ technology used by police to predict crimes
>>
>> Software that can predict when and where future violent crimes
>> will be committed is being used in Britain for the first time.
>>
>
> If lie detector technology cannot be used as evidence in a court of
> law, how could the pigs make these technologies legal? Beside George
> Dickhead Bush tried this pre-emptive strike abuse and look what that
> got us based upon lies. Also the entire idea of "individual rights" is
> based upon stopping majorities or minorities from abusing individuals
> based upon favored methods.
On the face of it, this is about a shinny new tool for the police
force. Just beneath the surface, if you look hard enough, its about
a use for the information gathering at pace around us. Its use by
the police, makes legitimate, information lazily gathered from
unattributed sources. Intel in this case would only be as strong
as the judgment of its weakest link.
The weakest link could mean the program, or the profile models it
relied on, or the data fed to the program, or the 'muppets#' who
saw in the ordinary what doesn't exist except as circumstantial,
but which they were forced to report in order to meet their quotas.
In all this you would have a system which deferred responsibility
for its action, to the program. Our fears coupled to circumstance,
would do the rest.
#muppet, entertaining soft puppets controlled by puppet master.
There's also a point lurking here on the manipulation of our
anonymous data sets. This isn't like the old days, where reams of
paper documents were signed and stored. See STASI files. Its not
like the old days where the time taken to find the record, meant
a level of common sense about the efforts expended in that paper
chase.
These days in our faster than thought communications, our world
of official and unofficial hackers means anyone with inside
knowledge of the system, can manipulated the data to their own
ends. No one would be any the wiser as lives were directed towards
indeterminate treadmills. You wouldn't even need to be a hacker
to 'jack' the system. The machine on automatic, with all the
intelligence of a search engine, isn't clever enough to see what
was said by you, or said about you in jest, nor would it see what
was attributed in spite or ignorance. Its not clever enough to test
the human 'quality' of the information. It would simply take the
data it found, or the data it was fed, and builds a picture to
match the most appropriate profile, modeled or prioritized after
our fears.. What the profile of a innocent person looks like
is anyone's guess, but i guess in this system we would all exist
with differing probabilities for suspicion, until proven otherwise.
The point you make about 'lie detectors' is interesting. {With a
little thought its possible to see how a physiologically reaction
to a particular line of questioning, ie the 'dectection', might
in fact be the result of prior conditioning, with nothing to say
about lies, just circumstance}.
In an open system, where one human being argues with another to
find the truth, that kind of data is inadmissible as evidence.
This though is about the automation of data, new technology,
predicting until the point where it is never questioned, and
then it becomes something else, the cold finger of technology,
pointing its way to the criminal elect. That initial suspicion
and the subsequent 'investigations' would give rise to its own
results.
The Downfall of Justice
"An apparent objective official investigation may become a weapon
of political control simply through the suggestions that inevitably
accompany it. The man who is under investigation is almost
automatically stigmatized and blamed because our suspicions are
thrust on him. The very fact that he is under scrutiny makes him
suspect. Thus, even the so-called "democratic power to investigate"
may become the power to destroy."
http://www.ninehundred.net/control/mc-ch8.html
THE RAPE OF THE MIND - The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide,
and Brainwashing by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D - January, 1956
ck
Which 'Minority Report' did you have in mind?
Steven Spielberg, Philip K. Dick, or H L Mencken? I think you
will find the point was made by Mencken 1956, before Spielberg
'borrowed' the title to draw our attention to the same history/
present/ future/..
ck
Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, was also published in 1956
C3
>
> >>> --
>
> >>> [Your thoughts please ]
>
> >> It's not really anything like 'Minority Report.'
>
> > Which 'Minority Report' did you have in mind?
>
> > Steven Spielberg, Philip K. Dick, or H L Mencken? I think you
> > will find the point was made by Mencken 1956, before Spielberg
> > 'borrowed' the title to draw our attention to the same history/
> > present/ future/..
>
> Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, was also published in 1956
Is that the same guy who wrote Blade runner?
C3+
TruthSlave
> described as 'the criminal gene'.
>
> usually a whole package deal.
>
> India is on the 'up'. Their caste system used to prevail, where your
> propesects were dominated by your birth situation.
>
> This is just a technological advanced version for a culture who, by
> all accounts, is on the 'down'.
>
> BOfL
Your use of the Indian cast system threw me, but i now see your
point. The criminal classes, defined and enshrined in science,
so that like the Indian cast system, they are shaped by what we
come to expect. Defined by function, so that one sees grows to
see them as functionless.
Its a good point, too subtle perhaps, but well made. As for
the 'Criminal Gene', you could call the same gene[s] anything
else you pleased. The non conformity gene, or the conditioning
gene, depending on which side you look from. The extremely
selfish gene, the lack of empathy gene, the double standard
gene? Then there's the crime. Petty crimes, habitual crimes,
opportunist crimes, brutish crimes, the subtle crime, the so
big crime, its taken as just another business crime.
I suppose by criminal gene, these Harvard types had whatever
it is the minor classes do crudely. Genes could be based on
biology, instead of the shifting morays of culture. I wonder
what these genes look like in the rest of nature, without the
culturally defined label?
The culture shifts as we create the next expedience, and then
find we are dependent upon it for our existence. The culture
shifts as we are changed by circumstance, and then adapt to
find we are dependent on the continuation of that circumstance.
Always with no thought to why we are changed, no memory of what
we once were. Always the one step back, the two steps forward.
Reactions to reactions, reactions apparently without cause,
before those reaction are over taken by habit. For crime one
could see extreme ways to add justice to our reactions. An
obscure function lost in our predictably cultivated reactions.
TruthSlave
Yes, Philip K. Dick with his visionary use of the genera. All you
need to ask now, is where does art come from, if its not from life?
I see Philip Dick making the same point in his story, which Mencken
made in his observation of life. Dick took the last words of Mencken,
took the same title circa January 1956, and gave it a novel form.
The point is there if you look to the source. An idea of time and
these enduring questions, an idea of the answers which we've now
become dependent on without realizing how or why. why?
Now we have the prospect of this new technology[??]. The same
questions, with the latest version of that older answer. What we
wont see, is what we don't ever see, the alternative uses for
this technology. We presume only one possible use. We can't see
those cultivating the extremes for our extreme reaction. Toying
with our fears for this added sense of natural justice. We can't
see the dual edge. Making and breaking, using and abusing, we
can't see the fallibility of this technology as its taken and
twisted, hi-jacked by those with the means to this ill study.
"quite an experience to live in fear, that's what it means
to be a slave." - Blade Runner 1980