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BEWARE---Precrime is Here---'Minority Report' From the Screen to Real Life

Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 3 months ago to Government
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I've watched small info releases and publication of work on this system and it's type over the last several years, but it's now moved into a Police Department near you and me--Now. From the article:

"According to a report from the Washington Post, when Fresno police received a 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, they consulted the “Beware” software, which “scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social media postings.”

The software search found that the man had both a “firearm conviction” and a “gang association,” which put his “threat level” at the highest of three possible color-coded scores."
And:
"“It’s trying to forecast based on maybe your past behavior, or what is seen in your social media – a change in behavior or a change in the things you’re posting about,” Smith said. “They say ‘maybe this person is going to perpetrate a crime in the future,’ and then they want prevention from police officers.”"

I'd guess in 2yrs or less, we'll see legislation to enable a pre-crime intervention law and I'd bet we'll see it offered as justification on a Pre-Crime Police Killing "mistake".


All Comments


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  • Posted by minorwork 9 years, 3 months ago
    Huh, pre-crime strategies are in place, have been for decades. Does enforcement pay closer attention to churches to catch drunk drivers?
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Not necessarily control, but certainly influence.

    I absolutely agree that it is anti-liberty. If the politicians want to do something like this, they should be the first volunteers to have THEIR profiles released to the public. That would be an eye-opener.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 3 months ago
    this logic then predicts that my having posted a title,
    "fascistic BHO ......" makes it okay in the future to put
    my name in the "potential terrorist" database. . then,
    if I were stopped by police for a traffic situation, they
    could treat me like a closet terrorist as they please.

    this is frightening. . Thank You, Zen! -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 3 months ago
    Black List by Brad Thor thoroughly describes how comprehensively intrusive your government is.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 3 months ago
    I can't keep up with this shit. I'll leave this kind of a future to younger folks who have no idea what liberty or freedom means.
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  • Posted by scojohnson 9 years, 3 months ago
    If it were really only a "threat warning" type of thing, for example, used as a police officer is responding to a call as in the article, I don't see much to be concerned about. Police officers are humans and Americans as well, and if the tool is available, they can respond better and likely prevent loss of life if they know what they are getting into by simply responding accordingly. The gang membership isn't new, that is tracked by California's Strategic Offender Management System that was custom-built for the Dept of Corrections, it actually started as a gang membership tracking system (among other things) so they wouldn't do something stupid like mix crips & bloods on the same cell block. It expanded into crime intelligence though and anything gleaned from interviews with prisoners is input for datapoint reference in the future.

    We all know it won't stop there though. I know everyone worries about 'big brother' stuff, but quite frankly, I'm a federal contractor, that assumes some level of competence by the federal workforce to implement, which doesn't exist. It takes 10 of them to figure out how to schedule a meeting in Outlook.

    Now if you see something in the news that General Dynamics IT, Booze Allen, Northrup Grumman, etc.. has been "contracted to provide this service to federal law enforcement", now you really need to be concerned. The feds don't do the NSA spying, the contractors do, actually. Federal hiring requires bonus points for being disabled, one purple eye, Native American ancestors, etc.. and it's really difficult to actually hire the right person for the job since the skills don't matter as much as politically-correct points on the application. The contractors don't have that problem.
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  • Posted by GaryL 9 years, 3 months ago
    The best I can say if you find yourself paranoid over stuff like this is get off this Wild, Wild Web. Growing up we had a phone on the wall in the kitchen. If it rang and no one answered then we were not at home and they could try again later. I long for those days when we were all so much less important.
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Well, that's the trick isn't it? To justify intervening you would have to have a high degree of certainty that an actual violent act was going to occur. In the movie they thought they were but sometimes they were wrong when one of the precogs disagreed -- the minority report.

    Clearly our ability to predict violent acts is no where near that good. But what would we do if it were? If we were over 95% certain that violence was going to occur would stopping it be justified?

    Of course punishing people for what they didn't do is right out -- but that was necessary for a movie.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 3 months ago
    Think about it. If the government knew EVERYTHING at all times, and it had CONTROL over everything, it could control everyone's behavior exactly how it wanted.

    I think thats where our government is going. Individual freedom is the opposite of this
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Absolutely, in that it would tell us how many broken promises and bad behavior (Clinton?) they have engaged in. Give them a FICO-type score as to whether they could be trusted.
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    intervened in what exactly? If you are a member of a violent gang-that's enough to implicate you right there. but not necessarily that you have a prior. what if it was a drug conviction? what if the girlfriend has a vendetta? what if you showed pics on FB of you with your new firearm and then there are a bunch of comments where you let off steam politically? I cannot tell you the number of people I know who say how careful the are on the internet. Probably a good policy-but not 1st Amendment kind of thinking
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  • Posted by skidance 9 years, 3 months ago
    The "precautionary principle" applied to police science.
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    pedaphile is the 1st thing that comes to mind. but then I got thinking-what if it wasn't ? what if the goal was to get information from the parents by getting the 3 yr old to go get something of the parents? or divulge what the family was going to do the next day? whatever it is-it's either deviant or sociopathic or both.
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  • Posted by edweaver 9 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is sick. What would be the point of hacking a baby monitor? Can't get my head around that one.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 3 months ago
    Every department of government threatened with lower funding "needs" this tool to justify the next WACO.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 3 months ago
    they are first going to score based on who is reading these articles
    Reply | Permalink  

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