Angry Jesus writes:
"The Chicago Police Department is mis-applying epidemiological science (the study of entire populations) to target individuals in a real-life version of Minority Report. They have decided that it is a good idea to put people on a secret list based on a Big Data analysis of their social networks. But don't worry, it isn't racist or abusive because, Science!"
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:56PM
Statistics show that young adult black males are the most likely to commit crimes. How much variation within that population will a computer program be able to find? I wonder how the people determine the social networks. Do they scrape Facebook? Do the cops report who is together during an arrest? Will teachers write down who sits together at lunch? Will phone calls between people be used?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by demonlapin on Thursday February 27 2014, @12:43AM
Emphasis added. That looks like a pretty straightforward criminal profile: guy who has committed property crimes in the past, high likelihood he'll be a repeat offender. In fact, I heard about just this sort of program being used in High Point, NC, on NPR [npr.org] last month. And they were very positive about it. They even talked about how Chicago was going to try to implement it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2014, @02:47PM
I parsed that sentence differently:
"hadn't (committed a crime) or (interacted with a police officer recently)"
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Friday February 28 2014, @01:19AM