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Chicago Pre-Crime - Racism Cloaked in Science

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the studies-show-poverty-causes-cancer dept.

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!"

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday February 27 2014, @12:09AM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday February 27 2014, @12:09AM (#7655) Homepage Journal

    The title of the linked article is "The minority report: Chicago's new police computer predicts crimes, but is it racist?", and it basically is a "minority report" kind of thing. It's a chilling use of computer tech by our political overlords. FTA:

    When the Chicago Police Department sent one of its commanders to Robert McDaniel’s home last summer, the 22-year-old high school dropout was surprised. Though he lived in a neighborhood well-known for bloodshed on its streets, he hadn’t committed a crime or interacted with a police officer recently. And he didn’t have a violent criminal record, nor any gun violations. In August, he incredulously told the Chicago Tribune, "I haven't done nothing that the next kid growing up hadn't done.†Yet, there stood the female police commander at his front door with a stern message: if you commit any crimes, there will be major consequences. We’re watching you.

    What McDaniel didn’t know was that he had been placed on the city’s “heat list†— an index of the roughly 400 people in the city of Chicago supposedly most likely to be involved in violent crime. Inspired by a Yale sociologist’s studies and compiled using an algorithm created by an engineer at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the heat list is just one example of the experiments the CPD is conducting as it attempts to push policing into the 21st century.

    --
    "To Einstein, without whose theory this book would not have been possible. Or necessary." Journey to Madness
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