Better Police Work

We can hardly deny the police, who are trying to protect us, the benefits of artificial intelligence to screen people at football games or look for fugitives from justice who might be trying to shoot a police officer, or terrorists who want to blow us up, but we need to think a little bit about how this technology is being used and where the data is stored.  We have already had cases where the location information on a cell phone is requested in bulk so it can be sorted through to determine if someone was at the location of more than one crime committed in an area.  It actually seems like a good thing - we look for people who were at the scene of a crime in Manhattan, and at the scene of a crime in Brooklyn, when those were committed.  It gives police a list of people who might be suspects.  I wonder why people who commit crimes carry cell phones.  Perhaps only the ones who get caught carry cell phones.  

There was a story today in the Wall Street Journal that says this technology is coming to a neighborhood near you.  Police will start wearing body cams that allow them to “see” when a lost child crosses into their field of vision (only the vendor of this technology would use such an example), or a fugitive.  The article notes that it has not yet been sold to any department, but technology companies don’t do development for things that are not marketable, so that is not a good marker.  

I don’t want my local Sheriff storing that kind of data where I live.  I like him, and all that, but I don’t trust his administrative staff to keep that kind of record on file in case I commit a crime, or think about committing one.  It might be useful if somebody steals my iPhone, but I can already do that without the police having that information stored somewhere.  They have license plate readers on all the major roads, so they have a subset of data already.  Now they are talking about using my face, which is public, to scan for possible crimes.  There is a lot to like here, but a lot not to like too.  This cries out for a standard for storage of data, processing of data, cross jusridicational exchanges of data, and things we might not have thought of just yet.  Just look at what China has done with this same technology and it will cause you to think harder on the subject.  China uses the data to limit travel of dissidents, limit their ability to buy almost anything, to establish profiles for people based on their political or social statements, and - yes, catch criminals.   I don’t like that, and would want to avoid having that kind of thing here.  For every kind of new technology there is always someone who will abuse it.  I like and want to support our police, but I wonder if they are ready for this kind of thing.