For most, social media fits into the investigation through the use of predictive policing software, such as the “Beware” system sold by Intrado, who operate the nationwide 9-1-1 emergency communications system used by police and first responders in every case. As the Examiner reported:
Your local police department is likely using numerous tools and applications that might determine how you get treated during a routine traffic stop, or in response to your neighbor’s call about loud music. One such application, Beware, has been sold to police departments since 2012. It can be accessed on any Internet-enabled device, including tablets, smartphones, laptop and desktop computers, while responders are en route to, or at the location of a call.
This app explores billions of records in social media postings, commercial and public databases for law enforcement needs, churning out “risk profiles” in real time. ‘Beware’ algorithm assigns a score and “threat rating” to a person — green, yellow or red – and sends that rating to a requesting officer. Worst of all, this information is not made available to the very person whose “threat rating” is being appraised. You have no ability to dispute being wrongly designated a high-risk potential offender.
For example, you wrote something about recent Ferguson protests on Facebook. Perhaps, you expressed dissatisfaction with police brutality. Maybe you complained about the CIA’s torture tactics, demanded President Obama’s impeachment or criticized the government in general. You could have shared a petition for the preservation of gun rights, or bought a holster online. You could also be mistaken for another person with a criminal record or a history of radical Internet postings. It could mean the difference between waltzing off with a warning, or being subjected to a brutal takedown at gun point. It could turn a simple knock at the door into a full-blown SWAT raid.
Not even a joke.
All the makings are here for targeting political activists, flushing out dissidents, catching debtors for the benefit of their creditors, and branding groups of all political stripes with dangerous and undue labels such as “potential domestic terrorists,” “unruly mobs, etc.” and labeling rogue individuals as “lone wolves.” These cases focus on the potential threat of errant behavior or offensive actions as justification to monitor, target and assessment, rather than actual criminal records used in past criminal databases.
The slippery slope of potential abuse appears so slippery and so sloped that it is a nearly vertical slide to total centralized power.
Reuters reported some other predictive policing services, too, including the government sanctioned FirstNet system that will connect all first responder calls and database assessments nationwide on a wireless broadband network. Known to some as 9-1-1 2.0, this system works a private-public partnership, which for-profit corporations facilitating the agendas of law enforcement:
New World Systems, for example, now offers software that allows dispatchers to enter in a person’s name to see if they’ve had contact with the police before. Provided crime data, PredPol claims on its website that its software “forecasts highest risk times and places for future crimes.” These and other technologies are supplanting and enhancing traditional police work.
Public safety organizations, using federal funding, are set to begin building a $7-billion nationwide first-responder wireless network, called FirstNet. Money is now being set aside. With this network, information-sharing capabilities and federal-state coordination will likely grow substantially. Some uses of FirstNet will improve traditional services like 911 dispatches. Other law enforcement uses aren’t as pedestrian,
however.
These systems put incredible power in the hands of law enforcement officers, and stand to color their judgement of individuals they are supposed to treat equally with due process under the law.
Instead, circumstantial evidence is used to imply guilt by association, trend, and pattern opening the door widely for abuse and preferential treatment. The stuff that has happened in places like Ferguson, New York, Cincinnati, Albuquerque and elsewhere may be nothing compared to what could happen with this type of leading and proprietary information.
Individuals, who may be targeted by this system and assessed as a threat, have no way of knowing what has been claimed against them. There is no venue for facing their accuser; instead, it is a whisper campaign coordinated between the most powerful corporations and banks, who’ve collected private intelligence on their customers, the police and public, government held records and a compilation of social media “events” that may or may not represent the intentions of people under the spotlight.
