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I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. When we sw

I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. When we switched from toll booths with people in them to automated tag reading, this increased the ability to create toll roads. By making the cost of enforcement cheaper, it's enabling. If you make the cost of law enforcement lower, that won't make law enforcement work harder at solving murders. It'll mean that whole swaths of things that previously weren't practical to police will become practical and even economic. Especially if there's an automated fining system. Computers don't fix the flaws in systems. They magnify them, by enabling those systems to be scaled way, way up.

jjk166 4y ago
> I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. That is not what I'm arguing. I am saying that if law enforcement capabilities are separate from the safeguards against their misuse, then a cut to resources will lead to a degradation of the safeguards much faster than the capabilities. Computers aren't better because they decrease the cost of law enforcement, they are better because their safeguards can't be independently cut, at least not without substantial, coordinated, and publicly acknowledged effort. Sure they might be used to investigate more crimes, but they will investigate those additional crimes with the safeguards in place. Automating toll roads may have made it easier to create toll roads, but that hasn't lead to the mass conversion of roads to toll roads. It has eliminated the possibility of toll booth worker saying "the sign is wrong, you owe an additional $2" and pocketing the difference. Now either everyone gets charged the toll they're supposed to, or everyone is charged an incorrect amount and there is a massive public outcry leading to the error being fixed. If the police start prosecuting lots of things that were previously impractical, then either there is large public outcry and we change the laws to make legal something that never should have been illegal in the first place, or people believe it's a law that should be enforced in which case it's good that now the police are able. This is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over selectively enforcing a law against those who are too powerless in society to fight against it under the guise of "conserving resources". Computers are not scaling up the existing system, they are a fundamental change to the system. I'm the first to acknowledge that this new system will still have flaws, and sure those flaws will be magnified by scale, but they are different and in my opinion at least, much more tractable flaws.
- msandford 4y ago
  The idea that any policing algorithms will by definition be open and auditable and whatnot is a lovely one. I would welcome that. We already have some situations where algorithms are used in policing. Like for breathalyzers. The code is not open source. The audit chain is not inspectable. To say that new algorithms will be held to higher standards because you want them to be is laudable. But it seems like you might be engaging in magical thinking. If you could make a strong argument why the system will use new algorithms differently than the existing ones, I'd love to hear them. But remember, the incentives for the people who allowed closed source breathalyzers, closed source voting machines, etc haven't changed yet. If their incentives need to change in order for us to get open, auditable algorithms, that's going to have to happen before we start using them, not after.

jjk166 4y ago

> I strongly disagree that increased law enforcement capabilities will lead to ever more perfect policing. I'm pretty sure that's what you're arguing. That is not what I'm arguing. I am saying that if law enforcement capabilities are separate from the safeguards against their misuse, then a cut to resources will lead to a degradation of the safeguards much faster than the capabilities. Computers aren't better because they decrease the cost of law enforcement, they are better because their safeguards can't be independently cut, at least not without substantial, coordinated, and publicly acknowledged effort. Sure they might be used to investigate more crimes, but they will investigate those additional crimes with the safeguards in place. Automating toll roads may have made it easier to create toll roads, but that hasn't lead to the mass conversion of roads to toll roads. It has eliminated the possibility of toll booth worker saying "the sign is wrong, you owe an additional $2" and pocketing the difference. Now either everyone gets charged the toll they're supposed to, or everyone is charged an incorrect amount and there is a massive public outcry leading to the error being fixed. If the police start prosecuting lots of things that were previously impractical, then either there is large public outcry and we change the laws to make legal something that never should have been illegal in the first place, or people believe it's a law that should be enforced in which case it's good that now the police are able. This is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over selectively enforcing a law against those who are too powerless in society to fight against it under the guise of "conserving resources". Computers are not scaling up the existing system, they are a fundamental change to the system. I'm the first to acknowledge that this new system will still have flaws, and sure those flaws will be magnified by scale, but they are different and in my opinion at least, much more tractable flaws.

msandford 4y ago
The idea that any policing algorithms will by definition be open and auditable and whatnot is a lovely one. I would welcome that. We already have some situations where algorithms are used in policing. Like for breathalyzers. The code is not open source. The audit chain is not inspectable. To say that new algorithms will be held to higher standards because you want them to be is laudable. But it seems like you might be engaging in magical thinking. If you could make a strong argument why the system will use new algorithms differently than the existing ones, I'd love to hear them. But remember, the incentives for the people who allowed closed source breathalyzers, closed source voting machines, etc haven't changed yet. If their incentives need to change in order for us to get open, auditable algorithms, that's going to have to happen before we start using them, not after.