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This system seems to work by using the locations a car has been to compare see if other cars with a similar location history are more likely to be used to trans

This system seems to work by using the locations a car has been to compare see if other cars with a similar location history are more likely to be used to transport drugs if I understand correctly. Assuming that this is how that system works I can't see how this is legal. Let's say police is only searching cars between place A and place B, but not between place A and place C. Therefore they find drugs in cars that drive between A and B. This system therefore is now flagging all cars that drive between A and B as suspicious due to the bias of the searches the algorithm was trained on. It could be that there are more drugs being smuggled between A and C, but the system wouldn't know due to data containing no searches on cars between A and C. If we now say A=downtown, B=lower income area and C=high income area I think it becomes very obvious how such a system that allows police control cars based on past searches is discriminatory and everything but fair. It enables searches without any reasonable grounds and I have honestly no idea how any of this could hold up in court, but what do I know.

avar 3y ago
How are you making the leap from discrimination to the search being without "reasonable grounds"? Let's say I'm driving from A to B and the police stops me with a trunk full of heroin. I'm supposed to argue that if they'd only searched drivers travelling from A to C they'd find trucks full of cocaine instead? Maybe that's true, but I'm still breaking the law. You could argue that police attention should be more distributed. But surely "reasonable grounds" for a search should be measured primarily on the basis of the "hit rate".
- gleenn 3y ago
  I am pretty confident that having a higher hit rate doesn't have any affect on whether it's reasonable grounds.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  This argument has been made time and again with respect to racial profiling. Even if it works that doesn't make it right. You either have an actual suspicion or you're just engaging in profiling of some sort and that means that everybody is suddenly a suspect. This is why dragnet surveillance is such a bad idea.
  - avar 3y ago
    Why is it a bad idea? I live in a dense European city, and the other day I was driving down a busy road at a certain time of day, and was made to undergo a breathalyzer, along with anyone else going the same route. If I'd failed the test, would I have been the subject of injustice? After all it would probably be true that had I been driving drunk I'd likely have gotten away with it if I was driving in a more rural area. Now, in the case of the article an AI system accurately predicted a crime being committed. So, to extend that to my example: If the police hadn't tested me at all, because they could have used some AI system to spot that I wasn't driving like a drunk person, we'd all be ... worse off? Surely such systems could benefit everyone. They'd be better at ignoring the law-abiding, and be more effective at catching criminals.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      You can't compare the use of a breathalyzer which takes manpower to operate and analyze the results of to something that you can run 24x7 year after year. Such an increase in capability turns the whole principle of policing on its head. Note that there is no brake on this at all, not even in principle. You could be followed from the cradle to the grave by technology and if it gets it wrong the onus will be on you to prove that. That's what you get when you start with the assumption that everybody is guilty. Your breathalyzer results are the result of a fairly simple bit of chemistry, one that is reliable enough in practice to have a low enough number of false positives that it is deemed acceptable, and in case of a positive test there is a backup test to ensure that a false positive doesn't lead to detrimental effects. AI based mass surveillance starts out from the premise that if you make everybody a suspect and then filter out the 'good people' all you are left with is the bad apples. But that is not how law enforcement is supposed to work. It's possible that you would like to change the whole presumption of innocence concept. But until that is the case any kind of surveillance should be specific and limited in scope as much as possible so that ordinary citizens can live their lives unobserved by the authorities. I recognize the power of utilitarian arguments, but they are a very bad idea when you start basing your law enforcement rules of engagement on them. There are people that can make these arguments far more eloquently and from a more informed perspective, so I'd like to close with a link to an article about this that may help shed some more light on this. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-126/the-dangers-of-surveillance/ https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-126/the-dangers-of-su... There are many more like it but this is a pretty good starting point.
01100011 3y ago
This has been done for a decade. If you regularly drive between San Diego and Seattle, say, you will eventually get pulled over for some made up infraction(i.e. parallel construction) because the DEA has informed the local/state police that you're likely a drug mule. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0127/US-car-spying-program-revealed-Are-Americans-now-OK-with-some-candid-camera https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0127/US-car-spyin...

avar 3y ago

How are you making the leap from discrimination to the search being without "reasonable grounds"? Let's say I'm driving from A to B and the police stops me with a trunk full of heroin. I'm supposed to argue that if they'd only searched drivers travelling from A to C they'd find trucks full of cocaine instead? Maybe that's true, but I'm still breaking the law. You could argue that police attention should be more distributed. But surely "reasonable grounds" for a search should be measured primarily on the basis of the "hit rate".

gleenn 3y ago
I am pretty confident that having a higher hit rate doesn't have any affect on whether it's reasonable grounds.
jacquesm 3y ago
This argument has been made time and again with respect to racial profiling. Even if it works that doesn't make it right. You either have an actual suspicion or you're just engaging in profiling of some sort and that means that everybody is suddenly a suspect. This is why dragnet surveillance is such a bad idea.
- avar 3y ago
  Why is it a bad idea? I live in a dense European city, and the other day I was driving down a busy road at a certain time of day, and was made to undergo a breathalyzer, along with anyone else going the same route. If I'd failed the test, would I have been the subject of injustice? After all it would probably be true that had I been driving drunk I'd likely have gotten away with it if I was driving in a more rural area. Now, in the case of the article an AI system accurately predicted a crime being committed. So, to extend that to my example: If the police hadn't tested me at all, because they could have used some AI system to spot that I wasn't driving like a drunk person, we'd all be ... worse off? Surely such systems could benefit everyone. They'd be better at ignoring the law-abiding, and be more effective at catching criminals.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    You can't compare the use of a breathalyzer which takes manpower to operate and analyze the results of to something that you can run 24x7 year after year. Such an increase in capability turns the whole principle of policing on its head. Note that there is no brake on this at all, not even in principle. You could be followed from the cradle to the grave by technology and if it gets it wrong the onus will be on you to prove that. That's what you get when you start with the assumption that everybody is guilty. Your breathalyzer results are the result of a fairly simple bit of chemistry, one that is reliable enough in practice to have a low enough number of false positives that it is deemed acceptable, and in case of a positive test there is a backup test to ensure that a false positive doesn't lead to detrimental effects. AI based mass surveillance starts out from the premise that if you make everybody a suspect and then filter out the 'good people' all you are left with is the bad apples. But that is not how law enforcement is supposed to work. It's possible that you would like to change the whole presumption of innocence concept. But until that is the case any kind of surveillance should be specific and limited in scope as much as possible so that ordinary citizens can live their lives unobserved by the authorities. I recognize the power of utilitarian arguments, but they are a very bad idea when you start basing your law enforcement rules of engagement on them. There are people that can make these arguments far more eloquently and from a more informed perspective, so I'd like to close with a link to an article about this that may help shed some more light on this. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-126/the-dangers-of-surveillance/ https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-126/the-dangers-of-su... There are many more like it but this is a pretty good starting point.

01100011 3y ago

This has been done for a decade. If you regularly drive between San Diego and Seattle, say, you will eventually get pulled over for some made up infraction(i.e. parallel construction) because the DEA has informed the local/state police that you're likely a drug mule. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0127/US-car-spying-program-revealed-Are-Americans-now-OK-with-some-candid-camera https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0127/US-car-spyin...