Predictive policing in the US

Predictive policing technology has proven highly controversial wherever it is implemented, but in New Orleans, the program escaped public notice, partly because Palantir established it as a philanthropic relationship with the city through Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s signature NOLA For Life program. Thanks to its philanthropic status, as well as New Orleans’ “strong mayor” model of government, the agreement never passed through a public procurement process.

In fact, key city council members and attorneys contacted by The Verge had no idea that the city had any sort of relationship with Palantir, nor were they aware that Palantir used its program in New Orleans to market its services to another law enforcement agency for a multimillion-dollar contract.

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Even within the law enforcement community, there are concerns about the potential civil liberties implications of the sort of individualized prediction Palantir developed in New Orleans, and whether it’s appropriate for the American criminal justice system.

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Six years ago, one of the world’s most secretive and powerful tech firms developed a contentious intelligence product in a city that has served as a neoliberal laboratory for everything from charter schools to radical housing reform since Hurricane Katrina. Because the program was never public, important questions about its basic functioning, risk for bias, and overall propriety were never answered.

  The Verge

P.S.

James Carville, the Democratic Party power broker and architect of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign. Carville is a paid adviser of Palantir whose involvement with the data-mining company dates back at least to 2011.

In an interview, Carville told The Verge that he was the impetus for the collaboration between Palantir and New Orleans. “I am the sole driver of that project. It was entirely my idea,” said Carville, adding that he and Palantir CEO Alex Karp flew down to New Orleans to meet with Mayor Landrieu. “To me, it was a case of morality. Young people were shooting each other, and the public wasn’t as involved as they should have been.”

So his idea of how to rectify that was to introduce a secret project? Interesting approach.

We've heard about Palantir before.  I posted excerpts from an Intercept article back in 2016:

Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir [Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel] tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

In a separate multi-million-dollar contract signed in 2014, Thiel’s $20 billion company is building a complex case management system for ICE’s HSI, which processes tens of thousands of civil and criminal cases each year.

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In recent years, the federal government has reportedly paid Palantir  some $340 million in contracts. Concerns over Thiel’s potential conflicts deepened last week when it was reported that he would not confirm whether or not he had signed standard paperwork barring him from participating in Trump transition matters that might conflict with his private interests. 

  The Intercept

All the horror stories of late about how ICE has been systematically rounding up and deporting people who have been model citizens for years in this country should be a cautionary tale about the use of data mining programs.  But it won't be. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.