Tag: police state

Thousands Of Mathematicians Call For Boycotting Predictive Crime A.I. From Police

After a flurry of police brutality cases this year and protests swarming the U.S. streets, thousands of mathematicians have joined scientists and engineers in calling for boycotting artificial intelligence from being used by law enforcement.

Over 2,000 mathematicians have signed a letter calling to boycott all collaboration with police and telling their colleagues to do the same in a future publication of the American Mathematical Society, Shadowproof reported.

The call to action for the mathematicians was the police killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and many more just this year.

“At some point, we all reach a breaking point, where what is right in front of our eyes becomes more obvious,” says Jayadev Athreya, a participant in the boycott and Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. “Fundamentally, it’s a matter of justice.”

The mathematicians wrote an open letter, collecting thousands of signatures for a widespread boycott of police using algorithms for policing. Every mathematician within the group’s network pledges to refuse any and all collaboration with law enforcement.

The group is organizing a wide base of mathematicians in the hopes of cutting off police from using such technologies. The letter’s authors cite “deep concerns over the use of machine learning, AI, and facial recognition technologies to justify and perpetuate oppression.”

Predictive policing is one key area where some mathematicians and scientists have enabled the racist algorithms, which tell cops to treat specific areas as “hotspots” for potential crime. Activists and organizations have long criticized the bias in these practices. Algorithms trained on data produced by racist policing will reproduce that prejudice to “predict” where crime will be committed and who is potentially a criminal.

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Report A Social Worker For Sexual Harassment And He Might Take Your Kids

Natia Sampson volunteered to become the legal guardian of her niece after the girl’s parents were incarcerated. And the social worker on the case took a liking to Natia.

At first she politely rejected his advances, fearing that reporting these instances would be met with retaliation. But soon it turned into sexual harassment, and she was forced to contact his superiors. But nothing changed. Until one day, the social worker exploded at Natia, saying, “I don’t know where you get off sending all these complaint emails and making all these calls, but you are going to find out that we at [Child Services] stick together, and cover for each other.”

Soon after, he lodged claims of child neglect against Natia. She eventually fought off the completely unsubstantiated charges.

Natia then sued the social worker and the Department of Children and Family Services for so obviously violating her rights. But the case was dismissed last month. The Judge’s decision reads:

“the right of private individuals to be free from sexual harassment at the hands of social workers was not clearly established at the time of defendants’ conduct in this case.”

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DETAILS NYPD ATTACK ON PEACEFUL PROTESTERS

NEW YORK POLICE deliberately assaulted dozens of peaceful protesters, medics, and legal observers in one of this summer’s most violently repressed protests, trapping people in the streets past a city-imposed curfew before beating and arresting them in what Police Commissioner Dermot Shea described as “a plan which was executed nearly flawlessly.”

At least 236 people were arrested at the June 4 protest in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, and at least 61 were injured by police, with some left with broken noses and fingers, lost teeth, and potential nerve damage, according to a detailed report released on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. “The police response to the peaceful Mott Haven protest was intentional, planned, and unjustified,” the report concluded. “The protest was peaceful until the police responded with violence.”

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