Tag: pre crime

What’s Next For Battlefield America? Israel’s High-Tech Military Tactics Point The Way

“I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.”

– Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel – a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S. – uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

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Combating “Hate”: The Trojan Horse For Precrime

Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella The Minority Report created “precrime,” the clairvoyant foreknowledge of criminal activity as forecast by mutant “precogs.” The book was a dystopian nightmare, but a 2015 Fox television series transforms the story into one in which a precog works with a cop and shows that data is actually effective at predicting future crime.

Canada is trying to enact a precrime law along the lines of the 2015 show, but it is being panned about as much as the television series. Ottawa’s online harms bill includes a provision to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future. From The Globe and Mail:

The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says. Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.

But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups…

People found guilty of posting hate speech could have to pay victims up to $20,000 in compensation. But experts including internet law professor Michael Geist have said even a threat of a civil complaint – with a lower burden of proof than a court of law – and a fine could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

While this is a dangerous step in Canada, I also wonder if this is where burgeoning “anti-hate” programs across the US are headed. The Canadian bill would also allow “people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over what they perceive as hate speech online – including, for example, off-colour jokes by comedians.”

There are now programs in multiple US states to do just that –  encourage people to snitch on anyone doing anything perceived as “hateful.”

The 2021 federal COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act began to dole out money to states to help them respond to hate incidents. Oregon now has its Bias Response Hotline to track “bias incidents.”

In December of 2022, New York launched its Hate and Bias Prevention Unit. Maryland, too, has its system – its hate incidents examples include “offensive jokes” and “malicious complaints of smell or noise.”

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Justice Minister defends house arrest power for people feared to commit a hate crime in future

Justice Minister Arif Virani has defended a new power in the online harms bill to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future – even if they have not yet done so already.

The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says.

Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.

But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups.

If “there’s a genuine fear of an escalation, then an individual or group could come forward and seek a peace bond against them and to prevent them from doing certain things.”

The peace bond could have conditions that include not being close to a synagogue or a mosque, he said. It could also lead to restrictions on internet usage and behaviour. “That would help to deradicalize people who are learning things online and acting out in the real world violently – sometimes fatally.”

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Lawmakers Want Pause on Federal Funds for Predictive Policing

Should data scientists be in the business of fingering Americans for crimes they could commit, someday? Last month, a group of federal lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to stop funding such programs—at least until safeguards can be built in. It’s just the latest battle over a controversial field of law enforcement that seeks to peer into the future to fight crime.

“We write to urge you to halt all Department of Justice (DOJ) grants for predictive policing systems until the DOJ can ensure that grant recipients will not use such systems in ways that have a discriminatory impact,” reads a January letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D–N.Y.), joined by Senators Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.), Alex Padilla, (D–Calif.), Peter Welch (D–Vt.), John Fetterman, (D–Penn.), and Ed Markey (D–Mass.). “Mounting evidence indicates that predictive policing technologies do not reduce crime. Instead, they worsen the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement.”

The letter emphasizes worries about racial discrimination, but it also raises concerns about accuracy and civil liberties that, since day one, have dogged schemes to address crimes that haven’t yet occurred.

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TECHNO-HELL: GERMANY ANNOUNCES ‘PRE-CRIME’ POLICE UNIT TO TARGET ‘FAR-RIGHT’

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
-George Orwell, 1984

In a classic case of “life imitating dystopian sci-fi pulp fiction,” the German Fourth Reich has announced big plans for so-called “far-right extremist” (which now means “anyone not blindly obedient to government”) elements of the population it oversees.

This will evoke in many connoisseurs of pop culture remembrance of a little ditty from 2002 titled “Minority Report,” the plot of which is that the state has devised a convoluted method of detecting crime before it happens and therefore eliminated all murders in Washington, D.C. by 2054.

“Germany’s top security official said Tuesday that she aims to make it easier to trace right-wing extremists’ financing and plans to set up an ‘early recognition unit’ to detect far-right and foreign disinformation campaigns as early as possible.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s proposals follow large protests against the far right in Germany in recent weeks. They reflect growing concern after a report said extremists met to discuss deporting millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that some members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, whose support has doubled since the country’s 2021 election, were present.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the number of far-right extremists has been rising*. In 2022, it reached 38,800, with 14,000 of them considered potentially violent. The agency’s head, Thomas Haldenwang, said the numbers are believed to have risen again last year.”

*Note that the governing authorities never seem to bother to investigate why so-called “far-right extremism” (again, a misnomer designed to smear, not describe) might be attractive to a growing swathe of Western populations — as if, apropos of nothing, the previously well-heeled, domesticated, cosmopolitan, thoroughly liberalized German population suddenly decided to return to its Nazi roots because…

Something, something… probably Russia, definitionally “disinformation,” or maybe the sleazy “malinformation” reared its ugly head. 

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul Announces Plans to Implement Pre-Crime Surveillance, Target Online “Hate”

In a press conference today, New York Governor Kathy Hochul outlined her administration’s aggressive new strategy for combating online “hate” and implementing pre-crime-esque online surveillance.

As part of this approach, New York’s Threat Assessment and Management Teams (TAM teams), which were established in August 2022 in response to the Buffalo mass shooting, will extend their efforts and start targeting speech surrounding the conflict in the Middle East, with a focus on preventing crimes before they occur. TAM teams will be given an additional $3 million investment for their implementation across New York State college campuses.

“We’re creating strategies, first time ever, to help identify hate at the source and prevent crimes before they occur,” Hochul said.

The TAM teams, primarily focused on tracking and stopping violent acts of hate, work in collaboration with mental health professionals. They establish reporting systems for red flags and provide training to identify early warning signs of radicalization. This initiative, while seemingly noble in its intent to protect New Yorkers, raises significant privacy and First Amendment concerns.

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Japan To Deploy Pre-Crime Style “Behavior Detection” Technology

The Japan National Police Agency has decided to adopt AI-enhanced pre-crime surveillance cameras to bolster the security measures surrounding VIPs.

This step comes in response to the commemoration of the shocking assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the rising threats posed by what the government called “lone offenders.”

The use of AI in law enforcement is becoming commonplace globally. A 2019 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed that 52 out of the 176 nations surveyed were incorporating AI tools into their policing strategies, Nikkei Asia reported.

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MIT Makes Probability-Based Computing a Bit Brighter

In a noisy and imprecise world, the definitive 0s and 1s of today’s computers can get in the way of accurate answers to messy real-world problems. So says an emerging field of research pioneering a kind of computing called probabilistic computing. And now a team of researchers at MIT have pioneered a new way of generating probabilistic bits (p-bits) at much higher rates—using photonics to harness random quantum oscillations in empty space.

The deterministic way in which conventional computers operate is not well suited to dealing with the uncertainty and randomness found in many physical processes and complex systems. Probabilistic computing promises to provide a more natural way to solve these kinds of problems by building processors out of components that behave randomly themselves.

The approach is particularly well suited to complicated optimization problems with many possible solutions or to doing machine learning on very large and incomplete datasets where uncertainty is an issue. Probabilistic computing could unlock new insights and findings in meteorology and climate simulations, for instance, or spam detection and counterterrorism software, or next-generation AI.

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LEXISNEXIS IS SELLING YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO ICE SO IT CAN TRY TO PREDICT CRIMES

THE LEGAL RESEARCH and public records data broker LexisNexis is providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with tools to target people who may potentially commit a crime — before any actual crime takes place, according to a contract document obtained by The Intercept. LexisNexis then allows ICE to track the purported pre-criminals’ movements.

The unredacted contract overview provides a rare look at the controversial $16.8 million agreement between LexisNexis and ICE, a federal law enforcement agency whose surveillance of and raids against migrant communities are widely criticized as brutal, unconstitutional, and inhumane.

“The purpose of this program is mass surveillance at its core,” said Julie Mao, an attorney and co-founder of Just Futures Law, which is suing LexisNexis over allegations it illegally buys and sells personal data. Mao told The Intercept the ICE contract document, which she reviewed for The Intercept, is “an admission and indication that ICE aims to surveil individuals where no crime has been committed and no criminal warrant or evidence of probable cause.”

While the company has previously refused to answer any questions about precisely what data it’s selling to ICE or to what end, the contract overview describes LexisNexis software as not simply a giant bucket of personal data, but also a sophisticated analytical machine that purports to detect suspicious activity and scrutinize migrants — including their locations.

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