Lucy Litt’s new article on The [F]law uncovers how law enforcement’s data collection and surveillance tools are often inaccurate, yet they are constantly expanding. The more “sophisticated” such tools become, the harder it will be to challenge biases that underlie them and the corporations that develop and sell them.
Read the article here.
“Law enforcement’s data collection and surveillance tools are often inaccurate, yet they are constantly expanding. And the more “sophisticated” such tools become, the harder it will be to challenge biases that underly them and the corporations that develop and sell them.”
“Based entirely on incorrect information, federal law enforcement officers were going to rip Kraig’s dreams to shreds. ”
“The overrepresentation of young people of color in gang databases inevitably drives the overrepresentation of Black and Brown men in gang raids and the ensuing RICO prosecutions, plea bargains, and lengthy incarceration sentences.”
“In short, the raid was a living nightmare.”
“Race and racism are endemic to risk assessment and related algorithms used by law enforcement, the courts, and correctional entities. Indeed, the notion of risk in this context is essentially a proxy for race.”
“ICE has even added a child to its gang database for wearing a blue shirt that was actually just part of the child’s mandatory school uniform.”
“Fundamentally, gang databases do not make people safer. They enable police to over-criminalize and harass even more people than they otherwise might in communities that often have long histories of tensions with law enforcement.”
“Gang database inclusion serves as a predicate for surveillance.”
“Law enforcement often finds social media material threatening when it is actually only portraying toughness in order to deter violence (or, in the case of some drill music artists, to make money in a legal manner).”
“These technologies often exist outside the limits of warrant requirements and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence; if we add NDAs governing what law enforcement can even disclose about surveillance on top of that, judges can never even reach the Fourth Amendment question—perpetuating the total lack of restrictions on surveillance by law enforcement that corporations seek to preserve.”
“Some Bronx 120 defendants experienced this nightmare first-hand: after they had been acquitted of state law charges, federal prosecutors successfully elevated those mere allegations to predicate acts for the purpose of establishing a RICO-qualifying pattern of racketeering activity.”
“When you take 103 individuals out of any community . . . you absolutely and positively take away a generation. You’re weakening our community. You’re losing all these resources.”
“We cannot safely leave scrutiny of these tools to the handful of experts who have the technical expertise to create them and the corporations that strategically sell them to increase market share and shareholder profits—often to the detriment of anyone who might be adversely affected.”
“When someone is arrested and charged based on, for example, predictive policing algorithms, that person should be entitled to know the factors that contributed to law enforcement’s decision to threaten his liberty.”
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From The [F]law: