This article was originally published by Aaron Kesel at Activist Post.
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.
“The data does not speak for itself, it’s not neutral,” explains Brendan McQuade, author of Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision. Police data is “dirty data,” because it does not represent crime, but policing and arrests.
“So what are its predictions going to find? That police should deploy their resources in the same place police have traditionally deployed their resources.”
Several, if not all, U.S. states and major cities are thought to use some type of predictive policing or pre-crime software with known users including — Chicago, Atlanta, Tacoma, New York, and LA, though not without protesting its use. As Activist Post previously reported, many of these states are using Palantir software for their predictive crime algorithms and have been exposed for doing so, like Florida, whose police terrorized and monitored residents of Pasco County.
These police organizations across the U.S. have been using what is known as “heat lists” or pre-crime databases for years. What is a “heat list,” you may ask?
Well, “heat lists” are basically databases compiled by algorithms of people that police suspect may commit a crime. Yes, you read that right — a person who might commit a crime. How these lists are generated and what factors determine an individual “may commit a crime” is unknown.
Activists and journalists sued the Chicago Police Department in 2017 for failing to disclose how these programs operate, as Activist Post reported.
Chicago wasn’t the only major police department exposed using predictive crime algorithms. The Los Angeles Police Department was also caught one year later in 2018 by activists from the Stop LA Spying Coalition, as Activist Post reported.
This heat list idea in local law enforcement actually originated in Miami then was rolled out in Chicago in 2013. However, Activist Post may have missed other cities that gained less media attention; and as this writer will discuss shortly, the idea comes from a federal database.
A paper released last year by MIT entitled “Technical Flaws of Pretrial Risk Assessments Raise Grave Concerns” has been signed by some of the highest level university experts in the field of A.I. and law who warn about the “technical flaws” of these pre-crime based systems, Activist Post reported.
Fortunately for us, as Nicholas West noted, the pushback has already started in several cities, and a few police departments have dropped their programs after becoming aware of the inaccuracies. In 2018, for example, New Orleans suspended its 6-year running pre-crime program after its secret predictive policing software was exposed.
The scariest part of all this is that the New Orleans and LA police departments were actually both linked to Palantir Technologies, which directly works with the CIA and is suspected of being the current fork of PROMIS Main Core software. PROMIS pre-dates all of these local police heat lists, with algorithms that put suspected “domestic terrorists” into their own round-up lists and highly scrutinized tracked purchases, created at first by Oliver North for President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush under FEMA’s Readiness Exercise — 1984 (REX-1984.)
The use of Palantir’s pre-crime algorithm software posits that other police departments may be utilizing the same software for their own pre-crime programs. Palantir is also the same company working with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on its own lists to catch illegal immigrants, as Activist Post and investigative journalist Barrett Brown originally reported.
You may remember Palantir from journalist Barrett Brown, Anonymous’ hack of HBGary, or accusations that the company provided the technology that enables NSA’s mass surveillance PRISM which is the successor to PROMIS. Palantir’s software in many ways is similar to the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS) stolen software Main Core and maybe the next evolution in that code, which allegedly predated PRISM. In 2008, Salon.com published details about a top-secret government database that might have been at the heart of the Bush administration’s domestic spying operations. The database known as “Main Core” reportedly collected and stored vast amounts of personal and financial data about millions of Americans in the event of an emergency like Martial Law.
PROMIS was forked into many reported use-cases for the U.S. government, including an intelligence application onboard nuclear submarines of the United States and Great Britain, and the use by both the U.S. government and certain allied governments for inventory tracking of nuclear materials and long-range ballistic missiles. But the most bizarre and frightening use was to keep track of dissident Americans under Main Core.
The Main Core database isn’t just a rumor or conspiracy theory; PROMIS software was used by Iran-Contra fall guy then-National Security Council, Lt. Col. Oliver North to create the dissidents list for Rex-84 that would later evolve to Main Core. North used PROMIS software in 1982 in the Department of Justice, and at the White House, to compile a list of American dissidents to invoke if the government ever needed to do so under Ronald Reagan’s Continuity of Government (COG) program as a liaison to FEMA.
In 1993, Wired described North’s use of PROMIS in compiling the Main Core database:
Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon’s enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy’s blacklist look downright crude.
This Main Core database of individuals was given to a handful of individuals, meaning most government officials had no knowledge of the program ever existing. The database was passed off from administration to administration through National Security channels, according to sources.
This writer wrote extensively on Main Core and PROMIS in an investigation on the cover-up of stolen Inslaw software and murders of journalists Danny Casolaro and Anson NG Yonc, CIA intelligence operative Ian Spiro and NSA employee Alan Standorf. See: “Octopus PROMIS: The Conspiracy Against INSLAW Software, And The Murders To Cover Up A Scandal Bigger Than Watergate.”
Palantir was founded with early investment from the CIA and heavily used by the military, and Palantir is a subcontracting company in its own right. The company has even been featured in the Senate’s grilling of Facebook, when Washington State Senator Maria Cantwell asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Do you know who Palantir is?” due to Peter Thiel sitting on Facebook’s board.
Palantir’s Gotham software allows Fusion Center police to track citizens beyond social media and online web accounts with people record searches, vehicle record searches, a Histogram tool, a Map tool, and an Object Explorer tool.
According to DHS, “Fusion centers operate as state and major urban area focal points for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between federal; state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT); and private sector partners” like Palantir. Further, Fusion Centers are locally owned and operated, arms of the “intelligence community,” i.e. the 17 intelligence agencies coordinated by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). However, sometimes the buildings are staffed by trained NSA personnel like what happened in Mexico City, according to a 2010 Defense Department (DOD) memorandum.
Tarik Aougab, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Haverford College, one of the many mathematicians who saw recent protests against police as a an opportunity to take action against these practices said. “If there is already disproportionately large amounts of time and energy being spent criminalizing Black and brown people,” Aougab continues, “the predictions the algorithm puts forth are just going to reflect that. It’s a way to perpetuate that over-criminalization.”
The mathematicians question if predictive policing is just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Athreya explains the boycotters will accomplish their goals by collaborating with criminal justice organizations.
We want to work through issues of how various algorithms are used in the criminal justice system, for things from facial recognition to DNA matching algorithms, where community groups and mathematicians can have a say.
In fact, one study conducted by the AI Institute last year investigated predictive policing systems and determined “in numerous jurisdictions, these systems are built on data produced during documented periods of flawed, racially-biased, and sometimes unlawful practices and policies.”
Another subsequent 2019 audit on predictive A.I. use in Los Angeles found a serious lack of oversight or procedures around the tools, rendering them utterly useless. Researchers have also noticed police tend to pursue their own “hotspots” rather than follow the technology making the tech become an enabler to police labeling and categorizing individuals without reason, Science Mag reported.
This is only the beginning of the fight, and it’s going to be a drawn-out battle to prevent the use of this technology, not just here in the U.S. but worldwide as well. There’s no telling how long these projects have been active, and trusting the police to honestly tell us is like trusting the wolf guarding the henhouse. However, with mathematicians as well as scientists and engineers on our side we have a fighting chance.
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I feel the need to point out the lunacy of Tunnel Vision, in the former truth movement, in which many appear to have been contracted by intelligence agencies, governments, or corporations, to distort the truth.
This is extremely disheartening. There are some individuals that appear to be standing in a tunnel and cannot see the rest of the world, and are blinded by the light that they see in the tunnel.
Some are blaming everything wrong in the world on Russia, America, Jews, Zionists, Capitalists, China, the DNC, the RNC, Trump, etc.
How can anyone take anyone with such a myopic world view seriously? Obviously, all of those that I have mentioned have contributed to problems in the world, but the level of irrationality that it takes to pin everything on one small organization or one country alone in an era of globalization is sheer lunacy.
This is not to discourage criticism when criticism is warranted, but to plea to those formerly in the truth movement to come back to the truth, and get out of the tunnel that is blinding you to reality.
Some have been extremely critical of 5G, yet refuse to hold China to the same standards that they hold the United States to. Are they waiting for everyone to be fried before they criticize the Chinese government the way that they have criticized America? If 5G is killing people, or will kill people, and they are using it, is that not a war that is just not called a war?
If the vaccines kill people is that not a war that is just not called a war?
If the lockdowns kill people, is that not a war that is just not called a war?!
I have been extremely critical of the United States government and institutions, but I am not in a tunnel and see the other guilty parties that are also responsible.
Andrea Iravani
Dr. Paul. I agree, focussing on issues over personalities or parties is the only way to get things done. Restoring our civil liberties and abolishing corruption and ending war are my top issues of concern, so, I have no reason to vote in this election, tragically, because violating constitutional rights, increasing corruption, and war are unfortunately on the agenda of the candidates that are running. If we did not have all of these massive bail outs and wars we would be in much better shape.
Interest rates are what increases the inflation and that then becomes a vicious circle and a debt trap, with ever increasing levels of debt. Even under the gold standard there was run away inflation, which is the reason that we abandoned the gold standard.
If we had a legitimate government, as opposed to the organized crime ring that is running the country, I would prefer a government green back similar to the Pennsylvania Pound but without interest.
There is not enough gold to go on the gold standard, and Russia and China are flat out lying about a gold linked currency, and if Trump is talking about it, he is either lying, or has no idea what he is talking about! Claiming that it is linked to gold, and actually linking it to gold are two totally different things, and it is hocus pocus and outright fraud, because there simply is not enough gold to do it. You would need a microscope in order to conduct transactions.
Andrea Iravani
Hacker prevented me from posting on Unz. Not sure why the hacker always targets Unz, or me for that matter!
This is hardly a surprise that the billionaires that orchestrated the plandemic coincidentally had the largest increase and coincidentally benefitted from their plandemic. Also coincidentally, the Health Care and Technology billionaires had the largest gains in wealth. No?! Reallyy?!! Well, I’ll be damned! China’s billionaires wealth has increased nine fold over the past decade. Not exactly sure what type of communism that would fall under, and the U.S. billionaires wealth increased by 43% over the past decade. The billionaires in America are struggling to keep up with the Chinese. Guess that means war, but we won’t call it that, we will just lock Americans in their homes and kill them with vaccines and other ways and then steal from them to teach the Chinese that we mean business. Oh, but don’t worry, because the plandemic grand masters have more plans in the pipes, for societal control, and policy control, because they really know how to kill and steal better than anyone else, and they know how to bribe the government to allow them to do it, since government pension funds invested in their companies! So, I guess that means that I am basically a goner, since I don’t work for any of those or the financial industry, nor would I. Good. The sooner that I get off this evil planet the better!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/business/billionaires-ubs-report/index.html
Andrea Iravani
I guess that that is why they called the scamdemic Gamer Revolution, because they are gaming the system,
which is otherwise known as cheating, and the act of cheating is in and of itself, an admission of defeat, and is losing with an illusion of winning, which is not the same thing as winning.
Andrea Iravani
Tarik ‘the Muslim’ Boob isn’t happy with databases and AI ferreting out brown and black criminals and terrorists? Now, isn’t that a surprise??!
Blacks and brown terrorists pop up more often in AI crime databases because they are actually more a threat than other groups in the population. When was the last time a Chinese ‘corner boy’ did a drive-by shooting? When was the last time a white guy terrorised a subway car?
I live in a big city and 90 percent of the time I have seen violence and intimidation/brazen theft or outright acts of terrorism, those individuals have either been black or brown. I have never seen a Chinese woman grab something in a shop and run out, or hop the subway turnstile. But I have seen hundred of black kids do that.
In fact, black kids routinely roam in gangs and intimidate people on the subway/buses, loot shops, deal drugs, hastle women. And so I do not have a problem with AI being used to stop this behaviour. These pencil-necked mathematicians (and you just know these nerds would be pounded into the ground by black thugs if they bumped into them on the street) are just grandstanding for the liberal chorus.
As if the people have any say, they’re going to do as they please. The people never really had any control whatsoever. They control all the leaders of the world as also the people. We better start getting organized and ready.
Armored vehicles gave the radicals ‘room to destroy’. Then, they arrived at the conclusion that traditionalists were most likely to commit acts of terror.
It is justified, mathematically, to have laboring bodies without life support, to ruin arable land, and to take-on, unserviceable debts, to cover a welfare state. Obsolescence is designed. Underemployment and class warfare are intentional parts of Marxian economics.
So, the argument, here, was against the same abstract thinking, which we use to generalize and stereotype people, everyday. They don’t want to say there is a natural elite:
“In fact, one study conducted by the AI Institute last year investigated predictive policing systems and determined “in numerous jurisdictions, these systems are built on data produced during documented periods of flawed, racially-biased, and sometimes unlawful practices and policies.”
Actually, though, the measurements are used to overturn the natural order. Rectified chaos, in other words ordo ab chao.
Imagine that you are legally allowed to build, operate, and maintain 737’s, consumer vehicles, bridges, Big Pharma, and the stock market that way.
I would choose to game such a system, as a mathematician. It’s flagrant bullsh|t. Willful participants plainly see it for what it is, yet obstinately refuse to be rescued. Their actions are generally predictable, and you can be rewarded for your predictions, is how I intend to act in the upcoming year.
Short of taking the mark, open blasphemy, or persecuting any sincere believers.
Thank you to the mathematicians that recognize the statements by Benjamin Disraeli & Samuel Clemmons (Mark Twain). Their statement about “Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics” that would be used as foundations for AI-Predictive-Policing should be a warning to everyone. The Tom Cruze movie, “Minority Report” demonstrated some of the problems. You must deny basic CIVIL RIGHTS spelled out in the Bill of Rights to use this type of thought policing. REJECTED !!!
Human editing is the future and the advance of this science and technology cannot be stopped. Just as Moore’s Law told us computing power would grow exponentially, so something I call ‘Tzu’s Law’ means the ability – and desire – to human edit will grow exponentially over the next 20 years. And the Chinese are the most advanced in this field.
The Chinese have done the advanced math on human populations and who is, or isn’t, useful to have around. They have calculated precisely the human mix required to see advances in IQs and in innovation. They also have calculated which populations, or elements of the population, need to be edited out. For example, holders of crazy belief systems (Muslims being a prime example) who are violent and disruptive/unproductive, or underperforming and violent races (blacks for example).
The Chinese are successfully combining this math with AI and genetics to go through their population and you can see the benefits. As an example, they have an exponential increase going on in very beautiful women combined with high intelligence.
The next step for them will be to spread this science around the world through their corporations, IP and software. To take the editing global. This will ensure global resources are used productively and the recent Western growth model (since the 1960s) of finding growth in cheap, mostly low IQ non-European worker importation, fades away and the huge harm it has done to the planet comes to an end.