{"id":1014,"date":"2003-07-17T22:50:04","date_gmt":"2003-07-18T02:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2003\/07\/17\/coplink-is-watching-you\/"},"modified":"2003-07-17T22:50:04","modified_gmt":"2003-07-18T02:50:04","slug":"coplink-is-watching-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2003\/07\/17\/coplink-is-watching-you\/","title":{"rendered":"CopLink is Watching You"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n

Civil Libertarians and pessimistic futurists (are there
\n any other kind, any more?) have long envisioned a cyber-police-state,
\n in which
\n all the myriad electronic entrails each of us leaves in his or her wake
\n as we wade through the digital age are recorded, followed, connected
\n and cross-referenced, leaving us at the mercy of an all-knowing constabulary.<\/p>\n

That day may be here sooner than you think. Like now.  From
\n today’s Globe….<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

 <\/td>\nThe Boston Police Department is rolling out a powerful new
\n computer program built to find hidden connections among people and events
\n almost instantly.<\/p>\n

Called ”Coplink,” the program sifts through tens of millions of police
\n records, from 911 calls to homicide investigations, to deliver a short
\n list of potential leads in just seconds.<\/em>
\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Of course, most of these records involve people never suspected
\n of or charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime.  Listen to what
\n goes into those "millions of police records"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 <\/td>\nDesigned in an Arizona artificial intelligence lab, Coplink searches
\n through arrest records, incident reports, and emergency phone calls to
\n identify potential suspects and compile all possible leads on them, including
\n past addresses, weapons they have owned, and even the arrest records of
\n people with whom they have been stopped in a car.
\n <\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
According to the article, this is just for starters.  Imagine
\n all of the other publicly available data that could be easilyfed into this
\n system: parking violations, political contributions, web publications,
\n tax records, credit information…..Here’s how it works, NOW…<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 <\/td>\nAt a demonstration this week, a technician typed in a reporter’s home
\n address. In seconds, a record popped up of the reporter’s car being hit
\n by a fire truck. Then came the reporter’s home phone number and wife’s
\n name. Then came the name of the truck’s driver and the address of the firehouse
\n where the truck is registered. With another click, the program could ask
\n the computer to look for any links between the fire truck and another incident.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

Now call me an alarmist, but the potential for abuse of
\n this system seems obvious and severe.  I’m sure it will initially be used
\n only in cases of "imminent terrorist threats" and ‘on-going criminal investigations",
\n at least until people get used to it. But how long until it is used
\n for "pre-emptive domestic strikes" and "identifcation of imminent internal
\n threats"?<\/p>\n

from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Civil Libertarians and pessimistic futurists (are there any other kind, any more?) have long envisioned a cyber-police-state, in which all the myriad electronic entrails each of us leaves in his or her wake as we wade through the digital age … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}