The 2002 science fiction and action film Minority Report, based on a short story by Phillip K. Dick of The Man in the High Tower fame, depicted a form of policing with the capacity to predict, with certainty, who would commit murder. As told in the film, the use of the system in Washington, D.C. successfully reduces the murder rate to zero, encouraging federal officials to consider extending it nationwide. Just one problem: it was subject to tampering and misuse for political and criminal purposes, putting the inconvenient innocent away as well as the pre-guilty.
It turns out “big data” and sophisticated algorithms are bringing us closer to Dick’s “pre-crime” law enforcement than we might have imagined, helping to erode the presumption of innocence in the name of crime prevention. Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly turning to vast data-mining programs and algorithms for something called “intelligence-led policing” (ILP) that ostensibly helps departments predict not only where crime might occur, but also the identities of potential criminals.
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