Reference no: EM133148761
IT's About Business 11.4 The Los Angeles Police Department Uses Predictive Policing
Palantir is an intelligence platform originally designed for the global war on terror. Palantir's software analyzes many different data sources-including financial documents, airline reservations, phone records, social media posts, and many more-to search for connections that human analysts might miss, in large part due to the overwhelming amount of data.
The U.S. government deploys Palantir in multiple areas:
- The Department of Defense uses Palantir to synthesize and sort battlefield intelligence. For example, the software helped analysts find roadside bombs and track insurgents.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud.
- The FBI uses Palantir in criminal probes.
- The Department of Homeland Security uses Palantir to screen air travelers and keep tabs on immigrants.
By 2019, many law enforcement agencies had used, or still used, Palantir. These agencies included police and sheriff's departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Let's take a closer look at Los Angeles' experience with Palantir.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) first deployed Palantir in 2009 to identify and deter people likely to commit crimes. The system analyzes data from rap sheets, parole reports, police interviews, and other sources and generates a list of people the LAPD defines as chronic offenders. These people are the ones that the system says are most at risk of reoffending and should be surveilled the most.
The LAPD distributes this list, called the Chronic Offender Bulletin, to patrol officers who have orders to monitor and stop these pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or a broken taillight. At each contact, officers fill out a field interview card with names, addresses, vehicles, physical description, any neighborhood intelligence the person offers, and the officer's own observations on the person. Data from these cards is entered into the Palantir system, adding to a constantly expanding surveillance database that is fully accessible without a warrant.
To widen the scope of possible connections with chronic offenders, the LAPD has explored buying private data, including social media, foreclosure records, toll road information, camera feeds from hospitals, parking lots, and universities, and delivery information from Papa John's and Pizza Hut.
Los Angeles says that predictive policing can help the LAPD efficiently target resources and help reduce crime. However, civil rights activists are concerned that the technology is simply a new type of racial profiling.
In 2018, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was forced to release documents about their predictive policing and surveillance algorithms, as a result of a lawsuit from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition (www.stoplapdspying.org). The documents revealed that the algorithms require officers to keep an eye on people deemed most likely to commit a crime. The coalition said that the documents also propagate disproportionately high arrests of black Angelinos, as well as other racial minorities.
There are lessons to be learned from the deployment of Palantir for predictive policing:
- For all of Palantir's professed concern for individuals' privacy, the single most important safeguard against abuse of the system is the one that Palantir is trying to reduce through automation: human judgement.
- Algorithms reinforce systemic biases-that is, algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, are only as good as the data that are provided to them. Therefore, if data comes from a city where there is an existing problem with over-policing of neighborhoods with concentrations of people of color, then the algorithms will reflect this data. People targeted by the algorithms can face extra police surveillance just because they may be associated with, or know of, criminal activity. This situation can occur even if they have never done anything wrong in their lives.
- Transparency will be the key in moving forward with predictive policing. Defense attorneys want to have evidence gathered by the predictive policing system thrown out, in large part because the software was used secretly, without the knowledge of the defendant or defense attorneys. Appeals continue to work their way through the court system.
- Convictions and punishments as the result of predictive policing software are problematic. These systems do not give high-risk individuals a reasonable chance to improve their behavior or learn lessons from their past. If anything, such systems may support an endless cycle of recidivism.
Sources: Compiled from B. Lipton, "Eight Years in, LAPD Can't Measure PredPol's Effect on Crime," Muckrock, March 12, 2019; "How Data-Driven Policing Threatens Human Freedom," The Economist, June 4, 2018; I. Lapowsky, "How the LAPD Uses Data to Predict Crime," Wired, May 22, 2018; M. Ahmed, "Aided by Palantir, the LAPD Uses Predictive Policing to Monitor Specific People and Neighborhoods," The Intercept, May 11, 2018; "The LAPD's Terrifying Palantir-Powered Policing Algorithm Was Just Uncovered and Yes It's Basically 'Minority Report'," Futurism, May 10, 2018; G. Joseph, "The LAPD Has a New Surveillance Formula, Powered by Palantir," The Appeal, May 8, 2018; A. Winston and I. Burrington, "A Pioneer in Predictive Policing Is Starting a Troubling New Project," The Verge, April 26, 2018; P. Waldman, L. Chapman, and J. Robertson, "Palantir Knows Everything about You," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 23, 2018; J. Loeb, "AI and the Future of Policing Algorithms on the Beat," Engineering and Technology, April 16, 2018; A. Ferguson, "The High-Definition, Artificially Intelligent, All-Seeing Future of Big Data Policing," aclu.org, April 4, 2018; A. Johansson, "5 Lessons Learned from the Predictive Policing Failure in New Orleans," VentureBeat, March 19, 2018; M. Harris, "How Peter Thiel's Secretive Data Company Pushed into Policing," Wired, August 9, 2017; C. Chang, "The LAPD's Biggest Conundrum: How to Suppress Crime without Alienating South L.A.'s Black Residents," Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2017; and www.palantir.com, accessed July 16, 2019.
Questions
- Describe a descriptive analytics application of the Palantir system used in predictive policing.
- Describe a predictive analytics application of the Palantir system used in predictive policing.
- Describe a prescriptive analytics application of the Palantir system used in predictive policing.
- Describe unintended consequences resulting from the LAPD's use of the Palantir system.