Dubai Police now using Crime Prediction software
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
Probably made an example of just the same, like the rest of the slave class there.
It really miffs me that UAE receives all this Western patronage. In a just world they'd be embargoed into the ground until they adopted decent human rights practices.
[1] Last time I mentioned his name I got down-voted to oblivion. Lets see what happens this time. :)
Obama won his first election on a platform of change. It's pretty clear that the citizenship wants something different, and Trump offered that much more strongly than Clinton.
Two of the most important issues for me are surveillance and imperialism. And as bad as Trump is for both, my understanding is that Clinton would have been worse. And I'd rather vote for someone uncouth than someone who is going to be using my tax money to spy on me and to bomb other countries.
You are free to have different priorities, you are free to care more about other issues, but please acknowledge that the election is more complex than "they voted for a guy who likes to 'grab em by the billy bush'"
I won't even address the world's history with egomaniacs and military power.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aWejiXvd-P8
He also has requested lists of employees at state agencies who have worked on climate change and gender equality. I really don't know where you're getting this image of him from.
"Rape" occurs whenever there is no consent. Yes, you can have marital rape. Obviously. If there was no consent, then it is rape and it is illegal ( at least in civilized countries ).
Whether the raped person is married or not has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT whatsoever. No consent, then it is rape, and the perpetrator, if caught, will be punished. NOT the raped person, obviously. The rapist.
Sick world.
Given the actual text in the post, your interpretation of the parent's true intentions could be as biased as mine... :)
> By 'rape' do you mean she had sex outside a legitimate marriage [which in much MENA law are equivalent acts]? If so, [by the laws of Dubai] she is guilty [in a purely legalistic sense] of prostitution or adultery or illicit sex. There is of course no such thing as marital rape [in the law books of Dubai]. For rape to be proven there must be multiple adult male witnesses who will testify [...I'm not sure how this sentence could be made any clearer]. The penalty for 'lying' [scare quotes emphasize that this is a perspective parent does not personally hold] about being raped is a year in jail. And the penalty for abortion is death [this is also not a matter of opinion, but is actually what happens to women in many MENA countries].
As the number of readers gets large, though, the long tail of interpretation guarantees that a few will, for whatever random reason, miss the subtext. The cost of such misreadings (pointless off-topic indignation) is high. So when commenting on appalling or other divisive things, please be explicit rather than implicit.
This is one case of the general phenomenon—noticeable on HN—that effective communication to large, weakly cohesive groups works differently than to small, close ones. The available range is narrower if one wants not to put the needle in the red. That's a pity, because it gives less latitude for expressing yourself, but putting the needle in the red is much worse.
But I'm not appalled by Dubai. If anything, I'm appalled by the childish arrogance and "moral superiority" on display in this thread. There is nothing "hackerish" or clever about getting inflamed against a far-away country you probably know nothing about.
Nietzsche has a good quote about this pestilential habit of moral condemnation, which I can't find right now. It's a bad habit, an addiction we should recognize and discard.
(Now a thread about the unique ways of the Emirates and how to navigate there would be worthwhile.)
People don't talk in this ridiculous, irresponsible way when they have skin in the game. I wouldn't expect loose, childish talk from you, Dan G about moderating forums, because you moderate a forum and know what's involved.
To be clear: this is not my opinion of how things should be, but it is the view of gulf states governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_system_of_the_United_Ara...
Also, lest someone take this as an anti-islam attack, let me be clear that this is about the authoritarian/theocratic oligopoly system over there. The normal people are lovely.
Wrong.
We need to progress in all parts of the world.
So, instead of pointing fingers, I was curious about your thoughts on Dubai's potential Crime Prediction Software.
The rest of the world needs to be aware of just how bad the situation is in UAE:
Rape Victims Are Being Jailed Under Extramarital Sex Laws in the UAE https://news.vice.com/article/rape-victims-are-being-jailed-...
UAE imprisoning rape victims under extramarital sex laws – investigation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/26/hundreds-of-wo...
'They Destroyed Me': French Teen's Rape Case Exposes Dubai's Dark Side http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3932740
The vanished: the Filipino domestic workers who disappear behind closed doors https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/24/t...
(Links via TorgnyLagman's reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5jr48x/unmarried... )
There's a lot you won't find on Breitbart or the Daily Stormer.
So, instead of pointing fingers, I was curious about your thoughts on Dubai's potential Crime Prediction Software.
The police said the hospital should have informed them immediately. “They should not accept such cases of unmarried pregnant women,” police said."
barbarians. the Irish pull the same shit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/967...
And that's why we can't have nice things, which is the common thread between telemetry in win10, trigger warnings in colleges and censorship on social media.
Mind you, I was talking about neural suggesting people for clinical diagnosis, not about neural nets diagnosing people. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not even that much interested in the idea (which strikes me as a bit Orwellian), but in the cold feet it would give a lot of people with skeletons in the closet. They don't know that it's not fool proof, they just know they don't want to be found out.
I got this idea when everyone responded to the revelations about the NSA spying on everyone in an extremely specific way 100% of the time. Everyone focused on human analysts reading the text or listening to the audio of conversations. Read literally any article you find where the NSA, Obama, others in the government, absolutely anyone talks about the things the NSA has done and how they practices might be altered. In every single case, they talk solely about human analysts reading things directly. They never once talk about automated systems analyzing communications and inferring behavior profiles, using those inferred profiles to make decisions or target investigations, nothing like that. And that's where essentially all of the actual danger lies as far as I'm concerned.
So perhaps if a website popped up rating each Congressperson on how likely it is they are cheating on their spouse determined by a neural net (or hell even a Bayesian filter, it doesn't actually need to be accurate at all), maybe we could actually get someone to talk about the issue. Because as it is, no one ever has or is willing to as far as I have seen. I don't know if it's because the politicians aren't aware of what such systems can do, or if they've been tricked into thinking they can actually be effective (they can't) so they intentionally try to misdirect people to concentrating on "they'll stop listening in on your phone calls" or what. The only reason I haven't built the site is that I'm unsure if there would be legal implications and if I'd end up charged with slander or something.
As far as I can tell, the NSA don't have a term to properly describe gathering and analysis of data which isn't presented to a human for analysis.
[1]: https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5240_1_r.pdf (Page 15, 2.2.1)
If there's no name for it, you can't accidentally name it.
So that's why the NSA parses their words very carefully, and likely Obama as well... but what about their critics in Congress?
> to suggest likely canditates
> for sociopathy
If people mind stuff like baby killers, Stalin and other things, they do mind sociopaths, whether they know what the word implies or not.
It leads to profiling and arrest of teens DRESSED in a certain way or hanging out at a certain location, etc.
There is also a major ethical problem with harrassing people for things they didn't actually DO.
Look, unless you've had run-ins with the business side of law-enforcement you may believe the myth that police are there to "protect and serve"
Law-enforcement has a single task to catch people breaking laws (any kind, the easier and lower risk to catch them, the better) and process them (arrest, run them in the system, write up the particular offenses, etc.)
If anything, the moral/ethical culture in policing in most cities only ENCOURAGES this kind of snap-judgement thinking as well. We need LESS of that and not more.
(of course, if you are Dubai, you consider it a grave public danger if someone is smoking a joint somewhere or engaging in consensual acts between 2 adults who happen to be of the same sex, etc...)
The CULTURE in law-enforcement is already one of impunity, and globally there is a reason that in perhaps 90% of the planets nations there is some derogatory remark for police rooted in their "us vs them thin blue line" nonsense.
Look at America, and it's rash of police killings. Over 1500 last year. There needs to be fundamental reform of most policing in the 21st century before we give them more tools to act like bullies with...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
And the vast majority of those were clearly justified (suspect being armed and posing an obvious threat threat.)
Police are far from perfect but they also have to deal with people on a daily basis who are quite literally the dregs of society: where "F--- you pig!" is as common as "Thank you Officer."
As far as inbuilt racial bias -- have you spent time on the streets? You tell me what the percentages are for a crime being committed among different racial and ethnic groups. If you're in Chicago you are far more likely to be shot by a male of a specific racial group than by any other. That's just a fact. Nothing racist about it.
White collar crime, like fraud and insider trading, sees as much automated detection software as street crime does. But even if it did not, let's assume we focus our attention on street crime, then your reasoning is a fallacy of relative privation: Y is a worse problem than X, so attempting to solve X is bad/unimportant/makes solving Y less likely.
> And the vast majority of
> those were clearly justified
Of course, the number of unjustified deaths will likely be disproportionately higher simply because all US police have the ability to react to a situation with lethal force. Sadly, as long as guns are as abundant as they are in the US, you'll never reduce that to the same level as the UK.
That used to be true, with a few exceptions (e.g. airports). It's not the case today and increasingly firearms officers are armed on patrol routinely.
Why is harder to answer. As a trend I don't think it's been directly related to terrorism. There have been no calls from the public for it and some typically quiet British grumbling at it.
The cynic in me imagines politics has played a part. Getting hold of extra budget for policing is probably difficult at the moment but guns are probably an exciting enough reason to release funds.
That said, they very much are using the latest incident in Berlin to push armed officers out onto the streets.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2440342/eleven-police-forces-t...
The problem with this is that the effect is not easy to measure. If you bring down the crime rate by policing than this can directly be associated with the cost spent. If you improve a school and the crime rate goes down the effect is much harder to measure, and cost/benefit will be in different organizations within the government.
These sort of predictions "work", for certain values of work...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/30/italian-police...
Ya'know I'm just saying, things like abolishing slavery and competing for and trying to create quality workforce... stuff nobody cares about when it comes to capitalism for last few decades, which were supposed to lead into socialism if it functioned well.
https://medium.com/@seeminglyquiet/modern-day-slavery-in-ame...
People in the US on H1B visas don't have their passport taken away and are prevented from leaving. They aren't arrested and imprisoned when they are gang raped. They aren't forced to live in shanty towns with limited facilities like running water. They aren't working 12 hours shifts 6 days a week. They aren't earning $580 a month (the $70k a year the article complains about is at or above the median wage in the bay area). Here in the US we also don't have laws on the books punishing homosexuality with imprisonment and death.
Most of the western media articles that you read are very biased and westerners seems kind of jealous of oil rich countries developing at a faster pace than theirs. Western media reports the incidents in an exaggerated manner when it comes to middle east nations.
If women are not allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, Nor are H1B dependents (H4) spouses allowed to work in the US. They are not allowed to have a SSN or a bank account. So what makes US any different ? Isn't just slavery in another form towards the migrant workers no matter in which country they work ?
>seems kind of jealous of oil rich countries developing at a faster pace than theirs
Fascism can sure look pretty from the outside.
As to the degree this is "encoding racial bias", I feel this is passing the buck to the computer. The computer is merely calculating a probability distribution on historical data the best it possibly can (and likely, more accurate, effective, and with more objectivity than humans ever can). Impartiality or partiality does not start or end with a computer program, it starts with human policies.
One does not solve police racism by creating a model that adheres to your view of an ideal world. This argumentation is naive. It does not change anything, but perhaps makes you feel good. You either solve it at its core, or you don't solve it at all.
One should also distinguish between heavy-crime areas and police bias. Some areas, where a certain race may be overrepresented, are just more prone to street crimes. This is not bias, but fact. Don't cripple your model, just because you don't agree with the facts.
As for white collar crime vs. street crime; automated systems to detect fraud, insider trading, scams, and theft, are also in place. These just don't benefit from capacity planning / more police presence on the streets.
The Minority Report angle is journalistic nonsense / click-bait, akin to invoking Terminator when talking about Google's AI efforts. This is about areas of crime, not pre-crime for individuals.
These systems can adapt. If an area sees a drop in crime rate, then that area requires less police presence. It is not just trained on a single snapshot.
Finally, such Crime Prediction software can be used by human police officers to make better decisions. It is far off from self-driving police cars without any human input.
Note, I am not saying algorithmic bias does not exist, or that this is not an important issue to solve, as we start automating more processes in society. But then, let's discuss it on fair and equal ground, and leave human bias against "human-biased" systems out. We can talk about this mathematically now, or at least, in a non-emotional rational manner.
Aside: Other comments here are very America-centric, and detract from the topic at hand. It's like posting news articles on manual SWAT-raids gone wrong in NY, when discussing predictive policing software in California.
There is a company from Israel that deployed 10 years ago algoritms to score if people was lying, or angry when people called the police.
And it makes sense.
Anything that helps you triage when you have limited resources it's a good idea.
And any tool that suggest deterrent actions to keep your resources is also a good idea (ie police near a metro station next to a stadium hours before a sports event so pickpocketers don't come nearby).
For me the weakest point is not the technical part (mechanisms), is how you use them (policies).
I mean, you need some policy to trigger reactions to signals. And since policies are made by human people, that has more bias than any algorithm you can ever produce, plus and policy changes will surely affect how the "system" works and how it needs retraining.
So, unless this is used for very simple stuff with simple policies it won't work.
However, this sort of information would be useful if you could figure out where support structures could be put in place vs simply deploying police... ie, planting community gardens, providing housing to the homeless, providing fresh food and child care, teaching parenting skills, etc.
Of course, you don't really need software to tell you that providing for people's basic needs drastically reduces crime.
But then if the crime does not happen, what is this software predicting ?
We imagine this with USA police and see where things could go wrong, but our police and Dubai's police have unique sets of problems to deal with.
Dubai has a very very high incentive to keep their crime rates as low as possible, and being a much more young growing nation with the capital to do so, this certainly keeps their appeal as a place to do business and vacation viable despite the region they're in.
Psycho-pass and Minority Report becoming reality?
The "blah blah" MACHINE LEARNING strikes again....