Predictive Policing Tools and Big Brother!

We're all tuned in to some level of technology these days. Some of us more than others. We watch "cable" television, are wired (or wireless) to our computers, laptops, notebooks, i-pads, Alexa, baby monitors, wireless security cameras, cell phones, "smart" phones, i-phones, fit-bits, car radios, etc. but very few of us really, truly know how wired we are. Not that it's always a bad thing, it's not, but like all good things it can get abusive fast.

Case in point the city of New Orleans was experiencing "out of control" murders, assaults, robberies, rapes... all things bad that people could do to people in the grand city of New Orleans was on the up-tick with no end in sight. Or so it seemed until the city's government quietly opted to tie in with some Silicone Valley folks in California, that liberal bastion of "personal freedom over anything" state. In desperation New Orleans opted to give Palantir, a new program designed to log and track anything anyone who's name is entered into the program does, anywhere, anyhow, anytime for any reason a try.

The upside? New Orleans homicide rates, assaults, robberies, drug sales, sex trafficking, etc. allegedly have dropped tremendously since the six plus years of marriage between the NOPD and Palantir. But rest assured Law Enforcement agencies in California's PredPol, New York, Washington State, Illinois via Chitcago's HEAT program, Holland and several other states and countries are either testing the waters with Palantir or have quietly jumped on board with them altogether. I find it difficult to understand how our "rights" have changed over the past ten or twenty years. Back in the day when I was knee deep in cleaning up the streets I was prohibited by our prosecutors, our legislators, our government from conducting investigations partially based on my suspects prior involvement in illegal activities, prohibited from openly suggesting that I suspected involvement in illegal activities. I was prevented from suggesting those who the folks who were being investigated were associating with were involved in illegal activities or most likely were involved in those activities. I was most definitely prohibited from taking into account the suspects demeanor, their friends, the lifestyles they lived including the possibility that their hang outs, their places where illegal activities are known to happen might be indicative of them being a participant of those activities as well. In essence the left, the politicos suggested that the good police work we did day in and day out or were trying to do back in the day amounted to "PROFILING"... whatever that meant. All I know is it cost the politicos votes! The administrators their jobs.

Back then, profiling solved crimes. BAD ASSED crimes! Then the political climate changed and criminals were allowed to walk free for commiting crimes we actually predicted they would commit but couldn't do anything about because we "profiled" the bad guys. Our administrators, our politicos ensured there was a layer of insulation between us, the law enforcement officers and select criminal elements.

Now, the big cities, the big tech gurus seem to have joined forces and found an ideal way to profile without calling it "profiling". Hence, cops can do their jobs again, bad guys are getting caught sooner and more AND our government is building, or should I say adding to one helluva invaluable database on all of us.

The scary part? The internet isn't a local, city, county, state, regional, national thing. It's a worldwide effort to collect information and it's been up and running and collecting information for quite some time now. They're just trying to numb our senses, dumb us down, normalize the intrusions via the more recent "crime fighting" tools being made available.

And they're gathering information. All kinds of predictive information and we're paying for it. All the while the government's wanting to destroy our second amendment rights, they want to take our guns and they want to monitor our very existence.

That's just the beginning of scary.

IMHO

George Orwell's 1984 wasn't all that fictional was it. At least it doesn't appear to be a work of fiction from my point of view.

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