How Cities Are Fighting Secret Surveillance
Predictive policing tools. License plate readers. Stingrays. As more and more surveillance tools fall into police’s hands, cities are trying to play catch up
By Tanvi Misra
A local government. A powerful private entity with controversial technology. A secret deal. This time, in New Orleans.
On Tuesday, The Verge revealed that Peter Thiel’s software company, Palantir, has been piloting a predictive policing technology in New Orleans for the past six years. Until The Verge’s story, the program was completely unknown not only to the public, but also to city council members.
The program, like a similar program in Chicago, pulls information from a variety of law enforcement databases and social media networks, and draws up a list of people most likely to be involved in violent crime. The stated purpose of programs like this is to better predict and prevent violent crimes. But civil rights groups have raised a host of concerns about the discriminatory effects of such data-collection and algorithm-based programs.
Had the community known about the program, these concerns might have surfaced. But like New Orleans, cities across the U.S. are adopting new surveillance…
