--- From: "Danny Yavuzkurt" <ayavuzkat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: New AI dubbed 'Coplink' brought online - helps link sniper killings, but worries some Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 06:27:22 -0500 Declan - something of interest to all FC and Politech readers... >From the NYT today: "An Electronic Cop That Plays Hunches" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/arts/02COPL.html (unknown why they put this technology story in the arts section - whoops..) Now this is some interesting stuff. Seems the head of AI at the University of Arizona, a Dr. Hsinchun Chen (who formerly worked on 'knowledge management issues' for the DoD and CIA) has been working since 1997 on a system he calls "Google for law enforcement" to link up disparate police crime databases into a coherent whole, overseen by an AI he calls, not too imaginatively, 'Coplink'. Article says it wasn't even fully online when the sniper killings were occuring, but it is already being used to link earlier killings to the known cases (we *have* seen many more killings previously thought to be unrelated coming to light in recent days). Article goes on to reassure readers that 'the Coplink files are all public records' and that it isn't 'classified or secret' data. However, Dempsey of the CDT worries about extending the AI's reach to disparate police databases that cover 'many different types of crimes' - or even to non-police DBs. However, the article did specify that Tucson Police Lt. Jenny Schroeder 'noted John Mohammed's history of domestic violence,' thus it may be implying that this is already the case. What worries me is not so much the linking of nationwide law enforcement databases - this kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and some of the latest fruits of law enforcement information-sharing include, say, the National Instant Check System for firearms purchases (it will be interesting to see whether this system was invoked, say, when Mohammed bought the gun he allegedly used in the sniper killings), and the background check system that is used in some states for people in 'sensitive positions' (including, now, many educators). What worries me is the possibility that the information in the databases will be *proactively* analyzed, say, for 'criminal tendencies' and for statistical correlations between prior infractions and possible future crimes. The world of Minority Report could become a reality, not by the fanciful use of some albinos in a tank of goo, but by something as simple - and error-prone - as a data-mining proto-AI system, which will be in effect an 'Electronic Cop That Plays Hunches,' as the article is titled. Playing some of those hunches might put innocent people under surveillance or suspicion of crimes they have not yet committed, or are suspected of having committed (but which 'might not have been put in the system yet', a great excuse for illegal search and seizure... Now all that remains, I suppose, is to give this system (which, they are already implying, is a computer and thus can do no wrong) the power to issue automatic search and arrest warrants, wiretap authorizations, etc.. and, since it will likely issue too many of these for humans to individually consider and catalogue, perhaps it will be given the proactive judicial authority to carry these out itself. Though we still need meatspace agents to break down doors (at least until people like Rodney A. Brooks, who is mysteriously both the head of the AI lab at MIT *and* the proprietor of a company dubbed, plagiaristically, iRobot, get their act together.. they've already made 'bots to search caves in Afghanistan..), I'm sure it would be easy as pie to give Coplink access to the FBI's Carnivore software and CALEA surveillance network capabilities, and let it roam freely through cyberspace, searching 'suspects' email, surreptitiously gaining access to their computers and installing Magic Lantern, what have you... If this system is used merely to link existing cops' databases, and give real humans a few tips to work with that might solve unsolved cases, it raises enough privacy and Fourth Amendment issues right there. But if it, as I suspect, is being geared up for even more powerful datamining and 'hunch' capabilities, well, we're heading for a Skynet-type situation here, aren't we?.. for now, I'm sure people are still suspicious enough of the buggy present-day AI in general to keep this on a short leash, but as its processing power and storage grow, I'm sure it'll start being pretty darn accurate, scarily accurate, possibly (it's already given the cops some leads they weren't considering).. and then, well, why not go for 'more of a good thing'?.. how about giving AIs the ability to automatically summon people to computerized interrogation stations where they could be pumped for knowledge of crimes they are suspected of being linked to?.. easy enough to put together an A/V recording system, a speech synthesizer to ask the questions in whatever language is required, easy enough to network it, perhaps even with encrypted wireless, to the rest of the system, to get real-time evidence collection, etc.. give it the power to deliver Miranda warnings, and people might just feel it was as legal as a cop showing up on your doorstep and doing the same. Only much, much more widespread, with the ability to instantly match up and compare different interviews, witnesses, etc. Or, getting deeper and deeper into 'what-if' paranoia, we could see mass-produced MEMS (memory encoding response) scanners - the so-called 'mind readers' the government spooks are developing - being integrated into such a hypothetical AI's abilities. Add these to the 'interview stations,' and you'd get lots and lots of supposedly accurate data as fast as you wanted it.. Hell, we could eventually even see a 'flawless' AI replacing the executive and judicial systems entirely, on the sci-fi end of things!.. Robocop plus the Terminator plus Judge Dredd.. *rolls eyes*.. So, where do we draw the line?.. when is AI-assisted police work too much of a good thing?.. only time will tell.. for now, at least, the price and dicey chances of success will keep most PDs from adopting Coplink - it costs 'anywhere from $40,000 to over $200,000', depending on a variety of factors, and probably most officers will be loath to entrust the thinking portion of cop work - the part that they get the greatest credit for - being performed by.. a *MACHINE*. But once it gets more effective and widely accepted, the sky's the limit.. after all, as Brooks of iRobot says, "There are enormous amounts of facts and connections out there, more than can be held in any one person's mind," he added. "Just like with gene patterns, it's much too complex for someone to remember it all." So, as we are shoehorned into accepting greater and greater data-collection abilities for law enforcement and domestic 'homeland security' departments, the amount of information can only grow, and eventually it will be literally impossible to do *any* LE database work without the help of a so-called AI like this.. even if right now it's just a 'Google for law enforcement,' I'm sure its abilities, and thus the trust we place in it, and those who administer it, will only increase. And I'm pretty worried about that. Danny Article text follows, for those who don't have NYT Online accounts (though they're free) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "An Electronic Cop That Plays Hunches By MINDY SINK TUCSON, Oct. 28 - Officials building a case against the Washington-area sniper suspects are using a new investigative tool to help trace their movements across the country. It is an Internet-based system called Coplink, developed at an artificial intelligence laboratory here, that allows police departments to establish links quickly among their own files and to those of other departments. During the 21 days in which snipers terrorized the area, investigators used everything from specialized ballistics testing to geographic and criminal profiling to radio and television announcements to track them down. Then, in what turned out to be the 11th hour of the pursuit, they finally reached out to Coplink. As it turned out, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo were arrested before it was fully installed, but now the post-arrest task force is using the system to help connect the dots. All of the information that was collected - including that from other computer database systems like the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Rapidstart - is now being downloaded into the Coplink database so that the accumulated data can be compared, said Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing Corporation of Tucson, which is turning the prototype in the laboratory into a commercial product. "The more data you get, the better Coplink works," he said. Coplink was designed by Hsinchun Chen, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Arizona. "It's the Google for law enforcement," he said, referring to a speedy popular Internet search engine that, given a couple of words, can find an array of related Web sites. "Things that a human can do intuitively we are getting the computer to do, too." During the sniper investigation, which generated hundreds of thousands of tips, the number of potential clues to assimilate was daunting. "We were mobilizing a massive effort," said Lt. Mitch Cunningham of the Montgomery County police. "We had tactile resources, the military, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and information technology using several products where each one of these had a role." So when the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department's research and development arm, suggested that the sniper task force try Coplink, the officials agreed. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 10:44:01 PST