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title: “Minority Report?” image: Cover excerpt: “Minority Report?”

O Data Mining chegando para o combate ao crime.

LAPD uses big data to target criminals

Dubbed LASER for its ability to zero in on offenders and hotspots, it is one of many newer law enforcement tools that use data tracking and collection - such as license plate scanners and cellphone trackers - often with little public knowledge or regulation.

Privacy advocates say LASER isn’t transparent, has no clear oversight and unjustly focuses on keeping ex-convicts under suspicion even though they’ve served their time.

“People who have paid their debts to society shouldn’t remain stigmatized in the eyes of police,” said Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union.

LASER uses technology developed by the CIA’s venture capital arm to realize a post-9/11 dream that allows investigators to match up vast troves of data from 15 separate sources to connect dots that they otherwise might miss.

Funded by federal grants, it launched in 2011 in Newton, and an expansion funded by additional money in October, brought the program to a total of eight areas throughout the city, plus the department’s high-tech analysis unit and its helicopters.

More than 3,500 LAPD officers have been trained to use Palantir, a platform that was introduced initially to speed up the process of creating dossiers on chronic offenders and is now used throughout the department for a variety of investigative purposes.