How will the predictive policing program affect American's civil liberties?

CA- Los Angeles police are aiming to beat suspects to the scene of a crime by using computers to predict where trouble might occur.

The Los Angeles Police Department is the largest agency to embrace an experiment known as “predictive policing,” which crunches data to determine where to send officers to thwart would-be thieves and burglars. Time Magazine called it one of the best inventions of 2011.

Early successes could serve as a model for other cash-strapped law enforcement agencies, but some legal observers are concerned it could lead to unlawful stops and searches that violate Fourth Amendment protections.

Crime mapping has long been a tool used to determine where the bad guys lurk. The idea has evolved from colored pins placed on a map to identifying “hot spots” via a computer database based on past crimes and possible patterns.

Over the past decade, many large police departments, including Los Angeles and New York City, have used CompStat, a system that tracks crime figures and enables police to send extra officers to trouble spots.

The new program used by LAPD and police in the Northern California city of Santa Cruz is more timely and precise, proponents said. Built on the same model for predicting aftershocks following an earthquake, the software promises to show officers what might be coming based on simple, constantly calibrated data — location, time and type of crime.

The software generates prediction boxes — as small as 500 square feet — on a patrol map. When officers have spare time, they are told to “go in the box.”
 
Other police departments across the nation are using similar approaches. Tech titan IBM has teamed up with police in Memphis and Charleston, S.C., to provide analysis; Minneapolis police are breaking down crime statistics and factoring in geographic locations to determine future crimes.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, an assistant law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, has written about predictive policing and how it may impact Fourth Amendment protections from unlawful searches and seizures.

Ferguson said the trend is “a seductive idea” for law enforcement agencies that carry a lot of power. He believes the LAPD has done a good job with the data but he's concerned that other departments could abuse the process with racial profiling or stereotyping a neighborhood or an area.

“There are real pressures to expand this nationally and see it succeed,” Ferguson said. “I think it's an important innovation. But like any innovation, it's not foolproof, and looking closely at the data is important to ensure it doesn't harm the civil liberties of the people living in those areas.”

Ferguson said he envisions a legal challenge at some point. He used an example of an officer patrolling a predicted area of burglary and who sees a man carrying a bag and detains the man because he looks suspicious.

“Alone, a man carrying a bag is not reasonable suspicion,” Ferguson explained. “But in court, the officer will say, `The computer told me to go there.' For the lawyer or the court, what are you going to do with this information? You can't cross-examine a computer.”

Brantingham's company has been contacted by about 200 police departments across the globe interested in the software. He wouldn't disclose the costs of the program because it varies on a city's population and size. LAPD isn't incurring any costs because it has shared data and other information with Brantingham's company for research purposes.
http://newsok.com/feed/sci-fi-policing-predicting-crime-before-it-occurs/article/3689320?custom_click=pod_headline_news

UK Police may be arresting marginal terror suspects to clear decks for Olympics says watchdog.  
England - David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terror legislation, said this summer’s Games are a “major target” and police may be intervening in cases earlier than they would normally.His comments follow a series of arrests by counter-terrorism officers in recent weeks.

Last month two Muslim converts were arrested on suspicion of plotting an attack against the Olympic canoeing venue. They were later released without charge.

And last week 14 people were arrested in two separate counter-terrorism operations against suspected Islamist plots.

Whitehall and security sources have previously suggested the threshold for assessing the potential risk of suspects is likely to be lower in the run up to the Olympics.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9385271/Police-may-be-arresting-marginal-terror-suspects-to-clear-decks-for-Olympics-says-watchdog.html