CNET
An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned.
If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues indicative of mal-intent."
Excerpt from internal DHS document obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center
(Credit: U.S. Department of Homeland Security)The latest developments, which reveal efforts to "collect, process, or retain information on" members of "the public," came to light through an internal DHS document obtained under open-government laws by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. DHS calls its "pre-crime" system Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.
"If it were deployed against the public, it would be very proble
matic," says Ginger McCall, open government counsel at EPIC, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C.
It's unclear why the June 2010 DHS document (PDF) specified that information is currently collected or retained on members of "the public" as part of FAST, and a department representative declined to answer questions that CNET posed two days ago.
Elsewhere in the document, FAST program manager Robert Middleton Jr. refers to a "limited" initial trial using DHS employees as test subjects. Middleton says that FAST "sensors will non-intrusively collect video images, audio recordings, and psychophysiological measurements from the employees," with a subgroup of employees singled out, with their permission, for more rigorous evaluation.
