CopLink is Watching You

Posted on July 17, 2003 by glasscastle

Civil Libertarians and pessimistic futurists (are there
any other kind, any more?) have long envisioned a cyber-police-state,
in which
all the myriad electronic entrails each of us leaves in his or her wake
as we wade through the digital age are recorded, followed, connected
and cross-referenced, leaving us at the mercy of an all-knowing constabulary.

That day may be here sooner than you think. Like now.  From
today’s Globe….
  The Boston Police Department is rolling out a powerful new
computer program built to find hidden connections among people and events
almost instantly.

Called ”Coplink,” the program sifts through tens of millions of police
records, from 911 calls to homicide investigations, to deliver a short
list of potential leads in just seconds.
Of course, most of these records involve people never suspected
of or charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime.  Listen to what
goes into those "millions of police records"
  Designed in an Arizona artificial intelligence lab, Coplink searches
through arrest records, incident reports, and emergency phone calls to
identify potential suspects and compile all possible leads on them, including
past addresses, weapons they have owned, and even the arrest records of
people with whom they have been stopped in a car.
According to the article, this is just for starters.  Imagine
all of the other publicly available data that could be easilyfed into this
system: parking violations, political contributions, web publications,
tax records, credit information…..Here’s how it works, NOW…
  At a demonstration this week, a technician typed in a reporter’s home
address. In seconds, a record popped up of the reporter’s car being hit
by a fire truck. Then came the reporter’s home phone number and wife’s
name. Then came the name of the truck’s driver and the address of the firehouse
where the truck is registered. With another click, the program could ask
the computer to look for any links between the fire truck and another incident.

Now call me an alarmist, but the potential for abuse of
this system seems obvious and severe.  I’m sure it will initially be used
only in cases of "imminent terrorist threats" and ‘on-going criminal investigations",
at least until people get used to it. But how long until it is used
for "pre-emptive domestic strikes" and "identifcation of imminent internal
threats"?

from the Boston Globe
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