1 yr. ago • 96%

AI System Helped Cops Identify a Drug Trafficker Just by Analyzing His Driving Patterns

gizmodo.com AI System Helped Cops Identify a Drug Trafficker Just by Analyzing His Driving Patterns

As AI booms, it's not just helping companies replace workers and governments spread disinformation. It's also helping cops spy better.

Well this is terrifying...

53 comments

"And that's why we, the benevolent and peaceful police, need to track all your movements at all hours of the day. For the children. You don't want to be anti-children do you? Skynet told us where you live."

108
- Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!
  
  38
  
  The republican party is thinking about them all the time
  
  4
So, they tracked his plate as he crossed the state line multiple times.

I wonder how many false positives they stopped on the road before getting one successful case to boast about it.

Want to see a really fucked up case? Check this one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/15/predictive-policing-algorithms-fail/

74
- Can't. WP paywalls suck dick.
  
  11
  
  https://archive.ph/dqSjB
  
  17
- Unexplainable results should never be probable cause because you can't determine that the decisions were not made using protected traits either directly or inferred.
  
  4
- I was expecting a link to Minority Report.
  
  2
- Permanently Deleted
  
  1
  
  And if you're rich, it doesn't change anything at all!
  
  5
Permanently Deleted

44
- Slipping?!? Actively sprinting towards several black mirror episodes.
  
  Just rewatched the robot dogs episode...
  
  I believe the problem is that agencies have been collecting all this data, they just have no way to sift through it all the data.
  
  I see the route forward where you have no privacy outside your home.
  
  22
  
  I see the route forward where you have no privacy outside your home.
  
  your cellphone has entered the chat
  
  9
  
  they just have no way to sift through it all the data
  
  They don't need to. Selective enforcement.
  
  1
Indeed it is terrifying. I definitely don't think drugs should illegal to begin with. I am so anti-drug war it's not even funny.

36
- I'm anti-drug war myself, but I'm also sitting here thinking today, it's drug traffickers. What is it tomorrow?
  
  36
  
  Yes, the question of current purpose is nearly irrelevant. It's the question of possible purpose that's concerning because once it's A) available & B) left to human subjectivity then privacy & 'innocent until proven guilty' is no longer guaranteed.
  
  13
  
  What is it tomorrow?
  
  quite literally anything the majority quorum of your elected representatives want.
  
  an educated, engaged electorate matters, kids!
  
  edit: letter
  
  5
And for that, they also processed the data on thousands of innocent people, too. Without any legal basis or permission, probably.

30
- Exactly. This is why this is scaring me. The police are vacuuming up data on everyone and who knows who else they'll go after, especially if the wrong person gets into power. Even on the state level. I sure hope DeSantis' Florida doesn't have this ability.
  
  10
  
  ctOS, it is happening
  
  3
- I'm less concerned about that if its purely public data. If a police officer sat in a helicopter looking for drivers driving erratically, then notified a trooper on the ground to check on the car, and perform a field sobriety test if there is cause to do so I think that would fall within the confines of the law, even though thousands of cars could have been in their field of view and considered for potential DUI.
  
  I am of the opinion that if the data is not either directly in public view, or the user can opt out of persisting it and it is available to the general public, even if for a fee, then its fine to use the data. I think any kind of AI algorithm's suggestions on its own should not be considered probable cause, you can use it to narrow down suspects, but you need actual evidence for a warrant or arrest.
  
  I think the issue I have with this situation is collecting and storing such a vast amount of travel data on individuals without their consent. If leaked, that data could be used to track down victims of stalking and abuse, or political dissidents.
  
  2
It's OK. Ordinary people will have no trouble at all making sure they use a different vehicle every time they drive their kid to college or collect an elderly relative for the holidays. This will only inconvenience serious criminals.

17
Is there any actual analysis this went down as written? This sets off two eyebrow alarms for me: 1. AI doing something revolutionary without serious issues and 2. clean cut police work, which never happens (at least not anymore).

Honestly I'd put money down the police caught him by chance and went backwards to find a good explanation for how. I'd also be highly skeptical of an AI system that actually catching drug dealers without also catching like everyone else.

13
- It’s the new excuse for parallel construction.
  
  6
  
  We'll need 10 million dollars to reverse engineer how the unshackled AI did it, or you can take the plea.
  
  Go back to your cell, and we'll ask you again right before your trial.
  
  3
I would like to propose a toast to the end of the war on drugs, thanks to this technology which will surely be decisive in convincing people not to want drugs. Once we've dealt with all these pesky low level dealers the cartels will pack it all in and give up the chance of huge profits.

Kicking the same can down the road. Incredibly depressing and dumb. Stop voting for these idiots and join the likes of Portugal by legalising drugs and treating addiction as a health issue.

12
- Also don't defund the program like Portugal did. The conservatives there didn't like that decriminalizing drug possession for personal use actually works, so they immediately worked to cut funding to the program by like 80% and surprise surprise the program stopped being as effective as it was at the start. Essentially every piece of data we have on Tough on Crime™ politics shows that the approach doesn't work. If you want people to stop using drugs, make it easy for them to do so without fear of being arrested/imprisoned.
  
  9
AI tracker as I drive out my driveway: Well looks like Hobos off to McDonalds again....

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- Left or right turn signal: is Ford going to the liquor store or the dispensary?
  
  1
Where the heck are they getting training data for traffic patterns of drug dealers?

11
- In my area there are these so called traffic cameras all over the place. Maybe those.
  
  4
  
  the problem is the driver's life outside of the car being part of the equation. Imagine a headline like AI learns the driving patterns of anime fans. How is the traffic camera gonna know which cars are being driven by anime fans in the first place? Of course drug dealers are gonna be much less likely to have drug dealer bumper stickers that might tip the cameras off.
  
  3
- The Wire and Breaking Bad.
  
  1
AI does not equal pattern matching and machine learning

8
- AI is officially the current catch-all tech term for news titles right now
  
  9
Should have used public transport ;)

5
Ah yes, I knew Demolition Man was an accurate prediction of the future. Thanks for confirming the direction we are headed in!

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