

US Admits It Uses Predictions to Blacklist Flyers - 1arity
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/security-news-week-us-admits-uses-predictions-not-data-blacklist-flyers/

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bediger4000
Why would US law enforcement do this? I mean, I understand their economic
incentives, but predictive blacklisting seems to violate a number of sacred
principles, like presumption of innocence, due process of law and if the
algorithm is set up right, freedom of speech. Don't law enforcement officers
take an oath to defend the US constitution? Doesn't this bother anyone
involved other than Snowden?

~~~
tired_man
US Law enforcement does what it's told (more or less) and acts on the orders
of the various governmental entities, from the Federal level on down to the
tiniest incorporated entity with it's own budget and cop. Some politician or
bureaucrat decided how to do this, not a cop.

Do you really still think that the US government pays attention to any of the
constitutional stuff?

I wish with my whole heart that they did. All that civics crap from the
schoolbooks is little more than propaganda. It's been roundly ignored since
way before I was born.

Too many lawyers, too many overlapping laws created simply to make a
politician seem busy for his sheep before for election time, too many
politician's bought and sold.

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1arity
> Why do this ?

Preventative measure.

> violate sacred principles

Algorithmic blacklisting is a standard of proof.

Some others are :

    
    
      Reasonable suspicion 
      Probable cause for arrest
      Beyond reasonable doubt
    

Any preventative ( rather than curative ) measure will work only if it
operates before the fact, and to do so, it works to operate under a standard
of proof that is less than that required for an after the fact measure, being
less than required for a curative.

So a custodial sentence is a curative ( restrain offender from doing more harm
), after the fact, and after the facts of the offense have been proven beyond
reasonable doubt.

Arrest and detain, or prevent from flying, is a preventative, before the fact,
based on a standard of suspicion.

The balance here is that the inconvenience caused to a detainee ( or a
blacklisted flyer ) is less grievous, is better, than the possibility of a
harm caused by not detaining or preventing that suspect. This balance is
guided by the sacred principle of harm minimization ( protecting people ), and
the preventative measure is justified.

Innocence until proven guilt does not make regards to suspicion. A person can
be innocent ( and is by definition ) until they are proven guilty, and at the
same time they can still be a suspect. Innocence until guilt does not equate
with a person being beyond suspicion.

If suspicion was not a sacred principle, a lot of investigations would lead
nowhere, and a lot of preventable harm, would occur. In fact, it's reasonable
to argue that the courts often err on the side of devaluing suspicion,
resulting in offenders who, once they are released and commit a crime, find
themselves in the middle of a community backlash of people asking, "Why wasn't
this person prevented from doing this?"

In the view of the courts, a reasonable suspicion, or a probable cause, or an
algorithmically determined "black hand", is a workable balance in effecting
harm minimization. Its carriage is the very due process of law, and by
implication, a defense of the US constitution.

Another way of seeing this whole thing, is that any curative is by definition
insufficient, by virtue of a crime having been committed, how can any
punishment ever change that ? So even a curative, can be seen to be really a
preventative on the possibility of future offenses carried out by that person.

I don't imagine Snowden would be troubled by this, as his whole crusade seemed
to be founded on the idea, that if he releases the documents now, perhaps he
can prevent the possibility of future abuses occurring, and create what he
views as improvements. Snowden seems to believe more profoundly in the idea of
a preventative measure even than the courts.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that algorithmic blacklisting is actually a
step in the right direction. The lesser standards of proof ( such as
reasonable suspicion and probable cause for arrest ) are by their nature and
undertaking highly discretionary, and subjective, and also unscalable. An
algorithmic means of administering assessments of suspicion, is something that
you accept each time you pay the requested amount for your mortgage or use
your credit card. The assessment of risk, carried out by machines and
algorithms, is at least more fair and just, than if someone could deny your
startup loan application, not because the algorithm said your idea was
unlikely to work, but because the person simply didn't like you.

Algorithmic blacklisting provides the means to assess every person in the same
manner, being the very definition of, "equality under the law."

To get reflexive, every time you find yourself suffering the inconvenience of
being stopped at the airport for a random check, it works to remind yourself
that this inconvenience is lesser than if you were dead, because someone
hijacked your plane. You can't cure your way out of that, no one can. So while
you champion that people are innocent until proven guilty, and deny the
validity of suspicion, every day you judge people based on what you suspect
them of being capable of. You don't let your child sit next to that man on the
bus you think is strange looking, or you don't give money to that homeless
girl, because, in each case, you make a judgement about what they person may
do. You suspect your colleagues at work, you judge the people you just meet
based on what they say, and you suspect your spouse, and yet when you find
yourself in the position of being judged on suspicion, you claim the double
standard for yourself, that the very thing you do, should not be done to you.

If you want to think clearly about things, it works to see clearly that the
double standards you employ are a contradiction, and how useful suspicion is,
both from a personal, and a legal, point of view.

