UK government developing homicide prediction algorithm to identify potential violent offenders

WTF?! There have been several stories over the years about different governments creating crime-predicting algorithms, leading to comparisons to the 2002 movie Minority Report – even though that film involved clairvoyant humans. The UK government is the latest to come under the spotlight for working on this technology, but officials insist it is only a research project – at least for now. The UK government's program, originally called the "homicide prediction project," works by using algorithms to analyze the information of hundreds of thousands of people, including victims of crime, in the hope of identifying those most likely to commit serious violent offences, writes The Guardian. Civil liberties group Statewatch uncovered the project through the Freedom of Information Act. It claimed that the tool was developed using data from between 100,000 and 500,000 people. Statewatch says the group includes not only those with criminal convictions, but also victims of crime, though official ... Read full article.