Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes, how long until the NSA provides the FBI this and you get arrested for pre-crimes or thought-crimes? How do you answer the charge that you were thinking about doing something bad?
Laws are so complex that chances are you are breaking some law at some point in your life. If you do anything "interesting" like activism, entrepreneurship, alternative religious practices, DIY maker stuff, etc., you are probably doing something "of interest" according to some statute somewhere.
Also don't rule out harassment. Would you hire someone who is under investigation? How would you like a tax audit? Or maybe you'll get pulled over 10X more than the average person because when cops run your plates you are flagged? What about no-fly lists? Detainment at the border when re-entering the country? Exclusion from benefits or consideration for government jobs/contracts? There are many things that can be done to make your life unpleasant or wreck your career that aren't illegal and don't involve actually charging you with a crime. In many cases there may be no recourse civil or criminal. Look into the adventure of getting yourself off a no-fly list for a good example of non-criminal punishment.
Reminds me of Mccarthyism. Most people targeted were never arrested, never charged, but they still made their lives a living hell just through systematic harassment and intimitation.
What we're headed toward is ultra-fine-grained algorithmic McCarthyism.
In the future it will be possible to establish, with the aid of big data and machine learning, profiles of "normal" (a.k.a. desired) human behavior and to engage in fine-grained surveillance, harassment, or "nudging" of individuals who deviate from desired behavior.
Over time this creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: felons can't vote, and "soft persecution" could negatively impact peoples' careers causing more and more wealth to systematically accrete into the hands of desirable individuals. Put these two things together and combine them with fine-grained propaganda based on big data and cognitive modeling and you have a recipe for... well... I can't help but see this as the formula of a new dark age of totalistic orthodoxy and immovable dogmas.
The last dark age was built on self-enforcement of social norms as dictated by religious orthodoxy. This one might be built on big data and fine grained surveillance and control of the population by a technocratic orthodoxy. Instead of the pope and the Vatican we have the corporate-state complex and the NSA (and private corporations like Google). Collectively the administrators of this system are the technocratic analogs of the Holy See in the middle ages.
"Thinking" in this case is mostly "saying" stuff online, even in "private" to someone. They already arrest people for saying stuff like "I'll kill X" on a public digital place like Twitter or Facebook. The next step is to arrest you when you say that in private - even if you have no intention of ever doing that.
Brace yourselves, the police state is coming (civil law enforcement agencies having access to mass surveillance data and then acting on it whenever they like is pretty much the definition of a police state).
> Rumour has it that the NSA already has threat predictor algorithms and processes
Local police departments already have this and use it to target individuals. I remember reading that the Chicago PD shows up at people's houses and tells them, 'we watching you'.
47,000 people are on it. Most of them have not committed any crime... Probably. We don't actually know, because if you're on it, the government won't tell you why - or even that you're on it.
Would buying a plane ticket online let you know that you are on it? If so then the airline companies should be able to at least provide a service for informing you that you are on the list, if you ask about it.
usually, in the states, your ticket will have special letters on it, signifying your relative flight risk. There's countless stories of Laura Poitras and others discussing this. the reader is invited to !yt TSA Poitras.
The whole war on terror and this bulk collection is predicated on stopping crimes before they happen. It's a giant catch 22.
Would stopping mass shootings and not-called-terorrism-but-domestic-terror be part of the use cases here? Like if you were to ignore some other laws and track gun ownership and purchases, maybe cross reference it with the use/prescription of certain medications and then cross reference that with anti-social posts on the internet or associations with certain call-themselve-patriots-but-really-hate-the-government type groups you might stop some mass shootings. Maybe save some actual lives.
It's a terrible rabbit hole to go down, we need to stop it all ASAP.
The best thing about this whole setup is that it's unfalsifiable. Something bad happen? We need to work harder (read: accept more invasion of our privacy) to prevent such atrocities in future. Nothing bad happens? It's working, let's do it even more!
I don't think it's about thinking, it's about the supposed probability that you will commit a crime in the future. And as for that I can imagine very well that laws can change, provided the technology is sold to politicians and to the public in the right way.
E.g. "we now have technology that can prevent rapes of children before they even happen. So many children today live in the direct neighborhood of a potential rapist - and no-one could do anything because nobody knew. But now we can spot and remove the potential rapists and give the children back the pieceful and carefree life that they deserve.
Unfortunately, as of now, making use of the technology would be in violation of certain laws - laws that made a lot of sense in the last century. But given the changes in society and the urgency of the matter, we feel a reformulation would be more than justified..."
not so. intent is part of culpability in most violent crimes. hate crimes legislation takes it a step further. (It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech).
In Reed v Town of Gilbert we ruled that statutory limitations on free speech must pass scrict scrutiny.
You can argue for a compelling state interest in increasing the term of punishment for a violent offender based on his opinions about race. But (1) it's hard to argue the state interest in longer prison terms and (2) it's really hard to prove hate, so there's an easy due process appeal here.
Just going to point out... Many dead presidents are still spinning in their graves from the day that became a crimp. That's not how the freedoms they strived to uphold are supposed to work.
