This effort by law enforcement to identify "bad actors" in society is similar in concept to the effort medical biologists to identify "bad" genes.
Oddly enough (or maybe not), both groups appear to have run into the same problem. In biology it was once thought that more "omics" (genomics, metabolomics, etc) would be better and lead to a better prediction of negative outcomes. Apparently, it is not, mostly, at least not yet.
It seems that for many important events (crime/cancer) a larger mass of untargeted data does not make determining causative effects much easier. Personal expertise in a particular disease area almost always trumps the most fervent of statisticians and "big data" biologists. I imagine it is similar for crimes (for example, the local police would know who is a trouble-maker, or a congressman would know which bankers are shady).
I don't think this will forever be the case, but for now, detection of pre-crime and pre-cancer are in the realms of fiction, at least in the majority of cases.
Oddly enough (or maybe not), both groups appear to have run into the same problem. In biology it was once thought that more "omics" (genomics, metabolomics, etc) would be better and lead to a better prediction of negative outcomes. Apparently, it is not, mostly, at least not yet.
It seems that for many important events (crime/cancer) a larger mass of untargeted data does not make determining causative effects much easier. Personal expertise in a particular disease area almost always trumps the most fervent of statisticians and "big data" biologists. I imagine it is similar for crimes (for example, the local police would know who is a trouble-maker, or a congressman would know which bankers are shady).
I don't think this will forever be the case, but for now, detection of pre-crime and pre-cancer are in the realms of fiction, at least in the majority of cases.