Homeland Security Gets Closer To Minority Report-Style Crime Predictor

from the arrest-first,-ask-questions-later dept

Ever since the film Minority Report came out, we've seen a series of stories about efforts to predict future crimes before they happen. Most of these are more about data mining to predict high crime areas and times -- but some are going much further. Slashdot points us to a story about Homeland Security apparently making progress on a "pre-crime detector." It was originally called "Project Hostile Intent," but after some folks figured that the name was a bit... ominous, it seems to have been renamed as "Future Attribute Screening Technologies" (FAST). Basically the system is designed to spot "shifty" people who may be getting ready to commit a crime of some sort. The researchers behind it say that the early tests are incredibly effective: "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception." Of course, there are tons of questions about privacy violations and how long it will take criminals to figure out ways to "beat the system."

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