minority reportRemember the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise?
The use of technology was kinda cool.
It was fascinating to see how the cops could pull crime data out and move it around on the giant glass screen…
But the thought of this happening in real life…
The very idea of cops operating in “pre-crime” mode to prevent crime…
Pretty scary stuff.
Well, welcome to Minority Report gone live and real. Here’s what’s happening in Fresno, CA:
The police department in Fresno, California has begun implementing a new technology that, in addition to looking at arrest reports and property records, uses content from social media postings to calculate an individual’s “threat score.”
According to a report from the Washington Post, when Fresno police received a 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, they consulted the “Beware” software, which“scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social media postings.”
The software search found that the man had both a “firearm conviction” and a “gang association,” which put his “threat level” at the highest of three possible color-coded scores.
Look out, those precogs are out there…
Ready to nab you if they feel that you’re about to commit a crime.