UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill

[Retro]

This sounds great in principle as it should reduce the number of murders that happen. However, it's being done in secret and has a certain Big Brother connotation to it, doing more to erode our privacy even more than it already is, so it sounds more dystopian than helpful. Perhaps doing this in a more open manner and being accountable to the public would help to fix these issues? See what you think.

The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.

Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences.

The scheme was originally called the “homicide prediction project”, but its name has been changed to “sharing data to improve risk assessment”. The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help boost public safety but campaigners have called it “chilling and dystopian”.

The existence of the project was discovered by the pressure group Statewatch, and some of its workings uncovered through documents obtained by Freedom of Information requests.

UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill

Exclusive: Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’

www.theguardian.com