Police using ‘predictive analytics’ to prevent crimes before they happen

from rawstory.com: Crime fighters have long used brains and brawn, but now a new kind of technology known as "predictive policing" promises to make them more efficient.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the US and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen. The concept sounds like something out of science fiction thriller "Minority Report", the 2002 Steven Spielberg film based on a Philip K. Dick story.

Without some of the sci-fi gimmickry, police departments from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, and law enforcement agencies from Poland to Britain have adopted these new techniques.

The premise is simple: criminals follow patterns, and with software -- the same kind that retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon use to determine consumer purchasing trends, police can determine where the next crime will occur and sometimes prevent it.

Colleen McCue, a behavioral scientist at GeoEye, a firm that works with US Homeland Security and local law enforcement on predictive analytics, said studying criminal behavior was not that different from examining other types of behavior like shopping. "People are creatures of habit," she said. "When you go shopping you go to a place where they have the things you're looking for... the criminal wants to go where he will be successful also." McCue states that "the technology could help in cities where tight budgets were forcing patrol reductions. When police departments are laying (off) more sworn personnel, they can do more with less."


The key to success in predictive policing is getting as much data as possible to determine patterns. This can be especially useful in property crimes like auto theft and burglary, where patterns can be detected.

"You can build a model that factors in attributes like the time of year, whether it is hot and humid or cold and snowy, if it is a payday when people are carrying a lot of cash," says Mark Cleverly, who heads the IBM unit for predictive crime analytics. "It's not saying a crime will occur at a particular time and place, no one can do that. But it can say you can expect a wave of vehicle thefts based on everything we know."

IBM has worked with dozens of agencies such as London's Metropolitan Police, the Polish National Police and a number of US and Canadian cities. In Memphis, officials said serious crimes fell 30 percent and violent crimes declined 15 percent since implementing predictive analytics in a program with IBM and the University of Memphis in 2006.

The program known as CRUSH -- Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History -- targeted certain "hot spots" to allow police to deploy more efficiently.

John Williams, crime analysis manager for the city's police, said the system has had a dramatic impact, allowing Memphis to get off the list of worst US cities for crime. "If the data is indicating a hot spot, we are able to immediately deploy resources there. And in a lot of instances we are able to make quality arrests because we're in the right area at the right time," he told AFP.

Although beat officers can use their instincts for similar results, Williams said the software could be far more precise, such as predicting burglaries in a small geographic area between 10 pm and 2 am.
In one case, the software was able to help police break up a group that was committing armed robberies on the city's Hispanic population. "There were 84 robberies, but we had no idea it was so organized," Williams said.By crunching the numbers, police were able to pinpoint the zone and time of likely holdups: "We caught a group of robbers in progress, we had leads on additional robberies," he said. Williams said police officials from as far away as Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Estonia have come to review the experience in Memphis.

In Los Angeles, another program developed by scientists at the University of California-Los Angeles and Santa Clara University was tested in a single precinct, and resulted in a 12 percent drop in crime while the rest of the city saw a 0.2 percent increase. That test and others led to the creation of a company called PredPol. 

Los Angeles will expand its use of the program under contract with PredPol, said CEO Caleb Baskin who said, "the system is based on a model from mathematician George Mohler which is very effective in predicting the time and location for crimes that have not yet taken place."

PredPol had begun working with other cities in California and "we've had inquiries from a lot of places in the US and international locations," Baskin said. "The science that underlies the tool will work anywhere. The question is does the agency maintain a database that we can plug into."

While use of such analytics generally wins plaudits for helping "smarter" policing, it does raise concerns about Big Brother-like snooping, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, said the use of technology could be positive but that it could lower the threshold for constitutional protections on "unreasonable" searches. "To stop you and frisk you and search you, a police officer needs reasonable suspicion, so my question is how will this affect reasonable suspicion?" he said. If the search is based on a computer algorithm, Ferguson said, and the case comes to court, "How do you cross-examine a computer?"

IBM's Cleverly said the technology can in many cases improve privacy. "You can pinpoint the record of who has access to information, you have a solid history of what's going on, so if someone is using the system for ill you have an audit trail," he said.

As for "Minority Report" and its predictive software, Cleverly said, "It was a great film and great short story, but it's science fiction and will remain science fiction. That's not what this is about."

The Grand Entrance Narrated by William Shatner

Actor William Shatner narrates excellent four minute video, describes crucial seven minute descent by newest Mars rover Curiosity to surface of Mars.  Curiosity, AKA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL),  launched November 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral and will set down August 6, 2012 at Gale Crater. NASA endured criticism over landing site as not best selection for chances of discovering life on Mars!

'December 21, 2012 - Two Suns in the Sky'

Will we see two Suns in the sky on December 21, 2012? Marshall Masters believes Zecharia Sitchin correct that a celestial body exists, a brown dwarf called Nibiru. Masters has produced "December 21, 2012 - Two Suns in the Sky," a sixty minute video on Nibiru and its passing through our inner solar system. Will sight of two suns be harbinger of dread and doom to befall mankind and Earth? Masters sees cataclysmic period caused by a Nibiru flyby as it swings around Sun from its perihelion (Feb. 14, 2013) to point it crosses solar system ecliptic. A pole shift as Edgar Cayce saw in prophetic vision and devastating solar storms are predicted, and Marshall entertains idea, Annunaki may return to get their fill of gold and young virgins. Masters suspects extraterrestrials warned Earth about imminent threat with 2008 Avebury crop circles.

In an Exopolitics blog entry just this week, Masters adds:

"My analysis of the Avebury Crop Circle 2008 shows that Planet X-Nibiru comes up from the South from behind and to the left of the Sun. It then arcs over the Northern hemisphere of the Sun to its point of perihelion, which is on our side of the Sun at it's 2 o'clock position. So all the videos we're seeing of an object off to the lower left hand side of the Sun at this time are consistent with the Avebury Crop Circle 2008. After August 2012, we'll likely lose sight of Planet X-Nibiru for a few months until December 2012 as it travels behind the Sun."

Nibiru has heated up as topic of interest, again, when Brazilian astronomer Rodney Gomes observed recently orbits of Kuiper Belt objects only make sense if there's another large body out there. In June, BBC-TV broadcast an image of a second large object near Sun. John Moore and Mike Harris, RBN show hosts, ran a two hour Nibiru preparedness special this past week! Hour 1 and Hour 2 are available on You Tube. Nibiru is a wild ride and seems as real as ever! The present writer, despite an open mind, chalked up earthly disturbances to our present space in the galaxy near its ecliptic, where most mass and energy resides in our celestial neighborhood. Will you be looking up more to catch a glimpse of a large shadowy object near our Sun? Seeing will be believing, but then what?

Sci-Fi Weekend: Journey to Mars!

Curiosity is scheduled to land on Mars, August 6th. Juan Pablo Zaramello, an Argentine filmmaker, produced 15 minute sci-fi animation in 2005, "Viaje a Marte."  An excellent science fiction story done in claymation, perhaps, best suited for children. Antonio, young protagonist, wants to go to Mars, his grandfather obliges in his classic Ford tow truck. The only real question is model year:  53 or 54?  Moral of story is Argentineans beat Americans to Mars. Viaje a Marte, Parte Dos is here - good stuff!

How Long Does it Take to Get to Mars?

Universe Today article by Fraser Cain asks, "How Long Does it Take to Get to Mars?"  It may not be a practical question a long trip by any measure at five months, but still interesting and educational.  Space seems reinvigorated, possibly, due to all the private ventures?  Or, is it the human race searching elsewhere for salvation since our chances at home seem diminished?  Whatever the case, space travel is perceived exciting and Mars closer than ever!   Cain puts in perspective Mars proximity: 

"The planet Mars is one of the brightest objects in the night sky, easily visible with the unaided eye as a bright red star. Every two years or so, Mars and Earth reach their closest point, called “opposition”, when Mars can be as close as 55,000,000 km from Earth. And every two years, space agencies take advantage of this orbital alignment to send spacecraft to the Red Planet."

How long does it take to reach Mars? Cain informs below:

"When you consider the fact that Mars is only 55 million km away, and the spacecraft are travelling in excess of 20,000 km/hour, you would expect the spacecraft to make the journey in about 115 days, but it takes much longer. This is because both Earth and Mars are orbiting around the Sun. You can’t point directly at Mars and start firing your rockets, because by the time you got there, Mars would have already moved. Instead, spacecraft launched from Earth need to be pointed at where Mars is going to be."

The Hohmann Transfer Orbit is predominate method used to reach Mars, a nice link to video illustrates path.  German scientist Walter Hohmann first described transfer orbit in his 1925 work, "The Attainability of Heavenly Bodies." Hohmann was influenced, in an interesting note, as was the German Rocket Society by science fiction novel, "Two Planets," written in 1897 by Kurd Lasswitz.  Cain supplies data  Mariner 7 reached Mars in 1971 in 131 days.  Huntsville researchers are working to shorten that time to eight weeks as covered in a recent post.

RFID Chips Can Catch Computer Virus

A BBC News Technology video reports RFID "...implanted identity chips can pick up computer viruses." An experiment conducted by Reading University's Mark Gasson demonstrated RFID virus susceptibility, and suggests, chip should be viewed as a simple computer able to do some tasks. Gasson portrays vulnerability as a risk of technology, there's good and bad! Is it time to for some benefit-to-cost risk assessment? The present viewer finds remark suggesting implantable tech such as pacemaker chip or deep brain stimulator can be infected and likening human figure to a "...walking computer infected with a virus" - just plain curious! The last comment is equally disquieting, "...there's no danger, right now, of somebody say with a pacemaker getting a computer virus."

'AC/DC virus' hits Iran nuke plants

from torontosun.com: An Internet security company says it received a report nuclear plants in Iran were hit by a virus that makes their computers play music by the rock band AC/DC.

In a blog post earlier this week, F-Secure Labs, which monitors spyware, phishing and other cyber threats, said a scientist working at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) sent “a series of e-mails” saying computer systems at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities had been infected by a computer worm. The sender said hackers shut down their automation network and Siemens hardware.

Chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Finland - Mikko Hypponen, confirmed the nuclear scientist was sending and receiving e-mails from within the AEOI but could not verify any of the other details.

Iran’s nuclear facilities have recently been infected by viruses called Flame and Stuxnet, which Hypponen told the International Business Times were part of a joint U.S.-Israel cyber espionage operation.