Sensible Erection | Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race

quote [ The FBI maintains that the mapping program is designed to “better understand the communities that are potential victims of the threats,” but the ACLU says it is plainly unconstitutional. ]

[by vahid@8:11pmGMT] [+5 Informative]

Comments

damnit said @ 8:25pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:5 Funny]
Priceless

vahid said @ 8:25pm GMT on 25th Oct
you beat me to it....good on you.

damnit said @ 8:32pm GMT on 25th Oct
He had me at the trance intro... he had me at the trance intro.

vahid said @ 8:34pm GMT on 25th Oct
*takes drag of stogie*

crom said @ 8:35pm GMT on 25th Oct
I cracked up so hard at the end. Just beautiful.

damnit said @ 9:04pm GMT on 25th Oct
Nothing says 'MERICA like the Marlboro man smoking in defiance of the status quo with prideful, country music kicked into overdrive as background music.

arrowhen said @ 11:03pm GMT on 25th Oct
"Country" music? What country are you from?

tickaz said @ 11:34pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:5 Funny]
Trance-ylvania

damnit said @ 12:03am GMT on 26th Oct
It started out with the melodic-trance intro, then American pride kicked into gear. Toby Keith approved.

Ankylosaur said @ 2:57am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:5 WTF]

GordonGuano said @ 5:15am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 WTF]
That may be the best-deserved WTF mod I have ever given.

half said @ 12:10pm GMT on 26th Oct
I did not intend to click play until I saw your comment. thank you.

Chop-Logik said @ 9:37pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:3]

zenviper said @ 12:26am GMT on 26th Oct

cache22 said @ 6:58am GMT on 26th Oct

Anti-fuites said @ 2:59pm GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 Funny]

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Didel said @ 9:47pm GMT on 25th Oct
Okay, at the end there, that may be the creepiest "staid to smile" pose I have ever seen. That smile is Cain's Dean Scream. We can hope.

arrowhen said @ 11:03pm GMT on 25th Oct
WHY IS HIS HAIR BLURRY LIKE THAT?

donnie said @ 11:41pm GMT on 25th Oct
faux bokeh

damnit said @ 12:01am GMT on 26th Oct
gratuitous use of tilt-shift at close range.

sherlock said @ 4:48am GMT on 26th Oct
Herman Cain: together, we can make smoking cool again.

damnit said @ 5:02am GMT on 26th Oct
Conan just ran with it tonight. Dashing salt on the back of your palm, lick and drink liquor... attempting to smoke a pipe... cut to black then fade in to Herman Cain's face.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 8:36pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:1 Insightful]
I get that it violates certain rights and freedoms afforded to us by the Constitution. However, disenfranchised minorities are easily grabbed up by groups with motives counter to what we as a nation would like to see (terrorism, drug smuggling/distribution, et al.) so I have a hard time getting riled up over this.

dangerm00se said @ 9:11pm GMT on 25th Oct
The CIA: a disenfranchised minority

Supreme_Coconut said @ 9:57pm GMT on 25th Oct
But at least they do it in other countries ;)

dangerm00se said @ 10:45pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:1 Funny]

typical ignorant american

13ullet said @ 11:22pm GMT on 25th Oct
Can't tell if trolling or serious...
*Squints eyes*

willrogers said @ 12:27am GMT on 26th Oct
No more than whites, which is why there are the KKK, numerous neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity groups, numerous nativist racist groups, and various other racist white organizations.

Then there are the predominately white criminal organizations, like the Italian mafia families, Russian and various Eastern European mob groups, etc.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 12:38am GMT on 26th Oct
I guess you didn't read the part of the article where they mention the FBI watching Russians and other Eastern Europeans. And of course the FBI is monitoring the white militia groups. Or did you not hear about the group that was planning to kill cops and then bomb the funerals?

willrogers said @ 2:15am GMT on 26th Oct
I was clearly not responding to the OP, but rather to your specific comment to which I replied.

You comment was:

I get that it violates certain rights and freedoms afforded to us by the Constitution. However, disenfranchised minorities are easily grabbed up by groups with motives counter to what we as a nation would like to see (terrorism, drug smuggling/distribution, et al.) so I have a hard time getting riled up over this.

My response was arguing that minorities are no more likely than whites to be "grabbed up by groups with motives counter to what we as a nation would like to see."

Supreme_Coconut said @ 3:23am GMT on 26th Oct
So take out minorities and it still applies.

schatten00777 said @ 3:01pm GMT on 26th Oct
You'd make a great politician.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 5:30pm GMT on 26th Oct
I'd never get elected. I'm too honest.

schatten00777 said @ 9:30pm GMT on 26th Oct
I'm not so sure I'd use that word after your last comment.

CapnSilver said @ 10:19pm GMT on 26th Oct
The GOP is already trying to take out minorites

snowfox said @ 6:13am GMT on 26th Oct
Race isn't what makes them vulnerable. It's poverty.

snowfox said @ 6:13am GMT on 26th Oct
And I mean that for everyone of all races.

willrogers said @ 6:37am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 Insightful]
That's exactly my point.

Racist groups and criminal gangs use unrest to recruit and brainwash people to their ideologies and that unrest generally comes from poverty and socioeconomic inequity and discrimination.

bbqkink said @ 12:25am GMT on 27th Oct
I for one would be moreupset if the

bbqkink said @ 12:38am GMT on 27th Oct
I for one would be more upset if the FBI didn't have this type of information.
They should have maps that break down populations by income, religion, They should be able to tell if an city prefers Macs or PCs.

You can bet insurance Co.s Credit card Co.s have at least as accurate statistics.

Now are they using this to target sections of the population for investigation. If so then we have a problem. It is just the same as it is on the street. It isn't hard to tell if the person you are looking at is say Muslim or black. Profiling comes when you act on that knowledge.

Now if you want to talk about what the government has no business doing and that are obviously unconstitutional look no farther than the "Patriot Act" and if you are looking for racial profiling to go along with that how about....

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices raise serious concerns over racial profiling, illegal stops and privacy rights. The Department’s own reports on its stop-and-frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino.

http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices

Yea I get what he police are saying that this is done in high gang areas...but NO.... I don't care if it does make your job easier, you can't do that.

Didel said @ 9:02pm GMT on 25th Oct
Yawn. Oh no, the FBI is using publicly available information to define areas that tend to have large minority populations and then investigate those communities when illegal activity is detected within that community.

I love how the Former FBI agent also apparently has no clue how the Census actually works. "They are using Census data in order to identify anybody who identifies with a certain race or ethnicity." That would be a trick since all information collected and released by the Census bureau is anonymized, and in fact would be illegal for the FBI or any other agency to have in their possession that non-anonymized data. And the fact that all that data is going to be put into a census block, and it would be incredibly difficult to identify anyone based on the data reported.

Also, as if the local law enforcement agencies don't already know what ethnicities tend to live in whatever geographic location within cities, and use that information to plan their law enforcing activities. As if cities with over 100,000 people living in them don't use Geographic Information Systems every day in order to track and try to prevent crimes.

This is such a silly fucking thing. This is what I do almost every other day, only I use the data to analyze social and economic factors.

Call me when there is actually something to get up in arms about. Not just the FBI sending memo's with maps in them saying, "we might want to keep an eye on these Detroit mosques, you know, the radical ones where there actually have been guys who've tried to do stupid things." Or when the FBI actually violates someones civil rights. As much as I can talk about the power of maps, these maps seem pretty powerless to me.

lilmookieesquire said @ 9:31pm GMT on 25th Oct
"that would be illegal for the FBI":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_evidence#FBI_scandal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_method_of_profiling#Criticism

Didel said @ 9:46pm GMT on 25th Oct
I reject the argument that just because illegal activities have occurred in the past within an organization, that means that other illegal activities will continue (just as people can reject the idea that profiling a community because of past crimes means future crimes will occur within that community). I'm not saying what the FBI is doing might not be questionable, but I think that in this case, this is a mountain out of a molehill. Especially given the fact that they're using Census data.

The reason I say this is because I think a lot in terms of spatial/geographic methods, so to me, using maps to analyze criminal activities and to examine whether there is a spatial/temporal pattern to those activities makes perfect sense. Also, when approaching a problem, where data is easy to come by, such as with the US Census, I use all the data at first, as a shotgun approach, because more often than not I see results that either totally blew up my hypothesis, or were very unexpected. In this particular case, I probably wouldn't use racial/ethnicity/religious grounds as the primary variable for mapping areas of investigation, but I certainly would use it. Anybody who didn't use it, I would think isn't taking into account every variable available to them. Of course, I also believe that the primary factor when it comes to crime is always per capita income, but I'm not running the FBI's terrorism department (and I imagine that in terrorism, actual per capita income may actually be less of a factor when talking about US terrorism and predictive ability, but I don't know)

And I believe the second link is about individual profiling, with an emphasis on serial killers, not community/geographic profiling as described in the alternet article.

lilmookieesquire said @ 10:26pm GMT on 25th Oct [Score:1 Underrated]
That's fair.

I just think that if this is done, someone WILL abuse the data- so it would be nice to know the proposed benefits.

That said, frankly, I think the FBI should be able to use all data. However, I think it would have been politically expedient to leave out ethnicity and just rely on mostly socio/economic data (emphasis on economic data; socio aside from ethnicity)

Didel said @ 11:26pm GMT on 25th Oct
Yes, it's not that I think the FBI is totally in the right here, but I do tend to trust the FBI when it comes to actual law enforcement more so than other law enforcement/security agencies here in America, even more so than most local police forces. That may seem silly or naive, but I do believe that the FBI (as a whole) tries to remain within the law at all times and as an organization holds themselves to a higher standard. But yes, I think that they have to be careful when using this data, not just in the sense that it may be misused for nefarious purposes, but simply because it can be misused unintentionally and can produce results that not only are useless, but can harm innocents (as well as a public perception problem, as seen here, which I am probably understating, especially as there have been a few of these stories in the past few months looking at how the FBI views muslims, and this is something that should be looked into by someone in power and see whether this is or isn't a problem).

As to the benefits, I really can't speak to that at all. I think it's a good question. One area of geography I've always wanted to dabble and I never have is within the criminal justice system, using geographic information systems to track and try to predict crimes. Of course, tracking is easy, but I would like to see how police actually use it to plan their strategies. And of course, prediction is incredibly hard, but something I've always wondered about, how would you go about doing it effectively. I'm a dork essentially.

And see, part of my response is that I generally agree with the ACLU, and I like the idea at least of Alternet, but to me, the main article was just a press release for the ACLU talking about how evil this grand scheme is, and to me, it seems very much taking things out of context and making a controversy over something that I believe is just nothing. Especially when it sounds like the guy doesn't know how the Census actually works and then starts spouting off about how it violates constitutional rights. Usually, someone has to be harmed for there to be a violation of their rights. Making a map of their neighborhood doesn't count for me.

lilmookieesquire said @ 2:24am GMT on 26th Oct
I largely agree. I just think that as a political organization, they were/are bound to bend with the wind... and I think the predominant wind has been to the right the past decade. So I'm not sure just following the law and what's "legal" is enough for me. I mean, that is what GWB did. His torture was legal because it wasn't "torture". I don't mean to paint the FBI with that brush. I just think that the FBI should be careful not to get too wrapped up in politics to do it's job. That means avoiding (the appearance of) racial profiling as much as possible IMHO.

But I can understand your point about the ACLU perhaps making a mountain out of a molehill...

I tend to have a great deal of respect for both those organizations as a whole... but each of them has clueless assholes inside w/o a doubt.

Didel said @ 5:02am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 Informative]
I would definitely agree with the "bending to the wind" thing, to hear this and other stories come out of the Justice Dept. lately, you would think Dubya is still in office. And I do take your point about legal not always meaning morally or ethically correct. In this situation however I was referring to a legal that would meet most peoples values of ethically/morally correct. (and just as an aside, since you brought up the torture thing, you should totally check out this frontline show about an FBI Interrogator, he just came out with a book, "under the black banner" I think it's called, I haven't read it, but I've listened to a few interviews with the guy, it's pretty interesting stuff, and he's pretty explicit about how he (and many others in the FBI) don't believe in torture: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-interrogator/ )

And I too hate the whole, "it's legal because we said it is" shit. Like when obama killed a US Citizen. Yes, it may have been necessary, but was it legal under any law here in the US, no, so don't blow smoke up my ass and leak a memo saying it is. So yeah, this day and age, it's probably more important than many other times that all things appear aboveboard, and so unless (as you said) the results are really worth it, maybe the FBI would be better off spending their time looking in too other investigative strategies. Personally, again, I do wonder if Obama is okay with how his Justice Dept is being run these days.

lilmookieesquire said @ 5:55am GMT on 26th Oct
Ya, I think Obama is kind of a... conservative JFK. He definitely has a conservative bent- that I don't necessarily disagree with... there are political and economic realities to deal with and donors to please... but I kind of want to see a Jerry Brown or Ralph Nader as a serious contender in the democratic primaries (just not being dumb enough to run in the election).

I guess I kind of want the left wing to start actually blowing some wind and controlling dialogue and policy discussion.

While I'm at it, I'd also like SE to have a magic-unicorn button as well.

Just say'n.

chold_numa said @ 8:56pm GMT on 26th Oct
What happens when you press the magic unicorn button?

zarathustra said @ 9:50pm GMT on 25th Oct
Imagine if the local police did this. They wouldn't patrol the all white neighborhoods since, you know, why bother. They wouldn't patrol the all back neighborhoods cause, you know, fuck um. They neighborhoods that were mostly white with a few blacks, however, they would be all over and have the black homes half surrounded.

gunthar said @ 1:27am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 Funny]

sherlock said @ 4:56am GMT on 26th Oct
47 seconds in. Priceless.

Milkman666 said @ 5:02am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:2 Funny]
you know what, at the end when that womans athletic efforts were met with a deluge of singles as a show of appreciation i realized a lot of lifes accomplishments could be enhanced in a similar fashion.

"Holy shit! That motherfucker just spelled extemporaneous correctly!"
*Spelling Bee champ declared*
*Crowd makes it rain geoffrey dollars*

sherlock said @ 5:40am GMT on 26th Oct
I wish the crowds would throw waves of dollar bills at runners as they cross the marathon finish line. Maybe if we bring back nude running in the style of the ancient greeks? Of course shrinkage might present an issue in today's size obsessed modern society (I think the greeks probably enjoyed the shrinkage as a positive side effect).

half said @ 6:44am GMT on 26th Oct [Score:1 Insightful]
...dollar bills... yeah, I wish too. I'll run my first marathon in 4 weeks.

sherlock said @ 7:42am GMT on 26th Oct
Awesome.

sherlock said @ 7:44am GMT on 26th Oct
Damnit, SE won't do the moderate if you have something typed in the comment box already. I was going to give you a +1 just for training for your first marathon.

half said @ 10:09am GMT on 26th Oct
SE is so web 1.0 ;)

'bout the 42 km, until now I enjoyed preparation and fortunately did around 40 km per week since september with little pain. plus it is a great motivation to lose unwanted weight.

the run :
French Riviera Marathon

half said @ 9:59am GMT on 29th Nov
was last week. 4 H 33 minutes. I'm really happy I finished.