Re:Ask HN: Idea Sunday
by k8si on Sunday April 13, 2014 @07:30PM
(#7583621)
Social graph app for tracking gang activity on Twitter, with the intention of predicting potential violence before it happens on the streets. According to Vice/other sources, it's becoming increasingly popular for gangs to communicate publicly via Twitter and other social media sources. It's an interesting NLP problem because Twitter language is crazy and an interesting "computational social science" problem because it could actually help communities. You could partner with (or sell it to) municipal police departments.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I was listening to NPR a few months ago and they actually had a bit on tracking Twitter for gang activity and the ethics behind scanning twitter. Here's a link to the story [1]. One of the products they outline is called BlueJay [2] and scans for key words and locations. I guess NPR isn't popular among gang members or they would probably stop.
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/28/284131...
thanks!
Re:Ask HN: Idea Sunday
by allworknoplay on Sunday April 13, 2014 @08:10PM
(#7583772)
oh cool, pre-crime. worked for tom cruise, why not poor people in disadvantaged communities?
Re:Ask HN: Idea Sunday
by allworknoplay on Sunday April 13, 2014 @10:53PM
(#7584286)
Haha, I think your idea is great, I just think it has unintended profiling consequences and is the sort of thing that justifies police overreach. Even compstat (crime tracking system that largely helped clean up NYC and then other US urban centers) is being intensely scrutinized for its role in driving profiling, harassment, and quota arrests in places that aren't war zones. The police aren't great at understanding how systems like this can be used to make people feel safer rather than feel oppressed.
Yeah... I totally agree that this is a huge risk, and in fact I would expect abuse to happen because cops. Also, to be honest, I really don't like the idea of making software for the man. However, I'll probably still work on the idea this summer, just because it'll probably be an interesting project :)