UK surveillance state is embarking on murder prediction technology and it’s giving major CCP social credit score energy.
The UK and China are really good case studies in how a surveillance state plays out and what that mission creep looks like. The UK is already under fire for its censorship of individuals simply sharing heterodox views or off color jokes, never mind arresting people for thinking the wrong things in the wrong place.
But now it seems the UK is looking to, as one X post put it, draw on “vast troves of government data. This ‘homicide prediction’ project builds individual risk profiles, turning bureaucratic files into digital crystal balls“. The UK surveillance state is embarking on murder prediction technology, and this isn’t boding well for its citizens.
Life Imitating Art
There was a Science Fiction show in the United States called “Person of Interest”. It’s a very gripping and interesting series! The premise is that the character, Harold Finch, invented a program that could predict when someone would be involved in a life-threatening situation.
Involvement, however, wasn’t clear whether that person would be the victim or the perpetrator. All of it was algorithmically predicted through patterns and odds of likelihood. Finch would then dispatch a member of his team to monitor those individuals to ensure they were safe or apprehended.
The technology was sold to the government, but with a safeguard that only social security numbers would generate, rather than all the individuals’ personal information. The government was far less prudent with the technology, and there was also a rival who sought to overtake that software with a far more Machiavellian version.
Overall, you could see how technology was used for very noble purposes, how it could be misused, and how it could be weaponized against humanity.
As you might know, the UK is one of the most highly surveilled countries in the world second only to China. Now, the UK surveillance state is embarking on murder prediction technology.
Social Credit Score
I tried to find the most generous take on the Chinese Social Credit Score. And that take is brought to you by MIT Technology Review, who believe western skeptics have mischaracterized it:
Basically, the Chinese government is saying there needs to be a higher level of trust in society, and to nurture that trust, the government is fighting corruption, telecom scams, tax evasion, false advertising, academic plagiarism, product counterfeiting, pollution …almost everything. And not only will individuals and companies be held accountable, but legal institutions and government agencies will as well.
This is where things start to get confusing. The government seems to believe that all these problems are loosely tied to a lack of trust, and that building trust requires a one-size-fits-all solution. So just as financial credit scoring helps assess a person’s creditworthiness, it thinks, some form of “social credit” can help people assess others’ trustworthiness in other respects.
They just want a trust based society! That’s all! The ole motte and bailey argument. Put the noble ambitions of a trust based society up on the motte. How this is pushed through, however, is deep in the bailey.
How is “trustworthiness” defined? Who decides if someone is being genuine? A Chinese lawyer was denied the purchase of a airline ticket because years before a court dismissed his apology as disingenuous, meaning his obligation remained unfulfilled, landing him on a travel blacklist:
When Mr. Li, the lawyer, was first blacklisted in 2016, it took three weeks before an official talked to him. The court requested a second apology, which he wrote, leading to his removal from the travel blacklist. But he remains on another list, about which he had not been previously informed, this one prohibiting him from applying for credit cards. The court has told Mr. Li to write another apology.
The first component is the digital footprint, the other is the social component. Who you associate with matters, and is a factor in calculating your score. So if your friend or relative has a ding on their social score, it could adversely affect you too.
The Economist did a write up called, “The Chinese government exercises control through local busybodies“, where Lynette Ong explains what appears to be a sort of tattle culture similar to what Woodrow Wilson instituted:
The CCP tries to avoid using violence, but instead outsources repression to prominent figures in communities around China. These might include neighbourhood gossips, residents’ committees or even street hooligans. This has augmented the power of the government in peoples’ everyday lives.
If the CCP is willing to conscript private citizens to act as eyes and ears in communities offline, and ensnare its citizens in petty and inconsistent bureaucratic hoop-jumping, what can we expect from the UK surveillance state embarking on murder prediction technology?
Presumption of Guilt
Why the big write up on China’s Social Credit Scoring system? Because trying to determine “trustworthiness” is not much different than trying to predict criminality before the fact. When guilt can be ascertained extrajudicially, there’s an inherent presumption of guilt with the only evidence presented from an algorithm and a report from a local busy body.
Now the burden of proof isn’t so much proof as it is the testimony of an algorithm that deduced that you are a murderer. Which might have just slightly better odds at getting it right as dogs sniffing out drugs at about a 27% success rate.
And when it comes to facial recognition technology:
According to the research, when identifying women with the darkest skin, the programs had a success rate of 46.5 and 46.8 percent — barely higher than a coin toss.
This isn’t even about a slippery slope skepticism. We’re already sliding down the slope. The surveillance state was step one. The way in which that surveillance was used to then arrest and charge people for “wrongspeak” was step two. Ascribing a murder risk score to someone is not only prejudicial, but would inherently put some people at a disadvantage:
“…[T]he government just enacted racially biased criminal codes to punish white men more harshly than women or minorities.”
There are so many factors involved. According to UK government crime statistics, two-thirds of murders happen between known associates. So how would an algorithm determine which one would be more likely to murder? Is an abuser more likely? Or is the victim more likely to retaliate first?
But let’s just play this out. This tool is instituted. You’re picked up on suspicion of plotting to murder. You haven’t actually murdered anyone. But you have some social media posts indicating you think certain types of criminals deserve the wood chipper. You’ve liked other posts sharing similar sentiments. You’ve commented on them. Then they found a search for predators in your area and in other areas.
Turns out you were looking to move and wanted to make sure that you were moving to a safe neighborhood because you don’t like predators. But the algorithm thinks you’re out to hunt them down.
Are you guilty of “pre-crime”? Do you still serve a sentence or pay a fine? The number of people likely to be swept up in this dragnet is considerable…
The only way this is defensible is to ignore the number of innocents adversely affected and only focus on “if it saves just one life” argument. Which is to say, the cost of everyone’s civil liberties moving forward is an acceptable cost to potentially save one person’s life.
While we are wondering what constitutes “trustworthiness” in China, in the UK we are wondering what constitutes “suspicious” or “murderous” and how many degrees out from the act are we looking at? What level of reliability are any of these rating mechanisms operating at?
UK surveillance state is embarking on murder prediction technology and it looks a LOT like China’s Social Credit Score system. There’s very little daylight between them.
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