[Corpora-List] Open Research Position (M.S. / Ph.D. / post-doc):, Analyzing Routine Activities for Crime Prediction

[Christina Murmann]

Dear all,

I am pleased to read that the job offer posted by Matthew Gerberspurred 
a response and that the subsequent discussion offered many good points.

I would like to add a few arguments, first of all concerning Matthew 
Gerber's response:

Matthew Gerber wrote:
"I've provided victim-based examples"
Even if we do not take a potential criminal point of view but a victim 
centered one: It is still questionable if the potential (!) victim's 
data should be used in such a way. After all, they did not ask for their 
whereabouts and daily routine activities to be monitored and used. And 
they will not be made aware of it either, I assume.

Also, the approach cannot be purely victim-based for obvious reasons: in 
two cities there might be blocks with similarly high proportions of 9 to 
5 workers and therefore - according to this approach - an alledgedly 
high risk of robbery. Still, past criminality rates and mean wealth 
might differ greatly for these cities, probably resulting in a quite 
different risk of robbery for the respective city. A purely victim based 
approach doesn't accout for that.

Matthew Gerber wrote:
"Now of course, all of this could be used for malicious purposes, just 
like every other technology in the history of Man."

Matthew Gerber seems to want to say 'Because other technologies have had 
this flaw, I should not need to be troubled by this fact'
I guess that if I am (made) aware of realistic drawbacks of my approach 
I should try to overcome these or not pursue it any further.


Now coming to what other people have contributed:

AndrewHardie wrote:
"Ben Goldacre, who points out that the prior probability of any given 
purpose being a terrorist (or murderer or whatever) is so low that even 
the best data mining will produce results absolutely swamped in false 
positives."
Another aspect in my opinion are the false negatives: If police officers 
trust in the results of a machine
(see Mike Scott: "If the cops start to assume that the associations the 
software predicts are pretty well infallible, there  will be no escape 
for the innocent ")
instead of on actual past crimes, a lot of time and money is being spend 
in the wrong place!


John F Sowa  wrote:
"After 9/11, the major complaint was that different gov't agencies 
didn't "connect the dots".[...] We need an honest, impartial, ombudsman"
This sounds like a great idea. However, who do you think could be truely 
objective? Who could finance such a post without endangering objectivity?

In my view the main issue after 9/11 was a major shift away from human 
rights
(such as the right not to be subjected to arbitrary interference with 
one's privacy, family, home or correspondence as well as the right to 
freedom of expression and association, the right to life and liberty, 
the right not to be subjected to torture or other illtreatment or 
arbitrary arrest, the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty...)
towards an excessive need for security.

Best
Christina
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