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Ben Carson on Friday officially filed for New Hampshire's presidential primary, then waded through a bog of questions about whether special surveillance or "databases" were required to keep track of possible Muslims extremists. "I think we should have a database on everybody who comes into this country," Carson told reporters in the state house. Told that rival Donald Trump had proposed tracking Muslims already in the United States, Carson added that "hopefully, we already have a database on every citizen who is already here. If we don't, we are doing a very poor job."
Who are these people and what Constitution have they been reading? The Vaticans?
Who are these people and what Constitution have they been reading? The Vaticans?
Everyone who enters this country goes into a database. As soon as your passport is scanned you are in a database. We as citizens are also in a database known as Social Security, DMV, etc. Where have you been?
Everyone who enters this country goes into a database. As soon as your passport is scanned you are in a database. We as citizens are also in a database known as Social Security, DMV, etc. Where have you been?
Wow, a Ben Carson apologist, thats a new one. You know you're wrong on Carsons proposal, just admit it to yourself you dont need to admit it on a public forum.
Wow, a Ben Carson apologist, thats a new one. You know you're wrong on Carsons proposal, just admit it to yourself you dont need to admit it on a public forum.
I support the idea since we are all already in a DB of some sort. I don't care if your feelings are hurt, I really don't. I also don't care at all what you think about this.
While Carson's motives are definitely off (and we shouldn't be spending special effort to track Muslims in particular), he's right that we have records of pretty much everyone, and new people coming into the country shouldn't be an exception (and, of course, they aren't). Records are useful.
The danger, though, is that it's very possible to use data mining techniques to predict various potential negative outcomes. How is that a danger? It's a danger because these techniques are necessarily probabilistic, and acting on them turns real life into the sort of "pre-crime" stuff straight out of Phillip K. Dick's Minority Report.
It's sort of like how there have been recent mutterings about taking shopping patterns and social network connections into account when calculating credit scores. Yes, you absolutely can make better predictions that way, but you do so in a way that punishes a lot of innocent behavior (shopping at Wal-Mart, having certain friends), some of which is a rational approach for someone trying to attain the thing a credit score is measuring (i.e., shopping at Wal-Mart means wasting less money and thus having less strained finances, but the model punishes people who behave rationally because of a blind association with people who shop there out of necessity). Basically, a lot of people who shouldn't be trusted with loans shop at Wal-Mart, but shopping at Wal-Mart doesn't mean a person shouldn't be trusted with a loan, and enforcing such a policy just perpetuates a status quo in which some people are unfairly denied opportunities.
Predicting future behavior isn't that hard. The trouble is that when we predict behavior and then punish people for it beforehand, we violate civil liberties, and doing that hurts people and leads to more bad behavior in the future. When a marketing company does this sort of thing, it's a no harm, no foul situation, because targeted advertisements don't hurt anyone. When the FBI starts doing it, we have a gray area.
It being a gray area doesn't always make it wrong, of course. Given enough data, we could probably develop a way to stop some crimes before they happen, maybe through catching patterns that point to the need for extra attention or mental help or potential harmful ideas (e.g., some guy who makes public violent threats and racist rants and who goes out and buys a gun is a potential shooter, so we keep an eye on him before he hurts anyone). People wonder how warning signs can be missed so easily, but that's because we have a lot of people out there, and most of them spend a lot of their time not making a lot of noise. Computer learning algorithms can find threats before people can observe them, though, and while we can't really use that information to make arrests, we can absolutely use it to focus attention on the riskier cases.
Until criminals figure out how to beat the algorithms by behaving in unexpected ways, of course, since learning algorithms rely on past behavior.
I thought everyone knew they were in a database, well, except those entering illegally and that is why we have to "take care of business" with that group.
I support the idea since we are all already in a DB of some sort. I don't care if your feelings are hurt, I really don't. I also don't care at all what you think about this.
EXACTLY! Your ideals are subversive to our Constitution, the government doesnt get to spy on your personal life without reasonable suspicion, and a citizens particular choice of religion is not a reasonable cause.
EXACTLY! Your ideals are subversive to our Constitution, the government doesnt get to spy on your personal life without reasonable suspicion, and a citizens particular choice of religion is not a reasonable cause.
How much koolaid do you drink? You believe when the government says it doesn't look at your records without a court order?
All those federal notifications of upcoming ACA changes and charges just appear out of thin air, right?
And that is just one example.
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