02 October 2020
The Dutch police have started employing an array of "predictive policing" technologies, in projects that the police themselves describe as "living labs". Amnesty say that one such project in the city of Roemund treats the population "as 'guinea pigs' under mass surveillance and discriminates against people with Eastern European nationalities."
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Netherlands: End dangerous mass surveillance policing experiments (Amnesty, link):
"Police in the Netherlands must immediately stop using algorithmic systems that result in indiscriminate mass surveillance and ethnic profiling, said Amnesty International, in a report which exposes the threat “predictive policing” poses to human rights.
The report, We Sense Trouble, documents the dangers of emerging “predictive policing” projects that are being rolled out by law enforcement agencies across the Netherlands. The projects, branded “living labs” by Dutch police, use mathematical models to assess the risk that a crime will be committed by a certain person or at a certain location, with law enforcement efforts then directed towards those individuals or locations deemed “high risk”.
Amnesty International investigated a predictive policing project in the city of Roermond, called the Sensing Project. This policing experiment treats people in Roermond as “guinea pigs” under mass surveillance and discriminates against people with Eastern European nationalities."
Full report: We Sense Trouble (link to pdf):
"Around the world, police forces are experimenting with data and algorithms with the aim of anticipating and preventing crime. Law enforcement agencies in many countries are deploying investigative tools that they allege can ‘predict’ crime. These tools consist of data and algorithmic models to assess the risk that a crime will be committed by a certain person or at a certain location. One of the countries at the forefront of predictive policing in actual practice is the Netherlands. This report contains the findings of an investigation that Amnesty International conducted on one of these ‘living labs’: the Sensing project in the city of Roermond."
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