Richard Winton reports:
Can police prevent hate crimes by monitoring racist banter on social media?
Researchers will be testing this concept over the next three years in Los Angeles, marking a new frontier in efforts by law enforcement to predict and prevent crimes.
During a three-year experiment, British researchers working with the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. will be monitoring millions of tweets related to the L.A. area in an effort to identify patterns and markers that prejudice-motivated violence is about to occur in real time.
The researchers then will compare the data against records of reported violent acts.
Read more on the Los Angeles Times.
Joe Cadillic sent me the link to this story with a gentle I-tried-to-warn-you-all comment:
Earlier this year, I warned everyone that police will soon be arresting people based on ‘Sentiment Analysis’ of their Tweets: http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2016/08/police-to-arrest-people-based-on.html#!/2016/08/police-to-arrest-people-based-on.html