Predictive policing: (1) Palantir: Disturbing revelations of secrecy and disclosure violations from New Orleans - made public thanks to excellent investigative reporting by The Verge: The Verge in a story headed: "New Orleans ends its Palantir predictive policing program: "The partnership ran for six years without public knowledge."..."There is also potential legal fallout from the revelation of New Orleans’ partnership with Palantir. Several defense attorneys interviewed by The Verge, including lawyers who represented people accused of membership in gangs that, according to documents and interviews, were identified at least in part through the use of Palantir software, said they had never heard of the partnership nor seen any discovery evidence referencing Palantir’s use by the NOPD."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:This is an extraordinary piece of investigative journalism by 'The Verge' - with support from the Nation's investigative fund - involving an allegedly secret predictive policing program developed by the data-mining giant Palantir (so secret that city councilors claim to be unaware of it), and allegations of violations of failures to make disclosure of information obtained through the system to persons facing criminal charges in New Orlean's courts. Great journalism. One more serious concern over the ever-increasing use of predictive policing software by police.

Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "Yesterday, Orleans Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras agreed to hear a motion from Kentrell Hickerson challenging his racketeering and drug conspiracy convictions. Hickerson’s attorney, Kevin Vogeltanz, filed his motion with the court on March 8th, citing the nondisclosure of any relevant intelligence from Palantir about his client’s alleged involvement in the 3NG street gang as a potential violation of Hickerson’s rights. Under the Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, defendants have the right to procure any and all potentially exculpatory evidence assembled against them by law enforcement. After the hearing, Orleans Parish District Attorney spokesperson Ken Daley told The New Orleans Advocate that Hickerson was grasping at straws. “The NOPD’s Palantir software played no role whatsoever in Mr. Hickerson’s indictment and prosecution. Furthermore, any claim that the NOPD’s Palantir program contained exculpatory evidence to Mr. Hickerson’s defense is without merit,” Daley told the paper. However, according to Vogeltanz, during the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Alex Calenda admitted that he was an “end user” of NOPD’s Palantir system. During an interview with The Verge, former New Orleans Police Chief Ronal Serpas said Palantir was used to identify potential members of the 3NG, the 39ers, and the 110ers gangs in several prominent racketeering cases. On April 3rd, there will be a status hearing where Judge Buras will rule on whether or not to grant Vogeltanz’s motion."

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A palantír (pl. palantíri) is a fictional magical artefact from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. A palantír (Quenya for "far-seeing"^[1]) is described as a crystal ball, used for both communication and as a means of seeing events in other parts of the world or in the distant past.

Wikipedia;

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STORY:   New Orleans ends its Palantir predictive policing program:  The partnership ran for six years without public knowledge," by reporter  Ali Winston, published on March 15, 2018.

 GIST: "Two weeks ago, The Verge reported the existence of a six-year predictive policing collaboration between the New Orleans Police Department and Palantir Technologies, a data mining giant co-founded by Peter Thiel. The nature of the partnership, which used Palantir’s network-analysis software to identify potential aggressors and victims of violence, was unknown to the public and key members of the city council prior to publication of The Verge’s findings. Yesterday, outgoing New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s press office told the Times-Picayune that his office would not renew its pro bono contract with Palantir, which has been extended three times since 2012. The remarks were the first from Landrieu’s office concerning Palantir’s work with the NOPD. The mayor did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Verge for the February 28th article, done in partnership with Investigative Fund, or from local media since news of the partnership broke. There is also potential legal fallout from the revelation of New Orleans’ partnership with Palantir. Several defense attorneys interviewed by The Verge, including lawyers who represented people accused of membership in gangs that, according to documents and interviews, were identified at least in part through the use of Palantir software, said they had never heard of the partnership nor seen any discovery evidence referencing Palantir’s use by the NOPD.  Landrieu’s office will not renew its contract with Palantir, which has been extended three times since 2012. Yesterday, Orleans Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras agreed to hear a motion from Kentrell Hickerson challenging his racketeering and drug conspiracy convictions. Hickerson’s attorney, Kevin Vogeltanz, filed his motion with the court on March 8th, citing the nondisclosure of any relevant intelligence from Palantir about his client’s alleged involvement in the 3NG street gang as a potential violation of Hickerson’s rights. Under the Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, defendants have the right to procure any and all potentially exculpatory evidence assembled against them by law enforcement. After the hearing, Orleans Parish District Attorney spokesperson Ken Daley told The New Orleans Advocate that Hickerson was grasping at straws. “The NOPD’s Palantir software played no role whatsoever in Mr. Hickerson’s indictment and prosecution. Furthermore, any claim that the NOPD’s Palantir program contained exculpatory evidence to Mr. Hickerson’s defense is without merit,” Daley told the paper. However, according to Vogeltanz, during the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Alex Calenda admitted that he was an “end user” of NOPD’s Palantir system. During an interview with The Verge, former New Orleans Police Chief Ronal Serpas said Palantir was used to identify potential members of the 3NG, the 39ers, and the 110ers gangs in several prominent racketeering cases. On April 3rd, there will be a status hearing where Judge Buras will rule on whether or not to grant Vogeltanz’s motion. Should that come to pass, subpoenas will be issued to compel individuals with knowledge of the NOPD-Palantir partnership to testify at an evidentiary hearing."

The entire story can be found at:  

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/15/17126174/new-orleans-palantir-predictive-policing-program-end

 

The original February 27, 2018 Verge story, also by reporter Ali Winston (and reported in partnership with the investigative fund at the Nation Institute)  can be read under the heading: 'Palentir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology' and the sub-heading 'Palentir deployed a predictive  policing system in New Orleans that even city councillors did not know about.' at the link below..."In May and June 2013, when New Orleans’ murder rate was the sixth-highest in the United States, the Orleans Parish district attorney handed down two landmark racketeering indictments against dozens of men accused of membership in two violent Central City drug trafficking gangs, 3NG and the 110ers. Members of both gangs stood accused of committing 25 murders as well as several attempted killings and armed robberies. Subsequent investigations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and local agencies produced further RICO indictments, including that of a 22-year-old man named Evans “Easy” Lewis, a member of a gang called the 39ers who was accused of participating in a drug distribution ring and several murders.  According to Ronal Serpas, the department’s chief at the time, one of the tools used by the New Orleans Police Department to identify members of gangs like 3NG and the 39ers came from the Silicon Valley company Palantir. The company provided software to a secretive NOPD program that traced people’s ties to other gang members, outlined criminal histories, analyzed social media, and predicted the likelihood that individuals would commit violence or become a victim. As part of the discovery process in Lewis’ trial, the government turned over more than 60,000 pages of documents detailing evidence gathered against him from confidential informants, ballistics, and other sources — but they made no mention of the NOPD’s partnership with Palantir, according to a source familiar with the 39ers trial. The program began in 2012 as a partnership between New Orleans Police and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, the initiative was essentially a predictive policing program, similar to the “heat list” in Chicago that purports to predict which people are likely drivers or victims of violence. The partnership has been extended three times, with the third extension scheduled to expire on February 21st, 2018. The city of New Orleans and Palantir have not responded to questions about the program’s current status. Predictive policing technology has proven highly controversial wherever it is implemented, but in New Orleans, the program escaped public notice, partly because Palantir established it as a philanthropic relationship with the city through Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s signature NOLA For Life program. Thanks to its philanthropic status, as well as New Orleans’ “strong mayor” model of government, the agreement never passed through a public procurement process. “No one in New Orleans even knows about this, to my knowledge.” In fact, key city council members and attorneys contacted by The Verge had no idea that the city had any sort of relationship with Palantir, nor were they aware that Palantir used its program in New Orleans to market its services to another law enforcement agency for a multimillion-dollar contract.  Even James Carville, the political operative instrumental in bringing about Palantir’s collaboration with NOPD, said that the program was not public knowledge. “No one in New Orleans even knows about this, to my knowledge,” Carville said. More than half a decade after the partnership with New Orleans began, Palantir has patented at least one crime-forecasting system and has sold similar software to foreign intelligence services for predicting the likelihood of individuals to commit terrorism. Even within the law enforcement community, there are concerns about the potential civil liberties implications of the sort of individualized prediction Palantir developed in New Orleans, and whether it’s appropriate for the American criminal justice system. “It’s not the right tool for local and state law enforcement.” “They’re creating a target list, but we’re not going after Al Qaeda in Syria,” said a former law enforcement official who has observed Palantir’s work first-hand as well as the company’s sales pitches for predictive policing. The former official spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss their concerns with data mining and predictive policing. “Palantir is a great example of an absolutely ridiculous amount of money spent on a tech tool that may have some application,” the former official said. “However, it’s not the right tool for local and state law enforcement.” Six years ago, one of the world’s most secretive and powerful tech firms developed a contentious intelligence product in a city that has served as a neoliberal laboratory for everything from charter schools to radical housing reform since Hurricane Katrina. Because the program was never public, important questions about its basic functioning, risk for bias, and overall propriety were never answered..."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd
 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.