Big Data in Oakland and Beyond

This article in the NY Times chronicles Oakland’sefforts to use technology to improve law enforcement intelligence gathering.  The article, like virtually all mediacoverage of this topic, focuses on the privacy implications of gathering thedata.  Another angle, as hinted at by theparagraph excerpted below, has to do with the availability of all of thegathered information as evidence:

“For law enforcement, data mining is a big step toward morecomplete intelligence gathering.  Thepolice have traditionally made arrests based on small bits of data — witnesstestimony, logs of license plate readers, footage from a surveillance cameraperched above a bank machine.  The newcapacity to collect and sift through all that information gives the authoritiesa much broader view of the people they are investigating.”

– JB