Tech under Scrutiny: Praise and Issues with Mark43

While searching for hardware and software to scrutinize for egregious violations of privacy, I immediately thought of a surveillance software that certain police department used that had already garnered criticism. I originally heard of this surveillance software when I watched "Through the Wormhole", hosted by Morgan Freeman. The software shown on "Through the Wormhole" was originally created by Miles N. Wernick that projected patterns from MRI scans to show how cancer cells spreads. Using that as the base of the algorithm, the city of Chicago used this software to predict violent acts as they happened. The segment really caught my attention because how that specific technology - through use of 20,000 surveillance cameras - could have made predictions as to whom is most likely to be involved in a gun incident, give officers instant knowledge of when and where a gun was fired, and a profile of those at the highest risk of gun violence. However, neither the show or the internet would give the name of the software or how specific is the implementation of the software is. I had to settle for a software similar in concept after failing to find the name of the original software. This software is called Mark43. 

Given this background information, when I came across Mark43, I had thought this technology would help average citizens more than harm. Mainly because of how threats could be stopped before they were started. Only through further research did I find Mark43 to have dangerous and systematic dangers to normal civilians, mainly due to excessive observation and data collection. Worse case scenario, Mark43 effectively creates a society that becomes less crime-ridden by first assuming that everyone is a potential criminal. 

What Mark43 exactly does is cryptic. On their website, if you happened upon it, doesn't exactly say what it does, how its used, or why we should even pay for the service. What can be gleamed off their web page is that its highly effective at what it does and the departments that deploy it. Based on the their web page and YouTube channel, the software can use indicators from social media to drone footage to target suspicious people and their activities (link to the Mark43's YouTube Channel). Information can also be sent to other departments to relay information. Mark43, essentially, is a cloud-database that links up to individual police department databases and creating profiles that other agencies can use to locate suspicious activities, personnel, or possible situations. Looking at both positive and negative implications, there is a huge imbalance in benefits for the individual versus the police force. 

The Positive Impact

The use of Mark43 would create arguably "safer" situations. For one, many of the systems in use by police departments are outdated. Many use an RMS - Records Management System. The problem with RMS systems is that the response time is slow, and when incidents happen the systems used play a critical role in how bad the situations can become. Since Mark43 has cloud-based storage, different departments could access the profiles in a streamline manner and response time can now reduce the severity of situations.

Something like Mark43 would curve crime, yes, but also reduce police stress and paperwork. Studies show that stress can affect decision-making, risk-taking, and neural feedback (The article written by Barbara Isanski). Under stress where a loss is likely to occur, higher chance of risk taking is more likely, resulting in the higher chance of casualties. By having a system that officers could rely on, with the creation of profiles and drone footage and social media tracking, the amount of incidents that involve officers would have better handling because the amount of stress officers receive going into a situation would go down. As helpful and innovative as Mark43 can be, however, we can't ignore some of the glaring holes the system provides in terms of privacy.  

The Negative Implication

ACLU wrote to King County in 2017 about Mark 43 (here is the letter addressed to King County Council regarding Mark 43) and why the city council should seriously consider not acquiring the software. The letter ACLU wrote went over a lot of potential problems that Mark43 presents to civil liberties and individual privacy, but the main ones were about the transparency of the software. On their operating systems, supposedly Mark43 only replaces outdated RMS police systems. However, that information isn't stated explicitly in the service or on their website. (Here is the website for Mark43: https://www.mark43.com) So, one concern that ACLU and I have about Mark43 is what else Mark43 could do besides replacing an old system. What else could it potentially do? Could this sysetme be gamed for other purposes?

Are there any regulations preventing political abuse? There isn't a statement made whether or not third parties are able to access the database. It the police station teamed with a local or state governments, systematic surveillance could lean more heavily on groups that the current ruling state or local government deem necessary and or use analytics ran by the database as justification to make sweeping political moves.

Lastly, what's also concerning is the purchase of SignalFx as Mark43's cloud infrastructure. In August 2019, Mark43 would be using SignalFx as part of its systems. One of SignalFx's strengths is being able to, "in real-time', look at every single transaction and fix any issue before a customer even becomes aware that something had gone wrong. Now that SignalFx is the cloud infrastructure for Mark43, its possible to find every incident (provided with enough drone footage or cameras) and assess certain risks before sending in officers. While the positive is that this purchase would definitely lower casualties as whole since corrections to protocol could happen in real time, that would also allow for eliminations of less than thrilling results if things go wrong. That would allow for eliminations of certain accountability on the law enforcers part as the system could allow for corrections to the database.  

Mark43, in conclusion, isn't all bad. There are implementations that the software/database uses that would definitely increase overall good in the communities that employ Mark43, but there needs to be transparency in the extent of their reach. There is potential to otherwise suppress certain groups of people from a government level and that concern doesn't trade well with what protections Mark43 may provide. The system that was tasked to prevent crimes has a chance to turn into one that eliminates crime, and not necessarily at the root. In attempts to get the job done by removing those who might be associated with the problem, and that's just as problematic as what Mark43 was originally made to handle.         

Sources:

"'Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman': Stopping Gun Violence In Chicago". The Hollywood Reporter, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/wormhole-morgan-freeman-stopping-gun-violence-chicago-1002426.

Isanski, Barbara. "Under Pressure: Stress And Decision Making". Association For Psychological Science - APS, 2010, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/under-pressure-stress-and-decision-making.

"ACLU Letter To King County Council Regarding Mark 43". ACLU Of Washington, 2017, https://www.aclu-wa.org/docs/aclu-letter-king-county-council-regarding-mark-43.

"Mark43 Deploys Signalfx To Keep Its Law Enforcement Technology Always Available". Globenewswire News Room, 2019, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/08/01/1895810/0/en/Mark43-Deploys-SignalFx-to-Keep-Its-Law-Enforcement-Technology-Always-Available.html.