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The Police Data Accessibility Project

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Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#31

Post by sroussey »

bsanr2 wrote: post #24
thephyber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is in violation of the law It's not clear to me that this is true for all data about an arrest/charge. Courts have upheld that arrest mugshots and fingerprints taken at jail intake time both can be retained by the law enforcement system even if the arrested person is exonerated (acquitted, charged dropped, etc).

Retained, sure, but publicly-disseminated in a PII database? There are laws about handling sensitive data like that.

There is also the need to not have secret arrests, so arrest records are public.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#32

Post by primitivesuave »

swrj wrote: post #11
primitivesuave wrote: post #8

I submitted a FOIA request last year for all parking citations issued in San Francisco. The data was truly extraordinary and showed clearly how simple street sweeping citations could lead to a car being towed, auctioned, and the owner (whose name/license plate is publicly listed if they overpaid or paid a citation twice [1]) losing their business and eventually moving elsewhere. I decided against publishing my resear…

That sounds very interesting and is not something I had ever considered. Is there a reason you did not publish your findings anonymously?

I have been in contact with a journalist who offered to publish the findings in an appropriate manner, however the more I started digging the more I grew concerned over the ramifications of publishing the data. This thread, as well as recent events, motivated me to send a follow up email. My area of expertise is data science and I am looking for advice/mentorship from people experienced in responsible disclosure.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#33

Post by chepaslaaa »

thephyber wrote: post #20
gre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police issued an apology? How about we fire someone for this. There have to be consequences or the system doesn't work.

> How about we fire someone for this. There have to be consequences or the system doesn't work. Why do you think people are protesting or rioting? There are a ton of people who feel like their desire to change "the system" is falling on deaf ears. Elections and lawsuits are really the only meaningful power the average person has over those in power. Other than that, it's up to people in power to check others in power…

The citizens of the united states of america have a 2nd amendment.

I might be naive, but I think most populations around the world would have revolted much earlier if they were armed the way americans are.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#34

Post by dvtrn »

nradov wrote: post #19
primitivesuave wrote: post #8

I submitted a FOIA request last year for all parking citations issued in San Francisco. The data was truly extraordinary and showed clearly how simple street sweeping citations could lead to a car being towed, auctioned, and the owner (whose name/license plate is publicly listed if they overpaid or paid a citation twice [1]) losing their business and eventually moving elsewhere. I decided against publishing my resear…

The unfortunate reality is that parking tickets are just a cost of doing business in any dense city. When you have appointments to keep you simply can't circle the block until a parking space opens up. But that means businesses have to charge customers enough to cover the ticket cost, and then actually pay the tickets rather than letting them accumulate.

The unfortunate reality is that parking tickets are just a cost of doing business in any dense city.

Cost of doing business yes, but things tend to get a bit tricky when cities wholesale outsource their parking systems to private agencies that are harder to keep accountable than city departments[0]

[0] https://www.governing.com/columns/mgmt-insights/Chicago-Park...

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#35

Post by chrisco255 »

thephyber wrote: post #16
chrisco255 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure the goal of this project but collecting criminal arrest information and making it public is not going to help anyone who's been wrongfully arrested, or anyone who's had their charge expunged. I'm fairly sure that storing and exposing this data improperly without respect to subsequent court actions is in violation of the law.

> is in violation of the law It's not clear to me that this is true for all data about an arrest/charge. Courts have upheld that arrest mugshots and fingerprints taken at jail intake time both can be retained by the law enforcement system even if the arrested person is exonerated (acquitted, charged dropped, etc).

Each jurisdiction differs on this dramatically. But the law enforcement system is quite different from some random GitHub repo.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#36

Post by chrisco255 »

sroussey wrote: post #31
bsanr2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retained, sure, but publicly-disseminated in a PII database? There are laws about handling sensitive data like that.

There is also the need to not have secret arrests, so arrest records are public.

Each jurisdiction has very distinct regulations on this. It is not some trivial thing to handwave away. You are likely in violation of the law for retaining and publishing this info regardless of subsequent court actions. And anyone who is harmed by this info could rightfully sue you for defamation.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#37

Post by toomuchtodo »

chrisco255 wrote: post #35
thephyber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is in violation of the law It's not clear to me that this is true for all data about an arrest/charge. Courts have upheld that arrest mugshots and fingerprints taken at jail intake time both can be retained by the law enforcement system even if the arrested person is exonerated (acquitted, charged dropped, etc).

Each jurisdiction differs on this dramatically. But the law enforcement system is quite different from some random GitHub repo.

I unaware of any legal authority one could use to remove public information from GitHub, even after expungement of the public record itself. These are not works covered under copyright that a DMCA takedown notice would apply to.

You’re still correct that datasets such as these might need to be globally distributed, instead of hosted with a single commercial provider.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#38

Post by [deleted] »

hirundo wrote: post #26

Expect Github/Microsoft to crumble at the first, inevitable, court order to censor this material. This is derogatory data about members of among the most politically and legally powerful groups in the country. It's great to post this data there, but hopefully as only one node in a well distributed network of many clones.

[deleted]

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#39

Post by chrisco255 »

jwilber wrote: post #14
psychometry wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Records can be expunged, sometimes automatically per plea agreements. And yet these records would live on in this dataset.

I agree that that is a very valid concern. I’d hope the data is anonymized (even though I recognize anonymized data is not perfect).

You are also opening yourself up to severe defamation lawsuits by publishing any information that is incorrect.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#40

Post by primitivesuave »

runawaybottle wrote: post #29
primitivesuave wrote: post #8

I submitted a FOIA request last year for all parking citations issued in San Francisco. The data was truly extraordinary and showed clearly how simple street sweeping citations could lead to a car being towed, auctioned, and the owner (whose name/license plate is publicly listed if they overpaid or paid a citation twice [1]) losing their business and eventually moving elsewhere. I decided against publishing my resear…

Is there any protocol to have masked data similar to healthcare data?

I am actually the cofounder of a healthcare company that works with sensitive patient data (vitals, symptom reports, messaging between patients and doctors, lab results, etc). In the process I have found that even HIPAA is not a protocol, it is a largely unspecific set of guidelines for how patient data should be stored and transmitted. If we were to publish a dataset with anonymized patient information (e.g. the Framingham Heart Study) we could probably do so without any legal ramifications - there isn't much in HIPAA that explicitly prohibits or denies using data that has been stripped of PII. However we would never do such a thing since pretty much everyone in our industry is extremely risk-averse.

The only relevant guideline I found on parking citation data was that it is unlawful to look someone else up by their license plate. However, it is entirely possible for someone to do so without detection. My primary concerns, however, were ethical concerns - there were many people for whom you could determine their place of residence, place of work, and financial situation by their license plate's inclusion in these data sets.

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