Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality and Enforcing Discipline

Algorithmic accountability law—focused on the regulation of data-driven systems like artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision-making (ADM) tools—is the subject of lively policy debates, heated advocacy, and mainstream media attention. Concerns have moved beyond data protection and individual due process to encompass a broader range of group-level harms such as discrimination and modes of democratic participation. While a welcome and long overdue shift, the current discourse ignores systems like databases, which are viewed as technically “rudimentary” and often siloed from regulatory scrutiny and public attention. Additionally, burgeoning regulatory proposals like algorithmic impact assessments are not structured to surface important –yet often overlooked –social, organizational, and political economy contexts that are critical to evaluating the practical functions and outcomes of technological systems. This Article presents a new categorical lens and analytical framework that aims to address and overcome these limitations. “Suspect Development Systems” (SDS) refers to: (1) information technologies used by government and private actors, (2) to manage vague or often immeasurable social risk based on presumed or real social conditions (e.g. violence, corruption, substance abuse), (3) that subject targeted individuals or groups to greater suspicion, differential treatment, and more punitive and exclusionary outcomes. This framework includes some of the most recent and egregious examples of data-driven tools (such as predictive policing or risk assessments), but critically, it is also inclusive of a broader range of database systems that are currently at the margins of technology policy discourse. By examining the use of various criminal intelligence databases in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we developed a framework of five categories of features (technical, legal, political economy, organizational, and social) that together and separately influence how these technologies function in practice, the ways they are used, and the outcomes they produce. We then apply this analytical framework to welfare system databases, universal or ID number databases, and citizenship databases to demonstrate the value of this framework in both identifying and evaluating emergent or under-examined technologies in other sensitive social domains. Suspect Development Systems is an intervention in legal scholarship and practice, as it provides a much-needed definitional and analytical framework for understanding an ever-evolving ecosystem of technologies embedded and employed in modern governance. Our analysis also helps redirect attention toward important yet often under-examined contexts, conditions, and consequences that are pertinent to the development of meaningful legislative or regulatory interventions in the field of algorithmic accountability. The cross-jurisdictional evidence put forth across this Article illuminates the value of examining commonalities between the Global North and South to inform our understanding of how seemingly disparate technologies and contexts are in fact coaxial, which is the basis for building more global solidarity

A Fourth Amendment Theory for Arrestee DNA and Other Biometric Databases

Routine DNA sampling following a custodial arrest process is now the norm in many jurisdictions, but is it consistent with the Fourth Amendment? The few courts that have addressed the question have disagreed on the answer, but all of them seem to agree on two points: (1) the reasonableness of the practice turns on a direct form of balancing of individual and governmental interests; and (2) individuals who are convicted — and even those who are merely arrested — have a greatly diminished expectation of privacy in their identities. This Article disputes these propositions and offers an improved framework for analyzing the constitutionality of databases of biometric data. It demonstrates that the opinions on DNA collection before conviction have lost sight of the foundations of balancing tests in Fourth Amendment analysis. It argues that balancing is acceptable only for “special needs” or “administrative search” cases, for defining new exceptions to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, or for applying fact-intensive standards such as probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or excessive force. The Article examines how DNA collection before conviction might be brought under the traditional special-needs doctrine and how it might fit within a new, but coherent exception for certain forms of biometric data. This framework permits the courts to analyze DNA databases without diluting the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, and it provides a sound rationale for the current law on arrestee fingerprinting

Guarding EU-wide counter-terrorism policing: The struggle for sound parliamentary scrutiny of Europol

Since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC (2001), Madrid (2004) and London (2005), the European Union (EU) has stepped up its efforts to develop new instruments and reinforce existing ones to fight terrorism jointly. One of the key aspects of the EU-wide fight against terrorism and serious crime is the facilitation and enforcement of information and intelligence exchange among law enforcement authorities and, to a limited extent, security and intelligence services. This article examines how far the EU’s commitment to democracy, accountability and transparency is actually fulfilled with respect to its efforts at fighting terrorism by drawing on the example of the activities of the European Police Office (Europol). Taking the European Parliament (EP) and National Parliaments (NPs), but also inter-parliamentary forums, into account, the article analyses how, and to what extent, mechanisms of democratic accountability and, in particular, parliamentary scrutiny are in place to hold EU-wide counter-terrorism actors, such as Europol, to account. This is a particularly timely question given that Europol’s parliamentary scrutiny procedures are currently subject to considerable changes due to the change in its legal mandate as of 1 January 2010 and the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty

Research Perspectives: Through Whose Eyes? The Critical Concept of Researcher Perspective

In this article, we explore the notion of “researcher perspective,” by which we mean the viewpoint from which the researcher observes phenomena in any specific research context. Inevitably, the adoption of a particular viewpoint means that the researcher privileges the interests of one or more stakeholders while downplaying the interests of other stakeholders. Preliminary empirical analysis of a corpus of 659 articles published in three separate years in the AIS Basket of Eight journals, undertaken in preparation for the present paper, revealed that around 90% of articles (1) adopted a single-perspective approach, (2) were committed solely to the interests of the entity central to the research design, and (3) considered only economic aspects of the phenomena investigated in the research. Taken together, we argue that these three characteristics are unhealthy for the discipline and are likely to lead to the neglect of important research opportunities. We suggest that the principle of triangulation be applied not only to data sources and research methods, but also to researcher perspectives and that a consequent broadening of the IS discipline’s scope is essential. We conclude the article with prescriptive recommendations for the practice of research that is relevant to multiple stakeholders

Information Sharing for Homeland Security: A Brief Overview

This report reviews some of the principal existing homeland security information sharing arrangements, as well as some projected arrangements in this regard, and discusses related policy, evaluations, and proposed legislation

Annual report (Arizona. Department of Public Safety)

The Arizona Department of Public Safety became operational by the executive order of Governor Jack Williams on July 1, 1969. Governor Williams’ mandate consolidated the functions and responsibilities of the Arizona Highway Patrol, the Enforcement Division of the State Department of Liquor Licenses and Control and the Narcotics Division of the State Department of Law