Tales abound in the United States about policing efforts that bring the film to mind, the report said. They included a now-abandoned Chicago Police initiative to mine personal data to determine someone’s risk of carrying out a shooting, or a scuttled Los Angeles Police strategy that saw officers targeting possible crime hotspots based on information gleaned from utility bills, foreclosure records and social service files.

Cynthia Khoo, report co-author and lawyer specializing in technology and human rights, said Canadian police forces have access to some of the same technology, but have been more circumspect about using them in predictive policing scenarios.

Khoo said numerous Canadian police forces have been less cautious in their deployment of facial recognition technology.

She said such tools, while lacking predictive capabilities, are often launched without public notice and used to track and log residents as they attend protests or otherwise take part in constitutionally protected activities. Social media monitoring is another common practice, she added.

Khoo said any tech-driven law enforcement solution risks not only violating privacy and liberty rights, but further entrenching systems that have disproportionately targeted marginalized groups for years.

Source: Canadian police using controversial ‘predictive policing’ tools, report finds | Globalnews.ca