Cocktails & Popcorn: February 9th, 2019 Crossfire Hurricane Fizzled - Erickson's Butinas Didn't Find Dirt - But Then There Is Still Detroit

I just adore transposable models.

The Detroit Model, where it all began, is going to be gloriously spectacular!

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Day 97.4 123@china.gov? Shared Dropbox For China?

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Predictive Modeling Began In Child Welfare

Do my eyes deceive me?

Someone is actually picking up on what I have been spewing for years?

It always starts with the children because no one cares.

Software deciding how long people spend incarcerated started in child welfare with its databases.

Database is the new term for a central registry.

In foster care, it is called SACWIS. and NCANDS, to name a few, but never forget CRIS.

Then there is the rash of predictive modeling algorithms being marketed through propaganda to fund those social impact bonds.

The backgrounder of predictive modeling is always for the purpose of maximizing revenues from human capital. 

Being duly convicted validates entry into the human management systems, that just so happen to be privatized, meaning there are no civil rights.

Is not predictive modeling just another way of maximizing revenues through asset management, the new form of human trafficking?

CIVITAS Solutions: Human Trafficking Listed On NYSE

Econometrics Meets Jerry Milner, Privatization & Child Welfare Profit

Artifical Intelligence Meets Child Welfare Social Impact Bonds

Hack Foster Care Summit: "Maximizing Revenues, IT Style"

Los Angeles Needs New Child Welfare Leadership, Seriously

Just remember, in child welfare, these people can predict future emotional abuse and a parent's likelihood to succeed in life, whatever the hell that means.

All these databases are skewed and dirty.

Software Is Deciding How Long People Spend in Jail

The United States jails more of its citizens, by percentage and in raw numbers, than any other country on earth, including those we label dictatorships and criticize as human rights violators. Judge, jury and parole board verdicts are influenced by everything from lived experience to momentary mood to how recently participants have had a food break. Studies consistently show that being black counts against defendants, resulting in far longer, harsher penalties than white offenders get for the same crimes.

So what solution are courts now employing in order to overcome those biases? Let computers make sentencing decisions.

Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS, is perhaps the most widely used risk-assessment algorithm. The program, distributed by Northpointe Inc., uses data to make predictions about the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend. Essentially a digital questionnaire, COMPAS poses 137 queries, then uses the answers to determine, on a scale from 1 to 10, whether a defendant is at a high or low risk of committing more crimes. (No one, save for the manufacturer, knows precisely how COMPAS’ proprietary algorithm works, and Northpointe has repeatedly declined to offer greater transparency.)

Risk scores are supposed to be just one of a constellation of factors that inform sentencing decisions, but research has found those numbers often weigh heavily on sentencing decisions. Essentially, artificial intelligence machines are now the basis of critical life decisions for already vulnerable humans.

As you might guess, the problems with this practice have proven myriad. The most glaring issue relates to the tendency of computer programs to replicate the biases of their designers. That means along with say, the ability to crunch data in the blink of an eye, racism and sexism are also built into our AI machines. A 2016 ProPublica study found that COMPAS is “particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants.” The analysis also determined that white offenders were wrongly given particularly low scores that were poor predictors of their real rates of recidivism. Ellora Thadaney Israni, a former software engineer and current Harvard Law student, notes that without constant corrective upkeep to make AI programs like COMPAS unlearn their bigotry, those biases tend to be further compounded. “The computer isworse than the human,” Israni writes at the New York Times. “It is not simply parroting back to us our own biases, it is exacerbating them.”

Beyond helping an already racist system perpetuate justice inequalities, by reducing a defendant to a series of facts and data points without nuance or human understanding, risk assessments miss mitigating factors that offer a fuller picture. Israni notes that while judges and juries are notoriously prone to human failures in reason, it remains true that a “computer cannot look a defendant in the eye, account for a troubled childhood or disability, and recommend a rehabilitative sentence.” The alternative is true as well. Computers can miss red flags, while traits that look good on paper can outweigh more serious issues, favorably skewing a defendant’s score.

“A guy who has molested a small child every day for a year could still come out as a low risk because he probably has a job,” Mark Boessenecker, a Superior Court judge in California’s Napa County, told ProPublica. “Meanwhile, a drunk guy will look high risk because he’s homeless. These risk factors don’t tell you whether the guy ought to go to prison or not; the risk factors tell you more about what the probation conditions ought to be.”

At the end of the day, the ProPublica investigation found that COMPAS in particular, and risk assessment programs in general, are not very good at their jobs.

Only 20 percent of the people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so. When a full range of crimes were taken into account — including misdemeanors such as driving with an expired license — the algorithm was somewhat more accurate than a coin flip. Of those deemed likely to re-offend, 61 percent were arrested for any subsequent crimes within two years.

Risk assessment tools continue to be used in courtrooms around the country, despite so much troubling evidence and a recent court challenge. A Wisconsin man named Eric Loomis was sentenced to six years in jail for driving a stolen car and fleeing police, with the judge in the case citing Loomis’ high COMPAS score during sentencing. Loomis appealed the ruling up to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. In doing so, the court essentially (though not explicitly) gave its blessing to the program’s use.

In an era in which the Trump Department of Justice has repeatedly promised to push policies that make the justice system fail at even more turns, the use of AI programs in our courts is all the more dangerous. At the very least, courts—which don’t understand how the programs they use make the assessments they consider—should attempt to find more transparent systems and to mandate oversight that makes those systems function at optimal level. But that would actually be a departure from the way the courts have always functioned in this country, and it would require the U.S. to develop a real commitment to justice.

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Day 222 - Hillary's Leakers, Hackers, and Henchmen: KimDotCom, DNC & FBI

DNC Pulled the File. Early Metadata Looks Like July 7th, 2016, But We Are Having Experts Review 

 FBI Evidence Bag For FBI Bullet? 

 Kim Dotcom Negotiating a Plea Deal 

 Imran Awan at Inter-America, Congressman Wexler's Capitol Hill Reality Show on Sundance Channel 6 Called The Hill

Long version

Blackberries and Govt Contracting

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Day 217 - Hillary'Hillarys , Hackers, and Henchmen: FBI & DC Conflict of Interests

Podesta's Moving Money Now as Conspiracy Dissolves, Gold, Diamonds and Art 

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Day 164 - Hillary's Hackers, Awan Brothers Saga Deepens

Tahir Javed's Sugarland Express Sets Stage For Awan Brothers Mango Express and Nanoset Managed Ratlines.

Cernovich apology, Hageman shout out, moments of truth in journalism.

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Michigan Child Welfare Data Fusion Centers

Do you know what model Michigan's Children's Advocacy Centers is based upon?

Michigan's CAC predictive model
attempting to tag and track children of "The Poors"

Come on, give it a whirl.

Fine.  I will just tell you.

Children's Advocacy Centers (CAC) are based upon the model of what is called the Joint Terrorism Task Force Fusion Centers (JTTF), reminiscent of the Combined Intelligence Centers (CIC).

According to the FBI,

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or JTTFs, are our nation’s front line on terrorism: small cells of highly trained, locally based, passionately committed investigators, analysts, linguists, SWAT experts, and other specialists from dozens of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. 

Now, compare the language of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Fusion Centers:

Fusion centers operate as state and major urban area focal points for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between federal; state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT); and private sector partners.

Last, but not least, to bring home my point that the CAC is nothing more than the transposed model of a JTTF Fusion Center, original parents, better known as birth parents, relatives within the fifth degree of consanguinity, or any other legal guardian, are excluded from participation into these newly created databases.

These CACs are to be accredited by the privatized, NGO of the National Children's Alliance, where a quick glance at its Board of Directors will further bring home my point that these are data collection centers.

Michigan made sure to enshrine preservation of these child data collection centers by including the term of "or its successor agency".

Pretty slick because I know for a fact that stuff like that just flies over the heads of "The Elected Ones".

Oh, and since this stuff is going to be warehoused under the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, 5 will get you 10, it will be Medicaid funded, which is another reason Snyder is pushing to preserve the Medicaid Expansion.

Medicaid is going to fund the technological construction of data bases and all its operations.

Michigan was the first to construct a child protection model under CAPTA, so I guess it would only be logical to conclude that these CACs are the next phase of ASFA.

Always remember, the best way to surveil and track human data is to tag them when they are young.

Gotta be able to construct models to predict who will be "The Poors", in the best interests of the child, of course.

Coming soon to a state and nation where you reside!

Happy Compassionate Child Trafficking Month!

Snyder signs Stamas' children's medical records release law

LANSING — State Sen. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, joined child protection leaders on last week as Gov. Rick Snyder signed Stamas’ legislation to help children’s advocacy centers protect Michigan's children.

“This new law is part of an ongoing effort to ensure the best possible outcomes for victims of child abuse,” Stamas said.

“Children’s advocacy centers are safe and friendly facilities where law enforcement officials, child protection workers, medical professionals and victim advocates work together on child abuse cases. These centers give us the best chance to help children heal from abuse and hold their offenders accountable.

“This will enable children’s advocacy centers to access abuse and neglect information that can be critical in supporting young victims.”

Senate Bill 1021, now Public Act 491 of 2016, allows a confidential record about child abuse and neglect filed with the Department of Health and Human Services to be disclosed to a children’s advocacy center in the course of providing services to a victim of child abuse or child neglect or to the child’s family.

Michigan Children's Advocacy Center Bill 2016 by Beverly Tran on Scribd

National Children's Alliance Annual Report 2015 by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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The New Face Of Child Welfare Fraud: Ashton Kutcher, Databases & Human Trafficking

You know something is afoul when you have an individual testify in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations where he, and his wife. could not keep a straight face.

 

The testimony should be considered as a kick off for its final objective, and that is billing where I have recently voiced my concerns that the "re-engineering" of foster care initiative is nothing more than a free-for-all in the implementation of privatized billing schemes and absolute access to what should be considered as a human trafficking database, devoid of any public scrutiny.

Upon reading the submitted congressional testimony, it was found that there was no mention on why this "foster care to human trafficking pipeline" exists.

There was no mention of poverty being the crime of abuse and neglect, neither was there any mention of the lack of civil rights, the horrid conditions of drugging, rape, torture in foster care, nor the fact that these child welfare workers have the right to lie in a court of law to keep these children in foster care.

There was no mention of addressing the ills of poverty or the lack of access to resources.

There was no mention of being charged, without notice, placed on a central registry, without notification or the ability to enter a plea, neither acknowledgment of not being afforded the right to face one's accuser, or being tried as guilty until proven innocent.

If Ashton Kutcher claims to have saved so many foster children from the sex trafficking the industry, then why is it that no one from the foster care leadership communities has stepped forward to even state in the public record that this issue is so pervasive in child welfare, to even justify the activities of this new initiative?

The only thing this testimony promoted was a new fraud scheme to hustle money from the failed system of child welfare.

One would think if there is a need to further assist youth aging out of foster care, and those who just ran away, then that would be a red flag identifying just how bad the child welfare system is.

But, no.

There was much push for more privatization, without any topics being broached on the fact that privatization has no oversight nor a civil rights database.

What is even more questionable is why U.S. Senator John McCain is participating in anything dealing with human trafficking.

McCain Institute Caught Stealing Millions In Child Trafficking Donations

I am still waiting, for anyone besides myself, to speak out on these databases and their predictive modeling for financial sustainability.

Who is watching the watcher?

As of right now, the watchers are the same ones who have always watched over the children, in the name of the tax exempt God.

Having the financial and technical support of Google and Palantir, Kutcher is positioned as the spokesperson for Thorn as what I consider as another Clinton Global Initiative nefarious child welfare front to establish the next generational system to suck the Social Security Trust Fund, dry through its partner, the Hack Foster Care Silicon Valley Summit.

There is not one mention of any form of fraud prevention in billing, which will be Medicaid or the fact that foster care prepares children for human trafficking.

Why does foster care prepare children for human trafficking, well, if you want to track humans, what better way than starting with the child.

Ashton Kutcher Claims He Helped Cops Save Way More Sex-Trafficking Victims Than Authorities Say They've Found

On Wednesday, actor Ashton Kutcher testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on behalf of Thorn, an anti-sexual exploitation organization he co-founded with Demi Moore. Thorn's main project is Spotlight, a cloud-based data-collection and analysis tool that purportedly helps police find sex traffickers. According to Kutcher's testimony before Sen. John McCain and other U.S. lawmakers, the app—funded by the McCain Foundation—has helped save more than 6,000 U.S. sex-trafficking victims, including 2,000 minors, in the past 12 months.

But there's something fishy about these and other stats put forth about Spotlight. According to Cloudera, the company behind Spotlight's technology, the app was used in 8,305 criminal investigations into sex trafficking between September 2015 and September 2016, identifying 4,624 adult victims and 2,025 minor sex-trafficking victims (defined in the U.S. as anyone under age 18 engaging in prostitution).

These numbers wildly outpace the average number of new criminal investigations into sex trafficking opened in the U.S. each year or average number of victims identified by U.S. law enforcement. For instance, between late 2009 and late 2015, FBI agents working with state and local police across America identified an average of just 175 minor victims per year, according to the Attorney General's 2015 Annual Report to Congress and Assessment of U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

The report also notes that in government fiscal-year 2015, the FBI identified around 672 adult and child victims of sex or labor trafficking. The FBI opened 802 human-trafficking investigations (resulting in 453 convictions) that year, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) opened 1,034 sex- or labor-trafficking investigations (and got 51 sex-trafficking convictions). In addition, Uniform Crime Reporting data from the states indicates that 744 investigations into state-level sex-trafficking offenses were opened in 2015.

There's almost certainly overlap between the FBI and state investigations. But even if we count all cases separately, we're looking at a total of 2,580 investigations into sex or labor trafficking—5,725 less cases than Thorn allegedly helped identify in a one-year period.

While final state and federal data from 2016 has not yet been released, the Justice Department did put out a January 2017 report summing up the previous year's efforts to combat human trafficking. It mentions neither a significant increase in the number of victims identified or investigations opened in 2016. The FBI and its human-trafficking task force partners among state and local law-enforcement opened around 1,800 investigations into sex- or labor-trafficking last year.

How can Kutcher's group have helped in dramatically more sex-trafficking investigations than were actually opened across America? I can see two explanations. But first, it's important to note how Spotlight works. While no one involved will divulge specifics—Kutcher told Congress he "can't disclose exactly how it works," and my multiple attempts to communicate with Thorn have gone unanswered—what we do know about the app is that it collects and analyzes adult ads posted to Backpage and similar sites. Using proprietary techniques, Spotlight pinpoints ads allegedly likely to feature sex trafficking.

It's impossible to know how accurate their method is without more details. But the majority of adult ads on Backpage are posted by sex workers themselves, and the people arrested in cops' "human trafficking" stings based on these ads are predominantly sex workers and/or men looking to pay other adults for sex. Police might be looking for trafficking victims when they contact ads featuring young-looking women or certain supposed code words, but when their hunches don't pan out (and this is most of the time), they arrest the target for prostitution.

Considering the data we do have on state and federal human trafficking cases, the only way the numbers from Kutcher's group could make sense is if a) they're counting every red-flag ad Spotlight identifies, regardless of whether these tips are ultimately deemed worthwhile enough to prompt a criminal investigation, or b) they're counting cases of consensual prostitution between adults and lumping all adult sex workers identified into the "adult trafficking victim" numbers.

Ashton Kutcher Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations February 15, 2017 by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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Day 127 - Hillary's Henchmen, McCabe Ignoring Awan Brothers Leakers

Navy Seal's Dad Has Right To Know Who Killed His Son

Hillary's Henchmen, Petraeus Child Brides For Arab Sheiks 

Palantir Manages It All

Hillary's Henchmen, McCabe Illegal Flynn Wiretap, Part 3
McCabe Compounds Felonies With Illegal Unmask of Flynn's Identity

Hillary's Henchmen, How To Motivate Operatives
Using SSDI, NA, to fund operatives, push costs to targets

Hillary's Henchmen, Mike Flynn Strikes Back
Retweet Today's Videos To @mflynnjr

Hillary's Henchmen, Adam Schiff Reopens Hillary Investigation - Summary
Awan Brothers and Owens Investigations Lead to Huma's 650K Emails

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