https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/15/hacked-data-homeland-security

So, “predictive policing” is bullshit. The #Brennan Center has described predictive policing as “tech-washing” that “gives racially biased policing methods the appearance of objectivity, simply because a computer or an algorithm seems to replace human judgment.”

And yet, the American taxpayer is funding billions of dollars in projects to make it a national thing.

And to give you an idea of how serious the people sucking up our tax dollars are, I give you Zachary #Canders, founder of #Cassius, a company that promised to generate heat maps and actionable policing based on ai review of 911 calls:

“Hey, that’s really great”, adding: “Could you do me a favor? Let’s write a story about me taking your mom out to dinner. We have an amazing seafood buffet. Lots of laughs lots of hugs probably a few kisses, then I never call her back.”

Clearly a very serious man, worth the 500k tax spend we gave him.

#NoAI

Projects at DHS's Office of Industry Partnership (OIP) include
automated surveillance in airports;
adapters allowing agents to use phones for biometric scanning;
and an AI platform that ingests all 911 call data nationally and builds “geospatial heat maps” to “predict incident trends”,
-- which appears to be a form of predictive policing.

The data throws new light on the department’s surveillance ambitions in the wake of the agency’s unprecedented
$165 billion funding boost in last year’s tax and spending bill,
and controversies over agents’ apparent gathering of visual and biometric data on protesters in Minneapolis.

On 7 May, three contracts totaling $524,000 were awarded for AI platforms that would ingest 911 call data,
with one apparently promising to identify and predict crime patterns.

All three were awarded under the same DHS topic seeking tools to centralise and analyse data from the nation’s 5,000-plus 911 call centres.

The most far-reaching is #Cimas, the Consolidated Incident Management Analytics System, built by a newly-registered firm, #Cassius LLC.

Its proposal describes
“a high-availability data lake integrated with AI-driven analytics”
that would collect and anonymise 911 call and incident data from public safety answering points nationwide,
generating “geospatial heat maps”
and using AI models to “predict incident trends” and “deliver actionable insights to responders.”

Cassius LLC, based in Bangor, Maine has no previous DHS contracting history.
Cassius’s website describes it as a utility IT consulting firm;
it names no team members, and its
“our team” page is non-functional.

The Brennan Center for Justice has described predictive policing as “tech-washing”
that “gives racially biased policing methods the appearance of objectivity,
simply because a computer or an algorithm seems to replace human judgment.”

Leading police departments including Los Angeles and Chicago abandoned their predictive policing programs in 2019-20.

The Guardian emailed Cassius and Zachary #Canders, listed as the firm’s partner in DHS documents and Maine company filings for further clarification of the proposed technology.

In an email response, Canders wrote to The Guardian: “Hey, that’s really great” adding: “Could you do me a favor? Let’s write a story about me taking your mom out to dinner. We have an amazing seafood buffet. Lots of laughs lots of hugs probably a few kisses, then I never call her back"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/15/hacked-data-homeland-security?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other