Kristian Lum, lead statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (and letter signatory), fears that “in order to flag even a small proportion of future terrorists, this tool will likely flag a huge number of people who would never go on to be terrorists,” and that “these ‘false positives’ will be real people who would never have gone on to commit criminal acts but will suffer the consequences of being flagged just the same.”

HRDAG associate William Isaac is quoted in this article about how predictive policing algorithms such as PredPol exacerbate the problem of racial bias in policing.

HRDAG analyst William Isaac is quoted in this article about so-called crime prediction. “They’re not predicting the future. What they’re actually predicting is where the next recorded police observations are going to occur.”

As executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Megan Price uses statistics to shine the light on human rights abuses.

En ocasiones, las discusiones sobre ese fenómeno se centran más sobre cuál es la cifra real, mientras que el diagnóstico es el mismo: en las regiones la violencia no cede y no se avizoran políticas efectivas para ponerle fin. En medio de este complejo panorama, el Centro de Estudios de Derecho, Justicia y Sociedad (Dejusticia) y el Human Rights Data Analysis Group, publicaron este miércoles la investigación Asesinatos de líderes sociales en Colombia en 2016–2017: una estimación del universo.

One of the researchers, a Michigan State PhD candidate named William Isaac, had not previously heard of New Orleans’ partnership with Palantir, but he recognized the data-mapping model at the heart of the program. “I think the data they’re using, there are serious questions about its predictive power. We’ve seen very little about its ability to forecast violent crime,” Isaac said.

HRDAG collaborated with Data for Justice Project on a tool tool allowing members of the public to visualize and analyze nearly a decade of Boston Police Department SWAT team after-action reports. Tarak Shah of HRDAG is named in the acknowledgments.

“In 2016, two researchers, the statistician Kristian Lum and the political scientist William Isaac, set out to measure the bias in predictive policing algorithms. They chose as their example a program called PredPol.  … Lum and Isaac faced a conundrum: if official data on crimes is biased, how can you test a crime prediction model? To solve this technique, they turned to a technique used in statistics and machine learning called the synthetic population.”

“The 36th Rafto Prize was awarded to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) for their work on uncovering large-scale human rights violations. By using statistics and data science, HRDAG documents human rights violations that might otherwise go undetected. Their approach has enabled courts to bring perpetrators to justice and given closure to affected victims and their families.”

“The Rafto Prize 2021 is awarded to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) for their wide-reaching documentation of grave human rights abuses. By using statistics and data science they uncover large-scale human rights violations that might otherwise go undetected. This novel approach has enabled courts to bring perpetrators to justice and given closure to affected victims and their families. HRDAG represents a new generation of human rights defenders that advances the enforcement of human rights globally.”

Henrik Urdal has released his final Nobel Shortlist for 2022, and HRDAG is included on it, alongside Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Alexei Navalny, and others. The list highlights pro-democracy efforts, multilateral cooperation, combating religious extremism and intolerance, and the value that research and knowledge can have for promoting peace.

“In January, Invisible Institute released the data on a tool called the National Police Index, which houses data from over two dozen of POST’s peer agencies around the country. Developed by Invisible Institute, Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and Innocence & Justice Louisiana, the NPI seeks employment history data from state POST agencies to track, among other questions, the issue of so-called “wandering cops” who move from department to department after committing misconduct.” Read the article.

The Washington Post’s Paul Schemm recognized HRDAG’s work in Syria, in the category of research and activism. “HRDAG gained renown at the start of the war, when it was one of the few organizations that tried to put a number on the war’s enormous toll in Syrian lives.”

HRDAG contributed to work by the ACLU showing that a predictive tool used to guide responses to alleged child neglect may forever flag parents with disabilities. “These predictors have the effect of casting permanent suspicion and offer no means of recourse for families marked by these indicators,” according to the analysis from researchers at the ACLU and the nonprofit Human Rights Data Analysis Group. “They are forever seen as riskier to their children.”

In a CNN interview predicting a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Henrik Urdal from PRIO talks about his shortlist and HRDAG.

From the article: “Intentionally inconsistent tracking can also influence the final tally, notes Megan Price, a statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. During the Iraq War, for example, officials worked to conceal mortality or to cherry pick existing data to steer the political narrative. While wars are handled differently from pandemics, Price thinks the COVID-19 data could still be at risk of this kind of manipulation.”

In this video, Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute talks about her work with HRDAG on the missing persons project in Chicago and Beneath the Surface.

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.