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Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire?

Bailey Passmore + Larry Barrett. 2025. Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire? Significance, Volume 22, Issue 4, July 2025, Pages 34–37. 27 May 2025. © Royal Statistical Society 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrssig/qmaf042

Bailey Passmore + Larry Barrett. 2025. Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire? Significance, Volume 22, Issue 4, July 2025, Pages 34–37. 27 May 2025. © Royal Statistical Society 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrssig/qmaf042


HRDAG Offers New R Package – dga

Much of the work we do at HRDAG involves estimating the number of undocumented deaths using a statistical technique called multiple systems estimation (MSE, described in more detail here). One of our goals is to make this class of methods more broadly available to human rights researchers. In particular, we are finding that Bayesian approaches are extremely valuable for MSE. Accordingly, we are pleased to offer a new R package called dga (“decomposable graphs approach”) that performs Bayesian model averaging for MSE. The main function in this package implements a model created by David Madigan and Jeremy York. This model was designed to ...

New Estimate Of Killings By Police Is Way Higher — And Still Too Low

Carl Bialik of 538 Politics interviews HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball in an article about the recently released Bureau of Justice Statistics report about the number of annual police killings, both reported and unreported. As Bialik writes, this is a math puzzle with real consequences. Here's an excerpt. Patrick Ball, co-author of the critique and executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, said it’s not the BJS’s fault that it underestimated the number. That it estimated it at all was an important step, he said. Government agencies don’t all audit their own data or undertake the difficult task of matching records that ...

Kosovo 1999 – Using MSE to Examine Political Claims

Patrick Ball expanded his use of multiple systems estimation (MSE) to clarify the history of a deadly conflict in Kosovo. The violence began in 1989 when Serbian President Slobodan Milošević revoked Kosovo's autonomous status within the Republic of Serbia triggering fighting between Kosovar Albanians and the Yugoslav government. Allegations of widespread and systematic human rights violations were made against Serbian forces and NATO intervened to repel Serb forces from Kosovo. Ball and Scheuren gathered data from Albanian border crossings and other sources in the region. They used this information to examine the claim by the Yugoslav government ...

100 Women in AI Ethics

We live in very challenging times. The pervasiveness of bias in AI algorithms and autonomous “killer” robots looming on the horizon, all necessitate an open discussion and immediate action to address the perils of unchecked AI. The decisions we make today will determine the fate of future generations. Please follow these amazing women and support their work so we can make faster meaningful progress towards a world with safe, beneficial AI that will help and not hurt the future of humanity.

53. Kristian Lum @kldivergence


Megan Price Elected Board Member of Tor Project

Today The Tor Project announced that it has elected a new Board of Directors, and among them is HRDAG executive director Megan Price. The Tor Project is a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes online privacy and provides software that helps users opt out of online tracking. Megan and Patrick have long maintained that encryption and privacy are essential for enabling human rights work. Patrick's ideas are described in Monday's FedScoop story about encryption, human rights, and the U.S. State Department. “Human rights groups depend on strong cryptography in order to hold governments accountable," says Patrick. "HRDAG depends on local human ...

How Machine Learning Protects Whistle-Blowers in Staten Island

People filed complaints against NYPD officers, and HRDAG went above and beyond to protect the privacy of the people who reported the offenses.

Courts and police departments are turning to AI to reduce bias, but some argue it’ll make the problem worse

Kristian Lum: “The historical over-policing of minority communities has led to a disproportionate number of crimes being recorded by the police in those locations. Historical over-policing is then passed through the algorithm to justify the over-policing of those communities.”


Beautiful game, ugly truth?

Megan Price (2022). Beautiful game, ugly truth? Significance, 19: 18-21. December 2022. © The Royal Statistical Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/1740-9713.01702

Megan Price (2022). Beautiful game, ugly truth? Significance, 19: 18-21. December 2022. © The Royal Statistical Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/1740-9713.01702


Tech Note – improving LLM-driven info extraction

A follow-up chapter exploring recent advancements in LLM technology and extraction strategies.

The Bigness of Big Data: samples, models, and the facts we might find when looking at data

Patrick Ball. 2015. The Bigness of Big Data: samples, models, and the facts we might find when looking at data. In The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding, ed. Philip Alston and Sarah Knuckey. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190239497. © The Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.


November 1st Statement from Alejandra García at the close of her Father’s trial


Estimating Deaths in Timor-Leste


Syria’s status, the migrant crisis and talking to ISIS

In this week’s “Top Picks,” IRIN interviews HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball about giant data sets and whether we can trust them. “No matter how big it is, data on violence is always partial,” he says.


Guatemala 2011 – Developing Sampling Methods to Help Convict Perpetrators

During 36 years of internal armed conflict, which ended in 1996, an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared. HRDAG researchers returned to Guatemala in 2006 to analyze a sample of the estimated 46 million records discovered in the archive of the now disbanded Guatemalan National Police. HRDAG statisticians Daniel Guzmán, Romesh Silva, Patrick Ball and Tamy Guberek, together with Paul Zador and Gary Shapiro of the American Statistical Association, developed a multi-stage random sample of the archive to get a clearer picture of its contents. Sampled documents shed light on the disappearance of Guatemalan union leader Edgar Fernando ...

Court Sentences Two Former Policemen to 40 Years in Prison Todanoticia.com


Using Data and Statistics to Bring Down Dictators

In this story, Guerrini discusses the impact of HRDAG’s work in Guatemala, especially the trials of General José Efraín Ríos Montt and Colonel Héctor Bol de la Cruz, as well as work in El Salvador, Syria, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste. Multiple systems estimation and the perils of using raw data to draw conclusions are also addressed.
Megan Price and Patrick Ball are quoted, especially in regard to how to use raw data.
“From our perspective,” Price says, “the solution to that is both to stay very close to the data, to be very conservative in your interpretation of it and to be very clear about where the data came from, how it was collected, what its limitations might be, and to a certain extent to be skeptical about it, to ask yourself questions like, ‘What is missing from this data?’ and ‘How might that missing information change these conclusions that I’m trying to draw?’”


Haiti

In 1995, the Haitian National Commission for Truth and Justice (CNVJ) requested the advice of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Dr. Patrick Ball on how to develop a large-scale project to take the testimonies of several thousand witnesses of human rights abuses in Haiti. The team conducted work incorporating over 5,000 interviews covering over 8,500 victims to produce detailed regional analyses, using quantitative material from the interviews, historical, economic and demographic analysis.

Tech Note: Chicago Missing Persons

Our team was able to identify over 50 complaints related to missing persons cases.

HRDAG Welcomes New Data Science Fellow

Our newest Data Science Fellow, Will Taylor, is currently a doctoral student in political science and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

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