The Linux Foundation and IBM Announce Seven New Open Source Surveillance Projects to "Promote Racial Justice"
A digital content surveillance system designed to flag news articles, headlines, blogs and programming code with by-them forbidden language and a mobile application for recording "potentially racially charged incidents to help enable transparency" are the first two of seven new software projects hosted by the Linux Foundation in collaboration with IBM, RedHat and American Airlines.
written by 林慧 (Wai Lin) 2021-02-23 - last edited 2021-03-19. © CC BY
A "mostly peaceful" BLM protestor in Minneapolis on May 29th, 2020.
The violent Marxist terrorist organization Black Lives Matter has been out of the big legacy news outlets for some time. You may therefore wonder why IBM, their subsidiary RedHat and The Linux Foundation are now launching an initiative called "Call for Code for Racial Justice" at this time. Their website has this very informative answer:
"In response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, Black IBMers, in their pain, frustration, and exhaustion, had a moment of clarity. They had a vision of a world without social injustice – a vision of using technology to combat systemic racism."
George Floyd was a drug-addict with a history of pointing guns at pregnant women's bellies. He died in police custody with COVID19, fentanyl intoxication after methamphetamine use on May 25th, 2020. He stated that he could not breathe several times while a policeman causally sat on him with his knee kn his neck. Breonna Taylor was killed in a police raid targeting several homes used by hder boyfriend Jamarcus as a part of his drug operation since she happened to be in charge of handling the cash money side of his enterprise. Ahmaud Arbery is the only one of the three IBM praises who wasn't a hardened criminal, he was killed for jogging while being black.
The first two of seven "Racial Justice" initiatives are a real-world surveillance platform called "Fair Change" and a digital thought-crime surveillance system called "TakeTwo".
"TakeTwo" will crawl and analyze "news articles, headlines, web pages, blogs, and even code" in order to find through-crime such as not using "language recommendations" such as "inclusive terms". IBM has already begun using this surveillance system to monitor what their employees write and they provide API access for other organizations who would like to monitor their employees to ensure that they don't engage in wrong-think.
"Fair Change" is a more voluntary real-world surveillance system consisting of a mobile application and a back-end database. The idea is to have people record traffic stops and "other scenarios" with the potential for "racial injustice" and "systemic racism". The system includes a map where recorded incidents can be seen. The API for capturing data is made using NodeJS.
The "Fair Change" surveillance-system
The goal of the "Fair Change" system is to "enable transparency, reeducation and reform". IBM plans to add features like "visual recognition" and "tone analysis" to future versions in order to ensure that public servants using the wrong tone get flagged for reeducation.
IBM and the Linux Foundation plan to create five other initiatives in the near future. These are:
- "Five Fifths Voter", a web application for "determining optimal voting strategies" for minorities
- "Legit-Info", a service that will help "individuals understand the legislation that shapes their lives".
- Truth Loop, an mobile application that "helps communities simply understand the policies, regulations, and legislation that will impact them the most".
- "Incident Accuracy Reporting System", a platform that will let "witnesses and victims to corroborate evidence" that are relevant to filed police reports.
- "Open Sentencing", a system that will analyze prison sentences and show "racial bias in data such as demographics"
IBM and the Linux Foundation are asking developers and "ecosystem partners" to contribute to these projects by "adding their own diverse perspectives and expertise".
You can learn more about these wonderful new initiatives at developer.ibm.com/callforcode/racial-justice/ and linuxfoundation.org/projects/call-for-code/.
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