Inside the rise of police department real-time crime centers

NASA has selected SpaceX's Starship to take astronauts to the moon

Sponsored by Morgan Stanley The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Police surveillance 04.19.21 Good morning! Today: the tricky ethical questions posed by the rise of real-time crime tracking by US police, and NASA has picked SpaceX's Starship to take astronauts to the moon. I hope you had a fun weekend. I did an interview with NPR about my feminist internet piece. Give it a listen! And as always, don't forget you can get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Inside the rise of police department real-time crime centers   At a conference in New Orleans in 2007, Jon Greiner, then the chief of police in Ogden, Utah, heard a presentation by the New York City Police Department about a sophisticated new data hub called a “real time crime center.” Reams of information rendered in red and green splotches, dotted lines, and tiny yellow icons appeared as overlays on an interactive map of New York City: Murders. Shootings. Road closures. In the early 1990s, the NYPD had pioneered a system called CompStat that aimed to discern patterns in crime data, since widely adopted by large police departments around the country. With the real time crime center, the idea was to go a step further: What if dispatchers could use the department’s vast trove of data to inform the police response to incidents as they occurred? In 2021, it might be simpler to ask what can’t be mapped. Law enforcement agencies today have access to powerful new engines of data processing and association. Police agencies in major cities are already using facial recognition to identify suspects—sometimes falsely—and deploying predictive policing to define patrol routes.  Around the country, the expansion of police technology has followed a similar pattern, driven more by conversations between police agencies and their vendors than between police and the public they serve. The question is: where do we draw the line? And who gets to decide? Read the full story. —Rowan Moore Gerety This story is for subscribers only, but it's only $50 a year to subscribe and gain access to all of our award-winning journalism. Sign up. NASA has selected SpaceX’s Starship to take astronauts to the moon The news: NASA has awarded a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to take astronauts to the moon in its reusable Starship spacecraft. The plan is for it to launch separately and station itself in lunar orbit until NASA astronauts arrive aboard the agency’s Orion crew capsule. Starship will simply ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface and back. It’s part of Artemis, the US lunar exploration program aiming to return to the moon in 2024 (a target it’s likely to miss.) A surprise: Last year, NASA awarded three different groups contracts to develop their own lunar landers: SpaceX, defense company Dynetics, and a four-company team led by Blue Origin. SpaceX didn’t just receive the least amount of money—its proposal also earned the worst technical and management ratings. Since then, SpaceX has gone through a number of different flight tests of several full-scale Starship prototypes. What this means: For SpaceX’s rivals, it’s a devastating blow—especially to Blue Origin, which arguably had the most well-developed proposals. For NASA, the biggest implication is that SpaceX’s vehicles will only continue to play a bigger role for Artemis. Read the full story. —Neel V. Patel We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Why we can't stop sharing reading lists online.    + Being an editor is hard.   + Listen to a spider web.   + Hear me out… Dan Dan Pappardelle. I haven't made it yet, but it makes so much sense.    + About 20,000 Tyrannosaurus Rex used to roam the Earth at any one time. (NYT $) Sponsor Message Exceptional Leaders / Exceptional Ideas: The Future of Remote Work In the first episode, of Morgan Stanley’s new series Exceptional Leaders / Exceptional Ideas, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sits down with Morgan Stanley’s Rob Rooney and Keith Weiss to discuss workplace digital transformation, the office of the future and building a culture of resiliency. Post-pandemic, will the workplace ever be the same?   Learn more. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Global covid-19 deaths have now topped 3 million The true number will be significantly higher. (AP)   + The situation in India has gone from bad to catastrophic. (Quartz)   + US export controls could derail the plan to vaccinate the world. (The Economist $)   + Half of US adults have now received one covid-19 vaccine dose. (Axios)  2 The US is poised to make its most dramatic climate pledge yet Not a moment too soon. (Nature)   + The US and China have agreed to work together on the topic. (NYT $)  3 It's time to stop wearing masks outside When it comes to covid-19 transmission, being outdoors is very, very safe. (Slate)   + Israel has lifted its outdoor mask mandate. (NYT $)  4 Myanmar's fledgling digital economy is cratering Internet blackouts have been a disaster. (Rest of World)    + Pakistan has temporarily blocked social media amid violent protests. (TechCrunch)  5 No other company has signed up to Google's new advertising technology Despite that, we're still heading for the biggest shake-up in how the web works in years. (The Verge)   + What you need to know about the system, called FLoC. (Gizmodo)   + You might be using FLoC right now, without knowing it. Find out. (EFF)   + Big Tech is trying to push through data privacy laws and yes, you should be suspicious. (The Markup)   6 The mystery of disappearing drone swarms in the Midwest This is deeply unsettling. (The Guardian)   + There's a credible case that these are intelligence gathering missions conducted by foreign adversaries. (The Drive)  7 Tasers have a major design problem Some experts say they are too similar to handguns. (Quartz)   8 What happened when the techies fled San Francisco for Lake Tahoe They brought jobs, but also higher property prices… and a lot of Teslas. (Outside)   9 Someone got caught naked on Zoom, again 😳 An extremely embarrassed Canadian politician. (AP)   + Some people are not ready for post-Zoom socializing. (The Atlantic $)  10 Rug-making is big on TikTok 🧶 This looks like a lovely way to spend your spare time. (NPR) Re-envision the "future of work." MIT Technology Review and Harvard Business Review have joined forces to bring you EmTech Next. Explore the leadership strategies and the new technologies that will power a forever changed workforce. Register now. Quote of the Day "No one was driving the vehicle." —A police officer tells Houston TV channel KPRC 2 that no one was sitting in the driver's seat of a Tesla that crashed into a tree before bursting into flames, killing the two men inside. Top image credit: Niki Chan Wylie Please send reading lists to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Leading a forever-changed workforce Join us virtually | June 8-10, 2021 Register now   Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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