Week in Review: August 3, 2016

Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Algorithms

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled that a lower court did not violate the rights of Eric Loomis, a man accused of acting as the driver in a drive-by shooting, by sentencing him to six years in prison in part on the basis of a predictive algorithm. Loomis appealed the sentence because the judge in the lower court used Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS) software, which predicts whether or not someone will commit a crime based on his or her past criminal, history, drug use, and psychological behavior. Earlier this year, ProPublica found a significant racial bias in similar software: black defendants were more likely to be mislabeled as future offenders, while white defendants were more likely to be mislabeled as “low risk.” These algorithms were initially developed as tools for making parole decisions, but they are increasingly being used in sentencing decisions. San Francisco courts announced recently that they have been testing an algorithm that sets bail. Enough judges are abstaining from using this algorithm, however, that it is at risk of being unable to collect sufficient data. Despite these concerns, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court upheld the use of COMPAS, though several judges emphasized that sentencing decisions should not be entirely reliant on the software. In her concurring opinion, Judge Shirley Abrahamson questioned whether or not judges in general are qualified to understand the technology that supports predictive software.

Netsweeper Drops Lawsuit Against Citizen Lab

Last year, Citizen Lab, a research center at the University of Toronto, published a report containing evidence that Canadian software company Netsweeper was providing rebels in Yemen with censorship technology. The initial report stated that the Houthi rebels had used this technology after they captured Sana’a and “took control of the main government internet provider, YemenNet.” Citizen Lab claimed that the Houthis used this filtering system extensively, censoring political content as well as more typically censored content that violates Sharia law. Last week, Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, penned a letter explaining that Netsweeper had sued Citizen Lab for over $3 million. He noted that the Protection of Public Participation Act (PPPA), which Canada passed into law last November, would have protected Citizen Lab in a suit against Netsweeper, but the company dropped its claim in April. Moreover, this is not the first time that Netsweeper has been accused of promoting filtering; it also provided a “national website filtering solution” to Bahrain in exchange for $1,175,000 as well as similar services to the governments of Pakistan, Qatar, and the UAE.

Human Rights Watch Criticizes Bahrain’s Decision to Imprison Nabeel Rajab

Human Rights Watch criticized Bahrain’s decision to charge Nabeel Rajab for his comments on Twitter. Since the 1990’s Rajab has fought for “democratic reforms” in the country; he founded the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights in 2002. Following the Arab Spring protests, authorities in Bahrain arrested him many times throughout 2012, culminating with an August arrest that led to two years in prison. After his release in 2014, he was tried in October of that same year for critical tweets. His trial was repeatedly delayed, and he spent another three months in prison in 2015. Most recently, he was arrested on June 13, 2016 for criticizing the government and given his first trial on July 7. Officially, the government has charged him with “spreading false or malicious news, statements or rumours,” “offending a foreign country” in response to tweets about Saudi Arabia, and “offending national institutions” because he criticized the Jaw Prison for torture, corroborating other reports. He potentially faces ten years for the first charge, two years for the second, and three years for the third, adding up to the total of fifteen years. His tweets about the conflict in Yemen included images that showed the aftermath of the bombing from the Saudi coalition. Bahrain is a member of the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis in Yemen and unlike the rest of the Gulf countries, which are largely Sunni, Bahrain is largely-Shia. Because of this, the strikes enjoy even less popular support than in the other Gulf countries. Rajab’s second trial is scheduled for August 2, 2016.

A Group of Iranian Hackers Obtain Information from Telegram