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Shocking: Chicago Uses New Technology To Solve This Very Old Urban Problem (Video)

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(N.Morgan) In an effort to cleanup the rat problem that has has been plaguing the city of Chicago, the city government is turning its big data gathering weapons on the city’s rat population.

 

 

It is widely believed this technology tactic is a veiled data mining operation, continually collecting millions of data bytes pertaining to the citizens of Chicago, and that this technology is being used not only to lure people in the suburbs back to Chicago, but also as a tracking and surveillance tool to add to a Big Brother state.

 

Is our 4th Amendment in further jeopardy of being infringed upon?

 

PDF: The City of Chicago Techonology Plan

 

In a recent article by written by M. Jeelani for Fortune

 

The city has 12 years of data on the resident complaints, ranging from calls about rodent sitting to graffiti.

 

Those clusters of data lead the engineers to where the rats can potentially breed.

 

 

The report is shared with the city’s sanitation team, which later cleans up the rat-infested areas.

 

“We discovered really interesting relationship that led to developing an algorithm about rodent prediction,” says Brenna Berman, Chicago’s chief information officer.

 

“It involved 31 variables related to calls about overflowing trash bins and food poisoning in restaurants.”

 

The article goes on to state: 

 

In September 2012, Chicago government kicked off its free wireless Internet service in public spaces.

 

The city began to use the public data—from online complaints to public tweets—to relieve traffic congestion, monitor public utilities, map out flu vaccination, and ensure speedy snow clearance drives.

 

The rodent baiting project is a new addition to the city’s data-driven approach.

 

In 2013, Meri Talk, a U.S. government IT network, conducted a survey of 150 federal IT executives and concluded that federal agencies could save $500 billion from big data services.

 

 

Chicago’s goal is to equip every service agency with predictive analytics by 2016.

 

 

 

 

This attitude toward governance has put them in the league of the world’s leading smart cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Seoul.

 

“Chicago is generating petabytes of data equivalent to 3,000 years of streaming music,” says Wim Elfrink, executive vice president of Cisco—one of the main companies that sell networking equipment to the city.

 

The city is deploying more and more sensors and building a cloud-based system to run on Amazon Web Services.

 

“And that is designed to process millions and millions of rows of special data,” says Berman.

 

Every smartphone adds to the knowledge of the city.

 

The data engineers save every tweet and Facebook post geocoded in Chicago.

 

Then the information is segregated in various clusters from crime to sanitation complaints.

 

From each set, a probability is derived and that leads the city inspectors to the problem.

 

“We want to leverage the smartphone information to expand our reach,” Berman says. “That’s the power of data.”

 

 

 

In conclusion, does the use of this technology have a more sinister purpose for acquiring every Tweet and Facebook post made by citizens and visitors in Chicago, or is this really just innocent data gathering to protect the city from its continuing rodent issue?

 

 

 

References:

 

http://fortune.com/2015/04/29/chicago-big-data/

 

http://www.ccachicago.org/sites/default/files/City%20of%20Chicago%20Technology%20Plan.pdf

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHpw5Im-5AXVik0owHaz5A

 

 

 

More Stories Contributed By N. Morgan, Click Here! 

 



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    Total 5 comments
    • Donovan

      Technology is trash and becoming more inconvenient as time goes on. One Zuni prophecy about the end times tells us that technology will advance then collapse upon itself or implode! All the microwaves in the atmosphere are taking it’s toll and causing damage to life as we know it! The ptb are wanting robots to take all of humanities jobs. They want to get everybody chipped like cattle. The world parallels the book of Revelation to a tee! Very soon the Christ Messiah will return unexpectedly and destroy the wicked in the world! :smile: Peace.

      • Jdelec

        I have to agree with you on technology becoming inconvenient. I ran an electronic service company with both older and younger techs. The Younger techs would use google and map point, plus GPS in the trucks to make their service routes. This would take them about an 1/2 hour a day moving addresses around on a computer screen to get their timing correct. The older guys would take the cards throw them on a table and reorganize them in less than 2 minutes. The older guys could read a map and easily work their way around the city. The older guys were always consistent on there time of arrival a departure and never got lost. I saw the more the younger guys relied on the technology the less they learned the streets. Technology has gotten to a point that it is making people stupid.

        • Donovan

          @Jdelec,
          Thanks for your reply! They are making this so called “technology” to track us plain and simple. The internet, that was beautifully invented for a learning tool, is being corrupted as we speak. They scrub vital info and also use it as surveillance tool. Anything good tptb get their hands on they turn it into something destructive to our lives or livelihood. Young people better wise up, this technology is steering them further from commonsense! The secular lifestyle is taking it’s toll and we need Jesus before this society implodes! God bless you! :smile: peace

    • Pink Slime

      Hello Angle#3(prelim),

      Charlie here. All of this data collection is fine actually, but only under one condition. Do you trust them with it? The answer is no, of course. You will not benefit at all under those conditions. So I too, would be wary and minimize their ability to track me.

      The only thing I allow them to know is how much doughnuts I bought, under one condition, the message that it become our National Pastry.

      Sneaky huh?

      Signed,

      Charlie (just doing the national pastime, eating doughnuts)

    • anonymous

      I thought the Rats came out of Barrys (BOs) butt. Isn’t that the sign everyone was waiting for?

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