Can Bahrain predict a protest?
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It’s only a matter of time before authoritarian governments start using predictive AI to crush protests before they even begin. Bahrain might be ahead of the curve.
Data provided to Coda Story by The Markup showed Geolitica, the American predictive policing company formerly called PredPol, used their predictive analytics to show where past protests in Bahrain took place as a proof of concept. It seems to have just been a demo, and it’s not clear who the potential clients were or whether a deal progressed. But it marks a potential pivot to preemptive surveillance of protests.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Bahrain appears to be at the forefront of considering how predicting policing can target protests. In 2012, authorities hired one of the masterminds of predictive policing in America, John Timoney, to reform the country’s security forces. Timoney served as the deputy commissioner of the NYPD under William Bratton, exported Bratton’s controversial Compstat program to Miami and Philadelphia and has faced criticism about how police under his command handled protests. Timoney died in 2016.