Human–Technology Interaction during Advanced Surveillance Operations

Abstract Chapter 8 draws on ethnographic research to empirically analyse human and technical interactions in live police operational settings. Meaningful human intervention is a legal requirement for police uses of algorithmic data-driven processes. Yet a crucial unresolved question with significant rights implications is not only whether human intervention takes place but the nature of this adjudication.

The analysis reveals how algorithmic classifications of suspicion have diverse and wide-ranging implications on the operation of police discretion. In particular, sites of human decision-making varied during police operations and included decisions made by intelligence units in a control room and, on other occasions, by street-based intervention teams. Yet across these assorted arrangements was a discernible ‘presumption to intervene’ whereby discretion became ceded to algorithmic identifications of suspicious individuals regardless of their accuracy.