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Khoo said any tech-driven law enforcement solution risks not only violating privacy and liberty rights, but further entrenching systems that have disproportionately targeted marginalized groups for years.

“While algorithmic policing technology may seem futuristic, it is inseparable from the past,” she said. “The historical and ongoing patterns of systemic discrimination in Canada’s criminal justice system are embedded in police data and related databases. Where this data is used to train algorithms … the resulting algorithmic technologies will replicate, amplify, and exacerbate those discriminatory patterns.”

Jonathan Rudin, program Director at Aboriginal Legal Services, agreed, noting algorithms have already been used to monitor Indigenous rights protesters or assess a person’s risk of breaching conditions when released on bail.

“These are the ones that we’ve seen, and they cause us great concern,” he said.

Khoo said numerous police forces are exploring the possibility of adopting further tools despite the fact that Canadian laws written before such options were available are not equipped to regulate how they can be used.

The Citizen Lab report contains 20 recommendations to ensure fundamental rights are not infringed amid the shift toward predictive policing.

They include a call for the federal government to ban algorithmic tools that rely on historical data until it can hold a judicial inquiry to assess the implications of using such technology. Khoo also called on all police forces to disclose past, current and future algorithmic tools in use.

“We cannot have accountability without transparency,” she said. “The public and lawmakers must know the full factual state of affairs to … determine whether or how these technologies should be used at all.”

Public Safety Canada said government officials would take time to review the report’s findings and recommendations, but offered no further comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 2020.