The White House is considering a project that aims to find links between mental health and violent behavior like mass shootings — and which could use Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home to collect data, The Washington Post reported.
The proposal is part of an initiative to create a Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA) within the Health and Human Services Department, the Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
Though the HARPA idea was first discussed with the White House in 2017, it picked up steam after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the Post reported.
Backers of the plan re-approached the administration last week and proposed HARPA include a "Safe Home" — "Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes" — project, the Post reported.
The project would use volunteer data to identify "neurobehavioral signs" of "someone headed toward a violent explosive act."
According to the Post, a number of widely used technologies that could be employed to help collect that data, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home.
"Advanced analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly improving and must be applied to the data," the Post quotes a document on the plan saying. The news outlet reported the collection of data about individuals would not be done without permission.
President Donald Trump has said he thinks mentally ill people are primarily responsible for the spate of mass shootings in the United States, and has reacted "very positively" to the HARPA proposal, the Post reported.
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