Back in the 70s and 80s and well into the 90s, if you had a high-end stereo in your car, it was a target for any thief who could peek in the window. You could come out from the movie or the restaurant and find a window broken and the stereo pried out of your dashboard. Auto-stereo manufacturers responded by building detachable faceplates. Without the code-matched faceplate, the stereo was useless. Stereo thefts dropped. But thefts of other objects—like rims—rose.
During those same years, car-theft also became a major crime problem. Chop shops sold parts, or cars were smuggled out of country. So auto-makers started building anti-theft technology into their vehicles. They made it harder to break into a car, harder to hot-wire it, harder to start. Today, the Toyota Prius uses a coded-RFID fob instead of a key. If the fob is in your pocket, the car will unlock and start for you. Putting Lo-Jack into a car makes it possible for the police to track a stolen vehicle almost immediately.
But while all this anti-theft technology had the intended result of reducing thefts of newer vehicles, it also had the unintended consequence of increasing car-jackings—because if you can't break into a car, you have to wait till someone else opens it for you. You wave a gun at the person, pull them out of the car, and drive away in it. (And hope you can get to the chop shop before the Lo-Jack starts pinging.)
The electronics revolution is changing the nature of enforcement. Security cameras, tracking devices, micro-chips and other anti-theft measures are making it harder than ever to steal things and even harder to profit from that theft.
Security cameras may be the most obvious technological measure. On July 6, 2011, a guy walked into a San Francisco museum and stole a Picasso drawing off the wall. As he hurried away with his prize, he was videoed by the security camera of a nearby restaurant. One of their cameras was focused on the sidewalk and the video of him scurrying off with the drawing under his arm was clear enough to make an ID. He was arrested on July 7.
On July 3, 2011, a gas station mini-store was looted by a mob of teens in Riverwest, Wisconsin. The security cameras caught many of their faces. When the video was shown on TV, 8 teens turned themselves in. The mother of two more teens turned them into the police as well.
In August of 2010, a teenage girl uploaded a video of herself throwing puppies into a river. By September of 2010, she had been identified and arrested in Bosnia. Police did not release her name for fear of threats to her and her family.
And of course, for sheer stupidity, there was that woman in England, also August of 2010, caught on video dumping a neighbor's cat into a trash bin.
A lot of this can be found on YouTube, but there are also several fascinating cable-TV shows about people like this: World's Worst Drivers. World's Dumbest Criminals. People who do not realize that cameras are everywhere. Not just security cameras either. Whatever stupid thing you do, there's probably somebody pointing a cell phone at you. It can be uploaded to Facebook or YouTube almost immediately. And with cell phones now capable of HD-resolution video, your misdeeds will be seen by the whole world.
Right now, security cameras are still a pricy add-on to your house or your car, but it's worth remembering that car radios, stereos, air-conditioning, cruise-control, and GPS devices all started as add-ons, evolving into standard equipment over time. Security cameras, Lo-Jack, and On-Star tracking will likely be standard items before this decade is over. Security systems for the home will become more prevalent as prices drop and installation becomes easier.
Online validation is another weapon against crime. Suppose a truckload of brand new laptops is hijacked. But if all those laptops will automatically brick themselves the first time they connect to the internet, there's little profit for the thieves and no point in hijacking the machines. (Will users refuse to purchase any electronics until they see them turned on and working?) But this means that your laptop—like much of your software (Windows 7)—will be constantly checking to make sure it's legal.
Locater chips will also be an important weapon in the security battle. Imagine a chip that functions as an RFID and a GPS-locater and a 4G transceiver. Suppose you could walk into Fry's and buy a pack of these chips. You go online and enter the serial number of each chip and whatever valuable item you have attached it to, your iPad, your Canon 5D, your Lenovo X1, your Trek bicycle, your Gibson guitar, your authentic tribble prop from Star Trek, and even inside Fluffy's collar or your son's backpack. The chip only activates when it's pinged.
Suppose Fluffy goes missing or your daughter stays out too late. You run the locater app on your smartphone and it shows you a map, showing Fluffy's movements in real-time—or your teenager's. While parents would certainly appreciate having such an ability to check on their children, I'm equally certain that privacy advocates will be horrified at this use of the technology. Personal tracking technology will probably be an issue that the courts will struggle with for many years to come.
Consider Four Square. Are police required to get a warrant for personal-tracking? Or is that considered publicly available information? What about your personal devices? Your cell phone and your laptop can be pinged, so can your car if it has Lo-Jack. Where will the lines be drawn?
Image courtesy Ikeeda.com
Expanding technology is giving us near-universal surveillance, making detection of crimes and apprehension of criminals a lot easier. Crime rates will continue to drop and criminal activities will evolve in response.
And that's when the law of unintended consequences kicks in big time. We will likely see criminal enterprises based on blanking, hacking, and even counterfeiting locater chips—hacking the hardware will let them find out where the easy-to-steal Hondas are parked.
The intention is to expand our security, and this will slow down the stupid criminals, but we will also be sacrificing another level of privacy—and also creating another set of possible vulnerabilities for smart criminals to exploit.
And oh, yes—all those those little tracking chips will also become a massive database, not only of individual behavior, but also of demographic movements of whole classes of people. If Google or Amazon or Facebook can legally access that information, it will broaden their reach into our private lives. These companies already personalize the ads that you're presented with. What will they do with access to even more detailed tracking? What will the government do?
For most of us, that's not going to be an issue. We've already accepted so many of these myriad little invasions as conveniences. But for people who have become persons of interest to the law—convicted criminals, parolees, people on probation, and even those considered high-risk because they're members of a particular demographic—this level of observation will be intrusive, and this is where the courts are really going to struggle with the issues of electronic tracking. We will have to redefine what we mean by "freedom" in a technologically intense urban society.
What do you think?
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David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website, www.gerrold.com
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