We better stop,
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.
-Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth
By Randall Grantham
I was visited by the “Ghost of The Justice System Yet to Come” this Christmas season. Actually I was haunted by all three of the legendary ghosts, but only the future ghost had anything interesting to show me.
The past ghost saw the end of the dunk test for witches and the advent of fingerprint and blood-spatter evidence. The Ghost of the Justice System Present had DNA exonerations in the face of supposed rock-solid eyewitness ID and/or confession and HD video of the action. But the ghost of what’s yet to come in the justice system and law enforcement business brought some pretty incredible (and scary!) stuff.
In the future, the Star Trek/SciFi gimmicks are for real. Our cell phones, after first trying to emulate Kirk’s communicator, are now way cooler than what he had — at least the ones on the original series. And soon, we will be able to detect, identify and follow the smallest DNA residue, like the ion trails tracked by Spock.
We now have ankle bracelets that allow the state to monitor their wearer’s location. Similar devices monitor a person’s body chemistry to detect and alert authorities if the wearer is having an adult beverage.
In the future we will have one device that will show both location and substances being ingested by the subject. I hope we can also hook them up to a social network to alert those interested in the location of the party.
Currently some police departments have cameras mounted on their cars that are hooked to computers that do nothing but scan license plates and check them for “hits;” that is, to see if they’re stolen.
They are being tied in to state DMV and other records to check for much more though. They will be able to instantly read your tag, even in the dark, and compare it an RFID signal from your car, or maybe even your passport or Universal Identification Card (that’s coming too).
In addition to stolen cars getting hits, expired DLs, unpaid tickets, even overdue library books might get you pulled over. The existing memory capacity already allows some agencies to search their database to see if your tag was spotted in the last 30 days and pinpoint where you were.
Police now have dogs that are trained and dispatched to selected locations to sniff for bombs, drugs or even bodies. Soon, every cop on the street will have his or her own personal tricorder that will be able to detect the slightest trace of drugs, weapons or maybe even Cuban cigar tobacco on people and in cars they pass on their beat.
I’ve written before about the government being able to turn on a suspect’s cell phone and use it to listen in on what was thought to be a private conversation. They will be able to do that and activate the video app, too.
And tracking a person’s movements is so easy it’s ridiculous. With GPS, they don’t need to look at toll transponders and cellphone calls for bits of data. The GPS trackers don’t even need to be planted (or implanted) on us or our cars. We strap them on our hips and can be located or tracked for days and even weeks into the future or the past.
Your smart phone is busy gathering all that info every second of every day and it’s available to marketers and authorities alike. For a price. Or with a warrant.
A lot for a criminal to be afraid of, right? Also enough to give pause to all those who thought George Orwell’s “Big Brother” was too far out to ever be real. Between Big Business and Big Government, we already have everything needed in place to make that a reality.
And, just as predicted, the threat didn’t come from beyond our borders. We did it to ourselves! In the name of convenience, in the name of national security, in the name of fun (we can’t get enough of the latest widgets and gizmos) we sold ourselves out.
And we were cheap.
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2011 RCG. To comment on this or anything else, email the editor at and for past columns go to lakerlutznews.com.
