Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2030
ILLUSTRATIONS: ROLFFIMAGES / DREAMSTIME
THE FIELD OF
PUBLIC SAFETY
is now populated
by a generation
raised on instant
access to information,
fast-changing
communications,
and recreational
technologies.
THE FUTURIST
The Technology
Conundrum:
Balancing Security
and Civil Liberties
An avalanche of emerging technology is transforming crime and crime
control worldwide and will launch
snowball effects in the lives of all.
Technology is amoral; it will be put
to good use and to evil use. Technology will provide means to commit
crimes, to thwart crimes, to cover up
crimes, and to detect crimes. The offender can surveil targets and prey
from afar with high-tech gadgetry,
just as a detective can surveil the
suspect (or the area in general), full
time and in real time. And this is
technology that is improving exponentially.
As a surveillance technology,
microscopic cameras will soon give
way to nanoscopic body implants.
January-February 2013
www.wfs.org
GPS will be replaced or supplemented with internal tracking systems, making it possible that every
living creature will be findable
anytime, anywhere.
Body odors and essences will join
fluids as difficult-to-refute evidence
of culpability for any personal crime,
and digital forensics will provide scientific proof in cybercrime cases.
All types of transportationfrom
driverless cars to flying vehicles to
public-access moving sidewalks and
roadwayswill require identification of all users via chip-augmented
cards (and eventually implanted
chips). This technology will add to
our ability to account for all movement of all individuals. Being off
the grid will be seen as deviant behavior and likely will become a
criminal offense.
As chips replace personal computers and even mobile devices for receiving, processing, and disseminating data, the intrusion into personal
space will increase, especially after
the chips become organic and are
implanted into the individuals neurosystem. Again, the opportunistic
offender will find hacking into these
chips to be both challenging and
profitable (e.g., Ill scramble your
data and drive you crazy if you
dont do what I say). Public safety
officials will use the same chips to
collect and use massive amounts of
data to identify, track, arrest, and
convict these offenders and to uncover plots and deter others from
similar threatening behavior.
Eventually, trillions of unseen
nanochips may be unleashed to permeate every cubic inch of airspace
worldwide, providing a constant
and lasting record of all activity on
earth. Already, it is unwise to assume that any actionwhether in
public or in supposedly private
spaceis unnoticed or even unrecorded.
The overriding challenge for the
next decade and beyond is how to
balance safety and civil liberties in
the face of this omnipresent surveillance. Is there a level of usage where
sufficient safety is assured while a
modicum of privacy and freedom of
thought and action is preserved?
In the United States and the European Union, the courts have already
Acquiring
Sustainable,
AffordableEnergy
How is energy an issue in the
future of crime? The control of energy sources and the possible theft of
energy are major emerging dilemmas, due to the increasing cost of energy, as well as to the fear that major
sources are either in short supply or
in danger of being priced out of
reach of most consumers.
Until abundant, affordable alternative sources of energy are further developed, the world will continue to
depend primarily on fossil fuel; yet,
oil, natural gas, and coal are not
equally available and distributed
worldwide. Have and have-not energy source nations are often quite
THE FUTURIST
January-February 2013
29
Scenario:
30
THE FUTURIST
January-February 2013
www.wfs.org
Gene Stephens
Global Economics
and Future Crime
As markets become interdependent worldwide and operate on a
24-hour-a-day real-time cycle, it will
become difficult for many cultures to
isolate themselves and live by their
own customs without interference
from the outside world.
With this high-speed, high-tech
market economy, new types of crime
and crime prevention will also
emerge. Problems such as price fixing, market manipulation, insider
trading, and other types of fraud
and deception will be magnified as
they affect people across the globe.
Since laws are enacted in a political
environment, the first crisis may
well be deciding what types of activities (including those that are culturally accepted in some locations but
taboo elsewhere) should be allowed
and what should be illegal in this
new economy.
Methods of committing these economic crimes will continue to center
around the Web and its increasing
access to every nook and cranny of
the globe. The Nigerian bank and
lottery winner scams of today are being joined by hundreds of new ventures each week, burdening lawmakers to define these approaches as
criminal and then find ways to enforce the new laws.
Since the harm of a local, regional,
national, or international breakdown
in any part of the world economy
could put millions or even billions of
people at risk, preventing and mitigating such crimes will take on new
importance. It will require a type of
law enforcement specialist in short
supply today and likely will change
Promises and
Threats of
Omnipresent Media
Transparency is an increasingly important issue in public safety. More
rather than fewer eyes will be on the
field in the near future.
The 24-hour news cycle of cable
and satellite television has been
joined by the same cycle of blogging
and social networking on the Internet. And information dissemination
has become more immediate and intimate with the cameras and listening devices on almost all handheld
electronic devices (plus GPS to pinpoint location), creating the omnipresent media. The definition of media has been expanded from people
employed by media companies to
anyone and everyone. Increasingly
there will be no hiding from the public eye.
This plethora of surveillance of
public safety officers (and everyone
else for that matter) will multiply exponentially as the micro and then
nano dots saturate every square inch
of air in urban and later all areas of
earth. These self-contained spyware
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THE FUTURIST
January-February 2013
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Searching for a
Meaningful Life
ism and justiceis called into question by the nature of the emerging
society. If free will is a driving force,
we can expect massive revolts
against anticipated use of these technologies; whether the rebelling is by
large groups across the economic
and social spectrum of society or restricted to fringe elements, such as
survivalists and counterculture advocates, will determine the impact
this future has on public safety activity. It could range from all-out
citizen-versus-police warfare to simply a blip on the screen (such as recent Occupy movements).
In advance of the Singularity
(when humans become one with
smart machines), increasing numbers of individuals will join the
ranks of those who already have become bionicthe millions with body
implants (e.g., knees, hips, arms,
legs, and increasingly lungs, hearts,
and soon brains). Again, free will becomes an issue, as a defense against
criminal charges, already used in a
few cases, will be that the implant(s)
transformed the recipient from a
THE FUTURIST
January-February 2013
www.wfs.org
In the first decade of work, the 30plus members of FWG have met numerous times, assisted law enforcement agencies in problem solving
and initiating future-oriented planning, studied several emerging issues or situations affecting law enforcement, and issued 14
publications on such topics as police
and augmented reality technology,
the future of law enforcement intelligence, Neighborhood-Driven Policing, Homeland Security, the police
and the military, and advancing police leadership.
As a member of this Delphi group
on the future of policing, I have
gained a great deal of perspective
about how these highly informed
practitioners/academics envision
the public safety arena evolving by
the year 2030.
For more information, visit http://
futuresworkinggroup.cos.ucf.edu.
Gene Stephens
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.