00100	               TECHNOLOGY, CRIME, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

00200	
00300	
00400		At any given level of enforcement technology,  the  practices
00500	of  the law enforcement agencies represent a compromise among several
00600	considerations:  suppression of activities regarded  as  undesirable,
00700	costs,  the convenience of the authorities, and civil liberties (i.e.
00800	the right of citizens not to have his privacy invaded or  even  worse
00900	to be wrongfully punished).  The matter is further complicated by the
01000	fact that what activities are so undesirable as to  be  prevented  by
01100	legal  means  depends  on  one's  point  of  view  which  is  further
01200	influenced by one's position in society.
01300	
01400		It is not the purpose of this  essay  to  resolve  all  these
01500	problems,  but  merely  to  point  out  how  technology  can make the
01600	problems easier to solve.  In the main, we  shall  be  interested  in
01700	ways  in which behavior that is universally agreed to be criminal can
01800	be prevented while the civil liberties can be increased.
01900	
02000	
02100		1. Gadgets.
02200	
02300		2. Reducing motivation for crime.
02400	
02500		3. Civil rights.
02600	
02700		4. Institutions.
02800	
02900		5. Kinds of crime.
03000	
03100	Gadgets
03200	
03300	Crimes
03400	
03500		1.  Murder.   The  use  of guns for crime could be reduced as
03600	follows:
03700	
03800		1.1. Register guns as often proposed.
03900	
04000		1.2. Tag bullets and guns with radioactive isotopes.  If each
04100	box of bullets is tagged with 30 isotopes out of 30 pairs of isotopes
04200	(one from each pair), then if a bullet is found in someone, it can be
04300	determined  who  bought  the box of bullets provided sales of bullets
04400	are registered.  Of course, illegal bullets  could  be  manufactured,
04500	but  criminals  do  not  use  a uniform kind of gun, and posession of
04600	untagged bullets would be a crime.  Likewise, guns barrels should  be
04700	rifled or otherwise scored and the scoring registered when the gun is
04800	manufactured so that if a fired bullet is found, the registered owner
04900	of the gun can be determined.
05000	
05100		The  government  should obtain the co-operation of the bullet
05200	manufacturers and put the marking system into effect  without  notice
05300	so  that  the  unmarked  bullets  would  be flushed out of the system
05400	before too many criminals noticed.
05500	
05600		2. Theft.
05700	
05800		2.1.  Eliminate  money.   Paying  by  check  has  practically
05900	eliminated  the  payroll  robbery which used to be the most lucrative
06000	and easy kind of robbery.  The universal use  of  credit  cards  with
06100	photographs of the owner and credit checking terminals would make the
06200	theft of cash into a minor problem.
06250	A robber will have to demand that his victim transfer
06275	$500 to account number 558 30 4793.
06300	
06400		2.2. If cash is  completely  eliminated,  then  even  private
06500	financial  transactions  have  to  be  recorded and fencing of stolen
06600	goods can be detected.
06700	
06800		2.3. Extend property  registration  like  that  required  for
06900	automobiles  to the kinds of expensive goods that are commonly stolen
07000	such as TVs, hi-fis, cameras, expensive musical instruments. It would
07100	then  be  illegal to posess these items or repair them without proper
07200	papers.  Whether the paper work  can  be  handled  without  too  much
07300	annoyance is doubtful until home computer terminals are available.
07400	
07500		3. Other violence.
07600	
07700		3.1.   Hitch-hiking   should   be  made  safe  both  for  the
07800	hitch-hiker and the person who picks him up.  This could be  done  if
07900	the  transaction  was recorded in some way.  If the car automatically
08000	photographed its passengers and transmitted the  image  for  storage,
08100	then  if  either  person  came  to  a  bad  end,  the presence of the
08200	hitch-hiker in the car would be discovered.
08300	
08400		3.2. The goal is that anyone, child or woman should  be  able
08500	to  go  anywhere  at  any  time  with  a  high  degree of safety from
08600	molestation.  This could be accomplished by having the person carry a
08700	trackable  device  and  also  having  cameras  record people crossing
08800	boundaries.  Then if something  happened  to  someone,  it  would  be
08900	discoverable who was in the area at the time.
09000	
09100		In  this, we have to take into account the fact that crime is
09200	a rare event.  Thus, the records taken are not  inspected  by  humans
09300	unless  a  crime  has  occurred.   Further safeguards are required to
09400	protect  people  against  surveillance,  namely,  if  a   person   is
09500	identified in photo that is looked at, then he gets to know about it,
09600	and gets to know what investigation it was part of.
09700	
09800	Civil rights
09900	
10000		How much civil rights should people have?  This question  has
10100	been much debated as civil rights have extended.  The traditional way
10200	civil rights have been extended is to pretend that  the  rights  have
10300	always existed and that a violation is being detected.  This obscures
10400	the truth of the matter.  Namely, individuals  in  a  society  should
10500	have all the civil rights society can afford, and these rights should
10600	be extended as time goes on.  Here are some proposals to that end:
10700	
10800		1. The arrest of a person accused of a crime should  be  very
10900	rare  even  for  murder.  As the world becomes more settled and the
11000	technology  improves,  the  feasibility  of  running  away  declines.
11100	Therefore,  the  accused  can  be  counted  on  in  most  cases to be
11200	available for his trial.   Exceptions  might  be:  the  defendant  is
11300	accused  of  attempting to injure someone and might still do it if he
11400	were free; he is accused of failing to appear for trial.
11500	
11600		2. If a person is arrested, the jail should be separate  from
11700	prisons holding convicted persons.  In fact, the jail should be a hotel
11800	with good services including entertainment in keeping with  the  idea
11900	that  the  person is presumed innocent until convicted. The custodial
12000	agency should be independent of the police  or  the  prosecutor,  and
12100	these  agencies  should  have no access to the prisoner if he doesn't
12200	want to see them.  The prisoner should have full  rights  of  private
12300	communication  with  anyone  including the right to use ciphers.  Any
12400	exception should be based on a court order. It is not clear that  our
12500	society  can  afford  this reform yet since the police depend on
12600	control of prisoners for much of their evidence.  On balance, I think
12700	we can afford this reform, and in any case it should be a goal
12750	to be implemented as soon as alternate means of evidence collection
12775	become available so that confessions and plea-copping can be
12787	dispensed with.
12800	
12900		3. Every institution including a prison develops a tradition.
13000	In the case of a prison, this tradition is usually one of cynicism,
13100	despair, and individual selfishness.  Attempts by reformers to make
13200	other attitudes dominant sometimes have success in new institutions
13300	with selected inmates and young, enthusiastic personnel, but eventually
13400	cynicism among the inmates and personnel re-establishes itself and is
13500	almost impossible to overcome.  This effect can be mitigated by
13600	running prisons as batch processing rather than continuous institutions.
13700	The idea is that a group of prisoners who will be released at about the
13800	same time should be kept together and isolated from others.  The staff
13900	will attempt to establish a good tradition in this group.  No prisoners
14000	whose terms overlap the release date of the group will be put in it.
14100	When the group is released, the facility becomes available for a new
14200	batch.  This calls form numerous small prisons rather than a few large
14300	ones.  Perhaps a number of states could share facilities in order to
14400	put the prisoners into homogeneous groupings.
14500	
14600		4. A counterpart of making crime more difficult is making going
14700	straight easier.  Once the country can afford to give each person a
14800	base income independently of his working, people who cannot bring
14900	themselves to work will have an alternative to crime.  Under present
15000	circumstances, it might pay to pension released criminals at a rate
15100	of pay less than it costs to keep them in prison.  If this were done
15200	for a those who have spent five years in prison, there would be little
15204	temptation to commit a crime in order to get a pension.
15208	
15300		In  general,  a  major  object in improving the technology of
15400	crime prevention and detection is to be able  to  afford  more  civil
15500	rights.
15600	
15700		Part of the worry about abuse of police communication
15800	systems and future surveillance systems can be relieved by 
15900	arranging for these systems to be audited by civil rights
16000	organisations.  First, civil rights organisations should have copies
16100	of the programs and the right to verify that the programs they
16200	have are the ones actually being used.  Second, all traffic on
16300	the communication net including all inquiries made should be
16400	dumped on tape drives in custody of the civil rights organisations.
16500	This must include the authorization for each inquiry.  The civil
16600	rights organisation has the right to make statistical studies
16700	with the data and the right to look at particular data when a
16800	question of abuse of the system arises.
16900	
17000		Another possibility is the wired cop.  A policeman on duty 
17100	is required to carry a miniature sound recorder that records all
17200	sounds in his presence.  When technology permits, vision can be
17300	added.  The record will be subpoenaable by either side in a case.
17400	Having such a record will permit higher standards of proof, but
17500	one of its main benefits will be to assure police that crimes
17600	they see will be prosecutable.
17700	This will reduce their desire to make the arrest process a punishment
17800	in itself.
17900	
18000		Another immediately feasible improvement is to require
18100	the police to accept checks for bail.  The courts are in a better
18200	position to resent bad checks than any other institution in our
18300	society.  Making people spend a night in jail because they don't
18400	have cash for bail is part of making arrest a punishment.