Local law enforcement increasingly relies on technology to investigate, research, and solve crimes. While the fundamentals of policing remain the same, methodologies have changed with the times. Many of the new technology tools bring up ethical concerns. Your assignment will be to create a storyboard about one of the given topics below. Use the attached file storyboard.pdf to gain an understanding of HOW you will create your one page storyboard of the topic. Be sure to use graphics, talk about ethical/social concerns, identify stakeholders, and cover the topic is as much detail as you can. Write 1 TOK style question for each section of your page (ex: "To what extent do CCTV's violate personal privacy?" or "to what extent do offender databases prevent crime?") You will give a 2-3 minute presentation on your storyboard (which will be projected on the classroom screen). The purpose of your presentation will be to identify the tech involved, identify the stakeholders, and tell the class about social/ethical concerns. You will also be expected to provide possible solutions to ethical issues. Police use of IT: Risk profiling and crime prediction Since 2001 governments and airports have invested huge sums of money in systems to detect potential terrorist threats. Software which analyses passengers' data to establish their 'risk score' is explained in Risk profiling software tackles the terrorist threat (BBC), while Airport Screening Concerns Civil Liberties Groups (NY Times) discusses the inherent concerns about profiling and privacy. Finally, Deception Is Futile When Big Brother's Lie Detector Turns Its Eyes on You (Wired) details software that can - relatively accurately - detect liars at border control points.A similar technological development is 'predictive policing': the use of software and large amounts of data to make predictions about where crimes might occur - and even who might commit them - before they happen. Predicting crime - a step towards a safer world? (BBC) is a good resource for introducing this topic, while Wired explains how U.S. Cities are Relying on Precog Software to Predict Murder (Wired). Students will also enjoy watching IBM's video Predictive Analytics - Police Use Analytics to Reduce Crime. Police use of IT: Crime mapping tools Several sites provide online crime mapping data. The UK police run Local Crime and Policing information - just type in the name of any UK town or village. Website plots area Crime-by-Crime(BBC) explains the site in more detail.CrimeReports.co.uk is another site that maps crimes in the UK, US, and Canada. Trulia Crime Maps covers the US, creating 'heatmaps' of different crime types. Online crime mapping clearly raises several ITGS social and ethical issues: the article Will crime maps work? (BBC) discusses some of the potential impacts. Online offender databases, which go one step further and include the personal details of offenders on their sites, are covered below. Police use of IT: Offender databases Family Watchdog lists details of sex offenders living in the community (US), while the Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry (PSOR)contains records of sex offenders in the state of Michigan.Florida Department of Corrections Offender Database has online records of prison inmates, released inmates, and fugitives. TheSensible Sentencing Trust is a similar database of offenders in New Zealand - interestingly this is not operated by the government, which could raise further issues related to privacy and integrity.
Mugged by a Mug Shot Online (NY Times) discusses some of the potential long term ramifications of exposing such data. Police use of IT: Surveillance tools / Smart CCTV Although regular CCTV is not an IT System in the context of ITGS, Smart CCTV, which combines video images with artificial intelligence software that looks for 'suspicious' behaviour, is - and its use raises some important ITGS issues - including surveillance and privacy. Chicago video surveillance gets smart(CBSNews) and City Gets 'Crime detecting' CCTV (BBC) both discuss this relatively new phenomenon. This brief video from New Scientist is also a good resource.Meet the face of Big Brother in NSW is a very worrying article about similar technology that is currently being applied in New South Wales, building biometric templates of citizens' faces from CCTV footage - without their permission. The wall that knows whether you're a criminal (PCPro) discusses a similar system. The Telegraph reports that Brazilian police will use 'Robocop-style' glasses at the 2014 World Cup. Police use of IT: Surveillance tools / ANPR Thames Valley Police - Road Safety, ANPR technology in Plymouth police cars (video) and New Technology Targets Criminals (BBC) explain another new technology being used by the police and private businesses alike - Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). ANPR uses OCR technology to read car number plates and automatically look them up in a database - perhaps a database of suspect vehicles or a database of authorised vehicles in a secure car park. Your Car is Being Watched (WSJ) explains that both the police and private companies are using this technology, even if cars are not suspected of wrongdoing.In Are You Being Tracked (ACLU) warns about high-speed cameras that capture your record your licence plate and the civil liberty issues surrounding the issue.
Police use of IT: Surveillance tools / Cell phone tracking
Washington state will now require a warrant (The Verge) for law enforcement to use Stingray. Police use of IT: GPS offender monitoring and tracking Prison without Walls is an excellent article about the use of GPS trackers to monitor paroled offenders. It covers the technical aspects of the system (Strand 3: IT Systems) plus the plethora of impacts and issues (Strand 1), including economic impacts and psychological impacts. However, according to the LA Timesand The Atlantic, some of these ankle GPS trackers have serious reliability and security issues which mean prisoners have been able to disable them. SecureAlert, GPS Monitoring Solutions, and G4S are all companies that develop and supply offender tracking technology - their home pages include a lot of detail and examples about how the systems work and their impacts. |
2.6 GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Topic |
Examples |
| Political processes |
Online campaigning, voting, lobbying, fund-raising and advertising. |
| Government information sites |
For example, travel warnings, tourist information, environmental information and warnings, government policies, city government websites. |
| Access to, and updating of, personal information held on government databases |
Collection, storage and updating of personal data: for example, driving licence, TV licence, tax returns, passport applications and renewals, medical records, military service records, social security information, online police records. |
| Government control and use of information |
Censorship, data matching across agencies, archiving, biometric data, national identity cards. |
| Law and order |
Police surveillance, terrorist monitoring, DNA data. |
| Military |
Cyberwarfare, smart weapons, espionage, battlefield technology. |
Political processes
Government information sites
Many governments now use the Internet to provide citizens with access to advice, services, and information about government operations.
The Internet allows access to a much wider range of information than would be possible with paper based documents gives 24 hour access to government services, and means information can be updated more readily.
Media rich government information sites offer advice on topics ranging from health to tax and student finance.
Open Government in action
Take a look at data.gov.uk - this UK government site gives everyone access to government data through a set of open standards including such datasets as - crime statistics, housing statistics and ordnance survey maps and in the USA Obama's open Government initiative - Obama's government is opening all datasets to the public through this initiative.
Also in the USA recovery.gov charts the progress of the government in implementing the 2009 Recovery Act. The website provides information on how money is being spent, displays maps of local projects to stimulate growth, and allows citizens to report suspected governmental fraud, waste or abuse. Also view other USA sites like USASpending.gov, usaspending.gov, andforeignassistance.gov.
Online government services can have many positive impacts, but equality of access is also a major issue. Warning over 'us and them' online services (BBC) discusses potential problems with the UK government's online service provision.
Some government sites to examine for policies (notice how they vary in design and content):
Government Information Sites Assignment
Access to, and updating of, personal information held on government databases
Government databases: DNA databases
DNA databases are used by some governments to store DNA samples taken from people arrested or convicted of a crime.CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) is operated by the FBI, and the UK's National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database are the two largest DNA databases in the world. Their web pages explain some of the issues and impacts of DNA databases.
DNA Database: Key case studies (BBC) highlights some of the successes (and failures) of DNA databases in solving old crimes.
Accuracy (data integrity) is a critical issue in any database:Outrage at 500,000 DNA database mistakes (The Telegraph) discusses problems with the UK's National DNA Database.
Another related issue is the possibility of 'genetic profiling' - i.e. discriminating against people (for example, for employment or insurance purposes) based on genetic markers that may indicate susceptibility to particular diseases.
Government databases: Citizen information
Governments routinely (and necessarily) collect and store data about their citizens. However, large, connected computerised databases open the door for new possibilities - good and bad.In some cases, electronic databases simply offer a quicker way to perform tasks that have long been possible - though privacy concerns may still be raised.. The ATF Wants 'Massive' Online Database to Find Out Who Your Friends Are, for example, discusses a large database requested by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to help with criminal investigations.
U.S. Terrorism agency to tap a vast database of citizens (Wall Stret Journal) details a March 2012 proposal - which was passed into law - allowing the National Counterterrorism Center to examine government data on citizens even if they were not suspected of a crime.
Government control and use of information
Exercise 14.1: Internet filtering, censorship, and surveillance
Reporters without Borders and the Open Network Initiative (ONI) both maintain up to date information about global Internet surveillance and censorship. In addition, the following articles are useful for stimulating conversation about types of appropriate and inappropriate content, and whether government control of the internet is appropriate.- Fears over pro-suicide web pages (BBC)
- The rise of Hate 2.0 (BBC)
- BT given 14 days to block access to Newzbin (BBC)
- Pakistan telecoms authority to block 'obscene' texts (BBC)
- Australia planning to block 10,000 websites (The Telegraph)
- David Cameron rejects automatic block on porn to protect children (BBC)
- You Can't Say That on the Internet (NY Times)
- Opt-in Internet porn filter across 4 major UK ISPs humming along nicely (ARS)
- Russians selectively blocking Internet (NY Times)
- How Internet Censorship Actually Works in China (The Atlantic)
- Countries Where Internet Freedom Has Declined Most (The Atlantic)
- Vietnam internet restrictions come into effect (BBC)
- Google Transparency Report - details requests for content removal made to Google
- Google's Gatekeepers (NYTimes)
- Google blocks access to anti-Islam film in protesting countries (Fox)
- Wikipedia editor allegedly forced by French intelligence to delete 'classified' entry
- Twitter Blocks Neo-Nazi Twitter Account in Germany (The Atlantic)
- The dark side of Facebook
- Censorship - Stuff You Should Know Podcast May 2015 (46m)
- Internet Kill Switch - Tech Stuff May 2015 (61m)
Law and order
Law and Order Assignment
'Stingrays' are devices that impersonate a cell phone tower to trick phones into connecting to them, allowing traffic to be captured. Military
Cyberwarfare...
...is composed of an attack or a compromise of a computer-based system. Rather than using bullets and bombs, the warriors in these confrontations use bits and bytes. Using the current technology, hackers find weaknesses in their targets and exploit them. There are three major sectors targeted by most nations involved in cyberwarfare:
- Financial attacks could interrupt the world’s major markets by taking down electronically-controlled commodity exchange networks, or by shutting down web-based operations of major banks or retailers.
- Infrastructure attacks can damage a nation by shutting down critical utility systems, such as electrical grids, or by wrecking havoc on others, such as opening dams, or interfering with the air traffic control system.
- Governmental attacks can shut down the ability of government officials to communicate with one another, steal secret digital communications, or release things like tax information, social security information, or other personal data to the public.
- Useful strategy against terrorists by allowing governments to trace the attack’s origin.
- Less deadly than conventional warfare.
- Giving the enemy forces incorrect information about an assault.
- Ally troop movements’ coverage.
- Interception of information about enemy forces.
- Fast-evolving technology mean unprepared defense by many nations.
- Hackers can infiltrate ally military or air traffic control system and can cause physical harm or casualty.
- An enemy can attack from anywhere, even from within the targeted state.
- Hard-to-cure Cyber-epidemic caused by viruses (ex: Code Red, Slammer and Nimda) that can cause billions of dollars worth of damage to companies, businesses, and government
Social and Ethical impacts
Security
With highly advanced technology, hackers can shut down the victim’s firewall making his computer system more susceptible to attacks. Companies under these kinds of attack tend to have a hard time recovering the vital data that have been stolen; restricting the company from expanding. Because the Net is not regulated by the government, it is up to these private companies to ensure the safety of their networks. In a bigger scale, by infiltrating the enemy’s nuclear system, a hacker can cause global destruction by initiating a nuclear warfare.
Main concerns in this category are:
- Firewalls – make sure your firewalls are always up and running.
- Anti-virus – have the right software that protects your system from harmful factors.
- Internet – surf the Net with caution; avoid suspicious websites that may contain spywares or backdoor Trojans.
- Cyber security quiz
- Cyber security simulation & modelling
- Cyber security challenge UK - How to solve a cipher
- How stuff works - Is cyber war coming?
- rt.com -Cyber crime precedes cyber wars Kaspersky inc video Articles
- Cyber attacks & Warfare - Rules of engagement
- BBC Focus Feb 2011 - Cyber war is here
- Hostile States using cyberwarfare to attack UK infrastructure - Guardian (Dec 2012)
- Iran establishes cyber-HQ jpost.com (Dec 2012)
- Is the World on the brink of cyber warfare (Yahoo news Sept 2012)
Links