What if it were possible to have a fair witness next to every policeman in the world? What if that fair witness were a machine? We may live in the digital age, but police have not generally availed themselves of the most modern equipment available. Some civil libertarians might call this is a good thing, arguing that arming cops with advanced technology, especially for surveillance, only gives them new ways to abuse our rights. Another viewpoint, however, welcomes at least some high-tech police tools, especially those with two-way capacity. Properly deployed, a suite of high-tech devices can be our electronic fair witness to catch the bad cops red-handed and protect the good ones from false accusations.
Predictor: Seifort, Sandy
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Sandy Seifort, described as “a writer, cypherpunk and outlawyer specializing in privacy issues,” tackles the issues involved in surveillance of police work. Seifort writes: ”Around the world there is little to prevent cops from intimidating, harassing, robbing, framing, and victimizing those whom they are sworn to defend. But what if someone were watching? What if society were to find a way to manifest the ‘fair witness’ that was first conceived by Robert Heinlein in his seminal science fiction novel, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land.’ A fair witness was a person trained to observe and remember events without prejudice or bias. What if it were possible to have a fair witness next to every policeman in the world? What if that fair witness were a machine? We may live in the digital age, but police have not generally availed themselves of the most modern equipment available. Some civil libertarians might call this is a good thing, arguing that arming cops with advanced technology, especially for surveillance, only gives them new ways to abuse our rights. Another viewpoint, however, welcomes at least some high-tech police tools, especially those with two-way capacity. Properly deployed, a suite of high-tech devices can be our electronic fair witness to catch the bad cops red-handed and protect the good ones from false accusations. Today’s audio-video technologies make it feasible for juries to vicariously relive police actions. Imagine the courtroom scenes if a police helmet was equipped with a tiny video camera, perched like some mystical third eye in the center of the officer’s forehead. Add a supersensitive microphone next to each ear and, sprouting from the top of the helmet, various communications antennae. Imagine if everything the officer saw and heard was captured for later review. Depending on a police department’s budget, audio-video data could be monitored and recorded at a central site, transmitted to a locked and hardened recorder in the officer’s car … Tapes would be held in the custody of a neutral agency for possible later examination.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Peacekeeping/Warfare
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Watching the Detectives
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/sandfort.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney