Monday, 25 October 2010

New technology in 'crime control'

I am a fan of new technology but sometimes it can just go too far. This is what I would call 'scary stuff':

http://mashable.com/2010/10/25/sex-offender-tracker/

What, exactly, is the point of this aspect of the App: "an augmented reality view allows users to look through the camera lens of their smartphones to pull up addresses in any given direction" I can't see any point other than making people even more scared than they already must be if they are using this app.

I am a fan of new technology but sometimes it goes wrong: offenders unmonitored as tagging system fails

How cool- it's the twenty-first century panopticon, especially this bit: The offenders - about 300 in the state, most of them sex offenders - were never aware they were not being tracked, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Linda Eggert said.

I wait, in dread, for the day that the app in the first story gets access to the data in the second.

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