Crime & Technology

Oh my god, I have been so far away from my blogging in the past months. Again,

apologies for breaking my promise of being a regular. Circumstances, that’s it! No excuses. Now that I'm back, let’s see what we can talk about this time. From the fact that I broke my promise, it sure feels like committing a crime sometimes. Why not talk about use of technology in Crime: Both proliferation and prevention?

I know its again an interesting but sensitive topic but then it is something which affects us all the time. Crime is something which can really alter the way you feel, your well being, your mental state. If you live in a place which is calm, relatively low in crime, you will most likely feel safe, free and secured. On the other hand, if you live in a place where Crime is a daily affair around you, you are not likely to be free, safe or secure.

Enough to ascertain the importance of the topic. Now, lets come back to our friend technology. Technology does play a role in Crime, no doubt about it. The point is whether the technology use in prevention is enough to overplay its role in enabling crime. Good question?? I know, the answer is not simple either, which is the case which all Good Questions, isn't it?

We see or hear things where technology is being used for Crime prevention. All the time you hear about CCTV surveilance, Centralized distress call management [Dial 100, 101 & 102 or 911 services], metal detectors, x ray scanning machines on airports are all examples of use of technology for crime prevention. It is another aspect on how successful they are in different environments.

Many of you who do online shopping in India must have thought about the reasons why you now have to remember and enter one additional one time password for all credit card transaction online. Its an added layer of security. If you credit card is stolen, it could be used online as the Card number, the expiry date & the CVV numbers are all present on the card itself. Thats all you needed to use it online earlier but now this one time password or 3D secure password thing has changed that. Although, a bit late but our financial watchdogs finally thought about it and implemented it.

Look at the darker side of tech use in crime and it will give you shivers for sure. All over the world, terrorist organizations have been using technology like Sat phones, internet for their communication needs. The open nature of the internet as its harms as well. If you go to google today and search for how to assemble a bomb, you'd probably get thousands of entries some of them will surely be useful for terrorists. If you wanna know the extent of this negative use, sometime back I heard that terrorists and extremists are using JPEG images to circulate secret information about their missions via encryption and encoding.

Now, this is another area where technology is struggling to find the balance. The difference is that unlike any other fields like medical and business, this is a domain where the positive use of technology should always be ahead of the negative use. The real deal is ofcourse unknown right now. Maybe in some parts of the world, we may have the Crime Prevention tech ahead of the other side but some parts are way below standards in effective use for prevention whereas the use in proliferation is high. All voer the world, crime prevention agencies are striving to be ahead in this race.

I again would like to leave you with a question. What according to you can we as citizens of developing nations do in order to ensure effective use of crime prevention technology or atleast to enable the agencies to do it? Think about it as its really an important aspects which lies in very trivial things. Hint: How many times have you denied being frisked at a mall entrance stating you are Some One from Some big agency/deptt etc? Got your minds rolling?? Keep thinking and Keep up with technology while I wait your answers.

Cheers

N E O