Issue link: http://lawandordermag.epubxp.com/i/139048
information about such things as who family and friends are, religious affliation, medical conditions, political leanings and other personal matters shown in the gathering and use of GPS surveillance (and other electronic records) without proper court oversight that protects Fourth Amendment and other rights. As implausible as such matters might seem in societies in which law, equity and justice rule, the ramifcations of precrime detecting would raise new thoughts similar to those once pondered by Juvenal in his Satire, or Socrates and Plato in the Republic—the question of "who guards the guardians?" Finally, while many of the frst computers were given the name HAL, will the frst precrime programs run on these computers be given the name Agatha? It is the year 2054 and precognitive information has stopped all murders from occurring. "Precrime works." Photo courtesy of Rui Jamp Stephenie Slahor, Ph.D., J.D., writes in the felds of law enforcement and security. She can be reached at drss12@ msn.com. LaO Post your comments on this story by visiting www.lawandordermag.com in which someone is pre-arrested for a thought. And one step further— would there be banning of individuals from a particular place or event in the guise of preventing "bad" behavior before it occurs? Would the chant be that such precrime detecting is "for the public good" or "for public safety" and therefore something that should be allowed even though it stampedes over individual legal rights? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was founded in 1990 and confronts matters involving technology and free speech, privacy, innovation, consumer rights and legal/Constitutional rights of individuals. The EFF challenges legislation or other actions that violate individual rights. A recent incident involving GPS surveillance technology used in Massachusetts on a car owned by an arson suspect (and his passenger) saw the defendants later prosecuted, but they challenged the misrepresentations used to obtain a search warrant and the subsequent installation of a GPS device on the car. The EFF argued, as amicus curiae, about the privacy questions involved in traveling in a tracked vehicle, including the fact that information gleaned could point to a windfall of Click on EInfo at - www.lawandordermag.com reader service #15 www.lawandordermag.com 35