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GPS-Enabled Criminals In Massachusetts
Fun at LinuxWorld writes "Following on the heels of California's plan to put GPS receivers in cars, Massachusetts wants to fit criminals who violation restraining orders with GPS devices. Wearing the device would be a condition of probation (meaning you can refuse, but then you get to serve your time in jail), and fines and punishments would be imposed if the person entered "restricted zones" (under the terms of the restraining order). With all the reports of GPS being used to restrict the rights of innocent people, is this any better? Will it fix the problem?"
While I did not approve of the use of GPS in the previous discussion, in this case (when one choses to break the law), it is appropriate. Already there is precedence within the law for restriction or elimination of certain personal freedoms and rights, especially if felonies have been committed. Felons are not allowed to own guns I believe as well as give up the right to vote. Especially given the violent nature behind many restraining order allocations, this is a good implementation of GPS tracking technology. Already there are incredible difficulties with the victims of violent crimes proving that the subject of the restraining order has violated those agreements. This technology will help buttress victims claims of restraining order violation and perhaps prevent further violent actions.
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"...criminals who violation restraining orders..."
Hmm, the editors are great at proofreader articles.
... namely that we should be treated like criminals? eh, I gotta talk to my state senator about this.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
For some reason you go out of GPS reception?
Being an avid GPS user myself I know that its easy for them to lose signal. How can they tell if you were just at an angle that the antenna didnt like? Or went into a building? or better yet wrapped it with a metal foil to deceive the antenna?
How is this any better than existing tethers?
#include sig.h
and turn them on as the authorities see fit ... no court order required.
time to go look at EFF and EPIC sites again.
maybe this time I'll actually donate like I've meant to before ...
how do I get my original account back when @home died long ago?
So the collars explode when you enter a restricted zone?
With all the reports of GPS being used to restrict the rights of innocent people,
Huh? All what reports? I.e., of things that have actually happened? (Yes, yes, GPS in rental cars and speeding tickets and pay-by-the-mile and yadda yadda yadda. How is that restricting "rights", exactly? The "right" to break the law without having someone look over your shoulder?)
is this any better?
Um, I fail to see the connection. Because saying, for a moment, that I accept your thesis of GPS being used to "restrict the rights" of innocent people, yes, using GPS to track convicted criminals is definitely "better". How are these two things even related? Further, how is this fundamentally any different from the electronic monitoring systems that have been used to restrict offenders to their home or to a city. Wait - let me guess - now not only do you know they're in the city, but you know *exactly where they are* - *gasp*! Information that could be, you know, useful in the case of people who have violated restraining orders, of which information about the subjects location in proximity to someone else is fundamental.
Or, wait: would you rather send them to jail?
Will it fix the problem?
Yes. Technology can be used to fix problems.
Or is this going to be one of those things that draws out the latent Luddites in the normally pro-technology slashdot community?
If having a probation officer physically assigned to the criminal 24x7 would be ok, then so is this. Now, if you fundamentally disagree with the criminal justice system or "the Man" in general, then you'll likely disagree with this just for the sake of it.
This is great - I have no problem with this whatsoever.
Criminals are not innocent people. If you're guilty of the crime, you get to do the time, and if part of that time includes an electronic leash, I think society is all the better for it. An example are these sexual predators... Right now we release them and, other than checking in with an officer from time to time, they're out roaming. Wouldn't it be nice if a cop was summoned to collect them if they went anywhere near a school, or left a certain restricted area of their neighborhood, etc?
Finally, a good use for the "evil" Big Brother tactics.
How long before we just start putting criminals into the Running Man game?
There is an inherent difference between forcing -everyone- to have a tracking device and applying this new technology to already current methods (radio leg collars, etc) employed in the case of someone breaking the law. Making enforcement of restraining orders possible to this level is a Good Thing(tm) in my book.
Frankly, I don't want the police having the ability to track my car at will, especially given the new freedoms under the Patriot Act to surveil poeple without a warrant under certain circumstances. If you want to do that, that's fine, but making it mandatory in cars is extreme, and I doubt I'm the only person that doesn't have complete faith in the authorities to use it only for my protection.
It's called low-jack and onstar. They already do this. The problem with making it mandatory is that people do not want the police to be able to find the car unless the victim so chooses. With low-jack and onstar, the victim has to give the permision for low-jack and onstar to tell the police where the car is. With it in by default, the police may not need anything in order to track you, and it may be made illegal to disable it in your own car (insert big brother concerns here). Additionally, making it mandatory would probably increase the cost by several hundred dollars (not a small amount, even on a 20K car). For now, it remains an accessory or luxury item.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Right...sounds fair, but how do they insure that the GPS devices actually stay on those people? If they could take them off, they probably would; they'd throw them in moving cars or something to make it look convincingly like they still have it. The only way to insure that they didn't do that would be to monitor them constantly, which kind of defeats the purpose, or find a way to attach the devices so they cannot be removed...which might be...er, painful.
Put GPS on busses and taxis. Allow cellphone(with GPS) network users to access this information. Plot in a mapping system. Then a user can enter into their PDA/cellphone:"I want to get to 123 someroad.", and it will tell where they have to travel on foot to get to the bus station. Or have it hail a cab for them, so the nearest cab driver that's empty can come to their location.
God spoke to me.
the timeframe on probation can exceed the remaining time on sentance...
choice 1- get out in 5 years, choice 2- get out now-but have 15 years probation.
in some rare cases, time served+ probation can exceed maximum penalty time serverd-for an offense....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This seems like a perfectly good way for probation officers to check on their flock. It will also provide a disincentive for future criminal behavior under the program.
Remember, that these folks have already had due process of law.
Or maybe a nice GPS "collar" device that occasionally blurts out "Shun me!".
For decades, we have accepted the idea of criminals having ankle bracelets that trigger an alarm if the person leaves the area of their home.
It sounds like using GPS is just a natural extension of this technology that allows them to be more productive, increase safety to those around them until they've proven themselves, and reduce costs by allowing more non-violent offenders a chance to rehabillitate without being as big a burden to the taxpayer (eg, in prison).
If we're really outraged about the use of GPS to track the same folks that would have had a radio-locater alarm bracelet before, then I ASSUME that everyone was just as upset about the pre-existing technology.
Right?
GPS is a tool, and it can be used for good or bad. The same is true for Nuclear Power. There are many in our society that vehemently oppose anything with 'nuclear' or 'atomic' in the name because they have an objection that's more religious then practical. The same is increasingly true with GPS. The funny thing is, many of the people on slashdot who scoff at the anti-nuclear extremists turn around and apply the same standard of evidence to the evils of GPS that their anti-nuke opponents do to atomic energy.
My only thought is: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Since this doesn't seem to qualify as excessive, crual, or unusual (at least in this context), I don't see what the problem is.
I work in a court and deal with defendants on probation on a regular basis. This device simply is not needed.
First, the vast majority of people on probation to not run away.
Second, the ones who do stop reporting are almost always found at home.
Third, the few remaining get found, at most, a few years later.
And the fourth reason is the most important. Anyone who was going to run would simply remove the device and run. The entire purpose of electronic tether is to let people out of jail who are NOT a threat to society who will almost certainly NOT run. These are people with hardly any criminal records and who have good jobs.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
In addition to not seeing any problem with this, I see it as a great good for society. Keeping lesser criminals out of jails could save a lot of public money, and reduce the chances that they'll become "hardened" criminals.
I totally agree that GPS could be a godsend for helping enforce restraining orders. Instead of you calling the police after the lurking ex-boyfriend heaves a brick through your window and runs off laughing (or worse, no one calling the police, as he runs in with a baseball bat), the police are already on their way from the moment he parks in the alley and hides in your bushes. Currently restraining orders are *very* difficult to enforce, especially because violations are frequent and often difficult to prove.
But like any reduction of privacy, what are the possible abuses? Who is doing the tracking, and who has access to the information? If it's automated, and locked-down, and no one can check a location unless a buzzer goes off because parole or the restraining order was violated, cool.
There's a big benefit here either way, but if we can avoid sticky situations we should... i.e., suppose the felon is *not* violating any rules, but his ex is a secretary for the PD, and tracks his every move constantly to figure out who he's dating now (let's give her a call...), where he's working now (let's call them too and see if we can get him fired).
There are probably other risks; in this case I think the benefits outweigh them... but it's important to check this stuff.
Even though I agree that states shouldn't require GPS in cars, you have some faulty logic there. If meals for wheels provides the same meal that a prison does on a given day, does that mean they think their patrons are inmates? No... the two are mutually exclusive.
To put it more clearly, one is about taxes, the other is about probation restrictions.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
They're crossing over into a scary use of GPS, however.
I can get a restraining order against you even if you have been convicted of no crime. At some point, I can see GPS being used to restrict people who haven't been convicted, but have restraining orders against them. It's not that slippery a slope to see this being used on innocent people.
GPS as terms of probation are fine by me, but this is a different question altogether.
Instead of tagging criminals with GPS devices let's stop crime altogether by requiring everyone to wear one. That way anyone even thinking of committing a crime will know that he can be tracked and would be crazy to act on the impulse. I know that some of you can argue that you committed no crime and should not be subject to such treatment, but being good citizens you truly have nothing to fear because the state aided by technology will protect your freedoms. By chipping(TM) every man, woman and child we can finally insure a blissful existence marred with no crime. If we equip the devices with 2 way communication we can also insure protection from accidents by having a central computer analyse the data collected from the collars, interface it with vehicle data, cash register data, bank and health records and warn the wearer in case an incident is imminent. Warnings such as "Please step away from the edge", "Please cross the street in the designated area only", "You have exceeded the speed limit by 7 MPH", "This purchase will cause your bank account to be overdrawn when the rent cheque is cashed" and "Please decrease the intake of fatty foods" (when ordering 3 Big Mac combos @ McDonalds) will insure that the population is healthy, happy and trouble free. To further improve the system we can incorporate mild electric shocks to be delivered when several warnings will go unheeded or distribute calming drugs when the heart rate of the wearer exceeds the safe limit as determined on the basis of the medical data. In the next phase the genotype of the wearer will be stored in the central computer and dating will be made less stressful by matching candidates on the basis of genetic compatibility and administering electric shocks or Viagra to discourage or coerce the wearer into conversation with the members of the opposite sex. I think that Slashdot crowd (especially) will agree with me that such system will undoubtedly bring value to a life of an average geek and embrace it wholeheartedly. Yours Truly B.B.
Do not look into the laser with remaining eye.
At Starbucks, two kids with a laptop.
Jim:
"Hey Frank, check this out, I just got a signal tracker ping!"
Frank:
"Woah, cool, check it out..."
Jim: tap tap tap
"Look at this man, it's a felon tracker from the Department of Corrections probation department."
Frank:
"Freaky!!!"
Jim:
"Based on signal strength, it's, oh, 12 feet from us... "
Frank:
"Dang! it must be that guy over there putting sugar in his latte."
Jim, louder than before:
"Hey, that guy's a felon on probation"
Stares from all corners of the store meet the man's, and bedlam ensues.
No thanks! Anyone remembers the Scarlet Letter? Is this the kind of America our forefathers died creating and defending?
"Piter, too, is dead."
They must get a lot better coverage than mine. It always craps out inside my house, any store, and downtown with buildings higher than 5 stories.
Seriously. If you're "tracking" someone, they can fall off the map for quite a while before they show up again, and for very legitimate reasons. I don't see how this is reliable enough to trust.
Better to test them on the criminals I guess. Makes you wonder how many different devices you're going to have once you're a ex-con driving in California with your GPS taxed car on that nifty pay-as-you go GPS insurance scheme.
Right now there is little motivation for jamming GPS signals. The occasional terrorist, or the army, might decide to interfere with the signal, but otherwise I suspect there haven't been too many buyers of the GPS jamming system that was being marketed in Russia a few years ago.
... the only reason to use GPS is to know where people are whenever one wants) or by tracking parollees with GPS, we've just given a large population of people a really big incentive to jam GPS signals.
That could all change.
Certainly by tracking citizens in their cars with GPS (ostensibly for taxation purposes, but anyone with any technical knowhow knows you can read an odometer for tax purposes
As a pilot who uses GPL in both IFR and VFR flight, this worries me. Not because I can't fly without it (I can, and have the equipment to do so, though it certainly adds to the workload), but because I may be in the middle of a busy procedure when some jackass decides to jam the signal so he can see his girlfriend in the "forbidden zone", and the odds of losing my signal have just gone up by orders of magnitude thanks to a (perhaps well meaning, but certainly) intrusive big-brother application of the same technology.
I don't argue that tracking convicted criminals with GPS is a legitimate idea. I do argue, however, that it isn't a very good idea, and the unintended consiquences are worrisome.
OBTW - Technically, when one pays a speeding fine, one is "convicted" of the "crime" of "speeding." Does that make GPS monitoring of their car for all future driving a legitimate idea. How many people are going to start jamming the signal simply as a matter of asserting their privacy, and screwing up boat/air navigation at the same time?
This is a boneheaded idea, even if the intention is good.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Criminals have the right to choose: either they do their jailtime, or they wear such a device. That's more choice than they have now, so it gives them more freedom. On top of that, if they are locked in jail, the police knows where they are too...
Besides, I guess many people would prefer to be free, even if that means wearing GPS devices.
In high school there was a classmate of mine that was on probation, or parole or something and he had to wear some type of tracking device around their ankle. At the time I was absolutely appalled by it as all he was charged with was non-violent drug offenses. Why was our government tracking this kid who was not a danger to anybody?
I think that this could be a very useful and progressive technology, provided that the punishment fit the crime. I have been growing increasingly skeptical of the prison system. I really don't think that it provides much deterrence, rehabilitation or punishment that couldn't be provided in some other manner. People who are only hurting themselves should not be criminals at all. Liquidation and seizure of all assets, combined with forced labor (say weekly) would be a much more effective deterrent / punishment for white collar crimes than a prison sentence. The only thing that prison should be reserved for are violent offenders who simply must be removed from society. However, violent offenses vary in severity, and people should be given second chances. I think that this could be very useful in providing a more effective half way step between prison and complete freedom.
On the other hand, every year in this country, penalties for crimes go up. It used to be that there were laws that had been around for generations, and being tough on crime meant punishing people when they broke those laws. When done, the public agreed that justice was served, and that was that. Now every time any big crime hits the news these paranoid soccer moms pop up screaming for harsher punishment. And the politicians happily comply so they look like they are "hard on crime". You can't keep doing this forever - at some point you have to decide that the punishment is right for the crime and leave it!
So yeah, this is definitely a valid tool for law enforcement. However, like any tool it can be used or misused, and I am very reluctant to give law enforcement new tools as long as our political environment is tolerant, encouraging and even demanding of their misuse.
Sure it will, but you have to correctly identify what the main problem is and who has the problem.
You see, the globalists think of us as "resources", we are "human resources". We stopped being "personnel" quite a long time ago now, and this is very important, language has meaning, it is not random.
We are their "stock", their property, what they use to maintain power, control, wealth, to keep themselves at top of the food chain. They know they can't just overnight declare this,it would obviously spark a physical and violent revolution and one they would lose because they are so vastly outnumbered, so over a generation or so they have to use what is called "conditioning" to get us to accept our roles as "stock" to have enough of the population in full acceptance mode that the remainders-the "resisters" or "insurgents" can be effectively dealt with.
They advance on all fronts,every day,every day, using the time honored methods of incrementalism combined with the Hegelian dialectic of garnering a Pavlovian response from somewhat less intelligent creatures.
At first,to get this ball rolling briskly, those they demonise are universally viewed as "needing it", whichever new step is taken, as in this article. Vast majority of people would look at just this little tiny reference, and never bother to look at it in terms of the big picture, because they are ordered/conditioned not to. So, generic "bad guys" get the more draconian treatment first, and if they don't have enough legitimate badguys, it is *easy* for them to artificially create more, example, the war on some drugs.
But wait, what about "the children"? They are innocent, why must they be tagged?
See, if you can't immediately demonize to further the agenda, you must manufacture "threats" and nowadays all you need is a few high profile cases, mumble the word security"" and 99% of the parents out there will *eat it raw* having their kids tagged. They might not like it, it might make them uneasy, but between being overly scared and conditioned into thinking that "reistance is futile", they will in fact *eat itraw*, same as they have eaten any number of things raw that have to do with their children over the last 20 or so years, which is the roughh time frame when this really started taking off. This is an endgame scenario for them now,they are dramatically speeding matters up, because they finally have enough tech to pull it off. It is really that simple. They didn't have quite the correct kinds and amounts of tech, nor did they have enough conditioned people, conditioned from birth, or conditioned over a long enough time frame to affect an adult, but they now have *all that stuff*. And the kids and younger adults not knowing any better grow up thinking quite a few rather heinous aspects of their lives are "normal" because they have no other practical frame of reference.
It is much easier to keep controlling a population if they have been raised "controlled" in the first place. they won't even know it's been done to them, and anyone telling them otherwise, that "things" used to be quite different and a lot more free, is "an old kook" or something to them. They may intellectualise on it a little, but never really understand it, no more than a bushman may really understand what a wall street banker's world is like, or vice versa.
They want to get everyone acclimated to the idea that we must be like walmart inventory stock, you will need to always carry an "id" that is tagged, and your vehicle must also, in many diverse ways. Why, they need "taxes" and to be able to do "road surveys", so they need cameras on all the roads ane eventually rfid readers. And eventually, just follow it down, they will magically proclaim that just carrying ID "isn't working well enough, the 'terrorists and hackers' have discovered magical ways how to circuimvent a carried ID."
Then what comes next? This is an easy extrapolation. Hint: look what they do to all ho
Back in the '20s, alcohol prohibition was an attempt to impose one group's idea of morality on the whole population by law. It was unenforcable (at the time). The attempt to impose it funded the rise of organized crime (and also drove the rise of the BATF, which waged a shooting war on the law-scoffing citizens).
Eventually the government threw in the towel. (And one of the crime kingpins and his children, funded by their laundered money, became major powers in the government. He became an ambassador. One son became president and another his attorney general. A third is a senator and a major figure in his party to this day.)
The government immediately turned around and did the same thing by banning some potentially recreational drugs - starting with two that were popular among a relatively small underclass. Thirty years and a civil-rights movement later the drugs in question were popular among the bulk of a generation. The government's bogus pronouncements about the dangers of THOSE drugs led the citizens to distrust their warnings about ALL drugs and experiment with many others, leading to more bans and tighter enforcement.
The perceived success of "civil disobedience" and "passive resistance" in the cases of alcohol prohibition, civil rights, and oppositon to the Vietnam engagement, led to their use against the unpopular drug bans, as well. The opposition thought massive civil disobedience would overload the police, court, and jail systems, again leading the government to throw in the towel.
But this time the popularity of the banned substances wasn't cross-generational. There was an age gap. The users and their supporters were almost entirely young, while the government was in the hands of their elders (who perceived it as a youth-corrupting evil). So the government did NOT throw in the towel, but pushed harder. By the time the youth (or at least those who had avoided jail) began to achieve positions of power the "drug war" was institutionalized. (And with "bipartisan" support how do you vote against it?)
The overloading of the criminal justice system appeared. But the government worked around it:
The system of plea bargaining was established, slashing the load on the courts.
Drug offenses were prioritized for jail time, producing jail overcrowding, which was "solved" by shortening sentences. But with the mandatory minimums for drug offenses it was the "real" criminals - thieves, burglars, muggers, rapists, murderers - who got out progressively earlier, leading to description of the justice system as a "revolving door".
RICO allowed the siezure of the assets, not just of those CONVICTED, but of those ACCUSED, or even randomly when assets were found. This made the "drug war" self-funding (on the same model as the Spanish Inqisition) and created an incentive for police to ignore "real" crime and go after drug offenses.
A major reason alcohol prohibition was unenforcable was the difficulty of "mining" files for information. But the rise of the drug war occurred during the rise and cost reduction of automated information and surveilance technology, eliminating this impediment.
In a series of positive feedback loops both drug-related and non-drug-related crime have escalated to where the US is the country with the highest percentage of its population in prison or otherwise under government control due to conviction for "crimes".
Meanwhile the government culture now refuses to "throw in the towel" on any failed law. Congress continues to pass more laws, banning more things - some of which are quite as unpopular with the current generations as drug bans were with The Boomers. Cryptography, whistle-blowing, fair use, and reverse engineering (to name just four) are all being criminalized, in the classic salami-slice approach. Meanwhile the drug-law forged legal tools are being
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So when the next terrorist attack occurs and the President orders GPS disabled so that the terrorists can't use them, how will we track these guys?
[o]_O
This is a really bad idea. GPS receivers have a number of issues, including the fact that they are not precisely accurate. There is room in many areas for as much as 30m (50') of error - which can be more than the distance specified in the restraining order. Also, there are many locations where two people may be proximate, but still not technically in violation (a grocery store with a movie theater next to it). Remember, it is a restraining order from proximity to the PERSON, not a property.
More importantly though, someone has to actually monitor the GPS device reports. Now, I realise of course that all slashdot readers religiously read their logs, but it is not necessarily reasonable to expect a law enforcement organization to do so.
Finally, just as a parting shot - restraining orders (at least in America) do NOT represent a felony conviction - merely an assertion of fear of violence or harm from the person being restrained. Putting a GPS on someone before they are convicted is just plain wrong.
Would you care for a jelly baby?