Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
violating several statutes as well as the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Consti-
tution [70]. In July 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the
ruling on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the suit forward.
In other words, the plaintiffs had not produced any evidence that they personally were
victims of warrantless wiretapping.
Predictive policing
is the use of data mining to deploy police officers to areas where
crimes are more likely to occur. It is based on the observation that individual criminals
act in a predictable way. For example, criminals tend to frequent familiar areas. If a car
is burglarized, the probability increases that another car in the neighborhood will be
burglarized. The times at which crimes occur can also fall into predictable patterns [71].
Police in Santa Cruz, California, created a database of information about vehic-
ular, residential, and commercial burglaries, then used data mining to produce maps
containing 15 “hotspots” to distribute to police officers as they began their shifts. The de-
partment asked officers to make a point of passing through the hotspot areas when they
were not handling other calls. Over the first six months of the experiment, the number
of burglaries declined 19 percent [71]. The Los Angeles Police Department implemented
a similar system in an area with 300,000 residents and observed a 12 percent decline
in property crime. Predictive policing is now being practiced in many cities across the
United States [71].
A great deal can be learned about an individual when information collected at different
places and times is combined. In order to combine information from two records, the
records must share a common key. A name cannot be used as a common key, because
more than one person can have the same name, but if every individual had a unique
identification number and that identification number appeared in every database record
referring to that individual, then all of these records could theoretically be combined into
a massive “electronic dossier” documenting that person's life. In this section we survey
the debate around the establishment of a national identification card in the United
States.
The Social Security Act of 1935 established two social insurance programs in the United
States: a federal system of old-age benefits to retired persons, and a federal-state system
of unemployment insurance. Before the system could be implemented, employers and
workers needed to become registered. The Social Security Board contracted with the
US Postal Service to distribute applications for Social Security cards. The post office
collected the forms, typed the Social Security cards, and returned them to the applicants.
In this way over 35 million Social Security cards were issued in 1936-1937 [72].
