Security and Civil Liberties in the Twenty-First Century
We live in a time of rapid social change, being driven by technology. Consequently, policing is becoming increasingly difficult as the technologies driving change become more sophisticated and society becomes more dependent upon them. Criminals, too, are relying more on technology, increasing criminal opportunities and threatening civil liberties. Many scientists and technology observers suggest that the rate of technologically induced change is accelerating, compounding the problems facing law enforcement at a time when global terrorism and criminal networks are expanding. At the same time, surveillance cameras, radio frequency identification (RFID) devices, and computers are getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerful, while enormous commercial databases containing information on millions of citizens are proliferating. All of this is reducing personal privacy and fueling a growing anxiety among civil libertarians that we are moving closer to Orwell’s 1984.
Indeed, as the curve of technological advancement climbs exponentially and technology becomes cheaper, smaller, and more capable, it also becomes more usable and widely available to the average person and the average police department. As we move farther along the curve of advancement, new technology will give an increasing number of people the ability to do things that were once confined to large corporations and the military. There are, of course, tremendous benefits to society and the world as a result of this advancement. Technology drives economic prosperity, increases standards of living, and provides us with new and more powerful tools to mitigate or eliminate the death and destruction attributable to human-made and natural disasters.
Technology can also be used in a variety of ways that range from annoying to genocidal. From inexpensive microsurveillance cameras to Internet-accessible satellite imagery, citizens within our communities will have increasing capabilities to spy on their neighbors, take advantage of the weak, or in many other ways cause harm to others. Of even more concern are those individuals and groups bent on destruction and illegal gain, whose power to harm not just individuals but whole communities and nations accelerates along with the technological tools that aid them in their pursuits.
The first decade of the twenty-first century has shown there are many potential criminal and terrorist uses of technology.
Discussion of chemical and biological hazards, backpack nuclear devices and dirty bombs, and airline and border security are an everyday part of public discussion in the years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon of September 11, 2001. New topics and movies depicting humanoid robots and genetically engineered dinosaurs running amok fuel growing public concern about technology getting into the wrong hands, increasing demands for government regulation and control of technology. But while the public lives in fear of another terror attack, with the Department of Homeland Security’s terror alert system periodically changing between yellow, orange, and red, there appears to be even more concern with police misuse of surveillance technology and the growing body of private data on citizens available to law enforcement from open and private sources.
Programs to improve the ability of law enforcement to track criminals and terrorists through the sharing of information and the mining of large databases, such as the ill-fated Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Total Information Awareness (TIA) project and Florida’s Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) program, have suffered tremendous criticism from civil liberties groups and subsequent cutbacks, or outright cancellation, at the hands of policy makers. If these trends continue, law enforcement will be forced to fight the information age wars on crime and terror armed with industrial age tools.
The public’s trepidation regarding police use of technology to address law enforcement and homeland security challenges, now and in the future, is not completely without merit, and the issue remains highly controversial. For example, the use of facial recognition technology to search the faces of stadium-goers at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, in an effort to identify and apprehend criminals and terrorists faced strong public criticism to this emerging technology, notwithstanding significant homeland security concerns. A similar problem was faced by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) in developing and deploying new technology for airline safety that attempts to positively identify air travelers. Even after the 9/11 attacks, the enhanced Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) ran up against enormous hostility from a wide range of civil liberties groups and media outlets, eventually forcing the Department of Homeland Security to shelve the project.
As with technological advancement itself, however, police use of new technology is likely inevitable despite the concerns of privacy advocates. Billions of dollars continue to be invested in everything from digital statewide communication systems, computer networks, helicopters, and crime labs at the local, state, and federal levels to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) protective equipment and individual lethal and less-than-lethal weapons for officers on the street. New technologies, particularly those derived from military programs that have applicability to homeland security, are being marketed and sold to police agencies for their role in the war on terror.
But exactly how the wide range of existing and constantly emerging technologies will be used by the police, to what extent, and how efficient and effective their applications will be at stopping crime and terrorism remains to be seen. Clearly, there are important considerations regarding citizen privacy and the erosion of civil liberties. Just as clear, however, is the need to improve law enforcement operations to prevent the seriously destabilizing events such as 9/11 that create social turmoil and increase conflict within our world. Advanced and powerful technology will play a large role in achieving that improvement.
Crimes such as identity theft have severe impacts on the economy and erode faith in a nation’s financial institutions. Terrorist events such as 9/11 create fear and paranoia that leads to demands for increased security and more restrictive government policies. Small acts of terror, such as a pair of snipers randomly shooting innocent people, paralyzing an entire region of the country, can be socially and economically destabilizing. The mere perception of terror is terror, and it can have devastating and widespread effects on citizens, their nations, and the global economy. Powerful new technologies in the hands of those willing to prey on the weak and helpless for profit or whose principal desire in life is to destroy others of different faiths and cultures makes police use of similarly powerful technology to identify, apprehend, prosecute, and incarcerate these social predators a necessity.
Effective use of technology that simultaneously improves police operations and upholds constitutional liberties may be one of the biggest challenges confronting police departments in the twenty-first century. History shows us that police use of new technology is often fraught with missteps and oversteps, but despite the abuses there are few alternatives to choose from that will better provide both security and protection of civil liberties for all people. Military and corporate security involvement in domestic law enforcement operations has been growing for several decades, precisely due to their technological resources and expertise, but their organizational missions and individual training do not necessarily involve protecting the rights of citizens in the performance of their duties. Soldiers are trained and equipped to win battles in combat, and private security guards are accountable to those who pay them. Police officers within the public sector are the only group with the clear mandate and comprehensive training to protect life and property within the bounds of the Constitution. While the public police will always have some need for military and corporate assistance, it remains the essential role of public police officers to protect all people, regardless of social or economic status, while preserving their freedoms.
To achieve both of these goals—effective law enforcement and the preservation of liberty—in a rapidly changing world, it is essential that the public police take the necessary steps to thoroughly understand technology and all of its implications. The public police need to be able to efficiently procure components, integrate them into comprehensive systems, and then maintain and constantly upgrade those systems while developing the operational policies, procedures, and protocols for effective and appropriate utilization by its members. This will require that police have a completely new appreciation of technology—how it affects society, their organization, and their mission.
First, the common practice within policing is to buy and implement new technology to accomplish traditional duties better or faster or more efficiently than in the past. This has been evident during the past ten years as police departments implement modern IT networks, transitioning their manual paper files directly to a digital facsimile. The power of modern IT systems is not found in their ability to store and retrieve the digital representations of paper reports. In fact, there is little benefit in terms of administrative efficiency and cost effectiveness in replicating paper processes in a digital format. The benefit of today’s IT systems is that they allow organizations to do things that have never before been possible. Computer networks and relational databases allow agencies to gather, store, and instantaneously link what was once disparate data locked in metal file cabinets on paper reports and available only through intensive and time-consuming manual inspection. Similarly, shared wireless networks today allow both voice and data communication between multiple agencies and across jurisdictional boundaries. More than a simple patch between two adjoining radio networks or a few officers talking on interoperability channels at a crisis, shared digital networks give all officers the ability to communicate with the right people to acquire the right information to accomplish their mission and solve problems whenever and wherever they need it.
Second, modern technology and technological systems that are effective and easy to use in the real world are extremely complex and difficult to implement. And the complexity will continue to grow in the coming years. Technology is more than computers, radios, software, and hardware that are installed, turned on, and applied to solve a problem. Technologies are being interwoven into very sophisticated and intricate networks, systems of systems specifically tailored to meet a wide variety of requirements within the highly unique circumstances of individual organizations. Slight variations in the way a technology, or a component of the technology, is implemented or used can have a profound impact on the overall result.
It is therefore important that the education and training of everyone involved with technology for law enforcement purposes, from procurement, installation, and maintenance to its utilization on the street, have the necessary knowledge to do so effectively. As technologies and systems proliferate within and between agencies, the training time required to maintain proficiency and ensure effective utilization must also increase. Police chiefs and senior administrators will have to be able to articulate the importance of new technology and the need for additional training to budget offices and policy makers.
Complex technology and an increasingly technical society require police who are capable of using that technology safely, effectively, and wisely. Less-than-lethal weapons are only such when the officers using those weapons are fully trained in their use and have the judgment and restraint to use them safely. This has implications for the entry-level educational requirements, hiring practices, basic training, and continuing professional education programs of police agencies. A high school education will not be adequate preparation for the intellectual challenges facing twenty-first century police officers, and police departments should be placing a strong emphasis on locating, attracting, and hiring college graduates. To retain those educated officers and accomplish the goals necessary for information age success, the traditional recruit training academy that focuses on the obedience, conformance, and military-style discipline still popular with many agencies today must be transitioned to an educational atmosphere that develops creative, analytical thinkers who can readily adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and who are committed to life-long learning.
Lastly, police leaders need to re-create the culture of their organizations for the networked digital world within which they will operate. Accelerating changes driven by exponentially advancing technologies will directly impact crime, terrorism, and homeland security as well as the law enforcement tools and methodologies to deal with them. Emerging technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, unmanned aerial vehicles, artificial intelligence, robots, RFID chips, and ”smart dust” will be commonplace and ubiquitous, turning our communities into intelligent environments where everything and everyone is connected. To be effective in the future networked world, police departments need to consider new methods of organization and operation.
Net-centric operations are becoming the focus of many corporations, the military services, and today’s global terrorist organizations. These ”edge organizations” are characterized by the empowerment of those individuals near the edges of the organization who perform the services and actions necessary to fulfill its mission. Empowerment comes from a streamlined hierarchical structure, decentralized decision making, and dramatic increases in available information made possible by information technology. Empowerment at the edge fosters a bottom-up self-synchronization created by enhanced peer-to-peer interactions that improve situational and organizational awareness. The real-time flow of information to whoever needs it, whenever they need it means that the actions of all individuals serve the same goals, even as those goals are constantly changing. To be effective against tomorrow’s fluid and rapidly evolving criminal and terrorist networks, police agencies cannot continue to rely on the structures, policies, and methodologies developed for industries and bureaucracies of decades past.
Creating police organizations that are capable of operating effectively across the spectrum of present and emerging circumstances and situations, against the information age thugs of the twenty-first century, will take visionary leaders who can transform their organizations and build trust and confidence between police officers and the citizens they serve. Those leaders will have to develop strong police-community bonds in order to overcome the growing suspicions the public has concerning police use of technology. Lacking that public trust, it will be impossible for tomorrow’s police agencies to acquire and utilize the advanced technologies that will be necessary to provide public safety and security. That same strong leadership will also be essential to ensuring that new technologies are implemented and used correctly by administrators and officers on the street, in ways that protect civil liberties while improving police effectiveness.
Today’s and tomorrow’s police officers should understand that technology is not a silver bullet and that it is not the most important aspect of policing in the future. On the contrary, it is the police officers, police administrators, and police chiefs who are the most important component of twenty-first-century policing. Our ability to anticipate, manage, and adapt to the increasing presence and impact of technology within society will be a critical determiner of policing success in the future. Police officers who can anticipate and plan for potential social impacts of technology and then create positive applications that mitigate the negative outcomes of those impacts could have a significant effect in reducing conflict and unrest within our communities.
The new capabilities offered by continuously emerging technology can be tailored in any number of ways to accomplish police objectives, some good and some bad. Every technology can be used by people for good or for bad purposes, depending on their levels of knowledge and their levels of ethics. Every technology can be used by police in ways that either enhance safety and freedom or detract from them. Every technology has problems and shortcomings that must be carefully considered and planned for. Strengths can be maximized and weaknesses minimized with careful planning and thorough systems integration, keeping the protection of civil liberties at the top of the list of law enforcement criteria for success. Success in the future will depend on how well the police understand technology, especially the implications of using it within a free society, and how hard they strive to use it within the context of freedom and liberty.
