The Blooming Sisters is a blog dedicated to creativity and providing the barebones behind-the-scenes work for Lotus Made, a site dedicated to replacing the long lost Alchemy of Etsy.
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Does anyone remember the movie Minority Report? What about my 2010 blog post about pre-crime mathematical algorithms being used in D.C.? (Not to mention my husband's absolutely amazing genius cousin Joey wrote an algorithm of his own when he went to RPI as a collaborative thesis on speculative use of such technology.) Well, now the District has compounded on their pre-crime software and guessing games by collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security and precariously balancing one more item in the balance between privacy and invasion: Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.
According to an article by Nick Allen in the Los Angeles Telegraph, FAST would allow crime technicians to "predict" how likely someone would be to commit a crime based on biometric feedback. Using already-common technological items such as cameras, sensors and pressure pads, they would attempt to detect fidgeting; minute changes in body heat and movements; voice pitch; eye movements, pupil changes or blink rates; and even changes in a person's breathing. Intertwined with algorithms that already attempt crime prediction based on previous M.O.'s, FAST proves to be a dangerous technology in anyone's hands.
Could you imagine the implications of FAST when connected with a laws such as the California governor just vetoed, allowing law enforcement officers to confiscate, without a warrant, any mobile device on a person who was arrested and providing them likely access (with today's smartphones) to email, social networks, photos and all phone calls and texts? How about the fact that now you can implant a chip in your child, just like those implanted in pets, to expedite medical information in hospitals...or that even smaller GPS-enabled RFID microchips can be force-shot into you (at a distance of up to 1100 meters) with as little pain as a mosquito bite and you'd never know that you were being monitored? Keep in mind lately the insecurity of RFID debit card theft.....if the right person snuck behind you and scanned your hand, they could glean as much information as the chip contained. The government can now know where anyone is, pick up whoever they wanted based on a guess, and take any information on you or in you. The United States has indeed become a dangerous place to live. Even if you were not a religious person or a person of a faith in the Rapture and the 7 years of desolation prior to the coming of the new Earth, this could raise the hackles on any human being who wanted to keep private matters private.
The government states that no personal information would be collected during experiments which are currently being rolled out in large venues (they deny it being at a large public airport, though it would be the perfect initial setup). How long until, just like the images from body scanners at airports, the "uncollected data" shows up publicly on the internet?
There's some food for thought: publicly flaunted identity theft.
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