How technology is accessible - and inaccessible - to law enforcement, criminals and "civilians"
Who gets to deploy a drone, conduct a DNA testing, or start a dark web?
Working in criminal justice today means having ample opportunities to utilize different technologies to improve investigation, analysis, and surveillance. Facial recognition, DNA testing and matching, GPS location, robots... These are only some of the examples of fledged technologies implemented in the process. Even as reflected in many U.S.-based movies -- there is always an analytical team/person who has the right skill set and intelligence to take advantage of the technology and serve the larger team’s needs depending on the situation (Like Penelope Garcia in “Criminal Minds”). If the whole investigation team is a brain, the person who is responsible for the technological analytics is like the nervous tissue that connects each part of the brain and makes it functional.
Penelope Garcia in “Criminal Minds”
But technology itself is a mystery - depending on who uses it and how they use it, it has different implications. Technologies are neutral, accessible on the market, and could be utilized by anyone, including criminals. This is also one reason why law enforcement has to keep updating and educating its members on these technologies. For example, criminals use the dark web, which refers to the web pages intentionally hidden from search engines and is accessible only with a special web browser (e.g. using onion routing technology), to facilitate illegal activities. And because the pages go unmonitored, it’s being monetized in ways that the authorities can’t control, especially around illegal activities. And the cryptocurrency it used - Bitcoin, is also hard to trace. The drug marketplace Silk Road is one notorious example of the dark web. Of course, since criminals know how to use the dark web, police need to become better at this in order to break into their web pages. Earlier this year, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies also tracked down another massive global dark web and arrested 179 people.
However, when law enforcement handles the case, it is important to not associate one technology with criminals. Some dark web pages are also used as gateways for whistleblowers to provide journalists with documents. Vice journalist Joseph Cox mentioned that Silk Road technically belongs to both deep web and dark web, in that dark web could be considered as a very small part of the broader deep web.
Deep web is an encrypted or unindexed web page that is hidden from conventional search engines. But these pages can be hidden for a variety of reasons, not only to facilitate illegal activities. Cox also pointed out that although the deep web could be larger than we thoughts, the majority of the deep web is boring, including corporate databases.
Dark web or deep web are one of the examples showing how one technology can be utilized by law enforcement, criminals or civilian. Another example is DNA testing. What can an artist learn from a hair left by a stranger in a coffee shop? Gender, race, relatedness, skin, behavior, face, surname, weight, health, ancestry, identity… Heather Dewey-Hagborg talked about how fragile our identity can be in current days in her Ted Talks, and she is not even a detective - she’s an artist.
“If DNA evidence can be hacked, forged, and planted like any other evidence, does it deserve its elevated status?” —— Heather Dewey-Hagborg
Heather Dewey-Hagborg, founder of “Invisible“
Dewey-Hagborg went further and designed “Invisible,” a genetic privacy spray for sale that could erase 99.5% of the DNA people leave in public. The product has been widely reported by different media, and it seems that everyone can buy it. “Invisible” was designed to challenge the infallibility of the DNA “gold standard:” as Dewey-Hagborg wrote, “if DNA evidence can be hacked, forged, and planted like any other evidence, does it deserve its elevated status?”
video introducing “Invisible“
Although designed as an artistic provocation, the fact that everyone can purchase the product makes it easier for people with bad intentions to take advantage of the DNA eraser, and it requires law enforcement to rethink their approach and understanding of DNA evidence.
However, there are also instances where technologies are only accessible to the government body or law enforcement agencies due to policies. Since these high techs are fairly accessible on the market, the only thresholds are the knowledge required to use them and the relevant policy. In China, government surveillance is ubiquitous in each city - physically, cameras are placed in almost every corner of the city; virtually, a “net of surveillance” also exists to monitor each transaction, login, or browsing history online. Therefore, it is easier for Chinese law enforcement to track down illicit activities and identify criminals in a shorter timeframe. Meanwhile, the policy involved makes the surveillance technology in the sole hands of the government (meaning, you can’t “surveil a government”). Flying a drone is sometimes times prohibited or needs additional procedures based on how strict the local regulation is (certainly, there are also safety issues involved). However, the government can use drones to make sure you stay home during the pandemic. Therefore, in most cases, criminals have to come up with various “counteracts” to widespread surveillance.
Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images
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