Dangerous Minorities - Thursday 24th September

Seems there are very few of you actually in the office out there this week, so following yesterday’s look at world events, and after surviving what turned out to be a 96-minute speech by Gaddafi (he really must have been in a bad mood without his tent to keep him company and decided to wreak his revenge) as well as once more witnessing the charm offensive, otherwise known as Obama, as he back-slapped (Medvedev), high-fived (Sarkozy) and right-cheek-kissed (Argentina’s Kirchner – wouldn’t you?) his way across the room at lunch, we’ll keep it focused on political attempts at fixing the economy rather than the economy itself and a more worrying technological development that raises a high-stakes moral debate outside of greed and corruption.

The more pathetic-looking Gordon Brown, representing an equally pathetic economy-in-decline and carrying with him baggage of over-sized proportions across the Atlantic, found no joy at the once warmly-welcoming White House, unable to secure a formal one-on-one meeting with the President - demoted in favour of China, Russian and Japan. But hey, he did manage a quick “alone” chat, according to Brown’s aides, in the kitchen at the end of the UN luncheon where both leaders apparently saw absolutely eye-to-eye on Afghanistan, economic reforms and whatever else you can fit into a five minute “chat” – you can bet secret service were keeping a close eye on the steak knives.

More serious issues are due to be discussed at the G20 in Pittsburgh later this week concerning the financial system and following the Fed’s indication yesterday that they are looking to solicit the assistance of large fund investment firms to start “exiting” government infused markets. With that on the agenda, and the continuing debate over global regulation and general grievances against capitalism still bubbling under the surface (wait for Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism is Dead” to re-ignite amongst the masses a deluge of negativity against the rich) there will be more than enough to occupy the 33 nation leaders invited (isn’t it called the G20? – what’s an extra 13-invited-delegations-amongst cost-cutting friends huh?).

Judging Minorities…
A report today caught the eye detailing a new technology which may be introduced via CCTV on public transportation (to begin with). What it does is predict assaults and other dangerous behaviour by recognising a pattern of “tell-tale-signs” depicted by body-language and other subconscious human expressions that betray even the steeliest and bland-faced of criminals. The inventors of the system cite the UK’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras and their lack of substantial contribution to anti-crime activity, hoping that within another couple of years and at the conclusion of some rigorous testing, the system might go live.

Now, am I the only one a little alarmed at this type of technology? The testing period is all well and good. Think of all those poor innocent nervous travellers who would otherwise get bundled by an army of cops just for sweating a little more than normal on the tube (Dubai Metro not included – that’s air conditioned thank God), or shaking their head the wrong-way while listening to music on the bus and being mistaken for a knife-wielding loony, or the poor granny that gets mistaken for an ASBO inflicted youth due to her arthritic trembles – you get the picture. Naturally, the firm insists there will be fail-safe measures in place, namely a human point of interaction to the process whereby an operator would be provided with the suspect information after the system had flagged a potentially dangerous individual (making use of the aforementioned profiling but also computing general crime trends in the area, considering the time and exact location, number of people on the bus etc) and it would then be up-to the human operator to make the final decision as to whether a threat was viably posed or not. Hmmm, they call that a fail-safe?

All reminds me of a movie called “Minority Report” (starring Tom Cruise before he got reaaaallllly annoying and Scientology-weird) set in a future where a combination of technology and precognitive humans presage (with apparent 100% accuracy, initially) murders and other crimes – resulting in a utopia-like society where homicide is no longer heard of – it all goes horribly wrong of course (how else could they keep the movie going for longer than 40mins and give Tom all those excuses for cheesy grins and money-making action scenes?) when it becomes clear that the system is flawed and mistakes have been made. An almost interesting moral debate creeps in upholding the staunchly adhered to belief (in the Western world at least) that an individual is innocent-till-proven-guilty.
With the advent of this new technology, and the guess is that if they are talking about it now and predicting it will be in use within 3-5yrs then the reality is that it is already in use by certain organisations and has been over the last 12mths, debates over too much power entrusted into technology and certain individuals acting as omnipotent police-judge-and-executioner, will define the next great global moral dilemma.

What the system might actually be useful for though and welcomed with open-arms - some would guess a modicum of relief too - would be a predictive technique installed at the United Nations and other global leader gatherings, where body language, anger levels and personal-ego-self-importance factors would all be calculated to foretell and avoid debilitating and schedule shredding 96-min-long-Gaddafi-like-speeches. No moral arguments there.