Introduction and one paragraph - Draft

‘Increased use of science and technology to fight crime is an infringement on personal privacy.’ To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

It is widely believed as a whole society that the most encouraging act carried out by the law enforcement agencies is considered to be the prevention of crime. If these agencies deal with the offences before they even take place, the costs we pay in result of the effects of crime may be entirely evaded. Police play a big role in crime deterrence but it doesn’t mean they are the only people to help us fight misdeeds. In this modern era we have different sorts of technologies helping us to tackle the problems we face to make our environment safe and sound. However, according to Barry Steinhardt (1999) Associate Director of The American Civil Liberties Union, CCTVs could be seen as "intrusive" and do not need to have a warrant, a probable cause or individual suspicion to search anyone. In addition, these technologies are considered not to have much effect on the crime rate as previously thought. In this essay we will undertake two main topics. First we will discuss the available technology to help us fight offensive society; secondly we will come across the consequences of this on personal privacy.

Getting in to the modern age provides us with the whole lot of extraordinary opportunities, as we can communicate around the globe in several ways using the fastest ways ever invented by the human minds in the history so far such as email, mobile phones etc. We probably fall into the most sophisticated age bracket technologically, while speaking in the favour of the other side of the argument. Even this cosmopolitan style of civilization doesn’t help lessen crime ratio. According to the Kervin Harry (2008) the percentage of crime we face now is less than it was 30 years ago but, it is still not acceptable. Thus, here we need to receive the help from up to date technology to experience living in a better environment.

Bibliography:

Harry, K. Net News (2008), ‘Letter: The recent murder and crime in St Vincent’, 25/07/08, viewed 07/08/2008, http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-9374--7-7--.html

Steinhardt, B. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (1999), ‘Law Enforcement Should Support Privacy Laws for Public Video Surveillance’ 04/08/1999, viewed 06/08/2008, http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/16782res19990408.html

Note: Due to some restriction of HTML these links are not appearing in less than "<" and greater than ">" tags for this reason just typing them as it is.

Suspect Nation - The loop holes of surveillance age

Preparation for the seminar

Very informative documentary about the surveillance cameras and other technologies monitoring us all the times as if we are living in a suspect nation. Good to watch you’ll learn many things regarding the seminar on Monday. The major questions I got in my mind after watching this documentary are, are they trying to fight with the criminals using these advanced technologies or are they trying to make their nation suspect? And the most surprising thing in the documentary was, the representative of Channel 4 who is presenting the documentary was bugged. Even the secure means of determining identity what they call is RFID so called revolutionary chip could be cloned. This is the same technology which is going to be used in upcoming British passports and British ID cards, not really secure.

I found it originally on Jim’s blog but copying it here for my friends who visit my blog. Please click the link below to access the documentary.

Suspect Nation

Please feel free to leave me some comments if you like it. :)

Fighting crime with science seminar - Preparation

DNA - Genetic material contained in every cell and unique to the individual
DNA profiling - Identifying people by visual representations of unique regions of their DNA
Frye standard of admissibility - Scientific evidence may only be considered in court if the type of evidence is generally accepted by the scientific community.
Gel electrophoresis - Technique used to separate pieces of DNA by size
Multiplication rule - Method used to obtain likelihood of more than one event occurring simultaneously
Restriction enzyme - Protein that cuts DNA at specific base sequences


-This is an exercise on crime vocabulary with answers but, please do the exercise first before checking the answers.

Crime vocabulary exercise


-I read this article and found very interesting about the CCTV systems at present and some future plans expected to be implemented in near future to cut the crime rate and help police to do their job as its best.

CCTV System in use and some future plans

Steve's Homework 31/07/08

CCTV Frequently asked questions

Definition of DNA

Definition of Biometrics