Years ago, there was a television show running that I became a huge fan of, that being “Person of Interest.”
The premise of the show was that there was a nationwide system that monitored everything. From bank transactions, to traffic patterns, to faces of pedestrians, to school transcripts, everything was cataloged, processed, filed away as innocuous bytes of data.
Or so you thought.
Actually, the machine, driven by a robust AI, began tasking its humans to interfere with its predictive model to save the lives of people who may be destined to do good things, or maybe because it would be a travesty if it happened.
As is with most things, there was an evil counterpart, which took over, and so it goes.
The point here is that the machine went beyond its programming to perform what it perceived its function was and used any and everything that mankind had put up for “safety” as its means of gathering information — cameras, banking transactions, even proprietary software.
There are two aspects to this that are currently a growing trend in this nation: artificial intelligence and cameras — specifically Flock cameras.
Cameras are nothing new; there seems to be one just about everywhere worldwide — front doors, internal business hallways and offices, highways and other thoroughfares — more so internationally than here, but still, the use of them is growing.
For the uninitiated, Flock cameras are solar-powered license plate readers that law enforcement officials claim make investigation easier by having a database of license plates that travel through a given area at hand. There are numerous anecdotes claiming that these cameras have aided law enforcement officials stop all sorts of crime, including finding missing and abducted children; that use is not now nor will ever be a problem. I’ve felt that items that help the police do their job are welcome, except when they open the door to misuse, abuse and violation of civil liberties.
As there are stories touting how great cameras are, there also are stories about the misuse of those cameras for stalking, improper surveillance and more. Combine those instances with overzealous AI that misinterprets its parameters and there will be havoc, as pointed out by the above (yes, fictional) example as well as others (also fictional) like “The Terminator,” for example.
Years ago, several communities adopted the use of traffic control cameras, cameras that would flag speeding and other traffic law infractions and start mailing out tickets. In 2019, their use was banned in Texas as illegal. Flock cameras, however, simply record information and do not send out tickets, and law enforcement officials point out that should something of note crop up through the use of a Flock camera, it will still have to be researched independently.
Good idea? Maybe. But I feel that in this case, as with many other cases where government is involved, once that toe is in the pool, it’s not long before the whole body is in, and the initial scope of the program will have grown. It will take the work of concerned residents to put a stop to it, as there isn’t a government in existence that will voluntarily end a program. (Patriot Act, we’re looking at you.)
There’s a phrase by Benjamin Franklin that remains relevant, and apropos for the situation: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” There has to be a better way to curb crime than put more control and burden on law-abiding people.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
