Running head: TECHNOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Technology and Criminal Justice

Jensen Vasic
Salt Lake Community College

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Technology and Criminal Justice

In todays highly innovative, technologically driven society, lots of new technologies are
having a large impact on law enforcement and criminals. Lots of new things and tools that have
been created can help out law enforcement in many ways, but some have also given criminals
new ways to commit crimes as well. And in many cases the newly created technologies are
causing concern over whether or not they are violating people's rights and privacy.
In this paper I am going to be talking about surveillance and how its enabling law
enforcement to catch more criminals while being questionable about violating privacy and rights
or the people. Surveillance has come a long way with the increase of security cameras, traffic
cameras, facial recognition, license plate scanners, and many more. These things alongside the
NSAs and others mass data collection are making it very easy for law enforcement to track
people's movements.
When the fourth amendment was written, the many technologies we have today were not
around, so there is nothing written about a specific police officer, or government organization
being able to track a citizens every movement, because it just simply wasnt feasible back then.
Since we have all these technologies now, its becoming more of a threat to freedom, and
privacy. Almost everyone has a smartphone these days, and it has been shown that almost all
smartphones can be tracked constantly, whether or not they are turned on. Its true that law
enforcement having all of these new capabilities and technologies will help them stop crime, but
many people dont like it.
Police in San Diego are starting to use facial recognition software that had only been used
previously by the military overseas. It was used overseas to try and help identify potential
terrorists but is now being used locally by law enforcement to help identify criminals, such as

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drug dealers. This technology is supposedly faster than fingerprinting at identifying suspects,
although, its unclear right now whether or not it is helping police make arrests.
A man, Eric Hanson, who is a retired firefighter and has no criminal record, had an
interesting experience with facial recognition technology. The police stopped him, after he had
an encounter with a man that he described as a prowler, and ordered him to sit on the curb. The
police then took his picture without his consent and swabbed his cheek for a DNA sample. I was
thinking, Why are you taking pictures of me, doing this to me? said Mr. Hanson, of age 58. I
felt like my identity was being stolen. Im a straight-up, no lie, cheat or steal guy, and I get
treated like a criminal. (Williams, 2015).
A spokesman of the San Diego police department, Lt. Scott Wahl, said that the police
department doesnt require officers to file a report for using facial recognition software when it
doesnt lead to an arrest. The department has no records of the stop involving Eric Hanson, but
doesnt deny that it happened, and Lt. Scott Wahl even said that it could have (Williams, 2015).
Looking away from San Diego, the NYPD are now maintaining an unknown amount of
military grade vans that use x ray radiation to be able to look through cars, trucks, or even the
walls of buildings. This technology was also previously used overseas before being brought
home to be used by law enforcement. The New York Police Department refuses to reveal when,
where, or how often these vans are being used. Some specific questions that the NYPD refused
to use are: How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful Xray radiation?, How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at
them?, Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what
type of authorization? and, Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the
vans justified the price tag?. These questions have been taken from the New York Civil
Liberties Unions court filing. The New York Police Commissioner, Brill Bratton has told a

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journalist, I will not talk about anything at all about this, he also said, theyre not used to scan
people for weapons. and, It falls into the range of security and counter-terrorism activity that
we engage in. (Friedersdorf, 2015).
As most people know already, as common knowledge, x rays can be very dangerous and
harmful. They are harmful because they cause radiation exposure. Radiation exposure can cause
cell mutations that can end up leading to cancer. Generally the exposure to radiaton from x rays
is fairly low, but if people start having increased exposure it could be harmful. Also many times
x rays arent used on pregnant women (X-ray, 2015).
Another new type of technology used by law enforcement to increase their surveillance
capabilities is the Stingray. The Stingray is a false or simulated cell tower that can be used to
gather data from cell phones. The data they collect is often (IMSI) international mobile
subscriber identity and location, although they can collect other information, too. National and
local government have closely guarded details about the technologies use, but some information,
which makes up most of what is known about stingrays has been revealed through court
documents made public because of Freedom of Information Act requests (Stingray, 2015).
One of the documents made available about stingrays has revealed that the Baltimore
Police Department has used a stingray or cell site simulator around 4,300 times since 2007. The
document also revealed that they police had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI that
has told them not to reveal use of the stingray, but rather have prosecutors drop cases that
involved use of the stingray.
Other documents have revealed that stingrays have been used at least hundreds of times
without the use of search warrants. There has been a backfire on law enforcement, likely due to
the secret-ness of the stingrays. States are now starting to pass laws that say law enforcement
will need a warrant before they can set up a cell site simulator. Minnesota, Utah, Virginia, and

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Washington state, now have laws regulating the use of stingray technology. Other states such as
California and Texas are considering implementing similar laws and measures. There has also
been proposed federal legislation that would restrict using the stingrays to track a cell phones
GPS location (Stingray, 2015).
As you can see already, theres a crazy amount of new technology that goes into law
enforcement today. With all of these new things that are focused on surveillance, many people
worry that it will be used to track law-abiding citizens instead of just criminals. Right now law
enforcement agencies deny the use of their technology to track normal citizens, but the threat is
still there, and these technologies could be abused in the future. Also a lot of the time the data is
stored for a long period of time, in San Diego, for example, only stores most of their data for 12
months.
Reasonable expectation of privacy, is a legal test that is crucial for defining what is
applicable from the fourth amendment. The expectation of privacy test originated from Katz v
United States. The expectation of privacy must have a reasonable, independent source outside the
fourth amendment. This means that things like, private homes and houses, are considered the
core of the fourth amendment, and things like warrantless seizure of abandoned properties would
be considered not violating the fourth amendment. Basically it has to be reasonable, so if you
are out in the middle of a wide open field, that isnt considered reasonably private. Some states
laws do change the expectations in fields, although.
In my opinion these technologies are a great concern. I think many people get confused
by them, which deters them off from worrying about it. I really think that more people need to be
educated, and educate themselves on these issues, because they need to know what is going on
around them before they have rights and privacy taken away from them. Even if they decide that

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they are fine with all of this surveillance and loss of privacy, they should be educated on the
subject before making that conclusion.
I really think that its important for people to have privacy most of the time, and not feel
like they are being watched constantly. When people feel that all of their movements are being
recorded, it could cause them to behave differently, which to me, seems like a very great threat to
our freedom. Also with all of our information being recorded constantly and not always being
destroyed after any amount of time, I think that we also have a great threat to freedom of speech
headed our way. If what you say is always being recorded and watched, and that changes the way
you speak, that can be very dangerous. The best way to inhibit free speech is to stop the words
from ever coming out of the person's mouth.
Overall I think that technology can be a good thing, that will help police catch criminals,
but I think that we need to be very careful in how we implement it, and that there should be laws
and regulations to stop law enforcement from using new technology before getting approval, and
letting the public know.

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7
References

Williams, T. (2015, August 12). Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to
Local Police. Retrieved December 17, 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/us/facialrecognition-software-moves-from-overseas-wars-to-local-police.html
7 mass surveillance tools your local police might be using | The Center for Investigative
Reporting. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2015, from http://cironline.org/blog/post/7-masssurveillance-tools-your-local-police-might-be-using-6327
Friedersdorf, C. (2015, October 19). The NYPD Is Using Mobile X-Ray Vans to Spy on
Unknown Targets. Retrieved December 17, 2015, from
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/the-nypd-is-using-mobile-x-rays-to-spy-onunknown-targets/411181/
X-ray. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2015, from http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/xray/basics/risks/prc-20009519
What Is the Big Secret Surrounding Stingray Surveillance? (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2015,
from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-big-secret-surrounding-stingraysurveillance/
Expectation of Privacy. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2015, from
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/expectation_of_privacy

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