Tag Archives: crime

Blog

New UK smart CCTV cameras detect ‘precrimes’

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"one nation under cctv" by BanksyLiving in a small city like mine, it’s not often one gets to feel that one is at the cutting edge of an emerging future society.

So how lucky for myself and the other residents of the over-stretched city of Portsmouth that we are the first town in the UK to be under the observation of Phildickian ‘smart’ CCTV cameras that are programmed to flag up an alert when they observe ‘suspicious behaviour’ that might indicate a crime is about to be committed.

You know, those sure-fire indicators of criminality… such as standing still for a while, or stopping to talk to someone. I would like to take this opportunity to praise the glorious leadership of Airstrip One for going to such efforts to ensure that any and all double-plus-ungood actions can be eradicated before they even have a chance to occur!

If anyone needs me, I’ll be typing a letter to the German Embassy requesting political asylum. [image by JapanBlack]

Blog

Keys cloned from long-range photographs

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bunch of keysHere’s a neat but nasty little criminal hack that some smart folks at UC San Diego just released as a proof-of-concept: it’s possible for someone to clone your house keys from a photograph taken up to 200 feet away.

The keys used in the most common residential locks in the United States have a series of 5 or 6 cuts, spaced out at regular intervals. The computer scientists created a program in MatLab that can process photos of keys from nearly any angle and measure the depth of each cut. String together the depth of each cut and you have a key’s bitting code, which together with basic information on the brand and type of key you have, is what you need to make a duplicate key.

Crafty stuff, so much so that they suggest that blurring your key teeth on public photographs is probably as wise as blurring your credit card numbers – though it’s hard to imagine a criminal bothering to do this if they could just get their hands on the right sort of bump key.

But it’s a great example of the sort of minor science fiction plot point that would have sounded ridiculously futuristic just ten years ago… I guess maybe tagging yourself with an RFID chip to open your door has merits after all. [picture by Bohman]

Blog

The RFID and the saguaro

As somebody who used to have a front yard with a saguaro cactus, I understand why people pay up to $1,000 for them. Last year the law caught rustlers trying to steal 17 of these Sonoran Desert natives. So the National Park Service in Tucson, Arizona is planning to imbed chips in the cactuses to track them in case the plants go AWOL.

“We would likely not just go out and implant, but would gather data, GPS the locations, and record heights and widths and measures,” [Saguaro National Park chief ranger Bob] Love said. “We probably wouldn’t implant a plant that was not healthy or a desirable plant for someone to steal.”

Nevada chipped some of its barrel cactuses in 1999 to deter theft and help take inventory.

[Photo: backlitcoyote]

Blog

Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco

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Prohibiting the use of heroin and crack is stupid. Prohibition of cannabis is stupid and hypocritical, as further confirmed by a report (link is to background to the report) from the Beckley Foundation:

“Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,”

…

The Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust, claimed only two deaths worldwide have been attributed to cannabis, while alcohol and tobacco use together kill an estimated 150,000 people in Britain alone.

…

“Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment,”

Ending prohibition isn’t like ending climate change – it’s a comparatively straightforward way of solving Mexico’s drugs problems, our drugs problems, and generally making the world a better place.

What does this have to do with science fiction? I hope that prohibition will seem like the product of a dystopian science-fiction novel someday, and join slavery and the divine right of kings on the trash-heap of history.

[via Physorg][image from aforero on flickr]

Reviews and Criticism

BOOK REVIEW: Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster

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Sagramanda - Alan Dean FosterSagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India by Alan Dean Foster

Pyr Books, 2008, 290pp, $25, ISBN 1-59102-488-9

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In the Indian city of Sagramanda, a scientist, Taneer, steals secrets from the multi-national biotech company he worked for and goes on the run, trying to find a buyer for what he has stolen at the same time as avoiding the inevitable retribution.

There seems to be an increasing number of science fiction novels by western writers set in non-western locales; Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Arabesk books and Ian McDonald’s River of Gods are obvious examples. As the economic future of humanity seems to be moving ever more in that direction, it seems inevitable that more sf is being set in the emerging nations. This brings its own dangers for western writers as they attempt to reflect the cultures of these countries in a way which neither patronises nor demonises them, but which simultaneously remains honest about their issues. Continue reading BOOK REVIEW: Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster →