Britain as the 4million CCTV-camera nation is turning into a classic example of the trend of security and control obsession by now. A few days ago BBC Radio broadcasted a report on the ongoing efforts by UK and US governments to develop new gadgets in the area of surveillance. Observing, identifying, tracking, tracing citizens is no longer solely used to catch people who have committed crimes, but ever more to spot and keep an eye on ‘potential threats’ ahead-of-crime. Of the gadgets mentioned in the report a few examples are:

Gait DNA tools the University of Maryland is working on. The way you walk and move in general is like a fingerprint. The tools can spot an individual even in a crowd.

Automatic real-time speech-to-speech translation (next generations of IBM MASTOR and the like) is ever higher on DARPA’s wishlist.

Sense-through-the-wall technology (e.g. Oceanit) allows to identify people through the walls of buildings, sensing their breathing and heartrate patterns (increased heartrate can mean rising anger levels (note: yet also many other things, interpretation is a subtle art)).

Who knows how soon a full-fledged Department of Pre-Crime might take shape …

Via BBC news

Related posts:

1. america 2049
2. parking
3. The Futurist: Outlook 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 10:13 and is filed under future, society, technology, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.