Thursday, November 02, 2006

Technocorrections All Over the News

Lots of technocorrections-related items up today. Does calling your nation a "surveillance society" qualify? That's what the BBC is saying about Britain, "the most surveilled country" in the West. (First time I've ever said "surveilled." Cool. Doubt it will be the last, and they're just bragging before we get fully geared up over here.) Some of the article is workplace and marketing surveillance, but some of the "dataveillance" (another first) deals with our applications to corrections sentencing here. I love this quote from a British Association of Chief Police Officers spokesperson: "[A]ny use of the police surveillance that is unseen is in fact controlled and has to be proportionate; otherwise it would never get authorised." Uh-huh. And we don't have to worry if we don't have anything to hide, and Leonard Levy never wrote his classic The Origins of the Fifth Amendment. (Also, no word if the spokesperson walked away going "Bwahahahahahahahaha . . . .") . . . More BBC reporting, this time on WWW inventor Tim Berners-Lee 's fears of unchecked Internet development being used for bad (undemocratic, misinformation) things. He's proposing development of social science projects and bodies to study and guide the process in a more hopeful direction. Not specifically about technocorrections but even a moron about it like me can see Internet applications. Apparently MIT and the UK's University of Southampton have formed a Web Science Research Initiative to look at how we gather web info and assess its reliability. . . . Let's look at specific surveillance for a sec. How about ankle bracelets that measure your alcohol content from your perspiration? They're using them with DUI types in IL, and even defense counsel are among those satisfied so far. Oddly, no offenders were quoted. (h/t Crim Prof Blog) . . . This post at Prevention Works describes DC's efforts to use neighborhood sensors and crime mapping online to illuminate offending, all in the name of greater public awareness. . . . And, as we pull all this data and info into our systems, maybe this article in Nov's Governing will keep us restrained in our uses and expectation for the databases we're creating. . . bwahahahahahahaha!!!!

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