Biometric Security: Crime Fighting Goes Minority Report

When you read as many articles about eye tracking, head tracking, and biometrics as we do, it’s only a matter of time before you come across the inevitable Minority Report comparisons. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Minority Report is a Steven Spielberg vision of the future (loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s short story of the same name) in which a sleeked-out Tom Cruise navigates his way through a world bursting at the seams with flashy, interactive tech. The movie featured a number of cool new gadgets, each streamlined for screen and embodying some pretty far out ideas in general. But as we read more about advancements in biometrics, for example, the progressive features shown in the movie don’t seem so far off anymore. Fast Company recently detailed a number of ways in which real-life crime fighting mirrors the film. Of course, the movie takes place in 2054, but the distance between now and then is closing fast.

IBM has a new program called Blue Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History (CRUSH) that uses “predictive analytics” to forecast, as they put it, “criminal hot spots.” It’s pretty exceptional when you think about it. Using years of incident reports and data from law enforcement agencies, CRUSH is essentially a pre-crime prediction applications. Law enforcement agencies installed Blue CRUSH in Memphis, Tenn. not to long ago and can boast a 31% drop in serious crime. Wow.

Google Maps has allowed the public to track numerous geographically-related things online, not the least of which is crime. Gothamist’s “incident map” highlights all the reported episodes broadcast on the police blotter, locating them geographically in real time. Google Earth has allowed law enforcement agencies to view and use satellite imagery in their work, and police, for example, are able to zoom in so far, they can see a two-acre marijuana plantation. Maybe it’s best not to be doing obvious illegal things outdoors.

Of course, there are scanners everywhere now. We recently wrote about a billboard with an embedded camera in Tokyo that keeps an eye on potential customers, target audiences, and demographics. But cameras equipped with facial recognition and now on-the-go iris scanning technology can monitor a person’s face or features and recognize potential suspects on a terror watch list, for example. There seem to be cameras everywhere, and you can get a ticket nowadays by just having a camera record you running a stoplight. The photo and fine arrive in the mail a few days later and you never knew anyone was watching.

7 Ways Real-Life Crime Fighting Mirrors “Minority Report”

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