In one year alone 480 million dollars has been lost through part one crimes, which are limited to murder, rape, and assault. These crimes could be decreased by 30-40 percent if the Project Angelfire system is implemented according to Ross McNutt, the project’s creator. It has the power to remove thousands of criminals off the street and increase security in our everyday lives. Through a high-powered camera strapped to the bottom of a plane, law enforcement would have access to snapshots taken every second. Entire crime organizations could be taken off the streets by analyzing the connections and associations in the constant surveillance. Many believe that this system takes away our basic right to privacy, but limits and regulations could be put in place to ensure basic privacy while still allowing major crimes to be halted within hours. This technology would allow people to go about their daily lives without having to constantly worry about the crimes constantly occurring around them, giving them a peace of mind.
Technology of this magnitude is a danger to our basic right of privacy. The constant access to our daily lives leaves too much up in air in terms of personal safety. This level of clearance, power given to the government is a disaster waiting to strike, and with a right as basic as our personal privacy this just cannot be trusted in their hands. With more and more technological advances, hackers could potentially have access to everything we as a society deem precious. This system would potentially open the door for many more to whittle away at our rights little by little. Although many crimes could be solved, this sacrifice of our privacy brings even more issues that are simply not worth it.
FIRST POSITION:
In the Radio Lab podcast “Eye in the Sky,” surveillance technology is the topic in spotlight. Surveillance technology can detect crime by taking simultaneous pictures that can cover up to twenty-five miles of the territory. Specifically, the ability that the inventor and creator of this surveillance technology Ross McNutt has for zooming the lenses of the twelve different cameras has provided an entry for modern police daily vigilance. Up in the sky, a helicopter caries twelve different cameras that as perpetually taking pictures. Each shooting of the twelve cameras combine to form one single picture. By reviewing the pictures from previous hours and present hours, the police get to “travel in time” to detect who did a crime, at what time, and where. For this reason, the benefits of the surveillance technology are innumerable. “Steep drops in crime” have been inferred and the properties “rise in value,” which plays as a cause and effect. Ross McNutt said it himself, “I want them to be worried that we’re watching.”
SECOND POSITION:
The creators and upholders of surveillance technology celebrate the fact that crime will be detected and attacked in a matter of minutes rather than in a few days or even never. They adhere to the ideology that “rising property values” and “steep drops on crime” are good enough excuses to have the privacy of innocent citizens be affected. The tendency to live a fast life obligates the police to have to answer a case in a matter of minutes, yet everyone is aware that such ideal world is not “real.” No matter if the people’s faces cannot be seen in detail from a distance, the fact of having an aircraft above the blue sky recording your everyday movement does not seem humane. Humanity by itself is not the only source of juggle, but also the economy. Having this surveillance technology has the cost of $6,000 every hour that the twelve cameras are taking pictures. If the purpose of surveillance technology is to aid the human race, their best alternative is not to destroy what makes humans be humans: their spontaneity and right to privacy.