IP: Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees (fwd)

[DAVE FARBER <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> \
> Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 14:57:27 -0700 (PDT)
> From: 7Pillars Partners <partners () sirius infonex com>
> Reply-To: iwar () sirius infonex com
> To: g2i list <g2i () xmission com>, IWAR list <iwar () sirius infonex com>
> Subject: [IWAR] PRIVACY SECURITY Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees
>
> Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees
>
>   By Gary Fields, USA TODAY
>   
>   Military satellites designed to guide nuclear missiles are being used to
>   monitor prison parolees and probationers in a technological advance
>   designed to reduce the nation's skyrocketing prison population. But
>   critics say it also raises the specter of an Orwellian future.
>   
>   The ComTrak monitoring system uses 24 Defense Department satellites
>   orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth to track 100 people in nine
>   states. The people under surveillance range from sex offenders in
>   Chicago to juvenile delinquents in New Jersey. The cost of monitoring
>   each person is $12.50 per day.
>   
>   It is a long way from a system originally designed by the Defense
>   Department to help guide nuclear missiles. The Pentagon began leasing
>   satellite time, allowing others to use the satellites, after the Cold
>   War ended. "It's bullets to plowshares," says Jack Lamb, president and
>   CEO of Advanced Business Sciences Inc., the Omaha-based company that
>   developed the ComTrak system.
>   
>   The system has three main components: a bracelet the size of a
>   wristwatch, a 3-pound personal tracking unit that resembles a
>   walkie-talkie, and the battery charger/base that is kept at the
>   monitored person's house and transmits information by telephone to a
>   monitoring center . If the bracelet is broken or removed or the wearer
>   is more than 50 feet from the tracking unit, an alarm is sent to the
>   monitoring center.
>   
>   The system is programmed to set up zones where a person monitored can
>   and cannot go, depending on the crime committed. For example, people
>   with drunken-driving convictions can be tracked to set off an alarm if
>   they enter local bars. Exclusion zones for a sexual predator can include
>   schools and parks in a designated area. And an abusive husband can be
>   tracked to ensure he stays clear of his wife's workplace, home or places
>   she visits.
>   
>   When a person being monitored enters an exclusion zone, the tracking
>   unit sends an automatic alert to monitoring centers in Omaha. Law
>   enforcement authorities are alerted within minutes.
>   
>   At night, the tracker is placed in the charger, which downloads all of a
>   person's movements that day - right down to the precise route the person
>   took to work - and sends the record of movements to the monitoring
>   center.
>   
>   Lamb says the potential for growth is "phenomenal." There are nearly 4
>   million people under some form of supervision in the USA. Of those, only
>   about 11,000 are monitored electronically under the old system, which is
>   unable to track a person's movements once he or she has left home. Some
>   see the new system as a tool for judges grappling with a prison and jail
>   population of 1.8 million people at a cost of more than $40 per day for
>   each inmate.
>   
>   Percy Luney Jr., president of the National Judicial College at the
>   University of Nevada, Reno, where judges receive training in such issues
>   as alternative sentencing, says the system "gives judges an option for
>   keeping people out of jail and away from all the negative influences
>   there. It's also a cost-saver for the taxpayer."
>   
>   Lamb says his system also is an improvement over older technology, which
>   can tell only if those being monitored leave home during restricted
>   hours. "The problem with the old system is once they leave home, you
>   have no idea where they are or what they are doing," Lamb says.
>   
>   Others involved in the prison industry, from defense lawyers to
>   probation and parole officers and judges, acknowledge that the advanced
>   monitoring system has potential. But there are some concerns about how
>   far the use of such surveillance will go.
>   
>   Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, says the
>   system has the potential "to change the face of law enforcement and
>   incarceration." Nevertheless, he sees the "potential for creating a
>   monster."
>   
>   Rothstein is concerned that the advances in technology could result in
>   more and more people being subjected to electronic monitoring - not just
>   those on parole.
>   
>   "You could end up with the majority of the population under some kind of
>   surveillance by the government," he says.
>   
>   Jack King, spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense
>   Lawyers, says his organization supports the electronic monitoring. He
>   sees it as especially helpful in the case of someone who should be out
>   on bail but is too destitute to pay it.
>   
>   He says he is concerned about such technology being used to monitor
>   people who have served their sentences and paid their debts to society.
>   
>   "If it's to track someone who has done his full term, like a registered
>   sex offender or a formerly dangerous felon, then the use of this
>   technology becomes Orwellian with all the dangers to all our freedoms
>   that suggests," King says. "Who would they be tracking next?"