Minority Report: Fiction Has Become Reality
September 4, 2012
By John W. Whitehead
“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what
sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and
customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is,
that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is,
we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us,
talking directly to us.”—Steven Spielberg
It was a mere ten years ago that Steven Spielberg’s action film Minority Report,
based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, offered movie audiences a
special effect-laden techno-vision of a futuristic world in which the
government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. And if you dare
to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will bring you under
control.
The year is 2054. The place is Washington, DC. Working in a city in
which there has been no murder committed in six years—due in large part
to his efforts combining widespread surveillance with behavior
prediction technologies—John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise), Chief of
the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, uses precognitive
technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any
damage—that is, to prevent crimes before they happen. Unfortunately for
Anderton, the technology, which proves to be fallible, identifies him as
the next would-be criminal, and he flees. In the ensuing chase,
Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but
forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a
surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer
networks to track its citizens.
Seemingly taking its cue from science fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority Report
premiered that what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm
of science fiction. Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies
employed by the government and corporations alike—iris scanners, massive
databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated
into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our
movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior,
Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our reality.
Examples abound.
FICTION: In Minority Report, police use holographic data
screens, city-wide surveillance cameras, dimensional maps and database
feeds to monitor the movements of its citizens.
REALITY CHECK: Microsoft, in a partnership with New York City, has
developed a crime-fighting system that “will allow police to quickly
collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate
readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources. It will then
display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically,
allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they
happen or are reported.”
FICTION: No matter where people go in the world of Minority Report,
one’s biometric data precedes them, allowing corporations to tap into
their government profile and target them for advertising based on their
highly individual characteristics. So fine-tuned is the process that it
goes way beyond gender and lifestyle to mood detection, so that while
Anderton flees through a subway station and then later a mall, the
stores and billboards call out to him with advertising geared at his
interests and moods. Eventually, in an effort to outwit the
identification scanners, Anderton opts for surgery to have his eyeballs
replaced.
REALITY CHECK: Google is presently working on context-based advertising
that will use environmental sensors in your cell phone, laptop, etc.,
to deliver “targeted ads tailored to fit with what you’re seeing and
hearing in the real world.” However, long before Google set their sights
on context advertising, facial and iris recognition machines were being
employed, ostensibly to detect criminals, streamline security
checkpoints processes, and facilitate everyday activities. For example,
in preparing to introduce such technology in the United States, the
American biometrics firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) turned the city of
Leon, Mexico into a virtual police state by installing iris scanners,
which can scan the irises of 30-50 people per minute, throughout the
city.
Police departments around the country have begun using the Mobile
Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, a physical iPhone
add-on that allows police officers patrolling the streets to scan the
irises and faces of suspected criminals and match them against
government databases. In fact, by 2014, the FBI plans to launch a
nationwide database of iris scans for use by law enforcement agencies in
their efforts to track criminals.
Corporations, as well, are beginning to implement eye-tracking
technology in their tablets, smartphones, and computers and the
technology is likely to hit a mass market at least by 2015. It will
allow companies to track which words and phrases the user tends to
re-read, hover on, or avoid, which can give insight into what she is
thinking. This will allow advertisers to expand on the information they
glean from tracking users’ clicks, searches, and online purchases,
expanding into the realm of trying to guess what a user is thinking
based upon their eye movements, and advertising accordingly.
This
information will come in handy for police agencies as well, some of
which are working on developing predictive analysis of “blink rates,
pupil dilation, and deception.”
In ideal conditions, facial-recognition software is accurate 99.7
percent of the time. We are right around the corner from billboards
capable of identifying passersby, and IBM has already been working on
creating real world advertisements that react to people based upon RFID
chips embedded in licenses and credit cards.
FICTION: In Minority Report, John Anderton’s Pre-Crime division utilizes psychic mutant humans to determine when a crime will take place next.
REALITY CHECK: The Department of Homeland Security is working on its
Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, which will utilize a
number of personal factors such as “ethnicity, gender, breathing, and
heart rate to ‘detect cues indicative of mal-intent.’” At least one
field test of this program has occurred, somewhere in the northeast
United States.
FICTION: In Minority Report, government agents use “sick sticks” to subdue criminal suspects using less-lethal methods.
REALITY CHECK: A variety of less-lethal weapons have been developed in the years since Minority Report
hit theaters. In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security granted a
contract to Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., for an “LED
Incapacitator,” a flashlight-like device that emits a dazzling array of
pulsating lights, incapacitating its target by causing nausea and
vomiting. Raytheon has created an “Assault Intervention Device” which is
basically a heat ray that causes an unbearable burning sensation on its
victim’s skin. The Long Range Acoustic Device, which emits painful
noises in order to disperse crowds, has been seen at the London Olympics
and G20 protests in Pittsburgh.
FICTION: A hacker captures visions from the “precog” Agatha’s mind and plays them for John Anderton.
REALITY CHECK: While still in its infancy, technology that seeks to
translate human thoughts into computer actions is slowly becoming a
reality. Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley, and his research
team have created primitive software capable of translating the
thoughts of viewers into reconstructed visual images. A company named
Emotiv is developing technology which will be capable of reading a
user’s thoughts and using them as inputs for operating machinery, like
voice recognition but with brain signals. Similar devices are being
created to translate thoughts into speech.
FICTION: In Minority Report, tiny sensory-guided spider robots
converge on John Anderton, scan his biometric data and feed it into a
central government database.
REALITY CHECK: An agency with the Department of Defense is working on
turning insects into living UAVs, or “cybugs.” By expanding upon the
insects’ natural abilities (e.g., bees’ olfactory abilities being
utilized for bomb detection, etc.), government agents hope to use these
spy bugs to surreptitiously gather vast quantities of information.
Researchers eventually hope to outfit June beetles with tiny backpacks
complete with various detection devices, microphones, and cameras. These
devices could be powered by the very energy produced by the bugs
beating their wings, or the heat they give off while in flight. There
have already been reported sightings of dragonfly-like robotic drones
monitoring protesters aerially in Washington, DC, as early as 2007.
FICTION: In Minority Report, Anderton flees his pursuers in a
car whose movements are tracked by the police through the use of onboard
computers. All around him, autonomous, driver-less vehicles zip through
the city, moving people to their destinations based upon simple voice
commands.
REALITY CHECK: Congress is now requiring that all new cars come
equipped with event data recorders that can record and transmit data
from onboard computers. Similarly, insurance companies are offering
discounts to drivers who agree to have tracking bugs installed. Google
has also created self-driving cars which have already surpassed 300,000
miles of road testing. It is anticipated that self-driving cars could be
on American roads within the next 20 years, if not sooner.
These are but a few of the technological devices now in the hands of
those who control the corporate police state. Fiction, in essence, has
become fact—albeit, a rather frightening one.
WC: 1498
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