Gizmorama
January 26, 2011
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Good Morning,
I came across two articles that look at how technology has
an increasing role in criminal justice. The first article
emphasizes how social media can be an effective medium for
criminals to continue their behavior in prison while the
second article investigates a new piece of video technology
that will serve as hard evidence in future criminal cases.
Both articles serve together as a reminder of how many
aspects of our social structure technology seeps in to.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Social media let inmates carry on crime
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Prison inmates are increasingly using
social media to torment victims and continue crime outside,
U.S. corrections officials warn. Although banned in most
prisons, cellphones are routinely smuggled in, giving inmates
access to the outside. In South Carolina, convicted killer
Quincy Howard's contraband cellphone was confiscated, but
his Facebook page is still active, the Charleston Post and
Courier reports. He -- or someone acting for him -- added
more than 100 friends in the past week from the maximum-
security Lee Correctional Institute. "It renders the prison
fence sort of useless in some cases," said corrections spokes-
man Josh Gelinas. In December, Georgia inmates used smart-
phones to organize a strike at four prisons. A Lee prison
guard was shot at his home last year after an inmate used a
smuggled cellphone to order his killing, officials said.
"For inmates to have that kind of unfettered access to the
outside is an affront to the justice system and a slap in the
face of victims, not to mention a tremendous safety threat,"
South Carolina prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said.
Austin, Texas, to test police head cameras
AUSTIN, Texas - Head cameras will allow Austin, Texas, police
to gather evidence while holding officers accountable for
their actions, official said. Austin is one of a dozen or so
U.S. cities to test the new technology, the Austin American
Statesman reported Monday. "It captures the full gamut of the
life of a police officer, all the way to the district attor-
ney's office," said Cmdr. Troy Gay of the police department's
strategic intelligence and technology division. "I think the
cameras will give us a better visual depiction of what hap-
pened and also portray the demeanor of a person." Officials
said the cameras, which would be worn on an officer's head or
ear, would make recordings to be used as evidence. In addit-
ion to the cameras, officers would carry a small recorder to
store footage until it can be downloaded after the officer's
shift; it would not be transmitted live. Police are looking
for a company that would provide a secure download, Gay said,
and officers would not have access to the video once it was
downloaded. Police Chief Art Acevedo said the cameras will
be tested on foot and bicycle patrol officers because they
would be the ones to wear them if the tests are successful.
Astronomer discounts chances of alien life
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A leading U.S. astronomer says there is
no hope of finding alien life in space because all other
planets discovered so far are to hostile for life. Howard
Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard University, says
he believes humans are alone in the universe, following an
analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far that shows
they are all hostile to life, Britain's Daily Telegraph re-
ported Monday. The extreme conditions found so far on all
planets discovered around suns outside the solar system are
likely to be the norm and it may well be that the hospitable
conditions on Earth are unique, he says. "We have found that
most other planets and solar systems are wildly different
from our own," he says. "They are very hostile to life as we
know it." Other scientists remain confident life will be
found, and are looking forward to the next few weeks as
NASA's Kepler satellite telescope is expected to confirm the
existence of hundreds of newly discovered planets. Smith
insists extrasolar planets are too different from our own
and even if they did support life it would be impossible for
us to contact it. "Any hope of contact has to be limited to
a relatively tiny bubble of space around the Earth, stret-
ching perhaps 1,250 light years out from our planet, where
aliens might be able to pick up our signals or send us their
own," he says. "But communicating would still take decades
or centuries."
Study: Human meddling may halt extinctions
EVANSTON, Ill. - Human intervention in imperiled ecosystems
could prevent specie extinctions that often ripple through
disturbed or damaged environments, U.S. researchers say.
Scientists at Northwestern University say an analysis of how
disturbances propagate through a network of organisms reveals
that when an ecosystem is already at risk, proactively re-
moving particular species can halt the cascade of extinctions
that sometimes follow, ScienceNews.org reported Tuesday. That
approach, described in the journal Nature Communications,
could help well-defined areas such as islands deal with the
effects of invasive species, researchers say. "At the end of
the day, methods based on inflicting locally controlled dam-
age -- despite being damaging -- can have a positive effect
on the entire network," study co-author Adilson Motter said.
By modeling which species eat which and how that leads to
changes in population levels over time, the researchers say
they can identify particular species whose removal or sup-
pression would contain damage. Actions such as birth control
for deer that are overrunning an area, or encouraging fishing
to bring down a certain species' numbers, may prevent the
loss of multiple other species, the study suggests. The study
isn't advocating large-scale removal of any species, the re-
searchers say, but for contained spaces such as islands,
lakes or parks that often grapple with invasive species or
otherwise out-of-balance distributions of animals, the ap-
proach may be useful.
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