Dan Morris: Step too far in use of technology?

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times reported that NYPD officers would be giving up the use of their handwritten patrol memo books in favour of a smartphone app that would allow them, while on the beat, to take notes electronically.

By this Monday, all officers should have retired their traditional notepads – incidentally the New York Police Department’s oldest crime fighting tool – and taken a further step down the road of technological dependency.

The NYPD’s move comes with a number of apparent advantages. Notes typed into the app are sent directly to a department database, making them more accessible and, in theory, ensuring information is not lost. Supposedly, entries will not be able to be faked, and data won’t be lost as a result of poor handwriting.

Entries in the database via the app can be searched by date or keyword, meaning there is no longer a need to trawl through multiple memo books for a specific note. And naturally, the switch as a whole should cut down on paper waste.

Positive, yes? No. I’m troubled, and unfortunately have seen far too many dystopian sci-fi films not to spot the warning signs... But we’ll get to that. There are less dramatic but still problematic issues to consider first.In a move that is in theory time-saving and environmentally friendly, the Big Apple’s police department may have opened itself to problems.

Firstly, issues of accuracy will surely be just as prevalent when expecting a weary, old-school beat cop with hands chilled to the bone by the New York air, to type on a smartphone. If note taking is done as quickly as it will need to be, mistakes are still going to happen. And couldn’t typos going straight into a database system built on keyword searches surely prove far more damaging than handwritten errors that are easily spotted in the context of a note as a whole?

Also, the notion that entries will not be able to be faked seems unlikely. I’m sure the app has security measures in place designed to block false users, but cyber criminals are often organised experts, and surely the app cannot be impregnable? Would false entries not be more difficult to spot when the distinctive style of an officer’s own handwriting is removed from the equation? And also, would they not have more time to do damage when fed directly into a real-time database rather than having to be reviewed on paper?

The reason my spider-sense is really tingling here however, is that this feels like another dangerous step on the road to machines just being given a bit too much power. Now we get to the sci-fi dystopia…

The issue of beat cops’ notes going directly into a real-time database the moment they are made – and, importantly, with supposedly no handwritten back up –makes me nervous.

Could putting all of this important information directly into a computer system, and with no other record of it, be tantamount to giving that computer system a bit too much control?

To process a vast amount of diverse information instantly on a daily basis, such a database must surely need to be sophisticated. Is it beyond the realms of possibility, however fantastical, that such sophistication could lead to its own evolution? Why not? Everyday technology – from stuff in your smartphone to that used in search engines – is often programmed to ‘evolve’ and anticipate its user’s behaviour.

Like predictive text messaging, how long until said database starts to make assumptions about officers’ entries based on those previously submitted to it? With a wealth of data going straight into it pertaining to factors such as individuals’ height, race and gender, could it start assuming patterns of criminal behaviour based on these characteristics? Will it eventually start suggesting its own suspects of crimes, independently of officers’ opinions? And without a non-computerised record of police activity, how easily would anyone be able to challenge it?

Could it eventually start to think for itself, and therefore police the police?

It sounds a little ridiculous – a bit like the idea of technology being able to decide your fashion choices and dietary habits.

If I don’t ‘pinch’ myself when the internet funnels me toward clothing and food it has learned I will like, it can end up effectively making my decisions for me.

How long until the NYPD’s all-dancing database begins to do the same for it, and because of the lack of non-tech note book records to provide a check to it, do so without a ‘pinch’ to its power?

We’ve all seen The Terminator, and we may be a long way from ‘Skynet becoming self aware’. But the more I see people, and important institutions such as the New York Police Department, place more and more eggs in certain technology baskets, I feel we’re on a rocky road.

Technology and computer systems are getting better, faster, more advanced and more capable.

In line with this, are we surrendering some of our own capability, and even our decision making?

Hopefully the NYPD’s move will pay off, and make both the fighting of crime and the administration of justice easier.

But more so, I hope this seemingly innocent step doesn’t end up leading to far larger problems than it solves.

Ask me about this in 30 years. Your computer will probably remind you to.

I’ll be back…