“They” will never do xxxxx, yeah, right…

In the current spat about iPhones secretly recording the users location (note my writings about deliberately recording my location with my Android smartphone) there has been the usual to and fro nonsense, not based on any facts, but on whether you like / own Apple products or not.

But again and again and again, I am seeing exactly the same comment, here is one, quoted exactly.

…. you shouldn’t be worried unless you have something to hide. The Police are not going to routinely get every single person’s data and decided if they are where they claimed to be.

I have rarely in my life ever read anything so un-utterably stupid and imbecilic.

The UK has one of the largest per capita DNA databases on the planet.

As soon as the UK Police take a new DNA sample (which they can do, simply by arresting you on suspicion of something or other) which is routine as soon as you find yourself falsely accused by your ex, what do you think they do?

Do you think they just sit down and add your DNA record to the file?

Or do you have the fucking brains you were born with, and understand that with a single extra button click they check your DNA sample against the entire DNA database, and all DNA recorded at all crime scenes, it is after all a computer search, exactly equivalent to typing “wimminz” into Google and hitting search.

Note well, I am not even going anywhere near the whole thorny subject of partial matches, false positives, DNA fabrication, or the true statistical probabilities involved, not the billions to one the prosecutor claims…

So, a crime occurs at a particular location, at a particular time, the police only have to do a search for that location at that time, and get a list of all people/phones who were in that area at that time.

You are now no longer a citizen, you are a suspect.

(I use Google latitude and set tracking enabled 24/7, I (or my lawyer) can sit down, fire up a browser, go to Google latitude, select any two dates, and click play and watch a movie of me moving around while time elapses on a clock and calendar, or I can just click on a particular place and see when I was there, or click on a particular time, and see where I was at that time.)

The actual perpetrator left his mobile phone at home 50 miles away, and so has been EXCLUDED from the list of possible suspects.

Now, depending on the size of the suspect pool, and a lot of circumstantial shit, you can be in a world of pain and hurt.

This is why the quoted asshole above is an asshole, he thinks the police have better things to do than go through his individual records, he  doesn’t have a clue that due to the way technology (e.g. computers + databases) works, police (and everyone else) just do a dragnet approach, just as we all do when we type “wimminz” or anything else into Google or any other computer.

So, country with a population of 60 million, police dragnet search for all persons / phones at a particular location at 6pm on Tuesday the 1st of whatever, 2011 and sit back and let to the computer do the work.  A tea break later it churns out its answer, there are 5 possible matches, or suspects.

You are one of them.

Let’s say I am one of them too, like you, I am tracked, unlike you, I embrace and enhance it at every opportunity, my lawyer fires up google latitude, and yes, I was there, on my way from Liberty City to Gotham City, doing an average speed of 25 mph, eg therefore in a car or other motor vehicle.

I am excluded from the suspect pool, which is now down from FIVE to FOUR.

YOU haven’t done a damn thing, and yet you are suddenly considerably more likely to be the perpetrator.

I went from 20% to 0%

You and the other four went from 20% to 25%, when it gets to 50% you WILL have an appointment with a Court.

One of the remaining four is excluded because they were actually in the middle of a 30+ minute phone call with a friend… they go from 25% to 0%

You go from 25% to 33%

One of the others is a wimminz, you go from 33% to 50%, and the last remaining other is also a wimminz, you go from 50% to 100%, nobody else is in the frame, certainly not the actual perpetrator, who has no phone, and so didn’t even feature in the original search criteria….

Of course, if you have an alibi, you’re sorted, maybe, and the police will start looking harder, for the unknown sixth person, whom you five must have seen, being as you were all in the same time and place…. but even your alibi may not work if the two wimminz who were there describe themselves as having seen you, and being frightened by you, or intimidated by you, or thinking you were looking devious and up to no good… because you were there, we know you were there, so you must have seen this perp, or maybe you were with them and are protecting them….

And all this because you are in denial of human nature (police being lazy and using google-like tools) and convinced that my method (embracing 24/7 tracking and monitoring) is the mark of the insane, and finally because you do not understand the technology (computers and ever more interlinked databases and queries) you will one day find yourself paying the price, whether it be in a divorce court that only costs you all your shit and kids, or a criminal court that also takes your liberty and good name.

The reason I am writing this today, is because I have just had a phone call, a friend has been reported to the police, a criminal act has been alleged against them, and from someone convinced that since they did nothing  wrong, since they are basically a decent person, since they can explain excess cash as “black economy” earnings, everything should be OK… except their employer is suspending them, and they have already talked to the police without a lawyer, and thus disclosed their excess cash… dead man walking…

The real thief is like the no-phone perpetrator in this story, they are a null, not even a blank entry in the database, no entry at all, and once the wheel stops and you are stood under the spotlight, well, suddenly you start looking guilty, especially with a police force that looks for anything that, quote, “may be used against you” with no interest at all in stuff “that may be used to exculpate you” because as far as they are concerned, a bust is a bust is a bust on their professional score cards come promotion time.

“They” don’t give a fuck about you, or right or wrong, or their jobs, or justice, or anything else except clocking off, making deadlines and targets, and early retirement on cushy state pensions.

Any and every tool that helps them to do that, with the minimum effort on their part, is going to be used to the max.

Google-like tools that search ever more interlinked and cross pollinated databases are a prime example.

And like the gate guards at Auschwitz who did not personally douse anyone in Zyklon-B, these fuckers will shrug and say it’s the prosecutor, and the prosecutor will shrug and say it is the jury, and the jury will shrug and say that an innocent man would never be in the fucking court in the first place.

There is no justice, just us, and unless we play it smart and embrace and enhance all this technology, we become prey, grist for the mill, cannon fodder, and there is fuck all privacy doing 20 years in a cell with no door handle or light switch on the inside, and a peephole in it so you can’t even jerk off in privacy.