Uh, electronic surveillace bracelet are already widely used for prisoners on parole, it's not exactly a new technology.
Seems an odd option for such potentially serious criminals. The only thing preventing someone removing a tag is the potential penalty if caught (and it doesn't stop them reliably). If you were removing it for an attack why care? At most you'd have to take care not to alert the officials you'd been tampering with it.
From what little I know of Electronic Tagging (their use/abuse/misuse/non-use in the UK, specifically), the item is attached with a (theoretically) tamper-proof strap, with regular inspections to ensure there's no undue wear (accidental or on purpose) to it. At its most passive a strap damaged enough to permit removal stops the tag acting as the safeguard (e.g. checking in with the 'home station' at a certain time(/times) each day to indicate proximity to the curfew household, lest the lack of such a check-in mobilise the authorities to seek the tag-wearer out, or at least send out a repairperson/parole-checker to deal with whatever fault is discovered from the initial call to their home as a first action).
More actively, I've no doubt that there are also versions these days (beyond mere "keep your mind on the curfew" reminders of petty, but annoying, criminals) that have SIM cards in tags that alert to a tamper (or
fail to ping that all is normal), to disbenefit the higher-risk criminal, and it's only minor step from that to have a GPS chip to "ping location", on top of that, with the possibility of automatic 'geofencing' of the wearer (in
or out of areas... according to need, and probably also with agreed schedules and excursions and other exceptions, upon request).
The big problem with tags is the back-office handling, especially if issuing them en-mass to a broad group of people. Accidental damage or purposeful damage gets missed, equally, when the system is not properly manned for normal traffic. Units gone 'off the radar' take manpower to check, and could possibly be overwhelmed even with a decent 'buffer' in staff that "cheapest tender" rarely provide.
Even without such financial pessimism, one can easily imagine a coordinated sabotaging of willing/unwilling 'uninvolved' tagged-persons, to cover up the few 'involved' ones that wish to gain an advantage over any potential pursuers. Especially if they arrange for a stooge (or a fellow de-tagged individual) to be in their place and act all surprised when the checkers come over. (Meanwhile, if anyone's checking up on the de-tagged stooge, it's likely that any pursuit then heads out in the impression that the stooge is the one missing, which the actual escapee finds an easier trap to avoid by the dissimilarities of their profile, even whilst the stooge is still impersonating them through the similarities...)
And with widespread tag-application, the opportunities for find the knack to engineer an undetectable removal increase. Even if it means cutting the hand/foot off of an
innocent (or otherwise disposable) tag-wearer to work with the device at leisure, until the point comes that the same unfortunate individual (and the tag) is disposed of either invisibly (leaving more work for the 'trackers') or visibly-but-obfuscated (e.g. dropped onto the train tracks, both person and tag ending up with damage so easily mistaken for locomotive impact damage). Meanwhile, those not so keen on losing their own extremities have perhaps learnt the trick to cutting some 'stretch' into the device that doesn't cause an alarm, or found the proper way to gain access through the hard casing, or otherwise discovered the circuits needed to properly 'clone' a pseudo-device.
These simplistic issues have doubtless already been 'imagineered' by both tag-makers and tag-wearers (with safeguards arising, if not there right from the beginning), and there are probably plenty of patents out there for the Ultimate Tag, beyond even my imagination. (My imagination, by the way, includes various Fitness Tracker-style heart-rate/skin-temperature contact sensors and inertial movement sensors, left unmentioned to the wearer, to cover several methods of unusual operation. But beware false positives upping the workload if something like putting a (thicker) sock on, under the strap, provokes a broadcast alert and demanding resources be used to applied until the facts are known.)
Anyway, I'm not so sure about using tags. There's that guy in the US who (having been wrongfully accused/arrested/tried, perhaps even temporarily imprisoned, for someone else's crimes, and not wanting to repeat this) currently self-publishes everything about his life, including financial details, in order to continually be able to prove his location, activities and purchases in advance of any future incident that he thinks might otherwise be erroneously linked to him. (Interestingly enough, my Google-Fu is insufficient to find out who he is! Or was. But should the police come a-knocking again, his hopes (at least back when I first heard about him) now rest upon timestamped video of his every activity verifying his continuing innocence of whatever it is they came a-knocking about.)
So... voluntary use? Some perceived low-risk individuals prepared to be disadvantaged by the tag, and trusted not to disadvantage the authorities any more than they might otherwise have been expected to do through more physical monitoring or housing in more secure facilities, releasing these resources towards application towards those that are less low-risk...
None of this would have stopped the Paris Attacks (coming back on topic, with a jarring halt). Monitored individuals would refrain from overtly suspicious behaviours and movements prior to the deadline of the attack (at which point they're likely quicker to act than their monitors are to react), unmonitored and less-monitored intermediaries being used as necessary during preparation.
The authorities no doubt could still detect some elements of such preparations (hence other atrocities that never happened, either reported as foiled or never publicly revealed in any significant detail), but they ideally need to pick up
every such instance, whilst those planning such events just need to be lucky every now and then.
And, let's face it, even 'foiled plots' aren't a total loss. Shoes removed/liquids banned/etc on flights. Extra costs for all kinds of security measures. The everyday public polarised towards hating either the foreigners or the authorities more. All adds to unrest ideal to the needs of the people who are happy to have others try their luck in planning such disturbances, probably distracting everyone from coordinating more diplomatic solutions.
France may (just from what I've read above) have struck harder against those they consider 'responsible', and (for a while, at least, they were never really out for the count) the Taliban were disadvantaged severely by the US's reaction against the sort-of-affiliated actions of AQ. But Spain cut its military support for the most recent Iraq intervention when they had their train bombings, IIRC (ICBW about the geopolitical target), and misaimed retaliations (Iraq 2 being a prime example, with eyes wide open) are often as useful in recruiting for the target-side, as we all know...
I would dearly love to smart-bomb (or smart-bullet) every 'bad' person on the planet, in one fell-swoop. Or perhaps as-and-when-required, in the moments just before they actually put their plans into action/direct others to do this. Some magical system of recognition and/or precognition with some even more magical system of preventing
all collateral, and something equally mystic to deal with the psychological fallout of surviving relatives, to persuade them that it was a necessary action. (Although, with the latter capability, a re-tweak to put the targets under a geas to willingly refrain from wishing their harm, in the first place. Brave New World, more or less.) All this is impractical though, especially without a Minority Report system. (And both Minority Report and Brave New World, as with most utopian/dystopian fictions, had individuals who broke their systems... whether or not they were actually destined, or even willing, to be problems in the first place.)
So, we have retaliation. But eye-for-an-eye goes wrong when the eye-poked eye-poker pokes the original eye-poker who already (perceived) themselves as having been poked in the eye before that. "En eye for an eye leads to a world of the blind", I'm sure someone famous has (nearly) said.
We're really only left with "pour encourager les autres". Or '
discourager'. But, again, there's the human spirit.
We think that they're utterly wrong in their philisophy and morality, and wonder why they can't just go away;
they think that
we're utterly wrong in our philosophy and morality, and wonder the same sort of thing. (Swap "go away" with "become more like us", "stop being like them", etc, if you want... without necessarily restricting the "us" and "them" definitions at this point. I think the ones that want to swap in the word "die", there are the bad guys, but I'm open enough to the possibility that "live in thrall of superior forces" could be considered a worse fate to impose, so good/bad still ends up being an annoyingly relative terminology.) Whatever, it's not a problem I plan to solve. I've a friend who wouldn't mind being the Dictator Of The World, and would probably do a decent job at it (if you poll those who remain alive and at liberty after the first few purges), but it seems a bit too much hard work for my liking, and necessitating the kind of personal conviction that I lack...
Paris. Remember, again, that this is a thread about Paris. Even if a lot of what I just wrote isn't
directly related.
Anyway, I only decided to post regarding Electronic Tags. The rest just happened, once I had the fingers on the keyboard. Still, for a belated PTW message, at least I can't consider it too trivial...
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Topic: The Paris Attacks (Read 59868 times)