-Caveat Lector-
Satellite 'Big Brother' eyes parolees
By Gary Fields, USA TODAY
Military satellites designed to guide nuclear missiles are being used to monitor
prison parolees and probationers in a technological advance
designed to reduce the nation's skyrocketing prison population. But
critics say it also raises the specter of an Orwellian future.
The ComTrak monitoring system uses 24 Defense Department satellites
orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth to track 100 people in nine
states. The people under surveillance range from sex offenders in
Chicago to juvenile delinquents in New Jersey. The cost of monitoring
each person is $12.50 per day.
It is a long way from a system originally designed by the Defense
Department to help guide nuclear missiles. The Pentagon began leasing
satellite time, allowing others to use the satellites, after the Cold
War ended. "It's bullets to plowshares," says Jack Lamb, president and
CEO of Advanced Business Sciences Inc., the Omaha-based company that
developed the ComTrak system.
The system has three main components: a bracelet the size of a
wristwatch, a 3-pound personal tracking unit that resembles a
walkie-talkie, and the battery charger/base that is kept at the
monitored person's house and transmits information by telephone to a
monitoring center . If the bracelet is broken or removed or the wearer
is more than 50 feet from the tracking unit, an alarm is sent to the
monitoring center.
The system is programmed to set up zones where a person monitored can
and cannot go, depending on the crime committed. For example, people
with drunken-driving convictions can be tracked to set off an alarm if
they enter local bars. Exclusion zones for a sexual predator can include schools
and parks in a designated area. And an abusive husband can be tracked to ensure
he stays clear of his wife's workplace, home or places she visits.
When a person being monitored enters an exclusion zone, the tracking
unit sends an automatic alert to monitoring centers in Omaha. Law
enforcement authorities are alerted within minutes.
At night, the tracker is placed in the charger, which downloads all of a
person's movements that day - right down to the precise route the person took to
work - and sends the record of movements to the monitoring center.
Lamb says the potential for growth is "phenomenal." There are nearly 4
million people under some form of supervision in the USA. Of those, only about
11,000 are monitored electronically under the old system, which is unable to
track a person's movements once he or she has left home. Some see the new system
as a tool for judges grappling with a prison and jail population of 1.8 million
people at a cost of more than $40 per day for each inmate.
Percy Luney Jr., president of the National Judicial College at the
University of Nevada, Reno, where judges receive training in such issues as
alternative sentencing, says the system "gives judges an option for keeping
people out of jail and away from all the negative influences there. It's also a
cost-saver for the taxpayer."
Lamb says his system also is an improvement over older technology, which can
tell only if those being monitored leave home during restricted hours. "The
problem with the old system is once they leave home, you have no idea where they
are or what they are doing," Lamb says.
Others involved in the prison industry, from defense lawyers to
probation and parole officers and judges, acknowledge that the advanced
monitoring system has potential. But there are some concerns about how
far the use of such surveillance will go.
Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, says the
system has the potential "to change the face of law enforcement and
incarceration." Nevertheless, he sees the "potential for creating a
monster."
Rothstein is concerned that the advances in technology could result in
more and more people being subjected to electronic monitoring - not just those
on parole. "You could end up with the majority of the population under some kind
of surveillance by the government," he says.
Jack King, spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers, says his organization supports the electronic monitoring. He
sees it as especially helpful in the case of someone who should be out
on bail but is too destitute to pay it.
He says he is concerned about such technology being used to monitor
people who have served their sentences and paid their debts to society.
"If it's to track someone who has done his full term, like a registered
sex offender or a formerly dangerous felon, then the use of this
technology becomes Orwellian with all the dangers to all our freedoms
that suggests," King says. "Who would they be tracking next?"
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