As I've discussed in recent articles here, the criminals have not been slow to take advantage of new technologies. The ubiquitous use of cell phones by the little gang who were trashing my life for the past year is just one example. The highway street-racer kids and their use of cellphone lookouts is another. I think that any competent bank robbery team could use that kind of technology very effectively to reduce their risk. If I were heading such a team, I'd be looking into Cell or RF video surveillance of key intersections around the bank, or the use of cameras in highrises or even small planes or RF-controlled model planes, which are easilly available, to watch a wide area for approaching police or security vehicles.
Gaining access to key information has also become easier with the easy black-market availability of "date-rape" drugs, by which one could - as is common practice in much of South America among the professional kidnappers - pick the brains of a person with inside knowledge, and then use that to bypass or defeat proprietary security measures. The person whose brain has been picked would have no memory of the event, of course, so how the information had gotten out would likely remain a mystery, unless, for example, the organization was smart enough to always plant some false info that would show up in a break-in.
Another level in the offing, is represented by the Queen Bee of the local gang with which I've been dealing. She finds some lonely man and makes him feel special, then suckers him into aiding her endless wars. If he catches on, she just moves on to the next sucker. As long as she's got a half-dozen guys competing for her attention, she's fine. This whole little local gang network supports itself intellectually by standing up for each other's stories. This didn't work so well in dealing with me, as I videotaped and/or photographed a lot of stuff to corraborate my own positions. Most people would simply become victims, always losing the "he said, she said." As in all the frat house rapes, who's going to believe the lone individual against a dozen people all denying her validity?
The new technology, however, makes it possible to fake images, voice, even video, with a little effort. This is going to get a lot worse in the next few years, to the point that ALL testimony and most evidence will become questionable. DNA? DNA can be planted. And if you're normally in and around an area anyway, the presense of your DNA means nothing.
Good, old-fashioned police work could handle a lot of this, regardless, but the police are overwhelmed by the requirements of the War on Drugs, and have often joined the ranks of the criminals anyway, taking payoffs for looking the other way, or accepting victims for prosecution in return for letting other criminals do what they want.
This has itself become a whole new line of work for the enterprising criminal. Instead of committing crimes, trick other people into doing something and then blackmail, them, turn them in for a cut, or, ideally, do both simultaneously. Los Angeles County, according to the LA Times, has some 17,000 such professional snitches, who serve as a virtual 2nd teir to the prosecutorial officers.
More coming...