Technologically powerful means wire-tapping is the classic example are not necessarily the most opportune from a moral and legal viewpoint and can therefore not always rely on support from the public and/or find approval from government, the tension between a need for effectiveness in crime control and the recognition and respect for citizen and human rights has remained a central topic of controversy since technologies have been applied in policing. The problem is accentuated even further as the latter half of the 20th century has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the use of technology for purposes of social control, including a diverse and broad arsenal of means, such as heat, light, motion, and sound sensors, video and audio surveillance systems, biometrics access codes, DNA analysis, and computerised information and analysis systems (Marx. 1998, pp.171-186).
According to Manning (1996, pp.52-62), “police scholars debating and criticizing the impact of technology have mostly focused on the clash between a quest for technical efficiency and concerns of a normative nature”. Only few scholars attribute liberating qualities to technology in policing to argue (Deflem 2002, p.455) that a careful and responsible use of technological advances in police practice can safeguard abuses of power based on biased discretionary decision making powers. (Leo & Ofshe, 1998. Pp.429-496). More typically, police scholars have criticized high-tech strategies of policing because of their pervasive powers to erode civil liberties and the distorted, narrow conceptions of a crime-free social order that drive their use (Julie, 2000, pp.127-143). Problems associated with an over-reliance by police on technology are particularly acute in societies that are complex in matters of economic organisation, social organisation, and cultural make-up while also aspiring to democratic ideals. Although technologically sophisticated forms of control are typically justified as objective, scientific, and neutral, critics argue that they are in fact socially used and culturally interpreted (Marx, 1998, p.171).
In much of the police literature, technology is often condemned as lacking a human touch on the basis of the notion of an efficiency-oriented purposive rationality gone adrift, resonating the familiar pessimistic theme of reason turned against itself (Marx, 1998, p.188). “For the increasing intrusion in society of technological developments has not prevented a continuance of societal rationalisation in terms of rights and norms” (Marcuse, 1964). As much as our age is dominated by technology, modern society is also unprecedented in terms of attained level of legality (Deflem 2002, p.458) and democracy. Advanced democratic societies offer rich potentials to set limits to technically dominated accomplishments to bring technological ability in tune with practical needs and cultural requirements (Habermas, 1968, pp.81-122). A sociological study of technology must always separate between the technical and normative components of technology as a force in social life.
The most critical factor of technologies shaping international policing is their capacity to transcend physical and other borders (Marx, 1997, pp.484-494). In terms of international police strategies, these borders pertain primarily to geographical space and the related juridical limitations of jurisdictional competency. Throughout the 19th century, the earliest technologies that contributed to transformations in policing and international policing pertained to systems of information exchange. The revolutionary period of the late 1840s in Europe intensified international police activities with political objectives oriented at suppressing liberal-democratic movements. International political policing took place in the form of unilaterally planned intelligence work abroad and/or occurred by means of increased co-operation for shared purposes of political suppression (Deflem, 2000, pp.601-640). International co-operation was accomplished through establishing personal contacts among police officials on an ad hoc basis or through a more structured distribution system of information on wanted suspects printed in search bulletins.
Among the communications, technologies relevant for the policing were not only various forms of printed information, but also photographs and other means of identification of wanted suspects and criminals. After the police had taken the first picture of a suspect the photographic will match against other e-fit of possible suspects of similar crime in absent of DNA evidence, photographic identification services were established among all major police institutions in Europe and the United States. Perhaps most important of the technological means of criminal identification influencing the internationalisation of the police function were the bertillonage and fingerprint systems (Sullivan, 1977, pp.38-40).
Finally, the accomplishments of police technology were primarily perceived, developed, and implemented in terms of the means of policing. As the application of knowledge, technology is inherently always more instrumental in nature. Prototypical in this respect is the position since the first half of the 20th-century of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Bureau held a virtual monopoly in the United States over technologically advanced means of policing ever since it had assumed responsibility of the Uniform Crime Reports in 1930. Perhaps technology is the one of the most important among the means aiding the FBI’s international efforts with its huge collection of fingerprints, allowing Bureau agents to maintain an elaborate network of contacts with foreign police. (Deflem 2002, p.470).
CONCLUSION
I have empirically grounded the effect of technology upon policing, in this evolution, technology has the dual role of providing public police institutions with the means necessary to claim independence from their respective political centres on the basis of professional expertise, as well as of enhancing the opportunities for a newly constructed class of criminals to transcend the borders of national jurisdictions. Both developments contribute to an internationalisation of policing to establish structures (Deflem, 2002, p.471) of co-operation beyond the formal jurisdictional competence of police, based on an efficiency of the means of police technique and a depoliticised understanding of policing objectives.
The emphasis on efficiency technology as means of policing has serious implications in terms of the legality and morality of police. As police agencies and technology employ a technical apparatus of crime investigation and information exchange, normative questions of rights, and often even legal matters of due process and constitutionally guaranteed protections, are typically not or at least not primarily taken into account. In fact, police technologies were historically often developed and implemented to expressly bypass legal arrangements. Extradition procedures, in particular, were seen by police officials as time-consuming and unnecessarily restrictive arrangements that had to be replaced by ways to establish direct police communications across national borders (Deflem, 2000, p.763). The systems of information exchange instituted by international police organisations were similarly intended to bypass the restrictions of legal provisions, anticipating the relevance of the international exchange of expert knowledge and technical know-how among police today (Sheptycki, 1998, pp.485-503).
In terms of the transfer of police technology, it is problematic that technologies designed for a particular, legitimate purpose can be used for other, more troublesome objectives, as instruments of legitimate police power can become part of an apparatus of political control (Earth Island Journal, 2002). Briefly turning to a contemporary condition, in the post-September 11 context the war on terrorism is making high-tech systems of surveillance probably more acceptable than ever. Even civil libertarians concede that there is widespread sentiment that a proliferation of technologically sophisticated police methods, internationally as well as domestically, may contribute to make society safe from terrorist attacks (Wood, 2001, pp.94-97), but at the same time, legal and constitutional safeguards are brought into play to curb an excessive use of technology in policing (e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 2001; see Colbridge, 2001, pp.25-31). Instead of attributing intrinsic liberating qualities to technology or, conversely, condemning technological applications because of a presumed inherent lack of accountability, a more ambiguous role should be attributed to technology in terms of technical realisations and normative concerns alike. In the modern era of highly technologically oriented police institutions, policing becomes a delicate balancing act, caught in between demands for job effectiveness in matters of crime control, on the one hand, and concerns of due process, on the other. (Deflem 2002, p.473).
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