RadioLab's "Eye In the Skye"

September 13, 2016 9:29 AM

RadioLab "Eye In the Sky" I had some thoughts on this week's Radiolab Podcast and I thought here might be a good place to write them down. While RadioLab usually tells stories with nuance and depth, I feel this episode lacked a certain willingness to play devil's advocate. The "Eye In the Sky" technology is flawed in many ways that were not considered. Mostly, in that the highest bidder becomes the owner of the information recorded. While it was easy to pick out instances in were the information was used to the advent of the people, there is no guarantee that these are more than singular instances. We first take their word for its' success in waring countries, yet we have no indication to what effect it was used. It may have saved lives, but we just have to take the companies word for it. It also may have violated the rights of innocent Iraqis. There is no information either statistical or anecdotal. This persists when the show talks about Juarez. The discussion centers around about how the cities murder rate is high and McNutt's technology helped to trace cartel members back to a central location. However, what did this result in? The murder rate did not drop and it isn't clear that there was any end product at all. Even more troubling is that McNutt refuses to even say who the information was gathered for. Was it the police? Was it a concerned citizen? A rival cartel? Who knows. This is obviously a powerful technology, but it is unwittingly similar to those already in used by militaristic police forces in places like Baltimore and Chicago (both places still with growing murder and crime rates.) Shot Stopper uses similar uses similar methods with audio technology, but have cost cities millions and yielded no tangible results. Sting Ray technology uses an indistinguishable ideology in order to track phones of activists and protesters (not the terrorists and criminals it was intended for.) Spy technologies such as this will never fix the societal problems that cause crime. They can only increase distrust of authority, power, and police. What do you guys think?
posted by TheSillyman (1 comment total)

Not a good place to write them down.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:31 AM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]