Police future and using of new Technologies Essay

Police future and using of new Technologies - Essay Example Local law enforcement agencies are part of the overall DHS team, even while taking care of local issues, as they are also at street level and most likely to gather information from neighborhood contacts (Peak 2012). Many of the tools devised by the military are now being used by the law enforcement communities to help overcome issues of restricted manpower and availability on the streets. Tools used by the FBI and the NSA, particularly within the surveillance realm, are being used, such as advanced electronic apparatus that will pick up any phone and texting messages being sent in any given area that is being monitored by the Stingray (Sabalow 2013). This mobile device picks up the transmissions from a close-by tower and relays it back to the mobile device’s antenna and is then downloaded to a laptop. By all formal accounts, actual phone conversations and text messages are not picked up in real time. The point is to determine those suspected phone numbers, which link people being watched, with others who may yet be unknown to the police, until that linkage occurs. Location of the phone call or message is recorded by location and time, perhaps placing certain suspicious people close to so me event that has occurred, or is likely to occur, such as a bombing. The next step for law enforcement is to get a warrant that can be applied to the tower’s carrier and thus, be able to get more information from the carrier on the suspected people involved. However, there is always room for abuse in determining just when the original information was gathered, thus necessitating that warrant, or if one was even obtained. Not only are suspected people under surveillance, so are those people who just happen to be in that area where the tower is located (Sabalow 2013). It would be ideal if law enforcement could come up with fine-tuned technology that could just follow the suspicious phone numbers and text messages by setting up a technological code on the