Don't Killer Our Robots

Dallas went where technology has not gone before: towards making cyber abilities a tool of security reactiveness. Explosively destructive reactiveness.

The apparent mastermind of the Dallas police slaughter was brought to an end by having a remote detonation device (C4 from new reports) advance, trap, then explode proximate to him, taking his craziness out of public danger.

Law enforcement, faced with an untenable reality wrapped around today’s gun-heavy culture -- literally surrounded themselves by an armed and frightened, poorly regulated public militia of bad ideas! -- showed it could do what it does well -- turn technology into a killing machine. And who can argue with their result?

The bad guy had a gun, an assault weapon that gun advocates openly praise -- one able to fire scores of projectiles per minute; you know, something every squirrel hunter desperately needs! -- knew how to use it, and had isolated himself in a position where there was no way out.

So they did what they could: turned our robots into a killing machine.

This article in the light of morning following the Dallas Blue massacre captured the significance of this decision well. David A. Graham posted in The Atlantic a short piece entitled “The Dallas Shooting and the Advent of Killer Police Robots.” The piece says, with a seeming sense of pride, that "While many police forces have adopted robots—or, more accurately, remote-controlled devices—for uses like bomb detonation or delivery of non-lethal force like tear gas, using one to kill a suspect is at least highly unusual and quite possibly unprecedented."

Possibly, but this was not a tactic pulled out of the blue. It was a natural continuation of a trend that seems to favor using technology for law enforcement benefits over other viable options. And why not? Technology on many levels has been shown to be useful for numerous tactical advantages for the “good” guys, and there will undoubtedly be a hue and cry for more.

Where the danger with this lies centers on the imbalance caused by such a visualization -- namely, that cyber options are best considered to support or reinforce killing opportunities. But this is itself such an injustice. The real benefits of digital advancements lie in the fact that we can plug them into numerous positive and peacefully empowering efforts and strategies and make them work for the betterment of society … not just as another means to the end of an unfortunately set of circumstances; circumstances setup, one can argue, by global military over-reliance on weapons of massive assault potential to begin with.

Technology is well prepared to become part of the EMPOWERING heart of hyper-modern community policing methods, should we opt not to clothe it otherwise before we figure this out.

It is possible that good and engaging technology can quickly become a disarming police resource far more powerful than any type of guns, any militarization of weapons, or the entire notion that cops must be explosive representatives of front-line authoritarian control forces.

From communication platforms to decentralized connectivity and deep levels of participatory interactivity, cyber linking abilities may be able to redesign policing in ways that stop criminality before it organizes -- even in the minds of the crazy -- at the same time that it shines the light of honesty on well-doing and wrong-doing law officers who wrap themselves in the clothing of power.

SMART -- meaning technologically grounded -- community-policing strategies paired with smart and controllable guns will, in combination, add up to seeing technology as a friend of cultural ease - not just as a tool against ugly force.

I’ve previously elsewhere - and firmly believe now - that blockchain-based approaches offer many avenues to virtual empowerment (way more than financial or banking models). One such path could and should include making assault-style weapons monitorable and controllable. IMHO, there ought be no assault-capable guns on the streets of a just America that can discharge bullets at ridiculous RPMs (rounds per minute); at least not without there being equipment that can “see” these weapons through the eyes of public cyber guardians. In this day and age, neither cops nor bad folk should have dumb guns.

And the way to do this is by building the next generation of community policing around updated technology aspects that look well at technologies. This is not only doable, I envision that it may be feasible that it will make routine police positions such that they would no longer need to carry guns -- and when the soldiers of democracy don’t think guns are cool, the enemies of it will not either.

Robots will become increasingly sophisticated law enforcement intervention instruments quite quickly. As a society, however, it is up to us to make sure that this choice does not require making robots explosive devices for extreme actions. Technology is smarter than that, and we ought to be too.