Remember the 2002 movie with Tom Cruise where the police force used psychics called “Precogs” to see and punish crimes before they happened? It seems that it’s not as far-fetched as we had hoped to believe. Police forces now have the means to gather your personal information through what they call data-mining, and use it to predict future criminal activity. Remember that time you said you wanted to kill your boss, or that you wanted to beat up your ex? Those things said in the heat of passion will now be visible to law enforcement agents. At what point does this idle talk become a crime? Civil liberties that were meant to protect our freedom of  speech and rights to privacy  have proven to be little defense against the government’s desire to possess this information. Their answer to our privacy concerns:

“There are significant civil liberties concerns that go hand in hand with predictive policing and data mining, Bratton conceded. However, the New York City police commissioner said, citizens should trust his department to not abuse its power and to remain within the bounds of the law”.

Citizens should just trust them…

Predictive policing is ‘wave of the future,’ NY commissioner says