Crime Doesn't Pay

2004-04-25T21:12:00.000-05:00

Hackers Discussion

The film Hackers shows how criminals used computers to commit internet fraud. Dade Murphy code name Zero Cool, one of the main characters, released a virus that wreak havoc onto the Wall Street, sending them into chaos at the age of 11 and landed himself under the scrutiny of the Secret Service. As a punishment, he was not allowed to use a computer or a telephone until the age of 18. Once the day of his 18th birthday arrives, Dade once again with a newly coded name Crash Override jump right back into hacking. From changing his schedule to match with his classmate and changing the schedules of fire alarm to making life miserable for Secret Service Agent, Richard Gill with altering credit card, traffic violations, and living status. While the police are trying to arrest Dade and his gang, Eugene Belford, The Plague, is using a worm to steal millions of dollars from a global company. In order to escape from the law enforcement, Eugene put the blame on Dade and his gang. To fight the real criminal Eugene, hackers from all around the world come together and put him down once and for all using the computer and viruses.

2004-04-25T13:28:00.000-05:00

Conclusion
Our goal in this project was to analysis the relationship between crime and technology as portrayed by movies and television shows. After watching a variety of films involving both crime and technology, it is evident that advancing technology affects both the way crimes are committed and the way that crimes are solved or prevented. S.W.A.T. portrays the ongoing battle between good and evil in which technology plays a role on both sides. As the police update their technology to investigate crime scenes as represented by The Bone Collector and CSI, criminals continue to advance in an effort to commit their crimes undetected as in The Italian Job and Hackers and vice versa. When it comes to crime, technology is merely a tool available to all to be used as each individual sees fit.

2004-04-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

Final Discussion

The original purpose of this project was to look how technology was used by criminals to enhance their chances of successfully commit crimes. Throughout the past five weeks, our theme has changed a bit from just focusing on criminals to looking at how both criminals and law enforcement use technologies to enhance both of their jobs. By watching films, especially SWAT and CSI, we were able to see how police use new technologies such as cell phones and advances in forensic sciences. Using these technologies, police are able to thwart the acts of criminals who also take advantage of new technologies. In the film SWAT especially, the battle between the good and bad can be clearly seen. This is exactly how the world operates right now. Criminals invest in the latest lock picking gadgets, safecrackers, weaponry, and other technologies to enhance their chances of scoring big. On the other hand, law enforcement has upgraded their surveillance technologies, and other tool of tracking and identifying criminal. There will always be an ongoing battle between the criminals and police. As technology gets better and better, criminals will find different way of committing crimes, and different crimes to commit, however, it is up the police to keep up-to-date with the technologies if they want any chance in keeping our streets, or telephone lines safe.

2004-04-24T23:25:00.000-05:00

Conclusion

The object for this project is to analyze how technology affect crimes both in the areas of preventing/solving crimes and commiting crimes as portrayed in movies and television shows. After five weeks of watching various movies and television shows, it is evident that technology can be used to prevent and solve crimes and also at the same time committing crimes. While people are blaming on the advanced technology for the various crimes, but it is not the technology that commit crimes, but the people using these technology. As portrayed in SWAT, this movie shows that the same technology can be used in both good and evil, while it is evident in /CSI and The Bone Collector that technology is used to solve crimes and capture the criminals. In Hackers and The Italian Job, however, technology is used to steal gold and money. In the end when it comes to crimes, it is up to an individual how technology is used whether for good or evil.

2004-04-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

Hackers Discussion

The film Hackers, directed by Iain Softly, doesn’t just show how technology is used to commit crimes, but shines light on an entirely new form of crime, internet fraud. Before the creation of the internet, there weren’t risks of people stealing identities, withdrawing from online account, or even stealing music from recoding artist. Hackers was one of the first films, after Sneakers, to begin to illustrate how dangerous the internet can be if used by malicious people. Even though Dade’s team of teenage hackers eventually saves the day, they first commit countless felonies all by using the new technological opportunities that the internet creates. These are kids with too much time on their hands. Before we would be happy to have kids off the streets and in their homes studying. However now, maybe we should send those kids, who have so much free time that they start breaking laws from their own computer console, outside to the streets.

What “new” types of crime have been created due the inventions of new technologies?

2004-04-24T02:09:00.000-05:00

Before starting this project, I had the opinion that technology assisted criminals with the pursuit of crime more than those trying to solve crime. Now I feel that technology aids both sides equally. It creates new ways of committing crime and even new crimes, such as internet crime and the ease to share copyrighted material. Technology helps those who chose to commit crime by giving them new weapons, forms of communication, strategical approaches, and neat gadgets. But these same technological innovations are also accessible by investigators and police teams, so neither criminals nor cops truly have the edge over the other. The only way to one-up the other guys is to use their technologies against them and of course find their flaws. For example, the criminals in The Italian Job use traffic control to stop the cops, force certain vehicles to go a particular path, and secure a quick getaway. Also, they intercept police radio to stay away from cops. A good example of using technology’s flaws for other’s benefit is seen in the movie SWAT. The criminals take the SWAT team underground to disrupt their radio signals and take them out of communication with headquarters. Technology helps both police and criminals; without it crime would be completely different.

2004-04-24T00:57:00.001-05:00

In The Italian Job the two main uses of technology are through communications and computers. The characters committing the crimes use headsets to communicate and constantly stay informed of what is going on while also working at the same time. By intercepting police radio, they plan the best escape route using the police’s technology to their own benefit. Phone taps are used to keep up with Steve, Edward Norton’s character, at all times. One of the uses of computers in the robbery is hacking into the department of transportation’s traffic control and controlling traffic lights. By using cameras and pictures of Steve’s house, they create a computer generated layout of the house. The computer is so accurate it even shows dimensions of rooms and distances between doorframes. Computers and GPS allowed the thieves to locate the safe in the beginning of the movie and steal the contents successfully. Without the constant use of technology, the crimes committed in this movie would have needed different planning; most likely a violent, more risky strategy would have been the only way to get away with the gold.

2004-04-23T23:41:00.000-05:00

The movie Hackers obviously uses technology through computers and the internet. Eugene, the evil criminal, plants a virus aiming to steal millions of dollars from small business transactions. A group of teenage hackers get caught up in his plans and wind up finding a way to turn him in. Computers were the main use of technology in the fight between the hackers, but there were other forms as well. Without all of the pay phones, the kids would not have been able to access the internet. They all used tape recorders with a recorded message of tones to fool the phones into giving them free usage. Since this movie was created slightly before the cell phone craze, they did not have access to wireless communications. Instead they used beepers to send important instantaneous messages. With the use of technology, a new type of crime was created, but it was also solved with these newer innovations.

2004-04-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

2004-04-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

Hackers
In Iain Softley's 1995 Hackers, eleven year old Dade Murphy, code name Zero Cool, hacks into Wall Street, sending the financial world into utter chaos and landing himself under the thumb of the Secret Service. Flash forward to his eighteenth birthday and Dade Murphy, newly coded Crash Override, has completed his sentence of a seven year ban from any computer or touchtone phone and jumps right back in to the hacking world. Crash Override and his hacking buddies use computers and the internet to cause mischief throughout the city. From changing classmates’ schedules and electronically triggering school fire alarms to hassling Secret Service agent Richard Gill with altering credit card, driving, and living status records, Crash and his gang are an unstoppable technologically criminal force. However, while agent Gill and the police are busy tracking down the culprits of misdemeanors, the real criminal, Eugene Belford, The Plague, is pilfering millions of dollars at the expense of the global environment. His hacking skills are now the only hope Crash has of clearing his own name and preventing an environmental disaster. The “hackers of the world unite” in a last stand against The Plague, uniting the technologies of the computer, the internet, the media, and viruses to defend their own.

2004-04-20T13:27:00.000-05:00

The Italian Job
Unlike in The Bone Collector, criminals are portrayed as possessing the most advanced technologies in F. Gary Gray’s The Italian Job. The robbers in this movie are organized, intelligent, and well equipped for breaking and entering while the police make almost no appearance throughout the entire movie. Although The Italian Job contains the “bad guy,” Steve (Edward Norton) and “good guys,” Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg), Bridger (Charlize Theron), and their gang, all the characters are essentially criminals, despite intentional audience sympathy with Croker and Bridger. Therefore, all technology represented in The Italian Job is used to aid criminal activity. Seth Green’s character, Lyle, hacks into the city traffic system to manage a quick getaway while Bridger uses drills and fiber optics to crack into safes. Computers are used throughout the movie along with Global Positioning, cell phones, and explosives in order to steal the gold bars both originally and again from Steve.

2004-04-19T00:50:00.000-05:00

The Italian Job Discussion

The Italian Job is a good example of a film where the criminals use technology to enhance the way they steal. A good example of where they do this is in the first scene of the movie where they steal the gold out of the safe. In order for them to correctly place the explosives underneath the safe so that it fell straight down they needed to know the exact position of the safe. Using a global positioning system and a computer they were able to know exactly where the safe was, and thus were able to place explosives exact enough not to have to blow the entire floor away. This is a good example of how criminals use technology along with conventional robbery techniques. The criminals could have possibly done the crime without the use of the GPS, but by using it, they were able to make their job much easier.

2004-04-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

CSI Discussion

I have always been a big fan of CSI ever since the show aired a few years ago. What makes CSI different from all the other crime dramas is that it focuses on the technologies the investigators use to solve crimes. The episode "Suckers," in season four, is a good example of the show's use to technology to solve crimes. I would again like to highlight the scene that Shawn described about using the video camera image to correctly identify the criminal as a way the technology was used to apprehend the bad-guy. Because the criminal was an employee of the business he robbed, he knew where all the security cameras were placed, and was able to hide most of his face from the camera's view. However, with only half of the criminals face exposed, CSI was able to take the half face and using a computer digitally construct the other half of the face. Without this technology, they would have had to use a sketch artist to try to design the full face. With the computer, digital measurements were able to be made of key facial dimensions, such as the length of the mouth, wideness of the nose, or even the distance between the eyes to a hundredth of a millimeter. Once the computer had combined the image of the face and its digital half, the hotel manager was able to quickly identify the culprit.

2004-04-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

The Italian Job

The Italian Job is an example where technology is used not to prevent crimes but to commit crimes. In this movie, the criminals use technology to steal gold from a safe in Venice, Italy. In order to successfully and safefully steal the gold out of the safe, the thieves used computers to accurately measure the distance of the safe at the exact spot where it is located so that they can place just enough explosives underneath the safe and blow it through the ground and not blow up the entire floor. By using a global positioning system, the criminals were able to locate where the safe is and calculate how much explosives are needed to blow the safe through the ground. In another instance when the very thieves at the beginning of the movie are carrying out a plan to retrieve the very same gold they had stole at the beginning of the movie but was robbed by one of the fellows, these criminals used a computer to hack into the traffic system and control the turning of the red and green lights. By doing so, they were able to direct where the truck they're robbing go, stop traffic to divert attention, and stop a train to block the entry way to where they are. In this movie, the criminals depend on technology to "guarantee speed and accuracy" since "there is no guarantee in this business."

2004-04-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

CSI
In the episode “Lucky Strike,” the police chase a supposed drunken driver through Las Vegas. However, when the car finally stops, Alex James staggers out of the driver’s seat with a stake sticking out of his head and dies at the scene. Although the police cannot find fingerprints on the stake, mass spectrometry reveals arsenic and cyanide imbedded in the stake and bat guano under James’s nails. At James’s salvage shop, a bloody bullet hole in the wall tell the police that they are looking for a second body. A map posted on the wall, the arsenic, cyanide, and guano lead the police to a gold mine that James had sold repeatedly. At the mine, the police discover that James had been firing golden bullets onto the cave walls to sell the “gold mine” at inflated prices. The dead body of the current victim of James’s fraud, Joseph McPherson, is found among debris from an explosion. The police are able to reconstruct the scene based on the evidence; McPherson had discovered James’s ploy, confronted him, and been shot by him. James then tried to hide the body in the mines, setting off TNT which caused a fragment of the construction to imbed itself in James’s skull. In a simultaneous case in the same episode, the son of the famous basketball player Tavian Tombs is kidnapped. Because so many of Tombs’s employees touched the ransom note, no fingerprints could be lifted. However, using liquid extraction and mass spectrometry on the note, the police discover that the kidnapper smokes mentholated cigarettes. When the ransom payoff goes wrong, the body of Tombs’s son, Isaiah, is found down the road, apparently thrown from a moving car. By examining the body, the police know that Isaiah was bound tightly with rope near many dogs and was sedated heavily with animal tranquilizer, which killed him. The police search a dog kennel near the site where Isaiah’s body was found and find all the evidence of Isaiah’s imprisonment and the dead body of Jacob Price. All the evidence found at the site points to Bridget Willis, the mother of one of Tombs’s other children. When the police go to investigate the Willis home, they find her son alone. Willis had apparently kidnapped Isaiah because she felt she wasn’t getting enough money from Tombs. When the kidnap went wrong, Willis fled, leaving her son to Tombs.

2004-04-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

The CSI episode “Suckers” is about a murder due to an underground group of wannabe vampires. Since the victim was killed by someone sucking blood from her throat, the saliva was traced for DNA evidence, which later matched up with the murderer. Fingerprints were also found at the scene, and technology helped find and utilize this evidence to find the criminal. As careful as the perpetrator was to avoid leaving anything, he did not realize that saliva contained DNA or that one fingerprint would give him away.

The other story going on simultaneously in the episode deals with a planned theft from which the owner plans to get insurance money. The main piece of evidence from this investigation was one clip from a security camera. With only one quick shot at an incredibly poor angle, the clip was put into the computer and analyzed. Incredible computer software helped create a mug shot of the man, allowing his boss to identify him. It is amazing how much information investigators can gain from the tiniest piece of evidence. Without these technological ways of collecting evidence at crime scenes, these crimes would probably have never been solved.

“This guy is not giving me much to go on here.”
“Yes, but technology is a wonderful thing.”

2004-04-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

CSI

In one episode “Butterflied,” of the television show CSI, the actors emphasize the importance of DNA evidence in solving the case. In this episode, a nurse at a local hospital is found dead in the bathroom of her own house. The tub, sink, and the floor of the bathroom originally filled with blood had been cleaned up with bleach by the perpetrator. As a result, most biological materials such as hair, skin cells, and body fluids were destroyed in the process by bleach except for a piece of hair in the left in the drain. Fortunately this piece of hair which contains a piece of skin was not destroyed by bleach; thus, forensic scientists in this show are able to learn of another victim and discover his body, which the killer had sliced in many pieces. Since the perpetrator was careful throughout the murder, no other evidences are found, and the crime scene investigators are reaching a dead end until they accidentally stumble upon another piece of hair left behind in the spare bedroom. Thanks to the technology that can analyze DNA materials, the scientists in this show are able to identify that the perpetrator is middle age man with white hair who is getting bald. From this evidence, they also learn that this man uses Rogaine to prevent from getting bald. In the end, the killer is found and apprehended thanks to the technology that can analyze DNA materials. With this single piece of evidence, forensic scientists in this show can identify the killer, capture him, and bring him to justice.

2004-04-11T15:19:00.000-05:00

Swat

This movie is about the capturing and recapturing of a high profile international criminal, Claude Bezoul or Alex Montel. Because of a broken headlight, the law enforcement officials were able to contain an internation criminal wanted for drug trafficking, two dozen murders, and many other serious felonies. The three main types of technologies used in this movie is the radio/phone/television, computer, and machine guns. With the use of computer, the LAPD was able to through the FBI and Interpol's database to find out who Claude Bezoul is. By using the radio/phone/television, Hondo's SWAT team was able to communicate, work with, and protect each other. The police also use machine guns to get rid of any obstacle in their way. In addition to using technology to solve crimes/prevent crimes, criminals also use technology for their purpose of committing crimes. Utilizing the media and the television, the wanted man, Alex Montel, was able to broadcast his price of 100 million dollars to anyone who can get him out of jail and bring hell to the Los Angeles' SWAT team. Using the very same machine guns, the bad guys were able to get Alex Montel away from the possession of the police and almost succeed in liberating the guy.

2004-04-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

S.W.A.T.
The advanced technology found in Clark Johnson’s S.W.A.T. is used by both the criminals and the police in causing and fighting crime. The primary criminal, Alex Montel, played by Olivier Martinez, uses the media to make his offer of one hundred million dollars to anyone who can break him out of jail. Ex-police officer Brian Gamble, Jeremy Renner, and current S.W.A.T. member T.J. McCabe, Josh Charles, then use high-tech weaponry to manipulate the S.W.A.T. team and extract Montel. Gamble and his team use advanced guns and explosives to capture Montel and land a plane in the middle of a bridge in an attempt to fly him out of the country. The police call on the Special Weapons and Tactics unit to guard Montel and deliver him to a secure prison. The S.W.A.T. team makes use of weapons, helicopters, SUVs, bullet proof vests, advanced communications technology, and simple cunning to recapture and deliver Montel as promised. Unlike The Bone Collector, S.W.A.T. shows both criminals and police utilizing many aspects of advanced technology.

2004-04-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

To answer Pete’s question, another way the criminals used technology in their favor was the monitoring of media and perhaps radio waves to find where Claude Bezoul, the wanted man, was at all possible times. In fact he used the television and media to advertise his offer of money for assistance in releasing him from police custody. The broadcasting of this announcement to the entire general public interested many greedy gangsters, causing a mafia of thugs to form and strategize against the police. Another more pyrotechnic use of technology to throw off the police was the bad cop’s cell phone call to the two SUVs. Although the explosion ignited by the call did not stop the SWAT team, it was undoubtedly an exciting use of communications and pyrotechnics.

SWAT stands for special weapons and tactics. How was technology used to assist the tactical approach of the criminals or SWAT team?

2004-04-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

Swat Discussion

One scene in Clark Johnson's film, Swat, showed how sometimes law enforcement depends too heavily on technology to solve crimes. This scene takes place when the Swat team is chasing the perpetrators through the sewers. Because they are underground, they lose communication with their headquarters and are unable to give them the position of the bad guys. Because of the police’s reliance on the use of walkie-talkies to communicate, they do not have all the critical information and send their tactical forces to the wrong place, giving the bad guys a greater opportunity to escape. If however the police had perhaps a second or even third means of communication in case one were to fail, this problem would not have happened. Because we live in a time where technology rules our lives, we need to have a backup plan when these technologies fail us and especially people whose job is protecting us.

I thought that Swat really showed how criminals use police technology against the police. They were able to control how the prisoner was transported by shooting down the helicopter. How else were the criminals able to use technology to manipulate how the police tried to move the prisoner or how they tried to recapture him?

2004-04-04T21:59:00.000-05:00

In this movie, there are several murders done by the same person, who copied these murders from a book call The Book Collector. The killer left several clues at the crime scenes and kill his victims all in the same way as described in the book. Using these clues and technology, Angelina Jolie's character, Amelia, with the help of a handicapped but intelligent criminalist, Rhymes, is able to figure out who the killer is and save her mentor's life. One of the most important technology in this movie is the phone/radio. With this technology, Amelia is able to keep in constant contact with Rhymes, who throughout the movie has helped her walk through the crime scenes and pick up evidences. Originally, Amelia is just a common police officer who stumbled upon a homicide crime scene and is recruited by Rhymes to help me solve these murders. Without Rhymes' help walking her through all the steps necessary as a forensic scientist, Amelia would not know what to do and pick up clues that are vital in these murders and save Rhyme. Another important technology is the computer that allows Rhyme, who cannot move his entire body except for one of his hands and his head, to look through enlarged photos and evidences and then tell Amelia where to go and what to do.

2004-04-04T12:03:00.000-05:00

The Bone Collector
In Phillip Noyce’s The Bone Collector, the crippled homicide detective Lincoln Rhyme, Denzel Washington, must use the eyes, ears, and feet of Amelia Donaghy, Angelina Jolie, to track down a serial killer before the next victim dies. Rhyme, once New York’s number one forensics investigator and now a quadriplegic, still has the mind of a detective and must rely on advanced technology to replace what his limbs once did. Through advanced communications technologies, Rhyme is able to instruct Donaghy through the crime scenes to collect the needed evidence and photograph scenes. The hi-tech analysis of the evidence is the crucial key to solving this case. With the aid of his voice activated computer and the one touch capability of his view screen, Rhyme is able to piece together the puzzles of the crime scene and save one of the victims. Donaghy, who learns quickly from Rhyme’s expertise, follows the clues which point to Rhyme as the ultimate victim and is able to save his life. Although the killer leaves complex clues, the use of advanced technology is focused solely as the means for the police to solve crimes and save lives in The Bone Collector.

2004-03-31T12:40:00.000-05:00

Like Pete said, an immense amount of technology was used in the Bone Collector to help solve crime. One of the technological advancements used in the investigation was photography. Without photography, Angelina Jolie’s character Amelia could never have taken the crucial pictures of the crime scene which started the whole search for the perpetrator. Even though she used a cheap disposable camera, her pictures were necessary in the investigation. Another major piece of technology used in the movie was microscopes. These intense magnifying glasses blew up the pictures which were taken, showing all the tiny pieces of incriminating evidence and taking the police to the person behind the crime. If these and other technological developments had not been created, the crime would have been a much more difficult task to crack.

2004-03-28T23:50:00.000-05:00

Bone Collector Discussion

Technology played a huge part in the movie the Bone Collector. Without the machines available to Denzel Washington’s character, they would not have been able to save the little girl. In particular, without the scanner and the computer, they would never have been able to manipulate the three small pieces of paper into the icon of the book that led them to the docks. Even though Denzel’s character was a walking encyclopedia, actually not walking at all, he would not have had the evidence he needed in order to piece together the plans of the killer. In this case technology was used to help solve the crime.

I thought another important use of technology in this film was the use of the cell phones. What would have it been like if they didn’t have the ability to keep in constant contact with each other?

2004-03-23T02:52:00.000-05:00

Hello World!

So here we are, at the beginning of a new group blog. The topic? Crime and Technology. Expect to find exciting entries on how crime in today's world is affected by the advancement of technology. We'll be analyzing and reviewing the use of technology in association with crime in television and film. Issues such as internet crime in movies like Hackers and Swordfish will be discussed, as well as on the other end, technology's impact on solving crime in shows such as CSI. Be prepared to be ~~thrilled~~ amazed at the conclusions that we'll draw as we write our way into a new century!

2004-03-15T01:49:00.000-05:00

Well I've created the group blog for our project and emailed everyone, we should start posting pretty soon.