End of Days by Sylvia Browne

SCAN (I have no idea what the letters in that acronym stand for) will be a massive international database of DNA collected from newborn infants and volunteers from the general population. It will be perpetually interactive with the currently existing CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System), which is focused on DNA gathered from criminals and crime scenes. The SCAN database will link each person’s DNA to such vital personal information as their medical records and their emergency contacts. If it did nothing else but eliminate the all- too-common tragedy of unidentified murder and other fatality victims, SCAN would be more than worth the forfeiture of privacy. But its ability to instantly identify lost, missing, abandoned, and stolen children will make it a Godsend.

The SCAN DNA database will actually be fully operational no later than 2015, as will the expanded capabilities of today’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. Added to the tens of millions of fingerprints currently stored and accessible to law enforcement will be full handprints, palm prints, footprints (as singular as fingerprints, it turns out), and prints of the sides of our hands, left behind when we write and almost unavoidably rest the side of our hands on the writing surface. The side-of-the-hand print is unique enough, and will be recognized enough as a valuable forensics tool, that its inclusion in the AFIS database will solve an internationally renowned kidnapping by the end of 2009.

In development at the end of 2008 and in full use by worldwide law enforcement no later than 2014 will be a database of the utterly unique “fingerprints” that are somehow imbedded in the iris of the human eye. The day will come when tiny iris-scanning devices are installed at every ATM machine, cash register, public building, and airport as a standard, doubly effective security measure. Let’s say, for example, that someone manages to steal your ATM card and pin number. The ATM machine will refuse to dispense cash when the iris scanner is able to tell in less than a second that it has an impostor on its hands. But almost as satisfying, at that instant both a silent alarm and the database will be alerted, and the police will know the identity of the would-be thief within moments of the attempted theft.

 

 

 

 

 

Most complex and most groundbreaking of the databases in our future, though, will be the voice database that will be perfected and in full international use by 2025. This database will be so highly sensitive that it will be able to detect every tiny detail of pitch, tone, rhythm, dialect, and countless other variables that will someday make each voice on Earth as distinctive as a fingerprint, no matter how many filters, synthesizers, and other voice-altering devices are used.

Now, imagine the combined forces of all these databases, as information is immediately transmitted to every airport, train station, bus depot, car rental company, hotel and motel, bank and ATM machine, restaurant and diner and convenience store throughout the world when a criminal is on the run, a child is abducted, or a missing-persons case is filed. Database receivers will be as common in public buildings and businesses as surveillance cameras are today, and law enforcement will instantly be alerted when a fingerprint, palm print, hand/side-of-the-hand print, iris “print” or voice “print” is recognized by the receiver.

Added to this series of coordinated global efforts will be an international version of John Walsh’s America’s Most Wanted, which will air seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day on its own non-profit satellite channel, broadcasting information on every fugitive and every missing person and child to an audience of countless millions in every corner of the world, with corresponding tip lines and Web sites. While the entire global law enforcement community will be instrumental in initiating and producing this brilliantly successful effort, it will have its real roots in the halls of Scotland Yard.

No later than 2014, satellites will be able to detect crimes and send alerts to law enforcement of the specific location where their help is needed. And in case there are no eye witnesses on the scene, or eyewitness accounts of the crime are inconsistent, as they often are, satellites in orbit for no other purpose will be able to instantly transmit detailed digital footage of a crime scene, the ultimate in discreet surveillance cameras.

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