Big Brother may be watching but is he seeing everything?

Apr 24, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The granddaughter of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the former President of Guyana, was attacked and robbed of her cellular phone. The incident took place outside of her home in the heart of the city.
When her father called the cellular phone number, it was said that the phone was answered and a conversation took place. This shows that the person who robbed the young lady is a punk and is stupid. It is most probable also that the persons also made calls from the phone, calls which the police can trace through the help of the phone company.
With good investigative work, the perpetrator of this crime can be caught and brought to justice.
This is not an isolated case. Almost every day in this country, there are reports of persons being robbed and relieved of their cellular phones. There are persons within our society who wish to get into the fad of having a cellular phone but who do not wish to buy their own phone. They prefer to take from others what does not belong to them, they thief.
There are kinds of cell phones out there, some cheap, some expensive. Every citizen can find a phone at a price to match his or her pocket. So there is really no need for persons to be robbing anyone of a phone. But there are some criminals in this country who want to have what is not theirs. They eye up your phone and then set about relieving you of it, even though they cannot afford to keep sufficient credit in the phone to make the calls they wish to make.
Cell phone crimes are now quite prevalent and there is the technology available to bring a stop to it. The government passed laws insisting that all cell phone accounts must be registered. This must have cost the phone companies a huge sum to implement. In the same way as this was done, the government should demand that the phone companies implement technology to reduce the incidence of cell phone thefts.
This technology is available. It is believed that once a phone is reported missing, the phone company can lock that phone provided they have the necessary information. In this way the stolen phone becomes useless to the person stealing it since it is locked and cannot be unlocked. Once there is co-operation between the phone companies then we can have a system whereby once a company shuts down a phone, it cannot be used by a subscriber of another phone company.
In the incident involving the granddaughter of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, there were injuries. Things could have been more serious. There have been cases where persons have been seriously wounded while being relieved of their cellular phones.
The police stations and the courts simply will be overwhelmed with cases about cellular phone thefts in Guyana. The police even with the help of the phone companies will exhaust themselves trying to track the phone records of stolen phones. From a law enforcement point of view, it would be problematic and onerous to pursue investigations into every stolen phone.
This is why the technology has to be used to act as a deterrent to cellular phone theft. So long as a criminal knows that a phone he steals can be permanently deactivated, he is not going to bother.
The use of the technology is going to reduce crime considerably in Guyana because right now cellular phone theft is rampant in Guyana. There was a time when choke and rob was the main crime in Guyana. That soon disappeared in the main and gave rise to other more violent forms of robbery and criminal conduct. Persons began to fear invasion of their homes.
Now choke and rob crimes are back with a vengeance and they are back because of cellular phones. Big Brother may be watching but Big Brother cannot see everything. Big Brother needs the help of technology and the technology exists to once and for all wipe out cellular phone theft in Guyana.
There is going to be resistance to the introduction of technology that can help wipe out cellular phone thefts. The introduction of this technology will reduce cellular phone sales since less number of phones will be stolen. However, this is no reason, morally or otherwise, to oppose the introduction to the technology that would cripple stolen phones.
Technology is changing all the time. Novelties are being introduced each day and new models are hitting the market each week. This alone is sufficient to assure of continued sales since many people want to be in the fad.
We can still be in the fad and help to prevent cellular phone thefts. It is something worth doing. The technology should be introduced.

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