Arrest-Proof Yourself by Dale C. Carson, Wes Denham Read Free Book Online Page A

will know automatically. You can’t hide! You can’t cut yourself even a bit of slack! The system includes a cell phone so the state can call you and tell you to stop what you’re doing, or worse, say, “You’re busted!”
    GPS chips are here now in a cell phone near you. Law enforcement, with a court order, is able to track your movements as well as record your conversations. Ex-spouses and other enemies, using the civil courts, will not be able to record your conversations, but they will be able to track your movements.
    Guess what’s happening with those high-end security systems installed in luxury cars, trucks, and SUVs? These systems include microphones and wireless uplinks for voice and data. Law enforcement officers can get search warrants that allow them to turn on the car’s microphone and listen and record conversations inside the vehicle without the driver’s and passengers’ knowledge. Total monitoring via total telemetry all of the time is here now and ready to keep tabs on you.

THE ELECTRONIC PLANTATION
     
    Many poor people do not have computers, do not use the Internet, and have no idea how much they are affected by these innovations. Readers, this is the most important point in this book—computers, high-speed data transmission, and the Internet have changed everything . They are the reason you have to avoid cops and avoid arrest more than ever. Because of computers, arrest records follow you everywhere, forever. You can never escape past screwups and start over. There is no clean slate in the era of computers. You can never pay your debt to society because society, with its computers, never forgets and never forgives. This slavery to your past due to computerized record keeping is what I call the electronic plantation.
    When you step out of jail and complete probation or parole, you leave the criminal justice plantation. At 18 or so, you get mustered out of the social services plantation. You will, however, remain enslaved in the new electronic plantation. Before you get your first breath of free air, your arrest records will be transmitted to computers around the world. Some of these computers belong to government law enforcement agencies, others to private companies that collect personal information and sell it to prospective employers, lenders, credit card companies, and landlords. The electronic plantation is virtual—everywhere and nowhere. You can’t touch it, or ever hope to find it, because it’s dispersed among computers, databases, and servers that can be located anywhere in the world yet be in instantaneous communication. Nonetheless, this plantation is absolutely real.
    Even if your records are expunged by a judge because your case was dismissed, because an acquittal was entered, or because adjudication was withheld, you can’t assume the information is unavailable. The reason? Local courts lack jurisdiction. They can’t order the federal government, which maintains the NCIC, or data collection companies in other states to purge information. They also lack funds, technology, or even the inclination to search out and erase expunged records. Preserving the rights of arrestees does not excite judicial officials or arouse the zeal of politicians.
    The electronic plantation is less visible than the criminal justice plantation, the social service plantation, or the rice and cotton plantations of centuries past. Nonetheless, it’s real. Employers, schools, and government agencies would rather not hire someone who has been arrested or whom the social service system has labeled as “troubled.” Lenders would rather not make a loan or a mortgage. Credit cards? Forget about it. Why bother, when other qualified people have clean records? Landlords, ditto. Why entrust rental property to someone who’s been arrested?
    So you may get back on the streets, breathing free air, but you’re on the plantation nevertheless. Only unskilled labor is available, and there’s plenty of it—digging