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Future generations of devices could also be programmed to interact more directly with a client's immediate surroundings. They might, for instance, react to the radio-frequency chips embedded in commercial products for the next generation of retail checkout scanners, and sound a warning if a parolee approached cigarettes like those he once shoplifted, or the liquor he liked to abuse. Or anklets could be set up to react with one another, preventing ex-cons from getting together without sounding an alert. Monitors could even be sold to store owners or other private citizens to let them know when particular categories of criminals set foot on their property.
These are the kinds of possibilities that give privacy advocates nightmares. Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, is a critic of mandatory sentencing and other measures that have packed U.S. jails, but he urges caution when viewing electronic monitoring as an alternative. "There should be a general concern about the extent of the power of the state to follow and track individuals and gather information about their lives," Luna says. "What is the minimum ambit of privacy, to maintain the level of human dignity that a liberal form of government should provide?"
At the same time, if the people being monitored are those who would otherwise be in prison, then the infringement on their privacy is substantially less intrusive than that entailed in being required to sit in a cell all day. BI's White made exactly this point when I raised the question with her. "They are doing their time in lieu of incarceration," she said, with some exasperation. When I asked whether the privacy concerns of inmates should be considered at all, her answer, in essence, was no: "A person's rights, when they are incarcerated, or a ward of the state, are different from yours and mine."