Interview with Sam Stonecipher, Director of Security for Astra city.

There has been much in the news recently about the differences in the crime rates in the vertical cities compared with the outlying areas. How do you account for that?

Astra, like the other city buildings, is a secured area. Everyone who lives, works or even shops in this building is registered with my department. It is illegal to enter the building without being registered and we have the means to quickly identify and apprehend unregistered intruders.

When a person registers, we get his or her identification information and enter it into the computer. The person is then required to have an id chip embedded in his or her forearm that is the universal security identifier throughout the building.

These chips have three main functions. Every three meters in the public corridors are sensors that track the encrypted radio signals from the id chips. The security computers track and record the location of every person at any given time. Also, there is twenty four hour recorded video in all the public areas (meaning corridors, elevators, the public areas of restaurants and other retail outlets, etc.). All this is done so we can quickly identify who committed a crime and where to find that criminal. As you can imagine, this type of surveillance does not go well with some privacy advocates. And this is a major reason why some people stay out of the buildings.

On the id chip is a nano chemical factory. It has an expected life of ten years. After that, the whole id chip has to be replaced.

One function of the nano is to test the blood for chemicals that are indicators of diseases in the body. Currently, tests for more than three thousand chemicals have been incorporated into the factories. If the nano detects a problem chemical, it sends a signal to the nearest sensor. The security computers pick up the signal and automatically relay an electronic message to the owner to seek medical attention. Since this area does not relate to either a security problem or a potential security problem, the medical information is not recorded and no human being (other than the owner) ever sees it. Of the three functions of the id chips, this one is the least controversial.

The other function of the nano is to identify the presence of illegal substances in the blood stream. Meaning that if the owner of the chip had consumed any illegal drug in the previous thirty days, the nano would detect the residual chemicals and send a notification to the nearest sensors. The nano does not track the overuse of prescription medicines, just the drugs that are completely illegal. In this group, there are the classic drugs like cocaine, heroin and marijuana as well as the hundreds of newer "designer" drugs. Once the sensors get a signal of illegal drug usage, security agents are sent out to arrest the individual.

This function of the id chip is also considered very controversial.

Why was it considered necessary to track and control illegal drug usage through the nanos?

Illegal drug use has been a major component of criminal activity for at least the last hundred years. The drug users frequently have to turn to crime to pay for their ever more costly habits. And criminal organizations resort to violence to enforce or expand their portions of the lucrative trade.

It is much cheaper to incorporate technology into the nanos to track this behavior than it is to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the traditional forms of drug suppression.

Since the residents of Astra know that they are being checked for drugs, illegal drug usage is now almost zero. In any given month, less than five people (out of four million total residents) are arrested for drug consumption. These are either new people who had consumed the drugs in the thirty days prior to registration or existing residents who went outside the building to party. In both cases, the nanos can identify the contraband chemicals within seconds and the violators are quickly arrested.

What is the penalty in the buildings for illegal drug usage?

For the first two violations a heavy fine is charged with no jail time. For the third violation, the person is permanently banned from all the building cities. If the person can stay drug free for five years after the first or second violations, those violations are purged and it is as if they never happened. Once the person violates for third time, however, the penalty is permanent.

Some people think this is rather harsh.

The results speak for themselves. The overall per capita crime rate is more than seventy five percent less in each of the major categories than an equivalent sized city on the outside. Some of this has to do with the enhanced drug enforcement and some has to with our ability to track down and arrest virtually all criminals soon after we become aware of a crime.

We can identify the criminal who committed a particular crime ninety five percent of the time just by using the security computers surveillance logs. Those cases where there are multiple suspects in the private areas have to still be resolved with old fashioned detective work. Of those people we identify as criminal suspects we have been able to arrest and convict nearly all of them. Some of the suspects flee the buildings and are currently outside our jurisdiction.

All that surveillance information could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

One of the components of federal Uniform Criminal Code of 2077 makes it a federal crime to use surveillance data for any purpose other than police work. The one exception to that law is that medically related surveillance data can be given to the target individual (just as we are doing in Astra). The penalty for the misuse of surveillance information is a mandatory ten years of sleeper time for the first offense and life imprisonment for any more offenses. So the government takes this matter very seriously.

At Astra we implemented a system where all human access to the surveillance logs has to be done with two persons present at all times and at least one of those people has to be a supervisor. In addition, all human accesses are recorded for later review. Not all of the buildings have yet implemented this level of security.

Have there been attempts to illegally access the security logs?

All the security logs are stored in military level encrypted databases. And each building's computers are not connected to any other building's computers nor to any other computer networks. So attempting a computer to computer break in is neither possible nor practical. The only viable way to gain access is through one of the computer security techs.

In the last twenty years there have been several break in attempts based on corrupting one of the techs. A politician was convicted of blackmailing a security manager into giving up the security logs of a political opponent. The politician never got the information. As part of a plea bargain, the politician agreed to plead guilty to a felony in exchange for not having to serve any sleep time, being permanently barred from the building cities and being permanently barred from politics.

There is only one known time where security log information got out to a third party. A stalker wanted information on a certain lady. In order to get it, he seduced a female security tech and convinced her he was in love with her. After he got the information he wanted, he raped and killed his stalking victim. Both the stalker and the security tech now have permanent residence in the sleeper prison.

Every new security tech is told the story of the stalker to make sure that it never happens again.

If the security systems in the vertical cities are so effective, why haven’t they been implemented to the outer cities?

That idea has been proposed many times. It has never been implemented because of cost and privacy issues.

The vertical cities were built with the notion of intense surveillance designed in from the beginning. The outside cities were not built that way, so a lot of expensive retrofitting would have to take place. Since the trend is to more and more vertical cities, no one wants to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to support the outlying areas with more security when those areas are increasingly becoming obsolete.

Each of the vertical cities is a secured area. This is no different from living in a gated residential community except that our cities are accessible to a much larger spectrum of the population. Our residents and visitors choose to live and visit the cities. In exchange for much greater safety, they are willing to put up with the minor inconvenience of the increased security.

If you ask the residents if they are living in a repressive police state, the vast majority will say no. If you ask them if they would rather live on the outside, the vast majority would say no. And since almost all of the residents are law abiding citizens in the first place, the increased security measures require little or no life style changes on their parts.

There are many people, however, who are not willing to give up part of their privacy even if it means better security. For them the outlying areas serve as a refuge from their perception of increased government intrusion in their lives.

The downside to all this is that since criminals by and large are avoiding the vertical cities and since the numbers of people migrating to the vertical cities in increasing, the people on the outside now have a much larger number of criminals per population than they had twenty years ago. Which has resulted in a soaring crime rate. So the exercise of their principles comes with a great cost.