But pay phones now sport armored cords immune to straight pins. Pop machines got smarter - some even talk. And no self-respecting vending machine - now smart enough to take paper currency - would accept a filed slug.
Cars now have steering locks, motion alarms, electronic keys and variations of "The Club," a device that prevents steering. Instead of an inviting "Hide-A-Key" stuck magnetically under the bumper, cars now hide small homing devices, activated by radio if the vehicle is stolen.
But while criminals - those "end users" of the law enforcement, justice and corrections systems - are watching some doors close by technology, other doors are opening. Crooks, for example, put a phony ATM machine in a shopping mall. Unsuspecting shoppers inserted their ATM cards, punched in their personal identification numbers and waited for their cash. Instead, the machine recorded the information on the ATM card's magnetic strip, as well as the personal identification number (PIN). The crooks retrieved the information and used it to make copies of the ATM cards, and began withdrawing money from accounts.
The dummy ATM machine - a technological upgrade on installing a phony "night deposit slot" on the side of a bank - is an example of sophisticated future crimes that some believe will change the nature of crime and of law enforcement.
Some manifestations of "futurecrime" are already commonplace - drug pushers and prostitutes using pagers and cellular phones; credit-card fraud and theft, computer viruses and computerized "breaking and entering" to change that biology grade or transfer a few thousand dollars into one's checking account.
When stolen credit cards became a problem, businesses installed card readers for online verification. Recently, someone was caught videotaping - from across the street with a special lens - bank customers as they entered their PIN. If the customer left his or her receipt in the machine, the crook then had the account number and the PIN. The rest you can guess.
Even pranks and vandalism have become electronic. A student who, in the 1970s, might have ordered a truckload of gravel dumped in a teacher's driveway can now dial up the school's computer system and plant a virus that turns each cursor into an obscene gesture. Instead of smashing windows and breaking furniture, someone can now tap into a huge database and destroy what may amount to thousands of hours of work - all from the comfort and safety of home.
So what does the future hold? Will human nature change? Not very much. Will technology change? You bet.
2005 A.D.
Walking down the street 10 years from now, citizens carry no cash. Money costs too much to manufacture, and is too easy to counterfeit with new color copiers. Armed robbery disappeared along with greenbacks.
Perhaps everyone but the indigent carry credit, debit and ATM cards. "Flipping a coin" to settle a dispute is replaced by the childhood game "scissors, rock, paper." Most watches cost less than a soda. The economy - previously a roar of stock markets, rattling change, the crackle of currency and jangle of cash-register bells - is merely a whisper of electrons pulsing over ancient fiber-optic cables or through the ether.
Social service benefits are the most technologically advanced part of the economic system. The indigent - who lose their cards, or are forced by criminals to relinquish them and reveal their PINs - receive benefits via live-scan fingerprint readers. The recipient merely selects items to buy in a grocery store, for example, and presses the right index finger onto the live-scan reader.
Everyone carries an emergency panic button. A built-in global positioning satellite (GPS) receiver pinpoints the location, just as airbag-triggered transmitters automatically summoned emergency vehicles to the scene of auto accidents in the latter part of the 1990s. Rapes and assaults - while still prevalent, have decreased, because of the panic buttons. All citizens are DNA typed and on file for instant matching at the National Crime Information Center in Washington, so the apprehension and conviction rate is much higher than in the 1900s.
Federal law requires "trap doors" in all encryption technology. Law enforcement and the IRS monitor all financial transactions and track criminals by their PINs. Law enforcement became dependent on the easily obtained financial transactions, to monitor the sale of drugs and other criminal activity.
The beginnings of social change is stirring, however, spurred by the lack of privacy and citizen discontent at the lack of cash for garage sales. A black-market currency in Disney dollars, old subway tokens and Chuckie Cheese coins begins to thrive. The government floods the market with counterfeit coins to destroy their value and once again makes it illegal for citizens to own gold. Barter is a crime.
2015 A.D.
In the aftermath of the revolt of the "Citizens Against Electronic Invaders," money is back. At the insistence of law enforcement, however, each bill is bar coded for tracking. The revolt has carried away accountants, tax shelters, tax loopholes and the IRS. Instead of income, property, interest income, capital gains, inheritance and other complex taxes, a 16 percent across-the-board national sales tax is all that remains.
As a result, Americans becomes a nation of savers, surpassing Japan and other thrifty countries. Savings are amassed by ordinary people without penalty. Money is available for loans and new business. Productivity is rewarded, and best of all, April 15th becomes just another lovely spring day.
2035 A.D.
Forty years hence, most property crimes have disappeared. According to Dr. Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., physical objects are produced from computer programs a la Star Trek's "replicator." In 1990 - while nanotechnology was barely conceived - IBM physicists wrote "IBM" using 35 individual xenon atoms (GT Feb. 1991). Nanotechnology now allows the production of objects from individual atoms and molecules, the basic building blocks of the universe.
Stealing a diamond is foolish, when, with a piece of programming code, your "nano-replicator" can make as many as you want. Physical objects no longer have an intrinsic value except for their immediate utility. Gold is used for decoration and fishing weights. But intellectual property - those lines of programming code - are priceless. Fort Knox is full of information.
