
Annoncering
Annoncering

Annoncering
Annoncering
Lawyers and academics have a theory of their own, something they refer to as "the CSI Effect". In 2010, the Economist declared that, "television dramas that rely on forensic science to solve crimes are affecting the administration of justice". Massively popular shows like CSI and Bones are so far from reality that a lot of the techniques they use may as well be magic. As a result, jurors turn up to trials with a warped sense of what forensics can actually achieve. One trial judge recounts overhearing a juror questioning why the police hadn’t dusted a lawn for fingerprints.“What I think is at play here is that shows such as CSI, NCIS, 24, etc, give people the impression that information is instantaneous and infallible,” Matt Hartings, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at American University, told me. “Results pop up much faster in real life, and the analysts are much more certain about results than I, as a scientist, would be. The information on these shows comes fast and furious and infallible.”The research on how this affects trials has been pretty mixed, but it does seem pretty clear that TV shows affect our impressions of science and technology. As trial judge Donald Shelton puts it, “Many laypeople know – or think they know – more about science and technology from what they have learned through the media than from what they learned in school.”That probably isn’t limited to CSI – we’ve seen similar in the media-driven MMR hoax, and the explosion of Roswell believers in the years since The X-Files first aired. With so many TV shows and movies showing the intelligence services using miraculous technology – “Enhance!” – juggling satellites like a clown on a tricycle, and monitoring anything, anywhere at will, it’s not surprising that so many comments in the wake of the Guardian’s reporting over the weekend were along the lines of, “So? We knew about this anyway…”The upshot of all this is that even if PRISM didn’t exist, a lot of people would assume it did anyway; and that some of us, on some subconscious level, would kind of wish it did. As the debate about state surveillance plays out in the coming months and years, that need is something privacy campaigners should pay consideration to.Follow Martin on Twitter: @mjrobbinsPreviously - The Developing World Needs GM Plants More Than It Needs Hippy Protesters