Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg. 20th Century Fox, 2002, 145 min.

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A Glimpse Ahead?

by Chip Pitts

A virtually all-seeing state, monitoring your location and actions on closed-circuit television, listening to your conversations and reading your email, entering your home without your knowledge to search for contraband — this is the world of the new Steven Spielberg blockbuster "Minority Report".

The film takes its core idea and tone, but little more, from a Philip K. Dick short story in which three mentally stunted but psychically gifted mutant "Pre-Cogs" help prevent crime by predicting its future occurrence. In one of the movie's many richly imagined innovations, the Pre-Cogs are revered as quasi-divine (they live submerged in a womblike tank of amniotic fluid within a room called the "Temple"). Instead of Dick's punch cards, they project their neural output directly onto large screens. John Anderton's (Tom Cruise's) Pre-Crime unit then locks up perpetrators before they can actually commit crimes. Anderton thinks the system works perfectly — until he finds himself accused.

Despite the filmmakers' intent to create a world not too distant from our own, they could scarcely have predicted how resonant the film would be by the time it was released.

Pre-Crime's motto is "that which keeps us safe, keeps us free." The same slogan could work for John Ashcroft as he rounds up and indefinitely detains terrorist suspects on "national security" grounds. American citizen Abdullah al Muhajir (José Padilla) was detained merely because police suspected he might have been planning to build a radioactive "dirty bomb." The quest for security also manifests itself internationally in the latest incarnation of the "Bush Doctrine," threatening other nations with pre-emptive military strikes before they can threaten us with weapons of mass destruction.

These cases have in common a disregard for traditional evidentiary requirements; that is, without probable cause in the case of domestic criminal suspects or an actual breach of the peace in international affairs. The truth of actual fact is deemed less important than the putatively greater "truth" that a possible threat requires serious pre-emptive action, no matter how remote it might be.

In "Minority Report," those apprehended by Pre-Crime protest their innocence. But their protests have no effect. They are innocent, but that is not considered relevant. What matters is society's interest in eliminating crime. This classically utilitarian rationale — the greatest good for the greatest number — trumps individual rights in the movie because of the proven reliability of the Pre-Cogs' predictions. As Cruise's character says in the movie, "the fact that you prevent it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen." The Pre-Cogs have never been wrong in the unit's six years of testing.

Of course, our human judges — Bush and Ashcroft — are hardly as infallible as the mutant Pre-Cogs. The perfect Pre-Cog track record is perhaps the main fictional element in "Minority Report." In real life, fallible humans weigh messy utilitarian considerations against rights-based considerations. This bomb may help end the war, but will it kill too many civilians? Since we're sure this suspect is a terrorist, shouldn't we keep him locked up even if we don't have enough evidence to prove it? Res-ponsible decision-makers in modern societies strike the balance not on the basis of arbitrary whims, mere suspicions, superstition, or religion, but on the basis of demonstrable facts. Political theorists (ranging from Madison and Jefferson to Karl Popper) have thus stressed the need for open debate and institutional checks and balances to temper and correct imperfect human decisions.

The imperfect world continues to inspire more perfect unions, good and bad. At their worst, they resemble the dystopias of science fiction or real-world totalitarian experiments. Some utopias considered attractive to many, like Plato's Republic or Osama bin Laden's Greater Islam, have frightening similarities, including the forced subordination of "lower" castes to "higher," quasi-divine, elements. Plato's Republic, no less than al Qaeda's ideal, was a conservative throwback away from Athenian democracy and toward a Spartan tribal state in which a select few govern the masses through specially revealed secret knowledge. When an investigator refers to the growing "priestly" power of the Pre-Crime unit in "Minority Report," a member heartily agrees that sometimes they act "more like clergy than cops." Despite the tension between this approach and American ideals and experience, such elitist inclinations also mark the current administration. Against these arrogant strivings for perfection, Popper's classic The Open Society and Its Enemies stands as both indictment and prescient warning.

The administration's theory, like that of the Pre-Crime unit and indeed the entire movie, is that we live in a Fallen World of lost innocence, and need purification. In a sense, all are guilty. Given the number of fundamentalist Christians currently in positions of power, this pessimistic view of human nature as tainted by original sin inevitably expresses itself in policy.

The president's executive order of November last year sidestepped ordinary civilian courts and authorized indefinite detention and military tribunal trials for any non-citizen that the executive branch "has reason to believe" is a supporter of terrorists. The hastily enacted PATRIOT Act similarly authorizes indefinite detention and deportation on even broader grounds, not merely of terrorism or association therewith, but any activity the attorney general has reason to believe endangers national security. The Guantanamo detainees are being held indefinitely despite the plain language of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention entitling them to a presumption of prisoner of war status and an individualized hearing in cases of doubt. The government justifies this by holding that they aren't soldiers from another party to the Convention, but unlawful combatants (i.e., al Qaeda terrorists), even though most were apparently members of the Taliban's army or associated militias who would fall within the scope of the Convention.

All these new laws and legal interpretations invert the usual presumption of innocence: no evidence of actual guilt or indeed of having done anything at all is required if the standard is unlimited executive discretion exercised for "protective" purposes. Like tribal shamans or judges, only the elite is allowed to see the facts underlying any suspicions. Anderton says in Dick's short story, "[even the Pre-Cogs] don't understand any of it, but we do." The movie's spreading atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust is reminiscent of modern-day America: only those possessing secret special knowledge are entitled to judge guilt or innocence. The contrast with democracy, which assumes that we are all able to judge matters affecting us, is apparent.

In many of these cases, the administration has been lax in requiring evidence in large part because the evidence often simply isn't there. Conspiracy laws can be used to convict those involved with overt acts of terrorism — they were used to convict Sheik Omar Abdel Raham in the first World Trade Center bombing. But Padilla hasn't even been charged with a crime. Justice William O. Douglas once noted, "[w]e in this country . . . early made the choice — that the dignity and privacy of the individual were worth more to society than an all-powerful police." The administration has made this once again an open question.

I just returned from a week in New York and a couple of weeks in Europe. I could not help but be struck by the extent of electronic surveillance in public places. In "Minority Report," law enforcement can ask for a "full camera," or photographic record of all your activities. This is already possible for those in Times Square or London's Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square. In London, ubiquitous signs remind you that your every action is being monitored by closed circuit television. A local newspaper reported over a million and a half cameras in operation. In Great Britain, at least, there was parliamentary debate before extending surveillance powers over telephone, email, Web surfing, and mobile phone location from police, security forces, and tax authorities to many additional government departments. No such genuine debate took place in this country before adopting the PATRIOT Act. Instead, businesses clamored over each other to provide stronger, more centralized biometric and other identification, database, and monitoring technologies. The trend toward decreased privacy will only continue.

As will the perennial search to use new technology to attain a risk-free, perfect society. And some of the new technology holds promise. Retinal scans, for example, seem to be a lot more reliable than facial recognition technology, less intrusive than full-body scans, and at least theoretically able to reduce racial profiling. Other emerging technologies, like genetic testing to predict future crimes, and the prospect of brain implants, including memories, pose even more dangers than the technologies in "Minority Report." But as we are reminded by the movie, any technology (and personal data obtained thereby) can be either used positively or abused. I don't mind the occasional purchase suggestion from Amazon.com, but I wouldn't like to live in the world of constant monitoring and unremitting personalized chatter envisioned by the filmmakers.

The movie plays repeatedly with the question of whether the knowledge gleaned from the Pre-Cogs really is perfect, since human interpretation of their insights could introduce possible flaws. The quest for perfect control and security is, alas, as futile as the quest for final victory in the war against terrorism, as long as we are human. Indeed, attempts to remove all risk are not only futile, but usually counterproductive. The administration's classified reports already question whether the Afghan war has decreased the threat, or merely driven al Qaeda deeper undercover to become more dangerous.

Protecting society through preventive incapacitation (incarceration or, in the extreme, execution after proof) is one of the accepted rationales for criminal law, in addition to rehabilitation, punishment, and deterrence. But forgoing the proof requirement raises serious issues of constitutional compliance, basic fairness, and effectiveness. Trying to further extend the preventive and retributive logic to international relations, without the careful proof criminal law requires, undermines the framework of international law carefully cultivated over centuries. Sanctioning a rule that we would be loath to have other states adopt violates the key principle of reciprocity and could create more rather than less instability and terrorism. Though this was not the meaning of the title "Minority Report," applying a rule to aliens and ethnic minorities that we wouldn't want applied to ourselves also violates the principle of reciprocity at the heart of not only legal but also all major ethical and religious systems.

One wonders whether the Pre-Cogs' predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies, as in the story of Oedipus meeting his fate because of the prophecy — whether there is a sort of Heisenberg principle at work here, by which our actions in seeking truth affect the truth we seek. After all, Anderton searches for his victim precisely because the Pre-Cogs say that he will murder him.

There seems to be a similar fatalism in the current administration's actions. Tragic ignorance seems to be propelling us toward an inexorable destiny of fighting the wrong enemy — states rather than terrorist individuals — creating more terrorists and enemy states in the process. By increasing pressures on these enemies for its own "pre-emptive" action, the administration mutates and multiplies the threats, rather than minimizing them.

And all the while we're forgetting why we're fighting in the first place: to preserve a culture of tolerance and free choice against the forces of prejudging, of prejudice, of notions such as "Pre-Crime." Will we, as individuals and society, be able to exercise free will against this determinism?

Of course, "Minority Report" does not focus so closely on these issues. As with all good art, the drama arises from the tension within and between the artistic elements (especially, the movie's characters, ideas, and auditory and visual music). But while the film's complex texture and plot (crafted by screenwriters Scott Frank and Jon Cohen) cannot be reduced to a few simple and clear lessons, the film reminds us — while stimulating, entertaining, and disturbing us — of freedom's importance in an increasingly hostile environment.

© Copyright 2010, Liberty Foundation

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