Roberts v. the Future - New York Times: "Sketching out a hypothetical situation, Rotenberg imagined, in the near future, a young man walking around the Washington Monument for 30 minutes while waiting for a friend. Meanwhile, sophisticated biometric camera systems (which can register the details of someone's face), connected to data-mining computer programs (which link the face to a database of personal information), monitor the young man. The cameras might also detect, say, a copy of the Koran he is carrying under his arm. Taken together, this information is used to generate a ''threat index'' based on how suspicious the high-tech profiling makes him out to be. ''According to the computer algorithm, pacing around a national monument might be a suspicious activity characteristic of someone intending to commit a terrorist attack,'' Rotenberg said. ''The link between his face and his travel records and magazine subscriptions, maintained by a big commercial database, might generate a citizenship trustworthiness score that suggests further investigation.'' "

Commentary: The Next 10 Years will not be without dramatic challenges to the legal system.