STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor’s note: Marc Goodman is a global security adviser and futurist. He is the founder of the Future Crimes Institute and serves as Chair of Policy, Law & Ethics at Silicon Valley’s Singularity University. He spoke at TED Global in June 2012. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading,” which it makes available through talks posted on its website.

(CNN) — The future of science and technology sounds so promising. Unprecedented advances in computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, genetics, neuroscience and biotechnology hold the potential to radically transform our world for the better and create mass abundance for all.

I sincerely want to believe in this techno-utopian vision of things to come, but my work as a police officer and global security strategist working in more than 70 countries around the world has taught me that there is a darker side to these emerging technologies.

The criminal underground is highly innovative and often acts as an early adopter of emerging technologies. As a young police officer, I observed gang members and drug dealers using beepers and mobile phones, long before they were in common use by the general public. Today, criminals are even building their own encrypted radio communications networks, such as the nationwide system developed by narco cartels in Mexico.

Watch Marc Goodman’s TED Talk

Technology has made our world increasingly open, and for the most part that has huge benefits for society. Nevertheless, all of this openness may have unintended consequences. Take, for example, the 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, India. The perpetrators were armed with AK-47s, explosives and hand grenades. But heavy artillery is nothing new in terrorist operations. The lethal innovation was the way that the terrorists used modern information communications technologies, including smartphones, satellite imagery and night-vision goggles to locate additional victims and slaughter them.

Moreover, the terrorists created their own operations center across the border in Pakistan, where they monitored global news broadcasts, online reporting and social media in real time, leveraging the public’s photos, videos and social network updates to kill more people.

TED.com: All your devices can be hacked

The terrorists in the Mumbai incident even used search engines during their attack to identify individual hostages and to determine, based upon their backgrounds, who should live or and who should die. These innovations gave terrorists unprecedented situational awareness and tactical advantage over the police and the government.

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