As if you needed another reason not to choose crime as a career path, this article from InformationWeek discusses a collaboration between Microsoft and the NYPD that  has resulted in the development of what is known as a Domain Awareness System (DAS).

This system unifies many, sometimes disparate, data sources into a single attack tool to fight crime in the city. According to the post, these data sources include CCTVs, Radiation detectors and license plate scanners, which can – for example – check scanned plates (on moving cars, mind you) against a database of plates of wanted cars, then locate and track them. It can even determine where that car has been, and whether it is part of a larger group of related cars. As a side note, that kind of extrapolation and relationship determination is a data mining process known as Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA).

So remember, crime doesn’t pay! Unless you don’t get caught, which you will with this new system. And it’s expanding to other cities.