Minority Report

In 1956, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick published a short story titled “The Minority Report” in the magazine Fantastic Universe. A meditation on free will and determinism, it was concerned about a future United States in which mutants with psychic abilities predict crimes for the police, who preemptively arrest the would-be perpetrators. The story was adapted into a film and was released in 2002 as Minority Report (sans definite article), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell. Minority Report was a box office and critical success, and it has loomed large in law and policy debates in the years since its release as an illustration of the potential perils of nascent surveillance technologies. After a summary of the film, this ...