Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson), a mysterious billionaire, developed a computer program for the government that predicts terrorist threats to the US. It was designed as a means to prevent another 9/11-type disaster, but Finch discovered that it was also predicting many "irrelevant" (non-terrorist) crimes. The non-terrorist data is dumped to a separate database and deleted each night. Finch realized that a great many domestic crimes could also be prevented if that data could be used. Finch built a backdoor into the machine that allows him to retrieve a list of Social Security numbers of people who will be involved in those crimes in order of occurrence. Unable to investigate the data on his own, Finch hires John Reese (Jim Caviezel), a former Green Beret and CIA field officer who is presumed dead, to help stop the crimes from taking place. The world thinks that Finch, like Reese, is dead. Finch made the choice of only transmitting the Social Security Numbers of the persons of interest so that if the backdoor is discovered, the government would have no clue as to what the numbers mean or that Finch is still alive.
Opening: narrated by Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson):
“You are being watched. The government has a secret system--a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because...I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror but it sees everything...violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you, crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn't act so I decided I would, but I needed a partner--someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You will never find us. But victim or perpetrator, if your number's up, we'll find you.”
At the point where Finch says "But whether victim or perpetrator, if your number's up, we'll find you", the person of interest of the week is shown. -
Watch current episodes...http://www.cbs.com/shows/person_of_interest
One of the more interesting shows on OTA TV.
So far, they've been respectful of citizen's rights - criminals gave up any claim thereto. Also they are acting as private citizens, not affiliated with a government entity. I can suspend belief for that hour. :^)