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Police Use James-Bond-Style GPS Bullet
mrspoonsi writes "The BBC reports that police in the U.S. are now using 'GPS bullets,' a device they can shoot at fleeing vehicles in order to track them. They're designed to make high-speed chases safer. The pursuing police car presses a button, a lid pops open, and a GPS bullet is fired which becomes attached to the fleeing car. The car can then be tracked from a distance in real-time without the need for a high-speed pursuit."
Not slashdot's fault... This is news from around 2009!
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-7000/first-gps-projectile-tracking-device/
I had a sucky sig.
ghost in the shell invented it first
Well, we might find Scorpio's lair finally!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Really. Slashdot.
Lol, when every US cop show has more shooting in the intro than an entire series of a comparable BBC show of much better quality, and you keep shooting each other at worlds highest rates, it seems spot on to me.
What issues are those?
A hot pursuit is the perfect situation to tag a vehicle with a GPS device and then back off.
The social benefit of not chasing someone far outweighs the social cost of the transient tracking.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If this becomes popular, then so will GPS jammers for any who expect a need to make a getaway.
"GPS bullets that can track the location of a suspect's car"
"There are other ways to track vehicles and this could raise some civil liberties issues" -- Dave Allen of Leeds University
shh! nobody tell him about PRISM or his head might explode.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The StarChase system is a pursuit reduction technology that contains a miniature GPS module encased in a tracking projectile/tag and a launcher mounted on a police vehicle. It is neither a bullet nor a weapon as the BBC story claims. It doesn't use gunpowder, it uses compressed air. The word bullet does not appear anywhere on the company's website - except where another ignorant journalist has used it. You'd think the BBC would be better and more educated than the Des Moines, Iowa local news. You would also be incorrect in that assumption.
You can argue that 'weapon' means 'tool used to achieve a goal' - but come on, this is the BBC we're talking about. You put the words "American police" and "bullet" together and quite naturally scare words like "weapon" come out. Look at the quote on the page: "There are other ways to track vehicles and this could raise some civil liberties issues." What does that even mean? Fleeing from the police, endangering the lives of everyone on the road and all the BBC can think of is how the criminal's rights might be violated...somehow. Unfortunately this mental rot extends throughout the entire organization and its journalists are simply no longer able to think straight. I doubt anyone even thought for a second about the bias. Sad, because once the BBC was a paragon of honesty. Look back at newsreels and 80s broadcasts and you will see a very different organization.
There are guns that fire projectiles with compressed air and have been since at least the 18th century. This is the Star Chase system, to me it looks like a compressed air gun and that fires a bullet like projectile so the BBC is essentially right. It seems to me that you are getting worked up over nothing because you don't like the BBC and have no made up 'EU wants circus performers to wear hard-hats' type story to get worked up over this morning.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If you read your own link, the StarChase website refers to it as a cannon ffs.
I think we can forgive the BBC for toning it down to bullet from cannon shell.
Except of course when it's perfectly fine to describe this as a bullet, there is absolutely nothing in the word bullet that requires the existence of gunpowder. Hell, bullet just means small ball by origin.
It costs $5,000 (£3,108) to install and each bullet costs $500 (£312).
Apparently the exchange rate was updated while they were in the middle of writing that sentence.
You know why I like the BBC and their sister stations in Australia, over the years they have been accused of biased by all sides of politics. Using 20/20 hindsight their track record of "getting their facts straight" is hard to beat, and that's the reason why the are castigated so heavily by politicians when they do fuck up.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is why I keep the back of my car coated in vaseline. Checkmate, Johnny Law!
The thing to remember about the BBC is that is the elite, who know they are the elite, getting an elite salary living in the elite section of London being quite ashamed about being elite, ridled with white guilt but not to the point of you know, hiring a "black" person. It is fun when you watch a show like "Have I got news for you" and you realize that 99% of the presentors and guests make more per episode then most Brits make in a year. "Deayton's salary was halved to £25,000 a show but the latest revelations forced Ms Heggessey's hand." http://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/oct/29/broadcasting.bbc6
That was ten years ago. HALVED TO, so it USED to be 50.000 pounds. Per episode. The series used to do two seasons per year of around a dozen episodes. And 50.000 pounds was his fee PER SHOW!
Now I don't know the exact economics of the UK but I think it is fair to assume that for most people, 50k a YEAR would be a nice salary to have. This guy gets it for a couple hours "work". His co-hosts frequently portray themselves as either being "working class" or defender of the down-trodden but they get similar fees and have other jobs besides this show.
Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson made a joke about the UK soldiers who were captured by Iran that they made quite a nice salary "oh that is per year!?! never mind" he then quipped. It is funny but it shows the complete separation between normal people (the audience of the BBC) and its stars. What do these people, whether they host a popular entertainment program, a news show or the news itself about losing their job and not knowing how you are going to pay next weeks rent (and no, not knowing how you are going to pay the mortgage on your 3rd 5 million pound summer home is not the same thing).
Or do you think Angus Deaton getting his salary halved from a mere 50k to 25k for an half hour show is on the same level as a pensioner having their benefits cut?
The BBC used to be a rare mix of working class and oxford silver spoon people making TV if not together then at least in the same building. This has changed. The pay has gotten so good that even if they were working class when they started, they aren't after a few years. This has rotted the BBC to the point you can see it in their news service, they just don't get the working class, let alone the class without jobs anymore. They feel sorry for them but like a nobel who sends his butler with the remains of the turkey dinner to the orphanage. Watch some HIGNFY eps were there are working class union reps on. The hostility is palpatable, how dare these people who make less then 20k a year tells us what it is really about.
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