Slashdot Mirror
Boston Cops Outraged Over Plans to Watch Their Movements Using GPS
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Boston Globe reports that the pending use of GPS tracking devices, slated to be installed in Boston police cruisers, has many officers worried that commanders will monitor their every move. Boston police administrators say the system gives dispatchers the ability to see where officers are, rather than wait for a radio response and supervisors insist the system will improve their response to emergencies. Using GPS, they say, accelerates their response to a call for a shooting or an armed robbery. 'We'll be moving forward as quickly as possible,' says former police commissioner Edward F. Davis. 'There are an enormous amount of benefits. . . . This is clearly an important enhancement and should lead to further reductions in crime.' But some officers said they worry that under such a system they will have to explain their every move and possibly compromise their ability to court street sources. 'No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?' said one officer who spoke anonymously because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. 'If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes? It's going to open up a can of worms that can't be closed.' Meanwhile civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file's own backlash. 'The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones,' says Woodrow Hartzog. 'But the officers' concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior.'"
There's a reason this ended up on the ACLU's website.
If you read TFA, Boston uses automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). Since each readout is logged and timestamped, this log data correlated with location history for cruisers could be used to build a massive location history database with very good coverage.
Barring that, as a public servant, a police officer is not entitled to privacy while on the job. As they are granted powers most people are not, they must also expect to be held accountable for their actions.
When off the clock, an officer is entitled to privacy like every other citizen. Keep in mind, the GPSes are installed in the cruisers. They're not ankle bracelets for crying out loud. If they're on foot patrol (do cops still do that?) the red dot on the dispatcher's map will show their car's location. The question mostly remains, then, do Boston cops typically drive their cruisers home, or leave them at the station and drive their personal cars home?
Since the goal of this tracking is to make 911 dispatching more efficient, the simplest solution is just to not record historic location data - show it in real time, and that's it. This mitigates tthe data mining and privacy issues while still giving 911 the tools they need.
Exactly. Every supervisor I've had for the past decade has known that I read Slashdot on the job. They also know that I deliver good results on time, and work extra without hesitation if needed. It should always be the results that matter.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
OK, guys, no cruisers within 20 minutes from here - let's hit them.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So I'd say that yes, we should do any type of recording including video, sound and GPS data. But we also need PROPER ways to protect the individual rights of the coppers. If the GPS data is needed for statistical analysis then we should store it anonymously and in bulk with no way to tie it back to individual officers.
I'm all for that.
Right after they ensure the same things for the citizens they monitor. A protection that - at the moment - is sorely lacking and the government is showing great reluctance - and even opposition - to codifying. The various law-enforcement (and other unrelated) agencies are grabbing every bit of information about its citizens and compiling massive dossiers about each and every one of us, and despite claims that it is all just "anonymous metadata" it has been shown how easily this information can be tied together to get data about specific individuals. There needs to be some protection against this sort of Hoovering.*
Until that happens, I not only want every police officer monitored every second he is on duty, but every politician too. We've given them great power over us; it's time to ensure that it is being properly used. If they feel that this sort of intrusion into /their/ lives is too much, they can damn well be sure the same can be true of ours.
We're the bosses of this country. They're just the petty clerks we've hired to do the dirty work (although it sometimes seems the political caste thinks things are the other way around). That sort of authority ought to get us /something/!
* I named this tactic both after the vacuum and the unscrupulous FBI administrator who utilized similar, albeit low-tech, methods to do the same; clever, huh? ;-)
Dark Alley. 45 minutes. "Informants."
Uh huh. I think they misspelled prostitutes.
And second, police on patrol (the article said cruisers). Do police detectives (not the type that write tickets) have cruisers? Idk, I'm no expert. But I know ticket writing police ain't taking down drug rings and shit. They patrol the streets. They don't have "informants".
I used to hang out with a woman who was a police dispatcher in a fairly major city. She had to know where the cops were at all times so she could call the closest one to any incident that may occur.
She said she did not know of one cop in town that wasn't banging a stripper or a hooker on the side. Most strippers and call girls will have "their" cop who would watch their back and look the other way for a little quid pro quo.
So yeah, having the fact that they park in back of the local "gentleman's" club for a half hour twice a week as public record might cause them some concern.
This will just nudge you to take the robbery first, the doughnut second.
Do you really think that's what this is about? I doubt it. Having the location of every cop in town will be very useful to those in charge, but not for the reasons you think. The guys on the ground aren't the only ones subject to corruption and malice. The mob will have an inside guy that will be able to tell them exactly where every cop is at any given moment.
I'd rather have cops eating doughnuts than having the mob knowing with absolute certainty that they are not eating doughnuts at the diversionary shooting on the other side of town. In fact, if I wanted to start intimidating cops, there's nothing better than knowing their exact location at all times.
Don't let your schadenfreude lead you to rally for something stupid. This sounds like a divide and conquer technique to me... "They're watching you!! Serves them right! Let's watch them now too." The correct course of action is to restore the rights of the group who lost them, not take the rights of everyone else away.