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Police Organization Wants Cop-Spotting Dropped From Waze App
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports on a request from the US National Sheriffs' Association, which "wants Google to block its crowd-sourced traffic app Waze from being able to report the position of police officers, saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk." From the article: "'The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,' AP reports Sheriff Mike Brown, the chairman of the NSA's technology committee, told the association's winter conference in Washington....Brown called the app a 'police stalker,' and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members had concerns as well. 'I can think of 100 ways that it could present an officer-safety issue,' Pasco said. 'There's no control over who uses it. So, if you're a criminal and you want to rob a bank, hypothetically, you use your Waze.'"
Stop setting up cash-cow speed traps. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is about ticket revenue. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Finding out where the police are should be as easy as it is for them to find you.
If they are on the road and performing their jobs, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy. In fact, knowing where the nearest police officer can be found could enhance the safety of the general public.
"We're afraid someone will use this knowledge to attack police officers because they know where we'll be!" Right, because you can't magically call some 3 digit number to summon them to you if you're planning a horrific deed? Some crazed lunatic needs Waze to carry out his dastardly plan? Or is it rather that you don't really want people to know exactly which billboard you're hiding behind at the side of the road to nail people for going 3 mph over the limit?
...you mean the police don't like being stalked, electronically followed, and reported on without a warrant?
Waze has been around for over 6 years. If this were a legitimate concern why can he not point to a single incident of someone doing exactly this rather than merely spreading FUD?
They don't actually work "real crimes" anymore. They have automated systems which allow you to file a police report that they can then ignore. However if you're sleeping in a park, it takes three cop cars and a supervisor to harass you.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk"
I'm pretty sure the recent increase in behavior trends in Law Enforcement are what's putting officers lives at risk.
( Pro Tip: Keep killing unarmed folks and the masses eventually will break out the pitchforks and torches )
Hell, to be fun, they should remove the COP logo from Waze and replace it with a Pistol instead to reflect the increased likelihood of being shot.
Perhaps the police should stop behaving in was that make non-criminals scared of them. The number of dangerous criminals in society is really very small. If this app is downloaded more than a few hundred times that would indicate that more people than just hardened criminals want to keep tabs on cops. Just the download counter for the app could be read as a social barometer of public trust.
Also, the watchmen don't like being watched? Tough shit. You want more power than the average person, you had better get used to extra scrutiny too.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Police want to be able to (without warrant or cause) track you, record you, search you, go through your cell phone, and whatever else the fancy at the moment but once there is the slightest attempt at any monitoring or oversight of the police they go apeshit about their rights and their safety.
It's so backwards it's almost a parody of the intent of the constitution and government accountability.
I use Waze virtually every day. It can only be used to spot for cops who are running speedtraps. It doesn't "stalk" them in anyway. It is not very accurate because it relies on someone to note their location, and cops move a lot (say, when they go after a speeder and setup somewhere else or move on with other duties). At best it can bed give you info like "There's been some activity by police looking for speeders around here recently."
If Google caves to this nonsense, I'm going to be very disappointed. And, for the record, never have any reason to use Waze again.
David Whatley
The Romans had a saying: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- "who watches the watchmen?"
Apparently, the sheriff's association would prefer "no one."
Meanwhile, they want unfettered access to track you, to search you at will, to apply force when they deem necessary - with no potential repercussions, and to have their word taken as literal truth in courts of law. In short, they want to answer to no one, and especially not to the public that pays their salaries and that they are sworn to serve.
To have their way, they threaten litigation or new statuatory laws. I suppose that they forget that the public has the right to free speech, and that the police are not the *secret* police in this country.
Let me get this straight.
Cops have guns, shotguns, assault rifles, armored tanks, armed robots, tasers, pepper sprays, billy clubs, body armor, police shocks, police engines, police cars, police radios, helicopters, and the power of law behind them.
But they are afraid of an app.
Sig for hire.