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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?
Nothing in here says anything about the NSA. Could we at least get a decent website.
John
...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.
Sometimes they're sitting there between calls doing paperwork.
The problem with cutting their budget is that traffic enforcement(writing tickets) generates revenue, solving crimes doesn't. So you'd be forcing them to write even more tickets.
Even in areas where the police department doesn't get a cut of ticket revenues, generally the legislatures will alter funding - IE give the cops money to be able to afford to write tickets where the money from the tickets goes to the schools. If they don't write enough tickets, they'll be questioned by the budget committees.
I don't read AC A human right
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.'"
If bank robbers only rob banks far away from where the cops are, and are gone by the time the cops get there, doesn't that LOWER the chances of an armed confrontation? Just saying ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"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!
Actually it isn't useless. Having emergency responders spread out, instead of gathered at the station, can significantly reduce response times in the event of an emergency.
This was one of the subjects of a friend's Ph.D. dissertation. He used it to show that while random spread can reduce emergency response times, creating patrol routes that target hot spots based on time of day can reduce response times nearly in half (compared with random spread).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
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
Just askin'.
When I was in my late teens I moved out of my parents' house and lived in a city whose police felt predatory, somewhat during the day, but especially after dark. Simple traffic stops would result in at least two units showing up half the time, and at night they were constantly racing around on the main streets, but never could be found in the actual neighborhoods. I've never been into drugs, never driven drunk, and at the time my vehicle was only six years old and in fairly good repair, but it felt like the police were actively looking for an excuse to pull me over. Literally within five miles were three other cities, and I never felt anywhere near as uncomfortable in those cities than I did in the one I lived in at the time.
I now live one city over, and there's a major state university here, but even with all of the youth hijinks and the college dropout slums a few miles from the school it still doesn't feel as predatory. Only time I was pulled over in this city I deserved it, and the officer was professional and civil even if he was firm in issuing me a citation. When pulled over in the previous city it always felt like the officers were just looking for excuses to get tough.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"...hypothetically, you use your Waze.'" Yeah. Let's start legislating everything that's "Hypothetically" possible. That sounds reasonable. + You can't speed around in obviously painted POLICE or SHERIFF vehicles with light bars spewing out Red and blue, and then complain about people knowing where you're at.
Oh I don't know....
I had every cop on duty in the small town I live in show up at my home once. What where they looking for? Some kids playing with guns during school...
It turned out to be some neighbor who called to complain about my kid playing with the kids across the street (both home schooled) and their arsenal of bright blue and orange nurff guns that shot orange foam darts about 15 feet, the day before.
They showed up with all three squad cars and 5 officers, right after lunch to let us know we where violating a non-existent curfew law.. What a waste of time and resources.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
I wouldn't call it a law but more of a foundational legal principle. But I'm sure the distinction is lost on the majority of /. readers....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Person who puts the public at risk of death for their own profit complains when public wants to know where they are.
Speed traps are public safety hazards (a hazard on the roadway which causes people to suddenly and without warning hit the brakes) whose purpose is to generate money, not to increase public safety nor to reduce speeding. Just as an example, having inflatable police cars along the roadway is far more effective at reducing speeding, but does not generate revenue. This becomes even more obvious when you consider whether you're likelier to be pulled over on a nice dry summer day or a dangerous blizzard (at the same speed).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Go to a peaceful protest somewhere, something anti-government. Go up to random cops and just try to strike up conversation. Sure, some cops are cool and some people appear to ask for trouble. At the same time, you will find a tremendous amount of unfriendly and unprofessional cops.
The best experiment I ever saw was of ex cops trying to ask for complaint forms at police stations. Yeah, now that's a good time to be had for sure.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
From the cited article:
>> “There’s no expectation of privacy” for a vehicle driving on a public road or parked in a public place, said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, a spokesman for the Mesquite Police Department in Texas.
http://washington.cbslocal.com...
Man that must be a real bitch for them.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just make it illegal to use Waze to commit a crime.
There. Problem solved.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Here is a little scenario. An officer stops on the side of the road, and waits until that location gets marked on waze. Then he moves to another street and waits to get marked again, and again. Now the map looks like the police are all over the place. Properly played waze is a force multiplier. If waze were to simply change the marking algorithm so that marking an officer took one user event, but removing it took several, then the police would have the kind of visual presence on the map that would serve their better interest. People in those areas will slow down, and no you won't know which is current and which is merely recent.
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.
I agree that this is free speech, and that police should not only be okay with people reporting on their location, but should be *required* to report their location publicly, constantly.
But that's not what this post is about. Others are saying "maybe if police didn't abuse their power, people wouldn't want to circumvent police and speed traps"
To take the opposite approach: maybe if speed limits were not only sane, but actually *enforced*, people wouldn't care so much about speed traps.
Speeds traps being a thing is really a sign that something is fundamentally wrong. Speeding should not be a thing which everyone does, unless there's a speed trap. Speeding should be a thing which, when it happens, everyone on the road reports the speeder, because they are creating a dangerous situation (just as you might call the police to report a chemical truck on fire).
If we live in a world where a law exists that *only police care about*, that's a problem.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All