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Dutch Police Build a Pokemon Go-Style App For Hunting Wanted Criminals (csoonline.com)
"How can the police induce citizens to help investigate crime? By trying to make it 'cool' and turning it into a game that awards points for hits," reports CSO. mrwireless writes:
Through their 'police of the future' innovation initiative, and inspired by Pokemon Go, the Dutch police are building an app where you can score points by photographing the license plates of stolen cars. When a car is reported stolen the app will notify people in the neighbourhood, and then the game is on! Privacy activists are worried this creates a whole new relationship with the police, as a deputization of citizens blurs boundaries, and institutionalizes 'coveillance' -- citizens spying on citizens. It could be a slippery slope to situations that more resemble the Stasi regime's, which famously used this form of neighborly surveillance as its preferred method of control.
CSO cites Spiegel Online's description of the unofficial 189,000 Stasi informants as "totally normal citizens of East Germany who betrayed others: neighbors reporting on neighbors, schoolchildren informing on classmates, university students passing along information on other students, managers spying on employees and Communist bosses denouncing party members."
The Dutch police are also building another app that allows citizens to search for missing persons.
CSO cites Spiegel Online's description of the unofficial 189,000 Stasi informants as "totally normal citizens of East Germany who betrayed others: neighbors reporting on neighbors, schoolchildren informing on classmates, university students passing along information on other students, managers spying on employees and Communist bosses denouncing party members."
The Dutch police are also building another app that allows citizens to search for missing persons.
The alternative is sensors and cameras automatically finding persons of interest and uniformed officers grabbing people without notice. Having at least one citizen in the loop may make the police more trustworthy, if the system is set up only for serious crimes.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Willingly hosting foreign troops in your country isn't quite the same as an occupation. Before the Two + Four treaty you would have had a point with Germany, that the two Germany's were occupied. These days, Germany could tell the US troops to get bent and they would need to. It is just not in Germany's (and NATO's) security interests to do so.
Japan on the other hand, I'm sure Okinawans would agree with you that its an occupation. Again at this point Japan could tell the US to get bent, but as with Germany. It is simply not in Japan's security interests either, especially with the North Korean's being a little unhinged of late.
The arrangement however does keep Japan from developing nuclear weapons, which it easily has the technology to produce a nuclear tipped ICBM within a year if it wanted. That's what the US gets in return, a non-nuclear Japan.
There is a huge difference between crowd-sourcing 'wanted warrant' search versus asking people to report perceived offenses against a state on their own volition.
Sure, but a crowd-sourced 'wanted warrant' search is very close to a government-sponsored witch hunt or lynch mob. It enourages people to form unregulated vigilante mobs to unquestioningly enforce the will of the government. What if you were wrongly accused of a crime? Would you rather be arrested by an official police officer who was trained to be professional and to respect your rights (although, I admit, they do not always follow their training), or would you rather be arrested by an angry mob of random citizens who enjoy finding the "evil" people, and who don't really care whether you're guilty or not.