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.

Comments

Re:Holland Russia

[easyTree]

According to a google search,

Treason
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government.

So, aren't *you* demonstrating treasonous behavior? Just saying :P

Better than the alternative?

[dj245]

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.

Re:Better than the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

The alternative is sensors and cameras automatically finding persons of interest and uniformed officers grabbing people without notice.

And what do you think will happen when someone gets "reported"? Hell, TFS mentions the Stasi. Do you not remember anything from history class?

Having at least one citizen in the loop may make the police more trustworthy, if the system is set up only for serious crimes.

Mission creep makes that impossible. Corruption makes that impossible. If there is one thing you should know by now, it's that these things always start out for "only the most serious offenses, and the worst criminals." Then slowly the definition of "offense" and "criminal" moves more and more toward "anything we don't like" and "anyone and everyone".

Don't believe me? Go read that history book you clearly didn't study. Many people were scared that if they didn't report others, that they would be targeted themselves as a sympathizer. Others did it for profit and privilege, or as a get out of jail free card.

This is crap. Divide and conquer by turning them against themselves, leaving us free to do as we please. Not one thing is made better by putting a human in the loop, nor is it by putting a computer in the loop. The whole damn thing is set up to fuck over the citizenry for the benefit of the powerful, and you damn authoritarian sympathizers fall for it hook line and sinker every single time. You idiots cannot or will not comprehend that an authority is not always right, or that it may have interests that run against yours. You assume that they are good and benevolent by default despite all of the evidence to the contrary. You are the ones who betray your fellow citizens the worst. It's because of you that this crap never ends. "Oh! BBBBuut.. we need an authority." NO! We do not. We need people who are honest and have the interests of everyone at heart to lead, not some self-proclaimed "leader" who only looks out for themselves or their buddies.

Re:Better than the alternative?

[guruevi]

This is basically the same though but instead of buying sensors on a state budget where it can be controlled with oversight, this is making every citizen's device the 'sensor'.

The goal is that you take pictures of people's license plates (including the GPS location) and then you get rewards. The fact that a particular car may be stolen is only matched after the plate has been stored and processed. So they're building a giant database of people's whereabouts without having to invest in the camera systems all while evading state oversight on privacy rules.

This type of surveillance is particularly useful to the State of the Netherlands because the tax systems, if you have a car, you pay extreme amounts of 'road taxes' on the car for personal use however for "home-work" travel use, you can deduct the distances you cover.

Many people nowadays have figured that if they take a back-road home, they can evade the highway where there are already license plate cameras in order to be able to make detours to the grocery store without "losing" the deduction. If you take a detour for personal affairs (like shopping), the entire trip is no longer deductible and cameras on the highways have already caught people that deduct too much this way.

So now they're basically wanting people everywhere take pictures of license plates, under the guise of "car theft prevention" so the state can map the whereabouts of people, if they happen to deduct home-work road taxes but are parked not at home or at work, the state could calculate how many days they took the deduction without qualifying for it.

Re:Better than the alternative?

[thinkwaitfast]

not long time ago

History became legend, legend became myth and after only a generation, some things that should not have been forgotten became lost.

Re: Better than the alternative?

[dj245]

I live on a street full of old people. They watch everything and report anything even slightly suspicious. Sure, that means the Amazon guy sometimes get followed by the police, but overall it is one of the safest neighborhoods I have ever lived in. Maybe the systems where informers were a problem were the problem, not the informers.

Wow, this is a remarkably bad idea

[rsilvergun]

Hey, I know, let's encourage the general populace (particularly the younger set) to hunt down potentially violent criminals. Surely there is no way this can backfire?

Re:Holland Russia

[DontBeAMoran]

Treason
the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill or overthrow the sovereign or government.

I think he meant the first part of it. If Trump is making decisions that aren't good for the U.S.A., isn't it treason?

If you find this comment funny, insightful or interesting, please donate a few Dogecoins to DNsSKbyNsi7369SGdvbKqLM9h4D5wAvmGD.

Re:Holland Russia

[easyTree]

It seems as though the history of your country is nothing BUT covert attacks on the people by powerful interests. Why single out one person?

Re:Holland Russia

[CODiNE]

Sure, but in partisan politics both sides believe they are right and the other side is flirting with treason simply for disagreeing with them. It becomes meaningless.

"A show of strength brings greater security"
"A show of diplomacy brings greater security"

Both valid arguments that are neither objectively wrong or right in all situations, both taken as gospel by some, both vilified as evil and dangerous by others.

The Stasi was not the beginning of this

[RhettLivingston]

These methods have been used throughout time. The only new thing here is the modern tech boost.

Germany was certainly very actively using these tactics during WWII to root out those destined for concentration camps. Informing on neighbors was highly encouraged and not doing so was very dangerous.

This is a tactic most utilized in social policing and tends to reemerge with populist movements. It may start out with "crime", but the crimes tend to evolve because citizens routinely think people with different belief systems need to be punished and feel empowered to do it themselves.

Re:The Stasi was not the beginning of this

[Anonymous Coward]

These methods have been used throughout time.

It's funny how Slashdot's idea of time begins in the twentieth century. Police didn't really exist until the nineteenth century. Before that there were soldiers to quell riots, and in some societies there were jailers and kinds of soldiers ("marshals" in American parlance, from "martial" meaning military) to enforce court orders. There weren't investigators or detectives like we have today: that's why detective fiction begins in the nineteenth century. In ancient Athens, the "Cretan Archers" existed to quell riots, but that's about all; in Rome, there were riot troops and firemen. Solving crime and bringing charges was the citizen's responsibility: the aggrieved party or someone acting on that party's behalf would have to investigate and prosecute. The idea of having the state do those things was totally alien for most of human history before the nineteenth century.

Re:The Stasi was not the beginning of this

[tietokone-olmi]

>It may start out with "crime", but the crimes tend to evolve because citizens routinely think people with different belief systems need to be punished and feel empowered to do it themselves.

Yep. This is why the police is the police, and everyone else is not.

Re:The Stasi was not the beginning of this

[AHuxley]

Want to reflect back on Maximilien Robespierre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... then? The EU and its past nations are filled with efforts to find people and alter the way entire nations think and function.

Re:Holland Russia

[DontBeAMoran]

My country? I'm Canadian, you insensitive clod!

Great

[qe2e!]

I don't think policing is psychologically healthy. Distributing the load can only be a good thing... Also that slippery slope? I wonder what fallacy that logic is using.

This is NOT Stazi state

[abies]

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.

East Germany (and other Eastern Block states) problem with citizens spying and reporting crimes was that it was mostly interested in political crimes/dissent. As it was something hard to prove or disprove, people were often reporting people they disliked, just for sake of causing them trouble.

It was:
1) possible false accusations due to personal hatred
2) being hunted for 'thought crimes' or any disapproval of state
3) not being able to trust your neighbors(or even family)
which was making it bad, not a pure fact that it was civilian reporting a crime.

That article kind of equates calling police when you see/hear somebody beating his wife in apartment next door to falsely accusing your coworker of anti-state collaboration so he will get taken to Gulag and you can get his position. In both cases you are turning against somebody who possibly trusted you and reporting him to state-run enforcement. But there IS a difference - and I think that finding stolen cars firmly fit into former category.

If police will start falsely flagging cars of political dissidents as stolen and using other citizens to hunt them down, only then it becomes a problem. But guess what - if they do that and do NOT involve other citizens, it is problem of same size.

Re:This is NOT Stazi state

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This is NOT Stazi state

[thinkwaitfast]

1) possible false accusations due to personal hatred,

2) being hunted for 'thought crimes' or any disapproval of state

Those sound strangely like tactics used on social media sites (just replace state by crowd).

Re:Germany is still an occupied country

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Holland Russia

[easyTree]

Please accept my apologies for assuming that you're American :D

*bows and scrapes out of sight*

Wait a second...

[Gravis Zero]

If the Dutch police made this application then why are they working as police rather than programmers? ;)

Oh, the police didn't make this at all. Words matter.

Want to see where this leads to? Watch "Popoz"...

[ffkom]

... the authentic documentary about Dutch police work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Want to see where this leads to? Watch "Popoz".

[ffkom]

Just realized this might be the better link to non-Dutch-speakers: http://www.comedycentral.co.uk...

Re:Holland Russia

[thinkwaitfast]

That is why we always need three parties that represent three different political values.

As of May 2017, there were at least 28 distinct ballot-qualified political parties in the United States.

Re:Holland Russia

[DontBeAMoran]

I apologize for making you apologize.

Re:Holland Russia

[DontBeAMoran]

Nobody mentioned Hillary, you two-party system fanatic.

Reminds me of a certain book and movie

[craXORjack]

This sounds like Stephen King's novel, The Running Man. The movie diverged a bit but was similar. Citizens help the authorities catch someone on the run.

Re:Holland Russia

[Aighearach]

I still can't figure out what schoolchildren telling on each other has to do with turning in car thieves! What sort of schools are they running in the Netherlands these days?!

And are we really sure that managers "spying on" employees counts as one of the evils of East Germany? Isn't that what being an employee is everywhere? I mean, if you work at McDonalds in the United States of America, and you drive a stolen car to work, and your manager finds out, doesn't he also call the cops on your dumb ass, and also fire you?

I just don't see the valid dichotomy being fought over here.

Get one caution or face the neighbourhood?

[AHuxley]

How authors who had eye witness generational access to the politics and ides of the 1920-50's told readers of what advances in tech would give governments.
Made for escapist fictional reading and movies in the 1940-90's.
Now a new generation are happy to work as unofficial informants digitally finding people for "crimes".

Thought crime? Wanted for the wrong kind of comment on social media?

Its a chilling way to ensure police only have to do one interview with a person who was reported for using social media for political reasons.
Be politically "good" online for decades or the next report will have the "neighbourhood" tracking a person for a crime.
The "neighbourhood" is never sure of the crime but only the very worst people get listed and tracked in that way.

The Circle

[GameboyRMH]

There was a scene like this in the movie version of The Circle (dunno if it was in the book, haven't read it). Governments must be harvesting ideas from dystopian sci-fi.