Slashdot Mirror
NYPD To Google: Stop Revealing the Location of Police Checkpoints (nypost.com)
schwit1 shares a report from the New York Post: The NYPD is calling on Google to yank a feature from its Waze traffic app that tips off drivers to police checkpoints -- warning it could be considered "criminal conduct," according to a report on Wednesday. The department sent a cease-and-desist letter over the weekend demanding Google disable the crowd-sourced app's function that allows motorists to pinpoint police whereabouts, StreetsBlog reported. "Individuals who post the locations of DWI checkpoints may be engaging in criminal conduct since such actions could be intentional attempts to prevent and/or impair the administration of the DWI laws and other relevant criminal and traffic laws," wrote Acting Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters Ann Prunty in the letter, according to the website. My $0.02 is that the NYPD loses on first amendment grounds.
SOTU to NYPD: STFU
Fixed.
This app also assists Lawful and Non-Impaired drivers in avoiding the inconvenience or uncomfortable situation of happening upon an unexpected checkpoint and possibly becoming subject to some search or test that they wish to avoid.
In other words.... this functionality has lawful and beneficial uses, contrary to what their letter suggests.
Furthermore, the submission, sharing, and dissemination of this information about government activity is speech of a political nature among the types of speech most strongly protected by the 1st Amendment of the US constitution, which the NYC PD is not above.
Go read the first amendment, and then go fuck yourselves. We have every right to tell each other about unwarranted surveillance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The law says you have a right to not be detained without reasonable cause, and freedom in security of your belongings from unwarranted searches.
Checkpoints prevent these lawful protections.
They get around this in some areas by publishing where these checkpoints will be. All of these actions take away rights by claiming exigent circumstances or public interest. Due to well-deserved lawsuits, they have to restore those rights somehow to prevent abuses.
But you're complaining about how those rights are restored. You are backwards.
The driver and any passenger face gets some quality CCTV well before any checkpoints.
Any smart phone is detected.
No smart phone detected? Talking at the checkpoint is the voice print.
The constitutionally approved magic is a K9 unit that can alert on command.
That allows for the K9 approved "search"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You have not been paying attention.
When you give your money to a company to build the road, they will make sure they own the road.
You will pay for it, though the nose, because they have you over a barrel. But they will own it
And they will charge you extraordinary amounts of money to use it. You and everyone.
Sure, government needs to be watched ( so, why arent we watching ), but corporations need watching too.
The Randian notion that corporate execs are uniformly stalwart pillars of truth, justice and fairness does not seem to apply.
I wish like heck it did, but it dont.
emt 377 emt 4
If they're allowed to get away with this, you can bet it won't be long before they'll be trying once again to make it illegal to video them when they're beating the crap out of somebody.
The police need to be smacked down hard. If you happen to be part of a demographic they don't particularly like, your odds of getting beaten or killed by the cops for no particular reason are higher than your chances of being injured or killed in a terrorist attack.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
I haven't found a Supreme court opinion on the subject, but a Federal district court judge granted a preliminary injunction against the City/Police in Ellisville Missouri regarding this. See "Elli vs Ellisville" from 2014. (I am not the same AC you asked for a citation, just thought I'd give googling for one a shot)
And the standard here isn't that people were helping people get away with criminal behavior. Flashing your lights at someone (and by anology letting people know about a police checkpoint) is the equivalent of telling someone not to commit that crime. This isn't the equivalent of a look out for a drug lab radioing in to let them know about a police raid.
So if you are speeding and I flash my lights to warn you of a speed trap that doesn't help the furtherance of a crime, you are going to slow down and comply with the speed limit. Likewise if there is a police checkpoint then you are going to drive more carefully or might just decide to stop driving if you had a couple. People are going to stop the criminal behavior, at least for a period of time.
Deterrence is the whole point of having speed traps and police check points... which is completely in-line with people being made aware of them.
"DWI checkpoints" are not used to catch drunk drivers. They mainly go after expired plates, unpaid tickets, outstanding warrants. auto insurance, minor drug offenses.
They're document checks, nothing more. The statistics on this are pretty clear.
You are welcome on my lawn.