Law Enforcement Wants Google To Cripple Waze Because It Lets The Mean Old Public 'Stalk' Police Officers
from the I-can-see-you-parked-right-there dept
If you've tinkered with Waze at all you know the app allows users to post road conditions, lane closures, police locations, and other pertinent driving hazards with a heavy emphasis on the gamification of that information (i.e., you get points for reporting accurate information). I generally find the feature to be marginally useful if not annoying. Police move positions so quickly I find that crowdsourcing isn't particularly effective. As such, I generally just stick to my long-standing practice of flirting with a speed that's around six to seven miles over the speed limit (I know, I'm an absolute wild man).Eager to protect a revenue generator, law enforcement has long wanted speed trap warning disabled in the app, though as we've noted, warning others of speed traps (whether that's flashing your lights or otherwise) is effectively protected speech. With previous arguments not working so well, the latest claim by the law enforcement community is that Waze is dangerous for police because it effectively facilitates stalking of officers. Or at least that's the argument being pushed forth by the National Sheriffs Association in their quest to make Waze much less useful to motorists:
"Sheriff Mike Brown of Bedford County, Virginia, said the police-reporting feature, which he called the "police stalker,'' presents a danger to law enforcement. "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,'' said Brown, who also serves as the chairman of the National Sheriffs Association technology committee."Of course, the police officers being "stalked" are parked in obvious line of sight on public motorways, and if a mentally-unstable person did want to cause problems, it's not too hard to find an opportunity. At the same time, the citizens using the app are simply having a perfectly-legal conversation. Combined with the fact that the quoted officers can't be bothered to cite a single instance where this sort of technology has ever been a problem in this regard, that's a pretty feeble justification for crippling an application by any measure. Regardless, it appears Google has already been making concessions; when it started porting Waze data into Google Maps earlier this year, police reporting data was notably absent.
Whatever, just as long as we're not talking about how much Waze location data gets shared with the law enforcement and intelligence communities, right?
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Filed Under: free speech, google maps, gps, information, law enforcement, navigation, police, stalking, waze
Companies: google, waze
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You first
If they can watch us, we should have the same ability to watch them, and if they object to being watched, then they shouldn't be doing any watching of others themselves.
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Re: You first
unfortunately the police neither care about the people, nor do they see themselves as beholden to us.
to the police, were are all just criminals they do not have enough evidence for arrest.
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Re: Re: You first
Well that’s fair. More and more of us are thinking of the police as criminals with nice uniforms.
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Re: You first
That's the problem, they don't care...that they are
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Re:
What read is "Holy crap, the cops are pansies!" They're armed to the teeth, wearing body armour, driving armoured vehicles (MRAPs?), and we're a threat to them? Come on!
This is not a new thing. I've been hearing police complain about how *everything* is against them for decades. Yet fifteen(?) year olds are shot in traffic stops, instead of cops thinking instead. Lay out a spike strip to stop that stolen car, you idiots! You don't need to be shooting teenagers.
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They've spent how many years seeing, and treating, the public as though every last member of it was an enemy, nothing but vicious criminals just barely restraining themselves from attacking the cops, and therefor who need to be treated as much?
Treat someone like that, in word and in action, and yeah, you're not going to be making many friends.
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What, this is an article about the National Sheriff's Association this time? Well, the warning still applies.
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Besides, the drivers that intentionally speed will have it embedded in their GPS devices, it's not hard to find maps with probable speed traps loaded in them (cops aren't very creative with their stuff and tend to set up the things in the same spot every time).
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Can you name any other profession where one is required to swear an oath, and immediately upon swearing the oath, do everything within their power to subvert the spirit of the oath while staying as narrowly as possible within the letter of the oath?
After all, that pesky bill of rights makes their job so much more difficult.
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The president of the United States.
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Police also need to stop being such pussies. They're armed, armored, and (semi) trained. Fear for their safety shouldn't be an issue anymore.
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We're just helping people follow the law (and make the Police measurably safer)
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I wonder...
Alternatively, this may make it easier to find where the good doughnuts are.
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Re: I wonder...
http://imgur.com/ZIqAw4S
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Wouldn't that be like going around saying "water is wet"? I mean, isn't that expected?
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Slowing down for a speed trap?
No tickees, no revenues. Oops!
Just like those red-light cameras, the goal was revenue, not safety.
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If anything, this is an opportunity to build bridges between groups of law enforcement officers, and privacy activists. We're all equally endangered by out-of-control surveillance.
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There is a HUGE difference, though. We're talking about the police while they are on duty. There is no personal privacy implication about knowing where a public servant is when they are performing their job.
The technology that tracks us is tracking us in our personal lives, not on the job. Notice that people are a lot more forgiving about on-the-job surveillance than off-the-job surveillance.
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Obligatory
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Hmmm. What's That Old Saw...
Yeah, that was it.
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Next Up, A Ban on Eyes
In committing the crime, he made use of his eyes and vision. These tools can be used to see police cars when they are stopped at roadsides and other locations, thus, the National Sheriffs Association is petitioning people to remove their eyes, which pose a marked risk to officer safety.
The data doesn't lie:
Cases in which eyes have been used to harm officers: basically all
Cases in which Waze has been used to harm officers: basically zero
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Re: Next Up, A Ban on Eyes
(Sounds like all the videos on photographyisnotacrime.com, so it probably isn't far off.)
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New feature request
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People will just circumvent...
Google could lock down the reporting functionality of the app, which would just drive people to adopt the next app that wasn't crippleware.
The eye cannot commit a trespass.
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Litigation or statutory action? Like what?
Are they really going to claim that they were parked in a public place and because of this app, people noticed them?
You know, sometimes I wish they would start with the litigation, and get themselves severely bitch-slapped by Google's lawyers, while being laughed out of the courtroom. After all, he seems so confident that he has a point.
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Yet G. appears to agree. They're censoring their app because cops are afraid of those (us; their employers) they're supposed to protect and serve.
It's a strange, strange world we live in, master Jack.
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Ticket quotas
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There is your basic police officer mentality in a nutshell
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