Miami Cops Flood Waze With Bogus Speed Trap Data, Don't Understand How Crowd Sourcing Works

from the you-think-you're-being-clever dept

We've been discussing how law enforcement organizations have started ramping up their war on the Google-owned, traffic info crowdsourcing app, Waze, in the belief that it's hindering local revenue generation. More specifically, they've been trying to stop the app and its users from reporting police speed trap locations, going so far as to make the absurd argument that the app allows citizens to become police "stalkers." Of course as noted previously, these officers are usually in plain sight and obviously marked, meaning if you really had an insane hankering to annoy a cop you can certainly do it without an app. It's also worth reminding officers that Waze users are simply having a perfectly legal conversation (just like flashing headlights or even holding up signs is legal), at least for now.

With the "mean old citizens are stalking us" defense apparently not working so well, some law enforcement agencies are turning to another, more clever (or so they think) solution: pollute Waze's data with false police speed trap locations. Officers in Miami have apparently taken to downloading the Waze app themselves just so they can flood the app with inaccurate data:

"Hundreds of officers in the Miami area have downloaded the app, which lets users provide real-time traffic information and identify areas where police are conducting speed enforcement. The local NBC affiliate says the officers are flooding Waze with false information on their activity in an attempt to make the app's information less useful to drivers. Disclosing the location of police officers "puts us at risk, puts the public at risk, because it's going to cause more deadly encounters between law enforcement and suspects," Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, tells the news outlet."

This was apparently something some Los Angeles homeowners tried as well late last year, when they reported false congestion to the app in the hopes of lessening local traffic load. Of course the very nature of crowd-sourced apps like this involves repeated false reports and unreliable users being weeded out not only by the system itself, but by more trustworthy reports from reliable Waze users with higher scores. Even if this dumb idea worked, and all Miami Waze users were confused into thinking speed traps were everywhere, wouldn't they drive slower and ruin revenue generation (what this is really about) anyway?

All the Miami police force is doing is wasting time and taxpayer money in a war on perfectly legal conversation. In fact, you could argue they're doing something worse by eroding their own safety. As it stands the Waze app isn't specifically singling out speed traps -- it allows users to mark any police location. As in, it allows users to mark any emergency vehicle at the side of the road for any reason, notifying Waze users that they should slow down. If this was truly about public safety and not revenue generation, you'd think this would at least be part of the conversation.

Still, law enforcement associations are increasing pressure on politicians (like Chuck Schumer), and Google's shown at least some flexibility on this. For me personally, it's all kind of a moot point anyway. I drove from New York to Seattle and back again last summer and found that police move positions so frequently, Waze probably indicated an accurate speed trap location around a third of the time anyway. Still, you'd hate to see any app made less useful just because it hurts a police department's ability to turn public protection into a major revenue stream.

Filed Under: crowdsourcing, fake data, miami, police, waze
Companies: google, waze

DailyDirt: Avoid Crowdfunding Scams

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some crowdfunding projects are really impressive and have gotten a lot of attention and praise that is well deserved. However, there are also quite a few projects that haven't quite lived up to their promise. It's disappointing to say the least when a project gets over a million bucks and still fails to deliver a working product to its backers. Some backers get upset when their favorite crowdfunded project sells out to Facebook. How can companies like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and the like deal with these problems? There might be escrow schemes or insurance policies that could help, but in the end, it seems like buyer beware is the ultimate answer. Here are just a few links on this situation of dealing with crowdfunding disappointments and outright scams.

• Indiegogo is trying out an optional insurance feature that would provide a refund if the project fails to deliver its product within 3 months of its estimated delivery date. So far, this insurance policy is in testing and costs $15, so it doesn't apply to every (or even many) campaign on Indiegogo, but it's an interesting way to provide backers with some kind of guarantee that their faith/money is not being completely misplaced. However, it looks like only 3 people have tried it, and we'll have to wait until early 2016 to see if those folks will qualify for a insurance claim. [url]
• Kickstarter is generally seen as dominant crowdfunding platform, and the company behind it wants to be known as a responsible corporation. Will being named a Certified B Corporation boost Kickstarters reputation at all? Or will its certification simply be taken away if more backers are dissatisfied when projects don't deliver as promised? [url]
• It's not hard to find crowdfunding projects that just won't work.. because physics or the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe crowdfunding platforms need to crowdsource some peer review for a project approval process? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: buyer beware, certified b corporation, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, customer service, escrow, insurance, reputation, scams
Companies: indiegogo, kickstarter

DailyDirt: How Much Is That MRI In The Window?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've discussed some healthcare nightmares previously, focusing on how the prices of medical procedures are oftentimes a surprise and far from transparent. This problem continues to plague people suffering from various injuries or illnesses -- but there are some projects trying to increase the transparency of medical pricing. However, just knowing the pricing before a bill comes isn't the final solution (at all). Here are just a few more links on this situation.

• KQED has started a PriceCheck campaign to crowdsource the charged prices for common medical procedures that actual patients have been billed. Early results show that a procedure like a mammogram can vary from $125 to $801. [url]
• A Canadian couple was charged nearly $1 million for giving birth in the US. Blue Cross said it denied them coverage due to a pre-existing condition. [url]
• There may be mounting pressure for price transparency as more patients pay more of their own healthcare costs, and as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) makes more prices public knowledge. Chargemaster prices are becoming more widely known, but those prices may not reflect what anyone actually pays. Healthcare Bluebook is another effort that aims to create a price list for procedures (akin to the way used cars prices are published). [url]
• Medical price transparency might not benefit low-income folks if prices become more uniform and procedures simply become unavailable for those who can't afford them. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get more price transparency, but that we should also prepare for the unintended consequences that can be foreseen. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: chargemaster, crowdsourcing, health, healthcare, medical billing, price transparency, pricecheck
Companies: blue cross, cms, healthcare bluebook, kqed

DailyDirt: Space Explorers Need Your Help...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've mentioned a few DIY space projects before where nearly anyone can participate in an effort to expand our knowledge of our solar system or to develop a cheaper way to get into space. More and more space exploration seems to rely on the help of a growing ecosystem of space geeks who can volunteer their time/resources to learn more about the universe around us. Here are just a few other crowdfunding or crowdsourcing efforts to explore space.

• Lunar Mission One is an ambitious Kickstarter project to send a probe to the moon and drill deep down below the surface in order to get a more complete picture of the moon's composition. This project also includes a "time capsule" mission so backers can send up information (and maybe hair/DNA samples?) to the moon for posterity. [url]
• In case you missed it, NASA open sourced the code for Apollo 11 -- and actually, all of the software NASA writes is open. A catalog of NASA's software is available for budding space scientists, but it's not just for space nerds -- some biologists adapted the Hubble Space Telescope's star-mapping algorithm to track endangered whales -- and presumably there are other gems just waiting to be adapted to other good uses. [url]
• NASA is looking for anyone with good suggestions on how to do something more productive with the "dead mass" that is typically ejected during the descent phase of a probe. The Mars Balance Challenge wants to know what you'd do with 150kg of mass that would be ejected at different times prior to landing a probe on Mars. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: apollo, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, diy space, lunar mission one, nasa software, space, space exploration
Companies: innocentive, kickstarter, nasa

Finnish Parliament Refuses To Consider Crowdsourced Copyright Law -- Or Any Other Bill Drafted By The Public

from the democracy,-who-needs-it? dept

Techdirt has been following the fascinating experiment of allowing the public to crowdsource proposals for new laws in Finland. As we reported, the Citizen's Initiative Act requires the Finnish Parliament to process any bill that collects 50,000 signatures from citizens of voting age. Last year, a bill to make copyright more balanced and better suited to the digital age managed to gather the requisite number of signatures, offering hope that it would be presented to the Finnish Parliament for a vote. But as TorrentFreak explained more recently, the Finnish Parliament's Education and Culture Committee recommended that the "Common Sense For Copyright" bill should be rejected. TorrentFreak quotes the digital rights group EDRi's explanation of what happened:

"In its report, the Committee notes that the initiative suggests several ambitious amendments, but that it considers it impossible to propose, based on the initiative, even partial changes to the existing copyright law," EDRi notes.

"The report states that the initiative includes internal contradictions and that many of the amendments it suggests are too significantly incompatible with the current legislation."

That's rather telling, because the measures in "Common Sense For Copyright" are hardly radical:

The draft, the brainchild of the Open Ministry nonprofit, calls for reduced penalties for copyright infringement and current penalties to be applied only in cases of a commercial scale. Fair Use provisions would also be expanded, alongside exemptions for those wishing to backup purchased media and time-shift commercial content.

The fact that the Parliamentary committee thought that even these mild measures were "too significantly incompatible with the current legislation" underlines just how great the gulf is between actual copyright law and what many people feel would be fair. Sadly, a report on the Finnish public broadcasting company YLE's website confirms that not only did the Finnish Parliament refuse to consider the bill, it has dismissed out of hand every crowdsourced bill that reached the 50,000 threshold:

Each of the six citizen's initiatives that have proceeded through the proper channels to reach the parliamentary floor for discussion has failed. The Finnish Parliament says it doesn't have the time to hear them and they can’t be moved to another date. Activists say technical shortcomings are poor justification for the slowness of the process.

That's a truly disappointing end to a story that began on a hopeful note. When politicians won't even allow the public these tiny expressions of democracy -- just as the European Commission refused to allow a purely symbolic online petition against TAFTA/TTIP to go ahead -- is it any wonder that people feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with politics these days, or that they are starting to take to the streets as a result?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: constitution, copyright, crowdsourcing, democracy, finland, politics

DailyDirt: Crowds In Spaaaace...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Exploring the vastness of space isn't cheap, but it's becoming more accessible as the cost of satellites comes down slowly and data from telescopes is shared widely and freely. Citizen scientists can help advance astronomy in a variety of ways, donating time and/or money to projects that need more help. NASA's budget isn't exactly huge (compared to other parts of the national budget), so space scientists need all the help they can get. Here are just a few links on the wisdom of the crowd contributing to space exploration.

• A crowdfunded group of space junkies has revived the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) satellite, which launched in 1978 and was officially suspended in 1998. NASA has turned over control of this old satellite to the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, but the group doesn't have much time to play with the satellite unless it can figure out how to re-fire its engines. [url]
• NASA's Be a Martian project is asking citizen scientists to help map the surface of Mars. There's a lot of area to cover with a chance of finding something really, really interesting. [url]
• Citizen astronomers could help identify interesting Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) that the New Horizons spacecraft might investigate. The Ice Hunter project ended in early 2012, and out of the 143 KBO candidates identified, none were in range. (Another Ice Investigators project to look for more KBOs is underway, though.) [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: astronomy, citizen scientists, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, diy space, isee-3, kbo, kuiper belt objects, mars, new horizons, satellite, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: nasa

DailyDirt: You Say You Want A Revolution...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Really big, world-changing ideas are not that easy to come by... but they're even harder to implement. Still, it seems like a good first step is to devise ways to collect good ideas and then try to give funding/resources to help develop them into reality. Crowdsourcing this process is a somewhat recent trend (or fad) that gathers wisdom from a community, and there are more than a few projects that have adopted this method for collecting inspiring ideas. Here are just a couple more challenges that you might contribute to.

• The Buckminster Fuller Institute has an annual challenge that will award $100,000 to support strategies that will "make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." The deadline for submission is April 11th, and the prize will be awarded in November. [url]
• Contests/challenges seem to be an effective way to kickstart innovation and maximize resources for investment. A study of thousands of software contests concludes that the scope and uncertainty of a problem should be explicitly addressed when designing a challenge in order to optimize the incentives and performance of any innovation tournament. [url]
• The AI XPRIZE is looking for some kind of artificial intelligence that can get a standing ovation for delivering a TED talk. The rules are not set in stone yet, but it looks like the winner will be the best lying bot ever created -- or else it might present an irrefutable criticism of humanity itself. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: buckminster fuller institute, challenges, contests, crowdsourcing, ideas, innovation, innovation tournament, prize, ted talk, xprize

DailyDirt: Be Careful What You Ask For

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The internet can be a rather dangerous place to ask people for suggestions. This is especially true for big brands and pop singers (eg. Taylor Swift's promotional contest that voted for her to play at the Horace Mann school for the deaf) who have a significant number of haters just waiting for an opportunity to troll. Marketing folks have been trying out some experiments in gathering "user generated content" from the internet, and here are a few of cases that didn't go quite as well as planned.

• Coca Cola has apologized for its "Share A Coke" website in South Africa that apparently didn't limit user input to people's names. Filtering user input is a lesson that seems to be re-taught again and again. [url]
• McDonald's asked people to share stories of their favorite memories of the burger chain giant, but not everyone had cheerful, glowing things to say. The #McDStories hashtag was pulled from promotion after just a couple hours. "#McDStories: McDialysis? I'm loving it!" [url]
• Back in 2009, Skittles turned over their main website to anyone on Twitter who simply mentioned "skittles" in their tweets. Was that campaign a success or a failure? Tell us in the comments below.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: advertising, brands, campaigns, coke, crowdsourcing, marketing, share a coke, skittles, ugc, user generated content
Companies: coca cola, mcdonald's, twitter

Crowdsourcing A List Of How Disney Uses The Public Domain

from the something-useful dept

We've written plenty of times about the importance of the public domain around here, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the public domain has been Disney, a company which has regularly mined the public domain for the stories it then recreates and copyrights. Of course, somewhat depressingly, Disney also has been one of the most extreme players in keeping anything new out of the public domain, as pointed out by Tom Bell's excellent "mickey mouse curve" showing how Disney has sought to push out the term of copyrights every time Mickey Mouse gets near the public domain. All this despite the fact that Mickey Mouse was almost certainly was an infringing work when it was created, copying multiple sources that were still covered by copyright. Oh, and also there's evidence that Disney screwed up its early copyright registrations on Mickey Mouse, suggesting that it really already is in the public domain, even if Disney will never admit that.

Either way, as we get closer to the next attempt to extend copyright terms in the US (and you know it's coming), Derek Khanna has decided to crowdsource a list of all of the public domain works that Disney has relied on over the years. He's also looking for revenue figures on all of those works, in an attempt to show just how much Disney has profited off of the public domain (and hopefully to shut up those who argue that when a work falls into the public domain, it suddenly loses its value). As Khanna notes:

While Disney took and reused from the public domain, none of the works created by Disney, including derivative works based upon public domain works, have entered the public domain for others to build upon. And if current policy is extended — they never will.

MPAA/RIAA/Disney lobby Congress and inform the public that copyright should last forever because it’s their “property” and that it’s never ok to use or build upon their property without paying. Under the content industry’s vernacular, if taking and remixing other people’s work without paying for it is always stealing then the Disney Corporation is responsible for one of the greatest thefts in world history.

If you can, please help and contribute to the list of public domain works that Disney has relied upon.

Filed Under: copyright, crowdsourcing, mickey mouse, public domain
Companies: disney

Crowdsourcing Journalistic Pressure On Congress To Get Answers About DHS's Treatment Of US Citizens At The Border

from the join-in dept

A few weeks ago, we were among many who were stunned to hear the story of On the Media producer Sarah Abdurrahman on the show about how she, her family, and a bunch of friends were all detained at the Canadian/American border by US Customs and Border Patrol agents (CBP) in two different locations. Every single one of the people detained were American citizens, and they were all treated absolutely horribly. Many had their electronics confiscated, and they were kept in freezing conditions without any explanation or recourse. One man was taken away from his family, put in a cell, and then his family was told that "an agency" was coming to deal with him, and they were told nothing further (only later to find out it was because of an unpaid ticket from years ago.

Perhaps even more horrifying than the treatment that they all went through was the complete lack of response to any and all journalistic questions about this. The DHS basically refused to return any calls and just ignored the matter. Abdurrahman was able to get one person from one of the border crossings on the phone at one point, and was basically told that he wasn't going to tell her anything. The sheer lack of accountability, concern or transparency was both shocking and depressing. Since then, On the Media has continued to try to get answers... and has come up empty. Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol appear to be taking the position that maybe if they ignore this situation it'll go away.

Not likely.

In talking their situation over with some experts, the OTM team was told that the way to deal with this was to get Congress to hold DHS accountable, and the way to do that is to have constituents of Representatives who have oversight authority concerning DHS to call their Reps and demand answers. OTM has tried calling their own Reps without much luck, so they've instead decided to crowdsource the journalistic effort. They're asking basically all of their listeners to put on their journalist hats, and to call Congress, asking some specific questions. If that listener happens to be represented by someone on a DHS oversight committee, it connects you directly to that office. Otherwise, they'll pick randomly from the list (of course, non-constituent calls tend to have less sway with Congress).

To make this even easier, they've built a tool to make it easy to call Congress, complete with the list of questions they'd like you to ask and a form to fill out the answers. Oh, and they've made the whole thing embeddable. It's at the bottom of this post. For those who think this doesn't have an impact, you should never underestimate the power of phone calls to your Representatives. They tend to have significantly more influence that most people expect.

Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, crowdsourcing, customs and border patrol, homeland security, journalism, on the media