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from the Not-that-NSA,-the-other-one. dept.
The US National Sheriffs' Association wants Google to block its crowd-sourced traffic app Waze from being able to report the position of police officers, saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk.
"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," AP reports Sheriff Mike Brown, the chairman of the NSA's technology committee, told the association's winter conference in Washington.
Waze, founded in 2008 and purchased 18 months ago by Google for $1.1bn, has about 50 million users who anonymously share their locations to help gauge road traffic flows. The app also allows police reports and road closures to be added to maps and shared with other users.
Brown called the app a "police stalker," and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members had concerns as well.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/26/nsa_gunning_for_google_wants_copspotting_taken_off_waze_app/
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:14AM
My minor cop-spotting story.
Background:
I have had a valentine 1 radar detector for nearly 2 decades. I'm not a habitual speeder, and I don't think it has ever saved me from a ticket (I have never had a ticket, not even in my teen years when I drove like a madman). Instead I use it as a cop detector. Lots of cops like to leave their radar guns on all the time even when they aren't tagging people because many of the models take a few minutes to warm up, so it is easier for them to just leave it hot all the time. That behavior turns radar detectors into cop detectors. I like to know when a cop is in the vicinity because, with the lack of oversight, I consider them a risk just like a drunk driver. The V1 makes for a particularly good cop detector because it has directional arrows that give you a general idea of where to look (or look out) for the cop.
Story:
About 10 years ago I was driving cross-country and it was like 2 in the morning and I was running really low on gas and the map I had said there was a gas station about 4 miles down the next exit off the interstate somewhere in the middle of nowhere iowa. I get to the station and not only is it closed it has been demolished, just a parking lot and weeds, no other buildings around. So I figure I'll keep going and hope to eventually find an actual town.
I'm driving and my V1 starts going off, and I'm thinking "great! I can ask the cop where to find the nearest gas station, finally a cop will have a chance to actually help me out for once in my life!" I got about 2 more miles down the road before I finally reach the cop. He's in the unlit parking lot for some little storefront with his lights off, partially obscured by the sign out front, just lurking. If I didn't know to look for him, I would never have seen him.
I pull in and drive right up to him, driver-side window to driver-side window. No reaction. I'm thinking this is kinda weird and my V1 is still going 100%, although I muted it, so I know I got the right cop. I get my flash-light out and shine it in the cop's window. Sure enough, he's in there. Sound asleep. I decided that waking him up would be a bad idea, there was a chance he'd be so embarrassed that he'd take it out on me with a ticket or one of those arrests for failure to respect an officer. Better to risk running out of gas in the middle of nowhere than deal with that shit. So I quietly pulled out of the lot and proceeded down the road for another 10 miles until I found an open station. On my way back, he was still there with his radar gun on full blast. I didn't pull in to see if he was awake though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Tuesday January 27 2015, @06:30PM
This is kind of what I was thinking. Why isn't this being touted as a public safety bonanza? Now you know where to find help when you need it! Weird that they're on the defensive about this.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.