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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: 5, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Tuesday January 27 2015, @12:35PM
Funny, how important trust is.
Indeed. They want us to trust them to uphold the law and protect us, when sometimes it's them we need protection from. Yet, they are trying to force us into silence against our will and against the Constitution, because they don't trust us.
And make no mistake, not only do they not trust us, they are trained to not trust us. One of the very first things a prospective cop learns in the academy is that "every citizen should be approached as if they are lying and can't be trusted". They are training to go to war with the citizens they are supposed to be protecting. I'd wager that most cops don't take that training literally and they use their best judgement when handling a situation. But there are a few (and it's a growing number) who eat that shit up like it's ice cream in a heat wave, and those are the ones making the news for beating up old men on traffic stops, or shooting children playing with toy guns. Even worse, sometimes that bully type ends up promoted to chief or runs for election as sheriff and wins. That's when the entire force gets purged of good cops and the ranks are filled with bullies and power-trippers. I've seen it happen more than once back when I worked in it, and it's scary as hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:43PM
Do unto your neighbor as you would have done to you, three letter traitors.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:23PM
or shooting children playing with toy guns.
Maybe if somebody could get the kids to stop removing the damn orange safety nub. Every single time I hear about it in the news, the victim removed the orange thing that is there precisely to prevent this situation from happening.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:42PM
Or, bear with me on this one....Or, they could, you know, talk to the kid before shooting them. Make an effort to diffuse rather than assassinate the situation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arashi no garou on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:16PM
In a way, you have a point. Then there's the guy in the Wal-mart who was leaning on a toy gun with the orange nub intact, who was shot in the back as soon as the officer saw him. No talking, no negotiation, no assessing the situation. He was a black man holding a toy gun, and that was enough excuse to shoot first and never ask questions.
So, no, the orange nub does absolutely nothing to make you safer. If the officer is intent on killing someone that day (and especially, it seems, if you're a person of color or just look "undesirable"), you're dead on your feet.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 27 2015, @10:03PM
So, no, the orange nub does absolutely nothing to make you safer. If the officer is intent on killing someone that day (and especially, it seems, if you're a person of color or just look "undesirable"), you're dead on your feet.
No, you just cited one specific instance where the nub didn't help. There are still plenty of times when it does, when e.g. the officer isn't just out to shoot somebody.
Don't say "absolutely nothing" when it's so trivial to disprove your argument.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 27 2015, @11:17PM
Thanks for the reminder to paint the muzzles orange on all my real guns.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Tuesday January 27 2015, @11:39PM
One instance out of many. By the same token, you can't claim that every single time an officer saw a toy gun with an orange nub, he magically didn't shoot.
And I said "absolutely nothing" because in that case it did "absolutely nothing" to prevent a death. Whether the gun he was holding had the nub or not didn't matter, because that officer set out to murder someone that day.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday January 28 2015, @02:30AM
I'm willing to bet that keeping the safety tips ON provides a BETTER chance of not getting shot for the pool of all incidents of this type.
There, are our senses of pedanticosity satisfied yet?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28 2015, @12:06AM
Ohio is an open-carry state.
If the toy gun had instead been a real weapon loaded with real bullets, the dude would have been within his rights to possess it pretty much anywhere in that state.
He was murdered by racist cops in a racist city because of the color of his skin.
The racist jerk that called it in and lied about the facts is culpable as well.
The 12 year old who was shot within seconds of the racist cop showing up on the scene didn't stand a chance either.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:08PM
Or maybe cops should stop using overwhelming force unnecessarily. Instead of blaming the kid for the cops' own actions (deciding to shoot him almost immediately), how about blaming the cops who choose to shoot? If you're so afraid of the gun, how about pulling farther away (rather than right next to the person you believe has a gun) and demanding they drop it? The cops are putting themselves into situations where they will, by their own standards, likely have to resort to extreme force. "Oh no, he's reaching for the gun!"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 29 2015, @02:31AM
I'm by no means excusing the actions of the cop(s) in question. Largely I agree with you.
However, we can go on about how the authorities in question SHOULD act differently, but not taking off the orange tips is something that WE can do to make ourselves more safe. We have little if any control over how the cops act, but all the control over how we act.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday January 29 2015, @05:41PM
That's interesting -- every single time *I* hear about it, the officers had no damn reason to use lethal force *even if it was a real firearm*. Not sure what country you're from, but FYI, owning real firearms and even carrying them around in public is all perfectly legal in the US. Where I grew up you can hardly take the dog out for a walk without running into someone walking around with a real, loaded firearm -- often while engaged in illegal behavior -- and none of them were ever shot by the local police...