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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, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday January 27 2015, @01:39PM
Just once, I'd like people to be upfront with their motives. Yeah, yeah, I know. But still.
There's a very good reason cops don't want people knowing where speed traps are. It's because it makes speed traps ineffective. This is the same reason cops dislike radar detectors, laser detectors, and people flashing their brights to let oncoming cars know where the speed trap is (I was in the car when a buddy was pulled over for this, despite it not being a crime).
And let's face it - traffic tickets are big business. There are small towns that get a sizable percentage of their municipal budgets from speed traps with huge speeding fines on nearby interstates. Which is a dangerous line to cross - when the proponents of "justice" stop seeing the fines as an incentive to enforce the law and more as "how we get paid," well, their motives get conflicted. The reason red light cams caught on wasn't that they improved safety, but rather that they made money.
Disguising it as a "public safety" message is offensively playing on people's fears. Hey, remember those two cops that were shot in New York? If people knew where the cops were, more people would probably do that, so we need to hide all the cops! Capitalizing on senseless tragedy to advance an unrelated agenda is a scumbag move.
Knowing that there are speed traps are makes people drive safer. Wasn't that the point of the exercise in the first place?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday January 27 2015, @01:42PM
I get the need to abbreviate, and that acronyms overlap, but when you throw the acronym "NSA" into a headline about "gunning for Google," you're creating a decided impression that the article is about something very different (and deeply of interest to this community) than the actual article is.
Wouldn't "Sherriffs gunning for google" have conveyed similar information while avoiding the ambiguity?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 27 2015, @02:49PM
From the Not-that-NSA,-the-other-one. dept.
Point taken, but the clue is there right next to the title. I'm off to give 100 lashes to LamX for his subtlety. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by WillR on Tuesday January 27 2015, @03:25PM
What the headline giveth, the tiny print taketh away.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:33PM
I'm sorry, I got to laugh here a little :)
Until your comment, I was definitely under the impression that the NSA was for some reason assisting law enforcement in asking for these concessions from Waze. The tiny print got me too...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:07PM
Sheriffs? Sherives? :)
"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) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:30AM
I get the need to abbreviate, and that acronyms overlap, but when you throw the acronym "NSA" into a headline about "gunning for Google," you're creating a decided impression that the article is about something very different (and deeply of interest to this community) than the actual article is.
Wouldn't "Sherriffs gunning for google" have conveyed similar information while avoiding the ambiguity?
From el Reg [theregister.co.uk]: "Not that NSA, the other one"
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday January 27 2015, @04:44PM
You kind of touch on this as you go on but you dont make it very explicit. This is true or very false, depending on what you posit to be the desired effect of the speed trap.
SUPPOSEDLY these things are there for purposes of safety - getting people to slow down. And if that is actually the goal, publicizing them, far from making them ineffective, is actually a force multiplier making them much more effective. If that's your goal, you don't hide the cruiser, in fact you put up warning signs instead. This actually induces people to check (and appropriately reduce) their speed.
But the *real* goal has nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with "revenue." To protect and serve... themselves.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?