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NSA Gunning for Google, wants Cop-spotting Dropped from Waze App

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday January 27 2015, @05:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the Not-that-NSA,-the-other-one. dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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/

 
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  • (Score: 1) by skater on Tuesday January 27 2015, @04:37PM

    by skater (4342) on Tuesday January 27 2015, @04:37PM (#138574) Journal

    I use it frequently and it works beautifully - either in and around the city or out on the open road, on weekdays and on holidays. This is mostly in the eastern USA, so there's good population density, which obviously is a factor. It's been far better than any other source of traffic information for me; when we run into an unusual slow spot on our way to work, my wife will first check Waze to see what's going on, and the information is always there.

    I agree that indicating a new hazard can be a bit distracting, so I rarely do it while driving.

    Also, gamification works for many, many people. Every app of this type (crowd-sourced data) has it. People feel rewarded for contributing...contribute more, get more rewards.