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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: 2) by damnbunni on Wednesday January 28 2015, @10:59AM
Virginia is the ONLY US state where radar detectors are still illegal.
(They're illegal in DC as well, but that's technically not a state, so nyah.)
They're also prohibited on military bases, but so are lots of other things.
Virginia's ban would probably be struck down like all the other states' bans if someone bothered to fight it all the way to the top.
Also, while the Fuzzbuster was one of the first affordable radar detectors it was also complete and total crap. To the point where when Fuzzbuster submitted one to Car and Driver for a comparison test. they took a Fuzzbuster case and put an Escort inside it because they knew the Escort was going to kick their ass.