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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 Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:08PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:08PM (#138898)

    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

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 29 2015, @02:31AM (#139080)

    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?"