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Truth, Justice and the American Waze
A few months back I downloaded a cool traffic app called Waze. At its heart is a basic GPS program like Google Maps, but it adds a social networking layer to provide real-time information to drivers. Unsurprisingly, Google bought the company, so you can expect to see the two apps integrated soon.
Here’s how it works: When I get in my new Maserati (okay, 2001 Toyota… whatever), I open Waze and it shows any traffic events occurring in my area. As I drive, warnings pop up for vehicles on the side of the road, freeway crashes, and delays. If I see a new traffic snag, I can report it through Waze to help other drivers going my way.
The app also tells me if a police car is waiting a half-mile down the road. Unsurprisingly, this last feature has several police organizations upset:
Google-owned Waze, although offering a host of traffic data, doubles as a Digital Age version of the police band radio.
Authorities said the app amounts to a “police stalker” in the aftermath of last month’s point-blank range murder of two New York Police Department officers. That’s according to the message some officials gave over the weekend during the National Sheriffs Association meeting in Washington.
”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,” Sheriff Mike Brown of Bedford County, Virginia, told the gathering, according to an account provided by The Associated Press. Brown, who chairs the National Sheriffs Association’s technology committee, said the app’s police-reporting feature renders it a “police stalker.”
Later in the article, the police admit that the NYPD killer didn’t use Waze to target his victims, but hey, we should ban this feature anyway. While critics use the most extreme and emotional hypothetical to sell their ban, it’s hard not to think this is more about revenue than safety.
The app indicates red-light and speed cameras in addition to manned speed traps, causing Waze users to drive with extra care in those areas. If public safety is the state’s only concern, police should be thrilled at anything that might rein in reckless drivers.
Speaking constitutionally, it’s my right to share public information with fellow drivers, even if it might make government’s job more difficult. I’m unclear why police should be granted an expectation of privacy while the general public is not. Waze is just a high-tech version of telling friends to slow down when driving through Wikieup, Ariz., since their only cop wants to buy a new speedboat.
What do you think, Ricochetti? Do the cops have any case at all here?
Published in General
It doesn’t. But if someone (anyone) says: “This is a technology/practice/product that endangers me” it is worthy of review. And, in fact, there is no call to outlaw anything. Simply a request from one set of people who are subject to a particular set of dangers to a product manufacturer that the eliminate a feature that has potentially dangerous misuses.
Actually, Waze offers vastly more opportunities because a lone crazy — in fact someone who has been rejected by co-conspirators — is thus able to turn any other Waze user into an unwitting co-conspirator.
Only if it’s credible. And there’s no evidence that there’s any real danger here.
OK, that’s just ridiculous. So if I report that a policeman is sitting at location X, I can turn “any other Waze user into an unwitting co-conspirator”? Through what mechanism?
Have you heard the story of Chicken Little? That’s the argument you’re making here, I’m afraid.
If some nut job does use Waze to ambush a cop, will the commenters here-above admit their error and express regret for having been unwilling to do anything to make said nut job’s task more challenging, or will there be a dismissal of it as “an outlier” or “only one dead cop?”
No, just as I did not admit I was wrong about the Second Amendment when a nut job shot a theater or a classroom. I did not admit to being wrong because I was not. Just about any tool can be misused for evil purposes. We do not ban those tools because they can misused.
Most cops I know really don’t like writing traffic tickets. This is why there are constant battles about “quotas” or other structures for tickets in police agencies. Police Departments need to write tickets (both for safety and revenue) and most cops would rather not, save for the most egregious and dangerous of infractions.
Traffic enforcement is predominately about revenue not safety. If it were about safety, the SOP would not be to hide on the side of a road with a radar or laser but rather drive the highways and observe for unsafe acts.
If police officers do not wish to be treated like tax collectors, they should not act like them.
But, more importantly, this app isn’t just about traffic. For instance, a cop taking a coffee break or sitting in his car writing a report is equally reportable, equally vulnerable but irrelevant to traffic matters. And, telling where cops are also tells criminals where they are not.
It is also telling the woman who believes she is being followed by a stalker were the nearest police officer is. It does not matter to her whether the officer is on a coffee break.
Aside from saving people money on tickets (which is a conversation worth having in and of itself), the only reason to oppose this idea is a) a desire to skirt traffic laws risk-free b) a desire to do more nefarious things absent interference c) a desire to do nefarious things to the police.
If a police officer feels vulnerable because the public he is sworn to serve knows where he is, he is in the wrong line of work.
Put another way: If someone is looking to kill a cop, and his friend calls up and says “a pig is parked at First & Main” and that officer is then killed, the friend would no doubt be an accomplice. We all know there are people out there looking to kill cops. How does this app not make the reporters accomplices if a tragedy occurs?
Surely you are familiar with the concept of criminal intent.
That is distinctly not what I said. I said that if any crazy is looking to kill a cop, he can use the information provided by an unwitting Waze observer for his task, thus making that reporter an unwitting (in fact, legally totally innocent), co-conspirator.
I appreciate the fact that you have clarified that a person merely reporting data regarding the observed location of police to the application legally innocent, but words do have meaning. A person in this case that provides this information with no demonstrable ill will or malice, would not even rise to the level of an accessory to the crimes committed by someone using the information to attack police, let alone a co-conspirator.
If you’re going to play at this level of silliness about the downstream criminal implications of a person identifying the location of public employees, working at the cost to the public, and while executing their duties in public places, then it is then reasonable to go to the opposite end and suggest that every person who inputs the information should be eligible for public commendation for the reaction of each driver that sees the information and chooses to be cautious, slow down, and possibly change lanes so as not to accidentally strike a policeman who may be out of his / her vehicle attending to road issues.
Truck drivers have been using ham radio to do essentially the same thing for decades. As for the cops, it will not be long before they start to manipulate it. They can easily enter data indicating non existent units are located in various locations and that units have been moved when they have not.
It’s actually not that easy to do what you describe. The information has a location attached to it, which is provided by the user touching the screen while at that location.
So you can’t enter information for another point. The police would be reporting their own position, effectively.
Waze cannot be used for tracking: you’re just marking a location where a policeman was seen, and then someone else clicks “not there” to remove the marker. You must also be travelling toward or have just passed the location to be able to remove the marker.
Indeed, Waze users are essentially rated on the fly. Bad actors would be purged.
The reason Google bought them is because they provide realtime crowdsourced traffic data, meaning it’s more accurate and more up to date than any other source.
Then Google Maps uses it to re-route your navigation if traffic changes.
Great idea. We are living in the future.