Boston Cops Outraged Over Plans to Watch Their Movements Using GPS 409
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Boston Globe reports that the pending use of GPS tracking devices, slated to be installed in Boston police cruisers, has many officers worried that commanders will monitor their every move. Boston police administrators say the system gives dispatchers the ability to see where officers are, rather than wait for a radio response and supervisors insist the system will improve their response to emergencies. Using GPS, they say, accelerates their response to a call for a shooting or an armed robbery. 'We'll be moving forward as quickly as possible,' says former police commissioner Edward F. Davis. 'There are an enormous amount of benefits. . . . This is clearly an important enhancement and should lead to further reductions in crime.' But some officers said they worry that under such a system they will have to explain their every move and possibly compromise their ability to court street sources. 'No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?' said one officer who spoke anonymously because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. 'If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes? It's going to open up a can of worms that can't be closed.' Meanwhile civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file's own backlash. 'The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones,' says Woodrow Hartzog. 'But the officers' concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior.'"
Might also fix their speeding (Score:5, Interesting)
Beware hidden effects (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a reason this ended up on the ACLU's website.
If you read TFA, Boston uses automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). Since each readout is logged and timestamped, this log data correlated with location history for cruisers could be used to build a massive location history database with very good coverage.
Barring that, as a public servant, a police officer is not entitled to privacy while on the job. As they are granted powers most people are not, they must also expect to be held accountable for their actions.
When off the clock, an officer is entitled to privacy like every other citizen. Keep in mind, the GPSes are installed in the cruisers. They're not ankle bracelets for crying out loud. If they're on foot patrol (do cops still do that?) the red dot on the dispatcher's map will show their car's location. The question mostly remains, then, do Boston cops typically drive their cruisers home, or leave them at the station and drive their personal cars home?
Since the goal of this tracking is to make 911 dispatching more efficient, the simplest solution is just to not record historic location data - show it in real time, and that's it. This mitigates tthe data mining and privacy issues while still giving 911 the tools they need.
... so... (Score:5, Interesting)
... the watcher is watched and finds out they don't like it? Well, well...
I'm in the midst of reading a book on Victorian England. It's interesting to learn a little about how policing came into being. No surprise to me that from the very beginning, policing had nothing to do with protecting and serving anyone but the monied classes. Policing has _always_ been about subduing the restless masses. [Hey! I'm a poet and don't know it!!!]
Re:Might also fix their speeding (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell me about it, in the UK a Policeman was let off doing 159mph [bbc.co.uk] as he was the "creme de la creme of drivers". They completely ignored the fact that other drivers have no ability to deal with people driving at over twice the expected speed on a motorway.
This happened to me on a dual carriageway (70mph limit) - I looked in my mirror and saw a car in the distance and estimated that I had enough time to pull out and overtake the lorry. By the time I'd started indicating and pulling out, a Nobel was on top of me - based on the distance covered he must have been doing about 140mph.
Oh the irony ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of Boston's NPR this morning having a series on prostitution in Boston, and talking about the frequency that Boston cops are seen ... well, lets just say not arresting the girls ...
No wonder they don't want GPS in the cars ...
Funny timing (Score:5, Interesting)
So many cops have such a "Bad Boy" look these days. They carry themselves as if they're mean and tough. And frankly, I couldn't imagine asking one for help. Last year, I was in North Carolina and was lost and my phone battery was dead. I walked up to an officer and politely asked him if he could point me towards the local train station. He abruptly pointed and walked away. I eventually asked someone who looked like a criminal as I was out of options and he gave me good directions and a light for my cigarette.
I think cops who are used to a little too much freedom might need this.
Re:That's kind of the idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I feel like a hypocrite (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, to me it comes down to "trust, but verify".
The police are the ones who hold all of the power in an exchange with citizens; and there have certainly been cases where police have shot someone (or whatever), claimed it happened in a specific way -- and only when someone's cellphone video surfaces do we realize the cops were completely lying to us.
In fact, we often see that several officers conspired to give us a story to make themselves look better in the exchange. And then the review board reviews it and determines there was no bad behavior.
So, from a perspective of "who watches the watchers", I'm of the opinion that police, government, and agencies like the NSA need to be under really close scrutiny to prevent them from committing widespread abuses.
Us little people have far less recourse when it comes down to our word against theirs. Which means we need to be objectively verifying what they say and matching it with what really happened.
Unless you want to live in a world where the police can be as corrupt as they feel, and generally act like criminals and get away with it -- monitoring what your police officers are doing is far less intrusive on individual rights than just letting them do what they want.
Police can pretty much ruin your life (or take it in some cases). So the stakes of what they're doing is far higher, and needs to be held to a higher standard. And if it requires actively monitoring them to achieve that, then tough for the police.
Totally unhackable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They are right. (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'd say that yes, we should do any type of recording including video, sound and GPS data. But we also need PROPER ways to protect the individual rights of the coppers. If the GPS data is needed for statistical analysis then we should store it anonymously and in bulk with no way to tie it back to individual officers.
I'm all for that.
Right after they ensure the same things for the citizens they monitor. A protection that - at the moment - is sorely lacking and the government is showing great reluctance - and even opposition - to codifying. The various law-enforcement (and other unrelated) agencies are grabbing every bit of information about its citizens and compiling massive dossiers about each and every one of us, and despite claims that it is all just "anonymous metadata" it has been shown how easily this information can be tied together to get data about specific individuals. There needs to be some protection against this sort of Hoovering.*
Until that happens, I not only want every police officer monitored every second he is on duty, but every politician too. We've given them great power over us; it's time to ensure that it is being properly used. If they feel that this sort of intrusion into /their/ lives is too much, they can damn well be sure the same can be true of ours.
We're the bosses of this country. They're just the petty clerks we've hired to do the dirty work (although it sometimes seems the political caste thinks things are the other way around). That sort of authority ought to get us /something/!
* I named this tactic both after the vacuum and the unscrupulous FBI administrator who utilized similar, albeit low-tech, methods to do the same; clever, huh? ;-)
Re:They are right. (Score:5, Interesting)
Dark Alley. 45 minutes. "Informants."
Uh huh. I think they misspelled prostitutes.
And second, police on patrol (the article said cruisers). Do police detectives (not the type that write tickets) have cruisers? Idk, I'm no expert. But I know ticket writing police ain't taking down drug rings and shit. They patrol the streets. They don't have "informants".
Re:They are right. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to hang out with a woman who was a police dispatcher in a fairly major city. She had to know where the cops were at all times so she could call the closest one to any incident that may occur.
She said she did not know of one cop in town that wasn't banging a stripper or a hooker on the side. Most strippers and call girls will have "their" cop who would watch their back and look the other way for a little quid pro quo.
So yeah, having the fact that they park in back of the local "gentleman's" club for a half hour twice a week as public record might cause them some concern.
Re:That's kind of the idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no problem with cops being tracked while on the job. I actually think it's an excellent idea. What I am worried about is the slippery slope. We've seen it with drug testing: at first, it was only the people who REALLY needed to have their shit together, like air traffic controllers. Then it was train conductors. And school bus drivers. And truck drivers. Now, it's just indiscriminate: janitors, secretaries, nurses, accountants... (although strangely enough, the managers who oversee these workers usually don't have to piss in a cup.)
Re:They are right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. I can't imagine situations where people are doing the right thing, that they have reason to show concern. If anything, it should defend them further.
Pretty typical of cops: "The more we can be held accountable, the worse it must be for us! Woe unto us!" as opposed to "Holy shit, I can actually do my job now and not be told I'm not - via proof".
Re:They are right. (Score:5, Interesting)
This will just nudge you to take the robbery first, the doughnut second.
Do you really think that's what this is about? I doubt it. Having the location of every cop in town will be very useful to those in charge, but not for the reasons you think. The guys on the ground aren't the only ones subject to corruption and malice. The mob will have an inside guy that will be able to tell them exactly where every cop is at any given moment.
I'd rather have cops eating doughnuts than having the mob knowing with absolute certainty that they are not eating doughnuts at the diversionary shooting on the other side of town. In fact, if I wanted to start intimidating cops, there's nothing better than knowing their exact location at all times.
Don't let your schadenfreude lead you to rally for something stupid. This sounds like a divide and conquer technique to me... "They're watching you!! Serves them right! Let's watch them now too." The correct course of action is to restore the rights of the group who lost them, not take the rights of everyone else away.
Re:"Who wants to be followed all over the place?" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Aww, what's wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I don't think public servants should have a right to privacy while on duty.
To police: You can have your privacy or your handcuffs. You pick.
Re:They are right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, they're human beings. Combine that with a near-complete lack of accountability, and history and the status quo both show us where that leads. It started the other way around, by the way. The "good old days" of police being members of their communities went by the wayside with the war on drugs and resultant militarization of the police force.
There's a reason for the old snark "To a cop, there's 3 kinds of people: cops, cops' families, and suspects." Add to that the fact that unchecked corruption at the top makes the only difference between cops and mob thugs one of scale -- when laws aren't made for the public good, but at the boss(es)' whim, those enforcing them lose the moral high ground.
AFAIC, the police forces have a lot more fences to mend than the citizenry, at this point. The former deserve all the flack they get, and more.
Re:Funny that. (Score:5, Interesting)
The GPS trackers are peanuts. Every squad car has a camera and a computer that reads every license plate it passes. It stores all of this in a massive database. They track EVERY care on the road with this. If you pass a cop, your position just got logged. They literally know where just about everyone is or was at any time unless you head way out in the country.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/virginia-state-police-used-license-plate-readers [aclu.org]
We're probably about 10yrs away from the government knowing your position at all times via license plate scanning on cars, along roadways and monitoring stations that read cellphone wifi data. Not to mention the likelihood of GPS being required in cars to track "Millage" for "Tax purposes. The surveillance state is here, they are watching you. 1984 was a joke compared to what our children will face.
Re:No, "they" are not. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that's exactly what they've evolved into. Today, they are armed and armored paramilitary who destroy innocent lives and maintain a culture of isolation and privilege.
Just for example... [cato.org] and then there is this... [policemisconduct.net]
There's your "most." And mind you, these are just the screwups that have come to light. For every one on that map, there are hundreds or thousands more where no one reports anything because to do so puts you on the police radar, the last place any self-aware citizen wants to be. The idealized view of police forces has for some time diverged greatly from the reality. I doubt you could find a single police department in the USA that isn't corrupt, holding the blue line, handing out favors, etc., and let me take care to include legislators, lawyers and judges in this condemnation. The system is just barely functional enough that it doesn't fall apart, and little more. As the previous posted said, if you do enter into this kind of public service with the idea to serve and protect, that attitude will be most thoroughly adjusted within a short span of time.