Not that long ago, police departments joined together to call upon the United States Supreme Court (with the support of the Obama Administration) to allow citizens to be tracked with GPS devices placed on their vehicles without a warrant or probable cause. The litigants argued that this was a minor intrusion into the rights of citizens and that there was no expectation of privacy in such movements. The Court wisely rejected the arguments in United States v. Jones. Now police in Boston are objecting to a plan to place such devices on their patrol cars as an unwarranted intrusion.
GPS devices allow departments to keep precise information on the location of patrol cars and alleviate the need to rely entirely on the radio for officers to confirm their location and ability to respond to calls. The burden and delay in such coordination is an obvious and unnecessary barrier to responding to crime. One officer voiced the few of his colleagues in complaining “No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” Hmmm, sounds familiar.
bettykath,
I just may give them my blood for a quick $50.00! Can they give a cheek swab and blood and get two payments?? Of course, they will find a lot of legal drugs in my sample.
To be honest nick, Unless the contract they signed with the city forbade the use of GPS, they city has the right to require it. A lot of private companies require it on company owned vehicles during company time, this should be no different.
bettykath,
Thanks for the link/information.
More:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2013/06/12/295113.htm
“Off-duty officials were helping with tests being conducted by the Maryland-based Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Turrentine said.
“They want to find out of all the people surveyed, how many people were driving with alcohol in their system, or prescription drugs, things like that,” he said.
The study is supported and partially funded by the Office of Drug Control Policy and is being conducted at 60 sites across the country, NHTSA spokesman Jose Ucles said.”
30 cities (your posting), 60 sites.
And maybe they’re collecting DNA samples, too? (I’d love to see the fine print.)
Sounds like a good idea to me. raff’s right. city vehicles, city employees. At least the cops know ahead of time they’re being tracked.
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/North-Texas-Drivers-Stopped-at-Roadblock-Asked-for-Saliva-Blood-232438621.html
excerpts:
Some drivers along a busy North Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood.
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They were asking for cheek swabs,” she said. “They would give $10 for that. Also, if you let them take your blood, they would pay you $50 for that.”
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He also noted the fine print on a form given to drivers informs them their breath was tested by “passive alcohol sensor readings before the consent process has been completed.”
raff, This GPS issue was part of a new union contract and the union put in what they thought were reasonable restrictions, mostly covering the first 6 months of GPS use. So, the City had to deal w/ that hurdle and did so righteously. Your question assumes common sense, and in dealing w/ public employees and bureaucracies, common sense is often a hindrance.
police forces around the country have been essentially acting as thugs for the security state, monitering, roughing up and arresting activists…but oh, that double standard…
what is also interesting is that the local forces are often acting against those who truly represent their interests (the lower, middle classes) and for the wealthy elite who benefit from many of our current govt/corporate state’s policies.
Aren’t police officers employees of the city and are they not driving city cars? Why can’t an employer know where those cars are going and what there employees are doing?
I follow the sentences of the article literally. If police were favor of the GPS tracking and then the Supreme Court ruled against this and now they are against this it seems like they are following the law. Maybe it is the broad use of the word “police”. Could it be that in Boston the Police Department is in favor of it and the Police individuals are against it? It is perhaps a matter of casual use of words in the article. But I would say that if a cop does not want it on his police car then he get another job at Dunkin Donuts where he will be closer to those who know and care for him on a daily basis without regard for where he is.
Boston cops don’t make “taco stops.” They make Dunkin Donut, chowda, and pizza stops, and they stay a wicked long time.
Another reason public employee unions should be outlawed.
“Boston cops outraged about GPS tracking plans”
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/cops-outraged-about-gps-tracking-plans-boston
By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project
Excerpt:
Boston Police Department bosses want to install GPS monitoring devices in every patrol car, to enable dispatch to more efficiently process 911 calls. But police officers and their union are outraged, saying that the ubiquitous tracking is too invasive of their personal privacy. Tracking the location of officers as they go about their days would reveal incredibly detailed information about their lives, the officers say.
We couldn’t agree more. Where you go says a lot about who you are. That’s why we want to ensure that Massachusetts residents are protected from warrantless location tracking, whether by GPS device, cell phone, or automatic license plate reader.
… (info from Boston Globe report)
Concerned officers also raised the specter of advanced hackers breaking into the systems and tracking police officers as they move about the city, potentially enabling them to evade police.
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Like the GPS devices BPD brass wants installed in cruisers, centrally managed license plate reader databases, which contain the location histories of perfectly innocent people, could be compromised by criminal hackers or even foreign governments. That’s why the best defense against exposure or abuse of this invasive information is not to build massive data stores of it in the first place.
While on-duty tracking of public employees raises different questions than does the warrantless tracking of innocent civilians, concerned officers at the Boston Police Department are exactly right when they warn about the sensitivity of this information. As these anonymous officers and their union official argue, tracking someone’s location as they go about their day-to-day life is incredibly invasive.
That’s why we hope police officers will join us in demanding that the state legislature pass forward-looking privacy protections to ensure that if the government wants to track a private citizen — by license plate reader, GPS device, or cell phone — it needs to first get a warrant.
Cross-posted from the ACLU of Massachusetts PrivacySOS blog.
Nal…classic…
SPROING!!
Looks like I need to find a new irony meter.
Yeah baby….. Make those taco stops on your lunch break…. Goosie meet gander…..
Nurses have been forced to wear tracking devices on the job for many years now, these cops need to stop whining, or such devices should be deemed an illegal intrusion on any employee’s freedom.
The Peoples Republic of California want to put black boxes in everyone’s auto and tax people by the mile. What could possible be wrong w/ that? New cars do have limited black boxes in autos that tell investigators what was going on w/ the vehicle[speed, braking, etc.] the last few seconds prior to a crash.
Here’s a dirty secret, Boston cops will go toe to toe w/ ANY police dept. on corruption and laziness. I went to school w/ a couple Boston cops and they have incredible stories. I know cops in many major cities but none of them have stories better than Boston. Hell, the most corrupt Federal law enforcement people, including US attorneys have ALWAYS been Boston. They were scared shit of Whitey Bulger, because he paid them all millions of dollars.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I put it in the same class of technology as body cams, Taser cams, and dash cams. More black box information if needed in an investigation. In fact, some modern automobiles come with built in black-box equipment; either standard, or as an option.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/black-box10.htm
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.
Goose, meet Gander. Gander, meet Goose.