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How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops
- mariuolo 11y agoNoble intent, but I fear these kids will be in the sights for a long time now.
- Namrog84 11y agoI do wonder if the app becomes popular and then an officer recognizes the kid in a pull over or situation how it will influence the interaction.
- bitJericho 11y agoA cop's going to mess with a couple of kids because he might recognize them as having created an app? That makes no sense at all.
- jarcane 11y agoYou don't interact with cops much do you? I got messed with by the cops just for being out after dark as a kid. A cop once made my whole family his personal mission just because he caught one of my brothers biking without a helmet. Makes perfect fuckin' sense to me.
- cubano 11y agoI was set-up and arrested in 2008 for simply being in a suspicious part of town where I knew an old family friend who fixed my car on occasion. I was charged with a felony "destruction of evidence" because a totally crooked cop, whom was eventually kicked off the force for messing with hookers, claimed I ate the non-existent drugs, and actually tampered with the swab he used to wipe my mouth. I was arrested and fired from my job the next week. Eventually, the case was "null-processed" as the cop had been fired for misconduct and the State had no case. In a life of bizarre legal experiences, it was perhaps the most bizarre of them all, and since then I put absolutely nothing past police, although I do recognize they do a dangerous job of which I would want no part of.
- coldtea 11y agoWell, people who speak up against cop brutality, corruption, etc have a big possibility of being targeted for harassment and intimidation, especially in they live in a small town, or they know who they are in their neighborhood etc. Of course people without experience with the police force, and without historical knowledge of other incidents and their frequency, often have no idea that this things even happen.
- logfromblammo 11y agoNo, he won't recognize them. As he is running the plates and driver's license through the official public computer system, he will also be whipping out his personal phone to run that name through a few private databases, run by ex-cops, with subscription access granted only to cops and ex-cops. Those databases will tell him, essentially, "This guy created a popular app that puts your job under a microscope. Also, he probably got a bunch of money for it, and may be carrying a lot of cash." It won't actually say anything about harassing him. That will be entirely up to the investigating officer, and all the other investigating officers that he may have alerted via the aforementioned databases to watch out for cars with the same model and color.
- e28eta 11y agoSounds like an excellent idea for a honeypot. Are you building it?
- logfromblammo 11y agoI'd be a bit late to that party. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8632c929c3ba4773a2e130689f4b8e69/private-database-lets-police-skirt-license-plate-data http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8632c929c3ba4773a2e130689f4b8... http://consumerist.com/2014/05/19/private-companies-building-giant-unregulated-databases-tracking-license-plate-location-info/ http://consumerist.com/2014/05/19/private-companies-building... http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st... https://desertsnow.com/ https://desertsnow.com/ https://bales.org/ https://bales.org/
- chaqke 11y agough, oh god
- bitJericho 11y agoHN really freaks me out sometimes!
- bitJericho 11y agoWhy?
- nmc 11y agoSince the author of the article did not even bother linking to the teenagers' website or even showing some screenshots of the app, here are some links: - The Five-O app on Pinetart Inc. (the teenagers' company) website: http://pinetartinc.com/?p=44 http://pinetartinc.com/?p=44 - The Five-O app on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.five_o https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.five_o - The "international contest for justice-related initiatives" mentioned in the article: https://innovatingjustice.com/en/pages/innovating-justice-forum-2015 https://innovatingjustice.com/en/pages/innovating-justice-fo...
- Wingman4l7 11y agoIt's a fundamental failure of journalism posted on the Internet to not actually link to the subject of your reporting.
- biot 11y agoThe article discusses "why" they created the app, but other than the fact that they're mostly self-taught, there's nothing on the "how". Information on their tech stack or how they're aggregating information would have been interesting to read about.
- zecho 11y agoWow yeah. HUGE oversight by The Economist, imo.
- drglitch 11y agoI'm glad to see that a lens flare photoshop filter is still a rite-of-passage in design just like it was back in late 90s :) Joking aside, this will have same terrible bias as BBB - bad reviews will be the only ones making it in. I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds but this is treating a symptom not the root cause.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S. Surely they aren't all overstepping. One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the world after a while. But even given this, I hardly believe that officers are "significantly (and often) overstepping their bounds".
- rrmm 11y agoSignificant and often are clearly a matter of perspective: what's significant and how often is too often? Realistically, there will always be some incidents. Ideally, they should be as few as possible such that law enforcement is still effective (for whatever value of effective that society chooses). The severity also factors in: No one will probably care all that much if a cop screws up the exact wording of a miranda warning, but when the consequences are someone dead and police perjuring themselves, it takes a lot fewer of those incidents.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoAs the poster I was replying to didn't set any constraints, its clear they meant generally. I disagree that generally officers significantly overstep their bounds.
- coldtea 11y ago
- zomg 11y agothe best way to police the police is to be aware of your local wire tapping laws and roll video.
- RankingMember 11y agoThis is my thought, too. Video, unless thoroughly chopped up (which tends to be obvious), doesn't lie. I've had an idea for a "RateMyCop" app for a bit, but it looks like these kids have basically created it already. The only problem with such an app is the natural human bias to be motivated to report negative interactions over positive, as someone else mentioned in these comments. Straight-up video recordings don't have this issue.
- sleepychu 11y agoSo let's have all government employed agents with body worn video cameras.
- coldtea 11y agoExcept if they confuse (or "confuse") the cellphone/camera with a gun, and shoot you. Don't try it if black or in places without much people and in relative darkness.
- mosselman 11y agoIt must be very cool to be able to create any kind of app with your brothers/sisters, especially if you then get some success together. How else would you get a chance at starting a company at 15, 16 and 18.
- ck2 11y agoPut aside the whole idea of the app for a moment. Think about how this reflects on society when this becomes therapy for teenagers at the formative years in their life to deal with something very bad that happened to them by people who were supposed to protect them.
- vacri 11y agoTeenagers and young adults are ripe for causes. It's part of their psychological makeup; find a cause and be passionate about it. It's why protest groups are mostly young adults, and why armies are full of teenage signups.
- jacquesm 11y agoThis is the kind of impact that start-ups rarely have, in spite of the 'make something people want' and 'lets go and improve the world' mission statements. Kudos to these three, it's the kind of development one would be proud to be a part of. Watching the watchers is badly needed, not just in America, elsewhere too.
- paulmd 11y agoOh, gee, the cops will surely avoid shooting you if it ~damages their rating~. Why has nobody thought of that before? The implication here is that cops would care what you think of them. They don't now, and they won't in the future either. The Chicago PD don't run that torture warehouse for the Yelp ratings, yo. This will be further enhanced by the fact that nobody likes being arrested/jailed and thus the ratings will be pretty much 100% negative. Why would a cop care about how much the perp is complaining, or a meaningless aggregation thereof? On an individual basis (and ignoring the systemic problems), being tough-skinned is basically a requirement for everyone in the justice system. Periscope is a good app that will help. This is dumb cargo-cult behavior that does nothing. This app doesn't address the problem seriously and will be forgotten in two weeks' time. Yes, they're kids and it's nice that they're coding, but don't give a bad idea a handie just for the heck of it. Tying recordings to specific officers to compile a history of bad behavior would actually be fantastic. But the Yelp aspect of it doesn't accomplish anything.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- account5011 11y ago"won at an international contest for justice-related initiatives, organised by a think-tank in the Netherlands." I hope the think-tank is aware that the Dutch police currently employs Stasi methods that are worse than anything that happens in the U.S.: http://vorige.nrc.nl/opinie/article1838531.ece Be aware that the NRC is a conservative newspaper and most definitely not a tabloid. And this isn't happening to "suspected terrorists" only ...
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI'm with Temporal that this will be negatively biased against the police. There will be some good ratings of good cops at least while this is a fad. There might be a percentage that do it consistently. Yet, most people are going to make this the goto app for ranting against the police. These rants will vary in accuracy. Overall, I mainly see it being an app for collecting negative claims about police rather than truly holding them accountable. Body cams and attorney's present are accountability. This isn't.
- wruza 11y agoBias is easily removed, just select your zero and scale. Human reaction to police actions is a precious feedback that can make them better, not throw them all to jails. What's good in police that is officially correct, but unaccepted by the entire society?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoYou make something sound easy that I rarely see done well. The real problem is willingness to convict cops. Not enough exists. Once that exists, clear guidelines are necessary so cops can get stuff done while knowing when they'd be crossing the line.
- cryoshon 11y agoDerp, maybe if the police stop behaving badly, we will have more positive things to say about them.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoYour argument would still apply if it was an app for citizens to tell the police who to investigate. "Forget the abuse potential: if they don't like a bad solution, they shouldn't have allowed criminals to exist in the first place."