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Police firing GPS tracking 'bullets' at cars during chases
- officialjunk 13y agoi am surprised this has taken so long, considering it's been going on in movies for quite a while.
- frooxie 13y agoSpider-Man has been doing basically this since the 60's!
- jasonkolb 13y agoThat's pretty cool. GPS jammers are relatively easy to make however. Funny how hacking skills are quickly becoming the most powerful skills in meatspace as well.
- crunchcaptain 13y agoDon't forget about cell signal jammers! Surely it uses CDMA or GSM. Links: http://www.starchase.us/d/ http://www.starchase.us/d/ http://www.starchase.us/d/2D.php http://www.starchase.us/d/2D.php http://www.starchase.us/admin/ http://www.starchase.us/admin/
- Fundlab 13y agoYour link points to a login screen I think it should have been this http://www.starchase.com/howitworks.html http://www.starchase.com/howitworks.html
- sopooneo 13y agoYes, but I expect the vast majority of chase targets were not planning to be chased, and would thus not have counter measures ready.
- Already__Taken 13y agoAll you need is any electronic devices - FAA Spokesperson
- rfnslyr 13y agoI'm at that point in my life where I'm making decent money without working a job, and heavily debating just completely recessing into an apartment and surrounding myself with all sorts of electronics and software. Learning the ins and outs of everything.
- giardini 13y agoWouldn't a GPS jammer be relatively easy to locate or follow? Wouldn't a device that mimicked a tracked GPS symbol be more useful?
- ogreyonder 13y agoGPS jammers are easy to track. A GPS spoofer, on the other hand, is more difficult to pin down and can cause at least as much havoc on the unencrypted (civilian) GPS.
- MacsHeadroom 13y agoPossession of a signal jammer is a felony.
- grecy 13y agoIf you're in a high speed police chase, I have to imagine you've already racked up a few of those
- baddox 13y agoIf only it were possible to instantly acquire a jammer on demand right at the beginning of a police chase.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- grecy 13y agoIf you have one that's turned off, it's going to be quite hard for them to find out you have it...
- jasonkolb 13y agoThat's what I was thinking as well. If this sort of thing becomes commonplace, you would just take a jammer or scrambler with you and turn it on after you see them give up the chase. It wouldn't be for your run-of-the-mill stupid criminal, but for the ones who think ahead.
- hershel 13y agoIf gps jamming becomes an issue, using some anti jamming(using spread spectrum or frequency hopping) transmitter together with few drones over the city to do signal localization isn't the complicated. Jamming this technology is much harder and usually emits large radio signals which isn't useful if you want to hide.
- Zancarius 13y ago> Jamming this technology is much harder and usually emits large radio signals which isn't useful if you want to hide. This is true. If jamming became commonplace, then it's just a matter of following the broadcast.
- afarrell 13y agoThese require Probably Cause, right? I'd assume so since they also seem a bit dangerous if they hit a human.
- endianswap 13y agoIANAL but evading/fleeing the police is unlawful in most US jurisdictions (if not all, and there's a felony variant in most) which sounds like it meets the bar for probable cause (though I'm not sure probable cause is required for use of this in all UW jurisdictions, hasn't there been very recent activity on vehicle tracking devices in appelate courts?)
- nilved 13y agoIt's not fleeing or evading if they're not trying to detain you, which itself "requires" "probable cause."
- gcr 13y agoWhy would they fire bullets at you if they aren't trying to detain you? To me, that speaks less of "Sir Please Come With Us Quietly" and more of "This Ain't Working, Let's Cut Our Losses And Try To Disable Their Escape"
- baddox 13y agoWhy would they fire real bullets at people they're not trying to detain? It's a good question, but they definitely do.
- jlgreco 13y agoWhat exactly is the fear here, they are going to accidentally hit a different car? Not really a big deal, considering during normal chases they accidentally hit other cars... with their car. Is the fear that they are going to sticky innocent law-abiding drivers on purpose? Well they already follow people and pull people over without reason, so I'm not seeing this as something new in that regard.. though this of course leaves a better audit trail.
- gknoy 13y agoI recall seeing this in Ghost in the Shell, as well. It's not surprising, but it is somewhat disappointing: a GPS tracing bullet sounds like it would still be quite dangerous if it were to miss.
- andrewfong 13y agoBased on the video, the bullet seems fairly large and soft, and the reporter refers to it as derived from a t-shirt cannon. So, dangerous[1] but not stray bullet dangerous. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JgRXOmZkSo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JgRXOmZkSo
- JulianMorrison 13y agoOh that's an easy one, make it a self-steering bullet[1] too. After all, it can already GPS track. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/26/darpa_gps/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/26/darpa_gps/
- frostcall 13y agoIt's about the weight of a softball and travels at ~32mph. It hurts but probably won't cause serious injury. You're much more likely to get injured by the vehicles that would presumably be driving at roadway speeds if you were close enough to be hit by the round.
- maxerickson 13y agoDoes the gun use less of a charge when the police car is at speed? If not, it will often be going faster than ~32 mph.
- Osiris 13y agoI have two brothers in the highway patrol and they believe that it's imperative that they chase anyone trying to get away, in order to make sure that anyone in the future knows that they can't run from the police, despite the risks of collateral damage to innocent people. On the other hand, high speed chases frequently end up causing car accidents with innocent people, sometimes fatally. The question becomes, is there a way to still capture the person trying to escape police without putting innocent people in harms way? I applaud any efforts to eliminate casualties caused by high speed chases.
- macspoofing 13y ago>they believe that it's imperative that they chase anyone trying to get away, in order to make sure that anyone in the future knows that they can't run from the police, despite the risks of collateral damage to innocent people. Kinda forgot about the whole "to serve and protect" part didn't they.
- wpietri 13y agoNot at all. It's a hard question. If there is no point in running, way fewer people will run. That could mean net fewer chase-miles, and also fewer crimes committed, because fewer potential criminals would think they might be able to get away with it. The officers likely believe that serving and protecting requires them to always chase. Whether it's true or not is something that has no obvious a priori answer. It'd be great to find the answer empirically, but until then, I'm inclined to defer to the pros.
- alan_cx 13y agoHave the number of car chases decreased over time due to all the chases teaching people its not worth running?
- bradleyland 13y agoYou're asking the wrong question. The question is how chase/no-chase policies would trend against a control. These types of social experiments are very hard to conduct, because there are so many confounding variables.
- parliament32 13y agoThey called it a "bullet" about eight times in that article. The thing is the size of a bloody coffee cup.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- malandrew 13y agoIn all fairness Bullet Bill is half the size of Mario and has Bullet in his name. http://www.mariowiki.com/Bullet_Bill http://www.mariowiki.com/Bullet_Bill
- philjackson 13y agoI really like this idea. A common tactic for people being chased by the police here in the UK is to head for the most densely populated areas they can. This will most likely cause the police to refrain from the pursuit due to concerns of collateral injury. With a GPS gun they could fire a tracker at the car, let them travel through the town and head them off as they exit. There's always a chance of them bailing but that was always a risk anyway.
- Groxx 13y ago>The system costs $5,000, and each bullet sets the taxpayer back $500. That's surprisingly not bad. $500 to stop a crazy-dangerous chase? Definitely worth it if it works. I'm used to things sold to governments being a few times more expensive.
- elwell 13y agoYeah, I was expecting him to say at least a 5-figure number for each system and something about one-time-use.
- frostcall 13y agoIf the round is still good, then getting it refurbished is only $250.
- jlgreco 13y agoI imagine that in practice two or more would be fired in a single chase, just to be safe. Even so, pretty cheap.
- hnriot 13y agoOr if a couple kids at MIT put the system together it would cost 10x less, be 10x more efficient and have been developed in 10x less time.
- Groxx 13y agoWell sure. But they wouldn't have won the contract.
- mapt 13y agoSupplement to this device: A 1-watt IR LED beacon that strobes a few times a second, and a fleet of small foam/electric flying wings that will track that beacon from 400 foot altitude at high speed (much cheaper to use CMOS sensors and a beacon than something FLIR could provide for engine heat). The current arrangement is vulnerable on two fronts - GPS jammers, which could be extremely disruptive to modern society, and jammers on whatever frequency is used to transmit position (GPS itself is a passive receiver technology).
- trippy_biscuits 13y agoThis only tells where the car went and may not implicate the real criminal. Imagine a someone borrowing a car, fleeing from the police, getting tagged, and then returning the car to its origin. The tag may help stop the police from engaging in dangerous driving, but what about the driver of the tagged car? If the driver knows the car is tagged, perhaps the driver will still drive dangerously? I suspect the action of tagging a car still encourages the police and the accused to behave dangerously. What if an occupant of the car returns fire?