Jacqui promotes police handhelds

Stalin Smith promotes hand-helds??

Aren't the police militia in already the palm of her hand?

Did I miss it?

I've re-read the article and I can't find the part that says what the purpose of this "handheld" device is. So I'm assusming it will be some kind of nightstick with built in

Taser to make you more "co-operative"

Camera to take your mugshot while not being capable of videoing plod obtaining your "co-operation"

DNA sampler

Fingerprint scanner

3G transmitter to send all the info back ( to the uberdatabase and receive a list of suggested "crimes" you can be charged with

<-- Flames, coz that's what happens to any inconvenient evidence

What a waste of money!

I was going to write something here, but I can't be bothered now. I can't wait until this half wit is sacked.

Re: Did I miss it?

>> 3G transmitter to send all the info back ( to the uberdatabase and receive a list of suggested "crimes" you can be charged with

Funny you should mention that - A colleague was pulled over recently by a police car; The officer told him his car wasn't insured according to the DVLA check on his number plate.

(In fact, he was insured, but he'd put a vanity plate on the car so the DVLA copy of his insurance details didn't match up with the DVLA record of the vanity plate registration). *

The policeman was quite chatty and mentioned the new toy he had - A Blackberry, that enabled him to text registration numbers through to the DVLA for checking.

And of course the officer was using a hand-held device while driving...

* Disregarding the argument that it's the driver who is insured to drive, not the vehicle to be driven

but...

will they run crysis at full settings?

mines the one with "save the economy - slash Jacqui's budget" stencilled on the back!

Fat Lot Of Use!

I used to work for an organisation that produces secure handsets for the police. We spent years working on developing new data handheld devices which were supposed to really help the police to get out of the paperwork treadmill and on to the streets where they could tackle real crime.

That was the theory until I saw something in the City of London which made me realise that I was wasting my time. As a direct consequence I left the company.

I was standing at a bus stop when I saw two police cars perform a rolling block on a bus, bringing it to a stop. There were four police officers in each car. Minutes later they dragged a man off the bus. It was January and he was wearing shorts flip flops and looked rather drunk (despite the description he did not look Australian).

After the chap was cuffed, the bus pulled away, and the eight cops stood around chatting for about 5 minutes until a police van with 6 officers in pulled up. All 6 got out saunteded over to have a bit of a laugh and joke with the other eight for about another 5 minutes.

A short while later, another two officers in a paddy wagon pulled up and also proceded to stand around an chat. Al the while the cuffed man was left standing on the street.

My bus arrived and when I left, 16 police officers were still standing around talking and joking. SIXTEEN officers to arrest one drunk guy!

This made me realise that putting mobile devices in the hands of these people would do fuck all. They would still be standing around doing nothing all day, only now they would have £500 worth of additional kit on them.

Since then the laws have become more draconian, so I'm sure that those officers are today arresting people for suspicion of 'extreme porn', taking photos, leaving their bin lids open, dropping twiglets, being a member of the opposition and generally 'looking a bit wrong'

That's it!

Unarguable, definitive proof that Jacqui Smith is stupid. "Stupid as all get-out", as my sainted mother would have said. "Stupid as a bump on a log" according to some others. "Stupider than the common garden slug", from the horticultural crowd.

How else can her fixation on IT solutions to all problems, even non-existent ones, be explained?

I'd say something nasty about her background being "school teacher", but that would unduly cast the teaching profession into disrepute.

Incredible. Government by fad, government by tabloid hysteria, government by outright lies, government by methods suitable only for the classroom.

I'm going to try to restrain myself from any further comments on Ms. Smith's obviously being unfit for Home Secretary.

From one AC to another AC

Now that is worth reporting to police authorities. In a way, not reporting it formally implies that such behavior and actions are supported.

(It runs along lines of "you saw it, what did you do about it? Nothing? Oh well they might have been your friends or something?"

Are these the same..

Are the the same hand-helds that show up as WPA-TKIP or WEP with a number followed by the words Patrol, every time a copper walks down the street.

This government is the blind leading the blind when it comes to technology. What with the information commissioner giving away peoples details in clear breach of the data protection act you now have bobbies on the beat being tracked by WiFi... Now if I can just get one to stand in one spot long enough, "Victor Charlie Five Nine Seven, they need you back at base...", "No, wait one, Victor Charlie Five Nine Seven, we've decided you'd be better off playing in the traffic!"

wimax?

if the gov't are going to go ahead with yet another insane way of wasting money, I would like to see them pay for a national wimax network, over which they could VPN their traffic and then let we plebs also use it.

they could use a locked-down version of the nokia tablet for this purpose.

however, what will probably happens is that some large manglement conslutancy (you know who they are) will receive billions to implement a half-arsed system with custom hardware that never quite works with communications that fails and a total lack of security built with Microsoft products which cost a fortune for license/support/maintenance!

New and ever more efficient ways to lose data

So, will these handheld terminals have full access to the PNC? Local storage for when they're jammed? Password protection ("Pl0d")? Encrypted comms? Will they be counted out, and counted back every shift? Will there be audit logs of searches? Will access be rate-limited?

And, when one - or more - is inevitably compromised: a) how long will it take to know? b) how will access be revoked? and c) what safeguards are in place to undo the damage caused by granting database access to organised criminals?

(Icon of a light-fingered chav making off with a police handheld)

When do the Met officially change their name to

The Combine?

Gordon Freeman would know what to do!

Forest Gate?

'9 coppers to pull Damian Green, 250 to arrest two guys in Forest Gate; we're going to start needing a word for large groups of them soon.'

It just has to be a thicket of coppers.

Paris, I spy a fat consultancy fee for her to teach them all about mobile data protection.

Excellent News

You do realise that this may make it possible to hack into the police central computer and add information about Whacky Jacqui's crimes (real or otherwise!)

We could maybe add information that says she owns a copy of the Scorpions album "Virgin Killer" with it's original cover.

Justice will prevail!

saving time...

Can I just say that as a victim of police harassment, I really like the Blackberries. Now when I get stopped for disqual driving I can be on my way in minutes, instead of being dragged down the station whilst they "check out my story"

At least until they manage to get their intelligence databases mobile and I have to respond to the next 'incorrect' thing.

Mines the one being searched again and again and again ( probably for batteries for their mobile tech)