Met police plans to track cops by GPS

White heat of technology

There's a slightly smaller police force quite close to Leeds that has been doing this since 2005.

Not a lot of use.

We are about to go live with an airwave/TETRA system with the ambulance service in Scotland and though excited about it I wouldn't want to rely on it for positioning. I've heard umpteen stories from the police about poor coverage, system drop outs and just plain no-one listening.

As far as big brother is concerned, I'd be more worried about an Airwave operator's ability to listen in without warning the user (yes, apparently the display will indicate this is happening but with a radio on your chest you're not going to notice that). We are assured that this capability will not be abused and is purely for crew safety. Whatever.

Implications for private employers?

"While they are on duty as a Metropolitan Police officer it is entirely justified that the MPS can locate their position for operational purposes, and the public should be able to expect this.""

Should the state be able to track it's employees to ensure that taxpayer funds are being well spent?

How about truck drivers at private companies?

How about pizza delivery kids?

How about Starbucks workers? (Computer says you've had 30 smoke breaks this week... and what were you and Sarah doing in the storage closet for half an hour last Wednesday?)

These issues need to be debated and sorted out now before the technology/free market does it for us. Technology appears to be defaulting to the 'most monitored' solution as gadgets get cheaper and smaller, but history shows that all heavily monitored societies result in terrible injustices and abuses. If we don't sort these issues out now, the implications for the future could be rather bad.

foot patrol !!

What's that then. Not seen a copper patroling on foot ( going from car to doughnut shot doesn't count) for years.

We already do it in Durham

We already track vehicles and pocket sets (for the last year in fact).

Cheaper option

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to install a webcam in the local chippie? (shop, not carpenter!)

Speeding fines for police?

Hmmm... are speeding fines issued to police officers who are going "over the limit" but aren't engaged in an emergency?

Ah

TK-421, why aren't you at your post?

She doesn't know either.

surprizing...

that the UK hadn't implemented that long ago! right along side all of the CCTV cameras you smile for each day. but i guess the natural order of tracking progression is people > police.

i live in arizona, in the greater phoenix area, I'm not sure about the police force here, but phoenix fire department and most of the surrounding departments have been using such technology for several years, it was implemented after a phoenix firefighter was killed in a grocery store fire in 2001. the fire department i work for rolled it out in late 02 early 03. so its nothing new really...

Big brother is watching us now as well Sir........move along please....

Oh priceless, I jes love this land of ours. Free from invasion of privacy for all.

Now George Dixon will have to watch out when he is having a crafty fag whilst "monitoring the correct application of closing time..." ;-))

duuh!

err ....

Don't these guys all have nokia mobile phones attached to their body armour already...

Now if i remember rightly.. any idiot can get a phones location tracked via any of the operators for £20 a month or so.

I've worked for companies that have done this with phones imposed on their contractors.(cough,,, cough,,, IBM! and Co..)

If i was working for the MET' as a foot soldier i'd be very worried about the additional burden of more useless IT junk to be carried about and even more about the effects of being effectivly a walking mobile phone mast.

Oh well it's probably for the best,

in the long run,

as they wont have so many coppers reaching pension age and so wont have to fork out the huge amounts they don't have for thier pension schemes.

I'm Sure their Union will eventually sort it out.....maybe...

(how to do a public service for the beliegured irradiated copper on the beat,(use a jammer on him) that way he won't be feeling The-Force so badly)

(well it would be nice if they got a chance to do some real work for a change)

Mines the Flourescent Stripy StormTrooper(tin-foil lined) Jacket with the mobile-phone-Antenna'd-Pin-Head Helmet....

illuminatus;p

Wrong date?

"The Police Federation, which represents all UK police, said GPS tracking of officers could be useful but it was concerned at the Big Brother overtones, according to reports."

Are you sure you didn't mean to post this article on April 1st?

Big Brother overtones...

concerns from the cops? Who try to monitor all of Blighty via CCTV?

I'm shocked! There is gambling at Rick's Casino...

Old News

This system has been in place in other forces for a while. Perhaps if your horizons were a little wider than London you would know this. Then again the media only tend to notice the rest of the UK when something goes wrong.

EL Reg, perhaps you could ring a few press officers for each of the other 42 forces and ask about it, perhaps your piece would be a little more detailed and useful.

It certainly worthy of an article rather than just some second hand "were gona do this" crap.

Mythbusters where are you? No. 1

@ Curtis W. Rendon -

concerns from the cops? Who try to monitor all of Blighty via CCTV?

But other than a few isolated cases, the Police don’t monitor CCTV at all. This is done by your local Council, they’re the ones that own, maintain and staff CCTV; I thought that was common knowledge?

They are provided with Police radios and, just so long as somebody is actually watching the screens - and can be arsed to bother - they may or may not report events to the Police. As you might deduce from my tone, the quality of this service varies enormously from council to council, regardless of what they themselves might claim.

@ Mike - most police vehicles are already tracked so they can get them to serious incidents (by which I mean speeders, not rape and murder) faster

No they’re not. Practically the only Police that derive any excitement from catching speeders are current and former ‘Roads Policing’ units - formerly the Traffic Dept. (yet another example of inane Bramshill inspired re-branding). They’re the only Police with the necessary equipment to enforce such offences.

The plain fact is that your average Traffic Dept. seldom represents much more than 10% of the total Force. Yes they do have a general tendency to enforce with zeal (which is why other officers refer to them as Droids or similar). We find little point in challenging such zeal as they invariably point out that there are far more people killed annually on the roads than by anything else in the UK.

A quick surf reveals: for the year 2006-7 there were 765 murders in UK, but on the roads there were 3172 fatalities and 258,404 casualties. How many families do you know who’s lost someone in a road accident? If the sole criteria was human suffering, what priority would you put on traffic enforcement? Personally, sudden death intimations are right up there on my top 10 “Shit jobs” list, especially when it involves children.

@AC - Hmmm... are speeding fines issued to police officers who are going "over the limit" but aren't engaged in an emergency?

Oh yes – see above comment re Droids

@AC - The police are always asking for more and more laws to force big brother on to the general public. BUT then when it comes to their being the subject of "surveillance" they shout

Which “The Police” are you actually talking about? Do you honestly believe that we all speak with one voice? That an organisation of 141,000+ people in 43 distinct establishments isn’t seething with discord, disagreement and dispute, in particular between management (ACPO) and workforce (Federated ranks)? Do you know anything about human nature at all?

That’s about as realistic as stating: “Its common knowledge that everyone in IT believe that Apple OSX is by far and away the best operating system available - its been proved”, or worse still: “It’s a well known fact that Black youths always ……. (fill in something negative)“. Frankly, there are too many ludicrous and uninformed generalisations uttered on these pages, on all subjects – such is the power of the knee jerk - saves of thinking I suppose.

The fact of the matter is that vast number of Police announcements, proclamations and policies are uttered by a very small but distinct subset, namely that Chief Officer Dream Team. This bunch of inmates-in-charge-of-the-asylum are churned out by the Bramshill Staff College and are responsible for all the nonsensical changes and hair-brained schemes that inflict the modern Police Force today. These are the guys trying to run a non-profit making public service along strictly business lines and failing miserably. Don’t be fooled, they speak for no-one but themselves.

And?

why shouldn't the Plod be monitored and tracked? it's what they want to do to us (the public who pay their wages through burdensome council tax) they want us to sit quietly in our homes, never go out, never stand up for ourselves, monitor our whereabouts 24/7, spy on our private lives, catch us doing anything not expressly allowed even if we didn't know it was forbidden, carry useless ID cards that turn us all into criminals just for leaving it another jacket or telling a nosy Plod to get lost when he demands to "see our papers, ja!" - so why shouldn't they be subject to Big Brother type surveillance as well?

And if you knew what coppers get up to especially late at night (police car hide and seek anyone? or get some presents for the Mrs and kids from the confiscated goods store?) you'd be demanding they get tracked. They're a shift thieving lazy bunch, on the make wherever they can.

I know that some coppers read the Reg and post on here - don't think that some of us don't know what you get up to!

excellent...

I'm going to open a pub/cafe/brothel with farady shielding in, sit back and watch the money roll in...

@ Mike

Tw8t.

If you don't want to be tracked don't use anything (and I mean anything) with a chip in it. You clearly know nothing about policing or IT.

Oh, and you clearly haven't realised that the police do not have that many powers to snoop on you, and when they do there is huge oversight by the courts, lay persons and all sorts of people. However your local council, the Environment Agency and lots of other people have the same powers (and more) but no one oversees them.

If the old bill want to kick your door in, they need a bloody good reason (e.g. murderous screams) or a warrant from the court. Strangely HMRC can just kick your door in, no reason required other than they didn't like the answers on your VAT/Tax return.

Like a lot of people you're focused on the police as the "enemy" yet they are heavily regulated and supervised by guardian readers. Meanwhile NuLab has given any halfwit at the council the power to snoop on you or enter your premises, even if you aren't killing anyone or running a cannabis farm.

Take the kids out of school for a day, the LEA will have private detectives following you for weeks before they get social services involved for you giving them an "unhealthy" chip supper. The fascist state is here, its just you haven't realised who the real fascists are. Take a look at who has RIPA powers - if only it was just the police. Do you really trust the local council tax department more than the police. Do councils have an IPCC when you find they've been filming you for weeks 'cos your bins a bit full? Thought not.

GPS Tracking Police is not new

There is a South African Telematics company that tracks police vehicles by GPS. And then if cellular network providers can track cell phones by triangulating the position of the cell phone from their cellular towers, why don't they just use that?

Add web cams and...

...you've got eBill. Charge the public to connect and watch the coppers roam the streets in real time then watch them nab the baddun's.

Cool

We can track all the police involved in the investigation of BT over the Phorm scandal then? Oh, that's right, it's not there job to investigate crime... That's Governments job.. Can we track them by GPS too then?