Cellphone Apps Level The Field Against Government Surveillance.

Blow-back! Google’s Waze app has some Law Enforcement Officers around the country getting skittish, believing that the moustached cop icon on the map uncovers their location in a dangerous way leaving them vulnerable to attacks and decreasing their revenue by the public slowing down or diverting their travel to avoid them. The National Sheriff’s Association said that “it will be harder to nab speeders, and that radar guns and speed traps reduce highway deaths.” Continuing by saying “This app will hamper these activities by locating Police and puts the public at risk.”

Then we have a Bedford County, Virginia Sheriff Michael Brown saying “it’s a matter of time before it will connect violent attacks on Police to this app, and that States might pass laws to prevent people from revealing the location of parked police cruisers.” A Law Professor from George Mason University Law School in Virginia says, “Holding Google liable for any future crime against Law Enforcement Officials would be a stretch.” “Because by notifying people where police are, has never been or seen as negligent or as committing any kind of intentional tort.” “The fact that someone would use misuse Waze in order to harm police is no more relevant than if someone misused a kitchen knife to stab someone.”

Social media had also been stirring up the debate as well with people supporting it by lashing out at the outspoken Sheriff’s on the irony about being watched and the comparison of how they track us as well. These complaints from Government employed Law Enforcement are a sense of fear which to us as a population is Liberty. When they have the same and even more Orwellian surveillance programs on us.

This app not only tells users the location of Police but also accidents, traffic cameras, potholes, roadway congestion and more. A spokeswoman from Waze Julie Mossler commented by saying “most tend to drive more carefully when they believe Police are nearby.” Nuala O’Connor a Waze user and the Head of the Center of Democracy and Technology, a Washington Civil Liberties group said, “Waze represents a person to person information in the public square and that it’s long been a right under our Constitution.” Infringements of our rights under this same document that is supposed to protect us are in full swing by our Governments.

The Department of Justice has a tracking database that was solely for the DEA but has expanded into a national surveillance web by using license plate readers, cameras on Government and Law Enforcement Vehicles, that are so high-tech that they can identify persons within vehicles while in motion. In 2012, a DEA agent testified to a House Subcommittee that the program was inaugurated in December of 2008 and information gathered was available to Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Organizations. The agent also said, “it includes protocols that limit who can access the database and that all the information is deleted after 90 days.” Well, that’s reassuring, considering that they have a gigantic NSA Storage Center in Bluffdale, Utah. What about the silly thing about having to make sure your address is updated on your license so they know where we are? With Police accountability groups growing throughout the Country and the ever-expanding technology, it works both ways. The Government doesn’t like a fair fight,

The Government doesn’t like a fair fight, well too bad. We the People need the available ammunition to defend ourselves from heavy-handed authority. The pedestals they are propped upon need to be removed because after all, they work for us!