General Forums >> General Discussions >> POLICE CAR TRACKING BY CITIZENS, TRAPSTER.COM, (NOT INTEL)
POLICE CAR TRACKING BY CITIZENS, TRAPSTER.COM, (NOT INTEL)
4853 posts back to top |
Posted 20 days ago
THIS IS ON THE INTERNET AT Trapster.com ANYONE EVER HEARD OF IT. I received this email from a college instructor today. Checked SNOPES, but there is no info available on this website. (Go to the website, click on the word, "ABOUT" on the top of the title bar and watch the video from Fox News). Officer Awareness: The following is some interesting information developed by Deputy Todd Thurston. R/D responded to the above location for a family trouble report. Upon arrival I was met in the driveway by the complainant. She stated she knew I was on the way to her house and knew when I pulled into the driveway of her house. When asked how she knew this information she stated she was tracking my police vehicle using her cell phone. Complainant stated she was using her Apple iPhone and an application called Trapster.com. As I looked at her phone there was a satellite view of her house and the surrounding neighborhood with a yellow ping marking my police vehicle in her driveway. According to the complainant, trapster.com has many applications including sending an alarm to the phone whenever police vehicles are within a one mile radius of the phone. It shows current live locations of police vehicles, vehicles running radar, checkpoints and most frequented areas by police vehicles. I went back to complainant’s house with Deputy Unterborn. I left my GPS running and Deputy Unterborn shut his off. Complainant had only one police vehicle located on her iPhone. According to Trapster.com, Trapster can use Wi-Fi or GPS to pinpoint the user's current location and send them audio alerts or text messages when they are approaching a ticket threat. Users report the existence of a trap by pressing the touch screen or using a key combination on the mobile device. Users can customize the alerts via the Trapster website or the mobile app so that they only receive notifications of conditions they are interested in, such as red light cameras or live police vehicles driving around. A suspect using this application that maybe involved in car larcenies, barricaded in a house or a drug house for example would know how many police vehicles and from which direction they are approaching once they enter the one mile radius. Source: Chief Deputy Steven Scott Monroe County Sheriff’s Office 130 South Plymouth Avenue Rochester, New York 14614 (585) 753-4712 Office, (585) 753-4701 Fax sscott@monroecounty.gov
MODERATOR 3 |
61 posts back to top |
| Posted 20 days ago According to the website they can't do this. In fact I don't think there is a way to do this much less have a system like this tap into a government system. It would be illegal in my state and i'm guessing its illegal in most as a computer crime.
All this is doing is allowing people to mark speed traps and alerts them if they get close to a known/reported spot. |
11 posts back to top |
| Posted 20 days ago Im an officer in TN and I have an Apple Iphone and trapster.com does work as an app. on my phone. So now the question is is this illegal and if so way hasnt anyone put a stop to it? If I am going to respond to a crime I dont want the perps to know IM in the area and from where Im coming from. its an ambush waiting to happen. |
2168 posts back to top |
| Posted 20 days ago I have never heard of it, course, I don't have an iphone or one of those really nice phones anyway. You're right though, this does sound illegal, and it is potentially an ambush waiting to happen.....geez. I like the idea of being able to know when a police/fire/EMS unit is going to get to you when you call them, but, this is far and above that! "You are part of the night, just like me. We're not afraid of the dark--we come alive in it...we're thrilled by it." GUN CONTROL.......means Hitting your target..... A person who performs good Karma (deeds) is always held in high esteem. |
12 posts back to top |
| Posted 20 days ago This is where people go on there and tell others where cops are.. It's word of mouth, not like GPS tracking or something. The iphone app works if you're cruising down the highway and see 8 motorcycles sitting on the ramp, the type the location and the site makes it available for others to see. So now the speeders are hauling butt, while surfing the internet on their tiny little phones so they know when to slow down. smart. |
5 posts back to top |
| Posted 20 days ago I don't have an I-Phone nor am I a computer engineer, but if all trapster is for is to warn for speed traps, well that's all fine and good. There are dozens of sites that offer this "service". Yet, if this application is also offering people the ability to track police units, that is a HUGE problem, and could be a very lethal one at that. If this is what this application can do then it needs to be stopped. Yet my question is how the heck would this application work? How would some civilian company be able to track government vehicles. One not all police departments have tracking units in their squad cars so it would be impossible to track those cars and two, if that is how they are doing that, that would be a criminal offense wouldn't it? Something along the lines of hacking into a government system? "Pain is Just Weakness, Leaving the Body."
|
428 posts back to top |
| Posted 19 days ago How alarming...I had not heard of this before (guess I'm not a techno-junkie). I did pass it along to our officers in case they were not aware of it also. In God we trust...all others checked thru NCIC. |
28 posts back to top |
| Posted 19 days ago According to their website it can only report the location of speed traps because it only shows user reported data. So if a driver sees a cop sitting out he reports it to the app. When another user comes up on that location, the app alerts them that a speed trap had been reported in that location. I HIGHLY doubt they can track police units in real time as I can't believe this would get past national security laws. Indeed their website does not claim that the app can do this. |
9 posts back to top |
| Posted 19 days ago It does look like they only track traps that have been reported by other users, which I don't see as a huge problem. But as some others have brought up, if people are constantly looking at their phones checking for new traps, this could present a problem. I'm not a huge fan of the idea either way, but it's not as bad as if they could track like the AVL does.
JTortorice, you have the app, does it ACTUALLY track live movement of PD units? If it does, could you PM me so that I can get this up to our IT and Physical Security division. |
|
28 posts back to top |
| Posted 19 days ago If it actually does have that capability that would be very alarming, but I highly doubt that it does. |
1 post back to top |
| Posted 19 days ago Hmm... Why is this still a topic? I had faith that the government has a team designed to detect and shutdown things like this? It is a huge safety concern knowing that our Boys and Girls in blue can be tracked, and potentially ambushed because of such carelessness of humanity to allow such technology to the dangerous people out there. |
172 posts back to top |
| Posted 17 days ago so why don't we screw with their system- every couple miles mark it as a "live" site with "high probability"? that way, whenever someone uses the site, it would show the whole highway as a speed trap... rendering the site useless because everything would be marked as speed traps or speed cameras. |
85 posts back to top |
| Posted 16 days ago
<!--Session data--> I went through and read several reviews for the application and articles in regards to it. It does not track police officers in the area, it is all based on user data. I doubt that a person could truely use it to evade the cops if they were running from them. From what I can tell there is a problem with the site where it does not get updated as often as it should. Speed traps stay on there for days versus being updated and removed in a timely way. So they are actually getting people to slow down thinking there is a police officer there when there isn't a police officer there and hasn't been one in several days. The GPS capabilities are only working on your phone, not on the police cars nearby. It is essenitially locating your phone and then pulling data entered by users for that area and sending alerts based only on what the user-inputed data states. And yes, would be very easy to manipulate the data by throwing in errenous info. :P Pseudonym of Princess Leia Check Out http://www.thetenfour.com |
|
11 posts back to top |
| Posted 4 days ago OK I have used this app on my Iphone and I have tracked several police vehicles from local depts in my area and yes it does work. It showed me there direction of travel and what roads they were on. this app is being played out as nothing more than a tell all of speed traps and dwi check points etc but it does go further. |
