Police officers and sheriffs around the U.S. are calling on Google to turn off police tracking on Waze, the traffic and navigation app Google purchased in June 2013, claiming that the feature makes Waze into a “police stalking” app that puts their lives in danger.
Waze is a crowdsourcing app that alerts drivers in real time to potential hazards, delays, and other traffic happenings; users might flag construction zones, accidents, or other areas of single lane driving. Drivers also use the police warnings often to broadcast potential speed traps, though there’s no way to designate the exact nature of police presence—whether they’re actually monitoring speed or the officers just happen to be parked there.
Mike Brown, a sheriff in Virginia, wants the function removed over concern for police lives in the wake of the shooting of two police officers in New York City. The shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, posted a Waze screenshot to Instagram along with threatening messages.
“The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,” Brown told ABC News. Fraternal Order of Police executive director Jim Pasco echoed these concerns, saying that it may be a way to plan future crimes. He said bank robbers may “use [their] Waze” in the plotting of a crime.
The Waze backlash has some civil liberties groups up in arms, maintaining that the app is simply reporting on freely available data—the position of law enforcement officers in plain sight. In 2011, Apple banned many DUI checkpoint style apps going forward due to police pressure. That pressure (and stiff competition from Waze) also contributed to the demise of Trapster. Trapster and PhantomAlert also fell in the scopes of policymakers in D.C.
This story originally appeared on popularmechanics.com via ABC News .
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