Guerilla technology against speed traps

CNN reports on an intriguing new use of technology to fight speed traps, called Trapster. As the Trapster site explains:

When you see a trap, report it by pressing a button on your phone, or calling a toll free number. Other user's phones will alert them as they approach the trap. Trapster® learns the credibility of traps based on how many users agree. It also learns the credibility of each user, over time.

Trapster makes use of Wi-Fi technology to figure out where your phone is, and thus which alerts to send you.

Speed limits in the US are almost always set with a large slop factor. In a 55 MPH zone, most people drive at 65 and aren't ticketed -- but a cop with a quota, or one who doesn't like the looks of your car, can ticket you for going 56. In some areas, such as Boston's Big Dig, speed limits are said to be set low in order to create a revenue stream. You can keep up with traffic and risk a ticket, or drive at the speed limit and risk being hit by impatient drivers. This means that sane, careful drivers have to guard against speed traps. I don't know how well Trapster actually works, but I'm glad to see that people are thinking of ideas like these.

A swarm of officers, Part 2

Today it was Porter Station on the MBTA that was filled with cops. However, they were only at the subway entrance. Anyone could go up to the commuter rail level and ride right into North Station. In this case, terrorists wouldn't even have had to walk to another station.

I wouldn't be surprised if this round of harassment, coming so soon after similar action in Harvard Station, was aimed at distracting attention from the fatal collision yesterday on the Green Line. Dan Grabauskas's recorded voice tells us every few minutes in the subway stations that "Safety is our number one concern" and that being suspicious of other passengers is the way to achieve it. But no one has ever been killed or injured by terrorists on the MBTA; signal failure or human error killed the trolley operator, and these have been the cause of numerous previous mishaps on the system. These are inevitable and take actual work to minimize, but Grabauskas would rather have people think that the person in the next seat is the real safety risk.

German telecom scandal

Der Spiegel has reported that Deutsche Telekom may have engaged in extensive spying on journalists, shareholders, and even its own board members. According to the allegations, it hired an outside company to track thousands of telephone calls. Prosecutors have begun an investigation. Deutsche Telekom is a private company, but the German government owns a third of it.

The report states that "apparently not all fees were paid" to the company hired to do the spying -- stupidity on top of arrogance -- and the resulting dispute may be the only reason the affair became public.

But arrogance -- or better yet, chutzpah -- is also a good word to describe a response which has been floated:

The chairman of the Federation of German Police Officers, Klaus Jansen, said the government should respond by forcing phone firms to place all their connection records in a common database supervised by privacy protection experts.
 
The companies could access the database for billing purposes while the government could access it in a strictly controlled way in criminal investigations, Jansen told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper. "The Telekom affair is a huge opportunity for data protection and we should seize on it," said Jansen.

Proposing a national database of all connection records in order to "protect people's privacy" really is impressive. It's up there with Bush's demands for blanket immunity for spying American telecom companies, though much more German in style.

Swarms of officers

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." -- Declaration of Independence

Today there was a swarm of officers in Harvard Station around 5 PM, evidently to harass people with random searches. I took a look down the Church Street entrance as well; there was a cop sitting by the turnstiles. I walked to Porter. The theory of the search is, I guess, that terrorists would have walked into the waiting hands of the cops.

Elsewhere, there are reports on NH Underground and Northeast Shooters that the Border Patrol set up checkpoints in the heart of New Hampshire's White Mountains tourist country during the past weekend, almost a hundred miles from the Canadian border.

I was in Connecticut at the time, and the highways were full of electronic signs threatening "Click it or ticket."

In all of these cases, the goal is to wear Americans down and get us to accept groundless police demands as a part of our daily lives.

LP selects Barr

The Libertarian Party has become even more pointless than before, nominating Bob Barr as its presidential candidate.