Samsung is Spying on You

 

Does your Samsung TV listen to you? That is the question that was posed on Monday, February 16, by David Lodge in a Pen Test Partners blog. This is a UK-based security company. Sure, the smart TVs have a voice command facility enabled by saying something or the default "Hi TV." What interested Lodge was "a bit of a privacy concern - can Samsung listen in on you whilst you're sat on the sofa watching TV? The easiest way is to intercept some traffic from a TV and see what it's trying to do." Lodge went ahead to do his research. To intercept the traffic he used a TP-Link switch which was able to mirror traffic from one port to another, allowing him to transparently intercept the traffic. From there he could record its handshake as it joined the network and attempted to make a few voice requests in different ways. Lodge said that "This was all recorded in Wireshark and saved as a PCAP for later analysis." (Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that lets you see what's happening on your network. It lets you capture and interactively browse traffic running on a computer network. It runs on most platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and Unix. Network professionals, security experts and developers use this regularly.)

What did Lodge find and conclude? Does the TV listen to you? The answer, he said, is "not unless you ask it to." At the moment, he said, it only listens to audio when you say "Hi TV". Does it send your audio to a third party? Lodge said sometimes. "When you say "Hi TV" it will listen for some simple things, such as volume up and volume down, that it does on TV, anything more complex, such as a web search it will pass to a third party." The Register explained how such spoken web search requests are piped to a company to analyze and turn into query results sent back to the TVs. "A specific server receives data from the televisions in plaintext, and replies with unencrypted responses," said John Leyden.

Looking at the contents of a stream, Lodge did not see SSL encrypted data. "It's not even HTTP data," he wrote, but instead "a mix of XML and some custom binary data packet."

Leo Kelion, technology desk editor, BBC News, reported that Samsung acknowledged some smart TV models were uploading owners' voices to the Internet in unencrypted form. Samsung told the BBC it planned to release new code that would encrypt voice commands for the user's protection. "Our latest Smart TV models are equipped with data encryption and a software update will soon be available for download on other models." The Register similarly reported on a Samsung response. "Since the publication of this story, Samsung has been in touch to say: "Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously and our products are designed with privacy in mind. Our latest Smart TV models are equipped with data encryption and a software update will soon be available for download on other models."

Earlier, on February 10, Samsung had issued this statement: "You can control your Smart TV, and use many of its features, with voice commands. If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Samsung will collect your interactive voice commands only when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV by clicking the activation button either on the remote control or on your screen and speaking into the microphone on the remote control. If you do not enable Voice Recognition, you will not be able to use interactive voice recognition features, although you may be able to control your TV using certain predefined voice commands. You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the 'settings' menu. However, this may prevent you from using some of the Voice Recognition features."

 

Uber's Carpooling Service UberPool Expands To Los Angeles

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Ride-hailing app Uber plans to launch its carpooling service in Los Angeles, one of the most congested cities in the world.

UberPool will allow riders on similar routes to share travel and split the fare with strangers. It will match two users per ride but allow each to have one person accompany them — for a total of four passengers.

The service is slated to begin on Thursday, and Uber says it could reduce rates for users by about 50 percent.

Los Angeles is the fourth most congested metro area in the world, according to Inrix, a Kirkland, Wash.-based traffic research firm, with drivers wasting 66 hours in congestion over the past 12 months.

UberPool is already offered in New York, San Francisco and Paris.

Smartphone Theft Plummets In Major Cities

Smartphone Theft Plummets In Major Cities Thanks To 'Kill Switches

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Thefts involving smartphones have declined dramatically in three major cities since manufacturers began implementing "kill switches" that allow the phones to be turned off remotely if they are stolen, authorities said on Tuesday.

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

"We have made real progress in tackling the smartphone theft epidemic that was affecting many major cities just two years ago," said London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were among numerous officials arguing for new laws mandating the kill switches.

In California, where a law mandating kill switches has yet to go into effect, smartphone theft is dropping because some manufacturers have already started installing the software-based switches on the devices they sell, Gascon said.

“The wireless industry continues to roll out sophisticated new features, but preventing their own customers from being the target of a violent crime is the coolest technology they can bring to market,” Gascon said.

California's law, one of the nation's strongest, received wide support from California prosecutors and law enforcement agencies that hoped it could help reduce smartphone thefts.

According to the National Consumers League, handheld devices were stolen from 1.6 million Americans in 2012. In California, smartphone theft accounts for more than half of all crimes in San Francisco, Oakland and other cities.

Other states experiencing a rash of smartphone thefts have considered similar measures, and Minnesota passed a theft-prevention law last year.

So far, Apple, Samsung and Google have implemented kill switches on their smartphones, and Microsoft is expected to release an operating system for its Windows phones that has one this year, the three officials said in their news release.

But some of the smartphone systems require consumers to opt in, meaning not all will be protected when their phones are operating in the default mode.

Gascon, Johnson and Schneiderman called on all manufacturers to make the technology active as a default position, as Apple has done with its iPhones

New Facebook features help sell stuff

New Facebook features help sell stuff

 

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has created a new way for people to sell stuff to friends on the giant social network.
In the coming months, Facebook is rolling out new features to Facebook Groups that let users list a price and description for products they are selling and arrange for pickup or delivery.
Sellers can also mark posts as "available" or "sold" and view a list of items they have sold.
The move is unlikely to pose much of a competitive threat to Craigslist. It's also not the first time Facebook has taken aim at the classifieds market.
Facebook launched a marketplace in 2007 but its classified postings never took off. It transferred control of Marketplace to partner Oodle in 2009.

World's largest solar plant opens in California

World's largest solar plant opens in California desert

The 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight Solar Farm on Bureau of Land Management land in the Sonoran Desert near Desert Center on Monday.(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

 

Conservative lawmakers have derided the loan guarantee program, arguing that it's wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Critics have pointed to the program's $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

But the Department of Energy reported last year that it expects to make a profit of $5 billion to $6 billion from the program. The department funded five traditional, large-scale solar farms, and Desert Sunlight marks the last of those projects to go online.
"They're all rock-solid, money is good, living up to every kind of condition we put in the loan documents in terms of performance, in terms of commercial operation," Peter Davidson, executive director of the Department of Energy's loan programs office, said in an interview last week.

The loan guarantee program did more than fund five solar photovoltaic projects, Davidson added: It helped launch the large-scale solar industry. In 2009, there were no traditional solar farms in the United States larger than 100 megawatts. Now, 17 such projects have been financed, according to a Department of Energy report released Monday.
Solar panels "existed before as a technology, but that technology hadn't been deployed at a large scale," Davidson said. "Once we've done that, the government steps aside to let the private markets take over."

Desert Sunlight employed an average of 440 people during more than three years of construction, and it now has about 15 full-time employees. Money provided by the project's owners — as part of an agreement negotiated with Riverside County — is also being used to fund $400,000 in improvements to the community center in nearby Desert Center.

"The debate's over — we're going to be moving to more renewable energy," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said.
Power from the plant will go to Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Desert Sunlight is the world's largest solar power plant, although only by a hair.
The Topaz solar project in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. — which, like Desert Sunlight, was built by Arizona-based First Solar — also has a capacity of 550 megawatts. But the desert has more abundant sunlight than San Luis Obispo County, so Desert Sunlight will actually generate more electricity than Topaz, said Georges Antoun, First Solar's chief operating officer.
"It's a beautiful sun here, year-round," he said.

California as a whole has installed more renewable energy than any other state, noted David Hochschild, a member of the California Energy Commission.
"There were a lot of skeptics who actually didn't believe that renewables could scale, that this cost reduction could happen, that we could introduce it to the grid," Hochschild said. "They've been proven wrong."

 

Americans OK with police drones

Americans OK with police drones - private ownership, not so much: Poll

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New rules on privately owned drones can't come fast enough for most Americans.

Some 73 percent of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Thursday said they want regulations for the lightweight, remote-control planes that reportedly have been involved in an increasing number of close calls with aircraft and crowds. People are also uneasy about potential invasions of privacy by drones carrying cameras or other devices.

Forty-two percent went as far as to oppose private ownership of drones, suggesting they prefer restricting them to officials or experts trained in safe operation.

Another 30 percent said private drone ownership was fine, and 28 percent were not sure, according to the survey of more than 2,000 respondents, conducted Jan. 21-27.

Many respondents were surveyed before a small quad copter breeched the White House security perimeter and crash-landed on the grounds on Jan. 26.

The poll results show widespread unease about the devices, many of which can fly as high as 6,000 feet carrying video cameras or other payloads.

"In regular peoples' hands, it's easy for them to get misused," said poll respondent Sandy Gifford, a 58-year-old daycare worker in Portland, Oregon. She equated drone dangers with those posed by guns and drugs.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is months late in developing small drone regulations. A draft FAA rule, under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, is expected to be published soon, kicking off a year or two of comment and revisions before it takes effect.

The FAA rule will cover commercial drone uses, such as photography, surveying and crop inspection, which are now mostly banned. It will not apply to hobbyists operating model aircraft under a safety code of a community-based organization. Congress granted these users an exemption from rules in 2012.

It was unclear how the rule will deal with people who buy drones online or at a big box store, rather than joining the sport through a club or hobby shop.

These non-traditional users, "don't have the same safety mindset that a modeler does," said Rich Hanson, government affairs director at the Academy of Model Aeronautics, world's largest community-based model aircraft group, with nearly 80 years of safe flying.

The AMA safety code says devices should stay below 400 feet near airports, not be flown carelessly or recklessly, and avoid all other aircraft, among other things.

Drones also have sparked fears of snooping by neighbors or law enforcement. The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed strong attitudes on both questions. Seventy-one percent said drones should not be allowed to operate over someone else's property, and 64 percent said they would not want their neighbor to have a drone.

But respondents widely supported drone use in law enforcement. Sixty-eight percent of respondents support police flying drones to solve crimes, and 62 percent support using them to deter crime.

"Where there's suspicious activity, it would help the police," said Phillip Gimino, 75, a retired engineer in Edmond, Oklahoma, who flew gas-powered radio-controlled aircraft as a kid. "But it should be limited." 

Gimino, a former gun dealer, opposes gun control laws, but said drones should be off limits to private owners until rules are in place.

The survey showed a split on other uses: 46 percent don't want news organizations using drones to gather news, while 41 percent support that use. And 49 percent think parents should be able to use drones to monitor their children, while 38 percent oppose that use.

The survey of 2,405 American adults has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.3 percentage point

 

Ötzi the 5,300-Year-Old Iceman has 61 Tattoos

 

 

Photo credit: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Eurac/Samadelli/Staschitz

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Researchers have mapped all 61 tattoos of Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old glacier mummy discovered by hikers in the Ötztal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border in 1991.
Previous studies have already detected fifty or so tattoos, but because they’re difficult to spot—since his skin has darkened over time—researchers haven’t agreed on the final count. Now, an Italian team led by Marco Samadelli of EURAC Research has turned to a non-invasive imaging technique, borrowed from the art world, that can capture light at different wavelengths, ranging from infrared to the ultraviolet. Their technique revealed never-before-seen tattoos.
The 45-year-old male’s 61 tattoos, some of the world’s most ancient examples, take on the form of crosses (or plus signs) and groupings of parallel lines that look like tallies of two to four. They’re all black, and some were as long as four centimeters. Unlike modern tattooing methods that use needles, these were made by rubbing charcoal into fine incisions.
The tattoos were divided into 19 groups across his body, including groups of lines to the left and right of the spinal column, the left calf, the right instep, on the inner and outer ankle joint, and on the chest at the height of the lowermost right rib. (This last one is the newest one discovered.) Two lines lie across his left wrist, and a cross appears on the back of his right knee and next to the left Achilles tendon.
Furthermore, many of his tattoos are located on parts (such as the lower back and joints) that may have caused him pain due to degeneration or disease—suggesting how the tattoos may have been therapeutic, and not symbolic.
“Many people think that it was a kind of treatment because most of the tattoos are very close to areas where he probably suffered from pain," study co-author Albert Zink of EURAC Research tells Live Science. And many of these inked spots even seem to correspond to skin acupuncture lines, the consequence of a form of healing that originated in Asia thousands of years after Ötzi’s time.
A few years ago, researchers sequenced Ötzi’s genome and found that he had O-type blood and was lactose intolerant. Then, last summer, a team analyzing the non-human sequences on the remains found evidence of an oral pathogen involved in gum disease. Additionally, his arteries were hardened, he had healed rib fractures, a cyst-like growth on his toe, and based on his fingernails, his immune system had been subjected to multiple attacks of severe stress. He’s believed to have died from an arrowhead wound in his left shoulder.
Ötzi is housed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy. The findings were published in Journal of Cultural Heritage last week.

White House Requests $30 Million For Europa Mission

 

 

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden held a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday to discuss the details of President Barack Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2016, which begins on October 1st. Obama is requesting $18.5 billion for NASA, up from $18 billion for FY 2015. The budget includes $30 million to develop a mission to Europa; one of Jupiter’s largest moons and one the best prospects for life in the solar system outside of Earth. The budget assumes the mission would launch in the early to mid-2020s.
“Looking to the future, we’re planning a mission to explore Jupiter’s fascinating moon Europa, selecting instruments this spring and moving toward the next phase of our work,” Administrator Bolden said at the conference.
Europa is the sixth largest moon in the solar system, with a mean radius roughly 90% of Earth’s moon. There are tectonic plates on the moon, just like on Earth. It is believed to have a vast ocean beneath its icy surface, which could contain the chemical compounds essential for life. Europa was once thought to have geysers shooting out from the ice, which would make it much easier to analyze the water, though they haven’t been located in months.
The Europa Clipper is an orbital spacecraft first conceptualized over 15 years ago. The proposed mission would image the moon’s surface, take measurements to help determine its atmospheric composition and potential habitability, and possibly even reveal what happened to those geysers. This information would be invaluable for planning future missions to the moon, especially a potential lander.
Though Obama has requested $30 million for the Europa mission, there’s no telling what the figure will look like after the budget has been approved by Congress. For FY 2015, the White House requested $15 million for a Europa mission, but Congress ultimately approved $100 million. However, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness is now chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has a history of voting to reduce funding to the agency and even threw the hissy fit that caused a government shutdown in 2013. This ultimately furloughed 97% of NASA’s employees and compromised decades of data.

Space

White House Requests $30 Million For Europa Mission

February 3, 2015 | by Lisa Winter

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden held a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday to discuss the details of President Barack Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2016, which begins on October 1st. Obama is requesting $18.5 billion for NASA, up from $18 billion for FY 2015. The budget includes $30 million to develop a mission to Europa; one of Jupiter’s largest moons and one the best prospects for life in the solar system outside of Earth. The budget assumes the mission would launch in the early to mid-2020s.
“Looking to the future, we’re planning a mission to explore Jupiter’s fascinating moon Europa, selecting instruments this spring and moving toward the next phase of our work,” Administrator Bolden said at the conference.
Europa is the sixth largest moon in the solar system, with a mean radius roughly 90% of Earth’s moon. There are tectonic plates on the moon, just like on Earth. It is believed to have a vast ocean beneath its icy surface, which could contain the chemical compounds essential for life. Europa was once thought to have geysers shooting out from the ice, which would make it much easier to analyze the water, though they haven’t been located in months.
The Europa Clipper is an orbital spacecraft first conceptualized over 15 years ago. The proposed mission would image the moon’s surface, take measurements to help determine its atmospheric composition and potential habitability, and possibly even reveal what happened to those geysers. This information would be invaluable for planning future missions to the moon, especially a potential lander.
Though Obama has requested $30 million for the Europa mission, there’s no telling what the figure will look like after the budget has been approved by Congress. For FY 2015, the White House requested $15 million for a Europa mission, but Congress ultimately approved $100 million. However, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness is now chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has a history of voting to reduce funding to the agency and even threw the hissy fit that caused a government shutdown in 2013. This ultimately furloughed 97% of NASA’s employees and compromised decades of data.

White House Requests $30 Million For Europa Mission - See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/#sthash.eDHJCvOQ.dpuf

White House Requests $30 Million For Europa Mission - See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/#sthash.eDHJCvOQ.dpuf

White House Requests $30 Million For Europa Mission - See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/#sthash.eDHJCvOQ.dpuf

Ancient Solar System Sparks New Search For Alien Life

Super-Ancient Solar System Sparks New Thinking About Search For Alien Life

 

Since it was launched in 2009, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope has identified more than 1,000 exoplanets and almost 4,200 exoplanet "candidates." It's even found entire solar systems--but never one like the system it just identified some 117 light-years from Earth.
The newfound solar system consists of five rocky,  Earth-sized planets circling a star called Kepler-444, which--at 11.2 billion years of age--is more than twice as old as the Sun.
Astronomers say the Kepler-444 system may help scientists pinpoint when Earth-like planets first started forming, and may have important implications for the possibility of alien life.
"There are far-reaching implications for this discovery," Dr. Tiago Campante, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham and one of the astronomers who helped discover the new system, said in a written statement. "We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8-billion-year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy."

Campante and his colleagues detected the ancient star system system by looking at data collected by Kepler over a four-year period. They used a technique called asteroseismology, in which small changes in a star's brightness indicate its mass, age, and diameter. They detected the five planets using what's called transit photometry, which involves observing a star dim slightly when planets cross its face (see an animation here).
The five planets are in tight orbits around Kepler-444, which means they're too close to fall within the so-called "Goldilocks zone," the region of space around a star that is warm enough but not too warm for a planet to have liquid water and, possibly, life.
Though Kepler-444 can't support life, Campante says it's possible there are other ancient solar systems out there that might.
"Other similarly old planets could indeed harbor life," he said in an email to The Huffington Post. "Think about a technologically advanced civilization that has a few billion years head start relative to us!"
Other scientists, who were not involved in the new research, have their doubts.
"It is not clear that planets much older than the Earth have a higher expectation of having life than the more recently formed planets," William Borucki, a space scientist at the NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif told HuffPost in an email. "The discovery of Kepler-444 is important, but whether it implies advanced life or no life will remain a mystery until our technology advances to the point that we can get a definitive answer."
Regardless of whether the discovery makes alien life more or less likely, Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, Calif., hopes the discovery will help E.T. hunters home in on where to look.
"The implication of this is that worlds of all ages are out there, and the average planet is going to be billions of years older than our own," he told HuffPost in an email. "Complex, thinking beings required 4 billion years of evolution on Earth. If clever creatures always take a long time to appear, then older planets might be preferred hunting grounds for signals that could tell us someone’s out there.”
A paper describing the discovery has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

U.S. Justice Department spies on millions of cars 

 

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The newspaper said the main aim of the license plate tracking program run by the Drug Enforcement Administration was to seize automobiles, money and other assets to fight drug trafficking, according to one government document.

But the use of the database had expanded to include hunting for vehicles linked to other possible crimes, including kidnapping, killings and rape suspects, the paper said, citing current and former officials and government documents.

While U.S. officials have said they track vehicles near the Mexican border to combat drug cartels, it had not been previously revealed the DEA had been working to expand the database "throughout the United States," the Journal said, citing an email.

It said many state and local law enforcement agencies were using the database for a variety of investigations, the paper said.

It added it was unclear if any court oversaw or approved the program.

The Journal quoted Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as saying the use of license plate readers "raises significant privacy concerns."

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which oversees the DEA, told the paper the program complied with federal law. "It is not new that the DEA uses the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity," the spokesman was quoted as saying.

 

SpaceX and Google form joint partnership

SpaceX and Google form joint partnership to bring Internet access to the world

 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Google forge a partnership to bring Internet connectivity to the most remote places on Earth (and Mars) using satellites.
Elon Musk’s company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has raised a billion dollars in a financing round with two new investors, Google and Fidelity (who will now collectively own just less than 10 percent of the company). The deal, which SpaceX confirmed on its website, will bolster SpaceX’s emerging satellite business and could help Google expand Internet access across the globe.
The funding will be used to support continued innovation in the areas of space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing.
In its blog post, SpaceX wrote that the funding would “support continued innovation in the areas of space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing.” However, Google’s involvement has led many to believe that the funding will primarily back SpaceX’s new satellite venture, which its founder and CEO Elon Musk announced late last week.
Musk and Google aim to connect people on Earth and Mars to the Internet!
At the time, Musk gave some indication as to the epic scope of the project that lies ahead. He seeks to create a network of hundreds of satellites that could not only connect people on Earth to the web, but also people on Mars - if and when people reach the planet. The total cost of such an audacious project has been estimated at a whopping $10 billion.
“Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” Musk told Businessweek.
That, of course, is something Google - and indeed many tech giants such as Facebook - would very much like to be part of. Over the last few years, companies like Google and Facebook have turned their attention toward connecting the unconnected to the Internet. Both companies have looked to technologies such as drones, satellites, and balloons that could bring connectivity to people living in the most remote places. While benefitting rural peoples and emerging economies this would greatly expand the companies’ already enormous reach.
But recently, Google hit a major roadblock in its efforts to connect the world when Greg Wyler, who was leading its satellite efforts, left Google to launch his own venture, OneWeb. Wyler took with him expertise in the field, but also the rights to some spectrum Google would need for the project. According to sources, Wyler even tried partnering with SpaceX himself, but the deal went sour when he refused to give up a significant portion of OneWeb to Musk.
It stands to reason that Google would be on the lookout for another, well-funded partner to help realize its vision for an expanded Internet.
Of course, just because Google and SpaceX are have delivered on moonshot projects in the past doesn’t guarantee that this endeavor will be successful. Richard Branson - an investor in Wyler’s OneWeb - has publicly doubted whether Musk can pull this off.
“Greg [Wyler] has the rights, and there isn’t space for another network - like there physically is not enough space,” he told Businessweek. “If Elon wants to get into this area, the logical thing for him would be to tie up with us, and if I were a betting man, I would say the chances of us working together rather than separately would be much higher.”

 

 

US sheriffs expand concerns about Waze mobile traffic app

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only does a feature of a popular Google Inc. mobile app put police officers' lives in danger, it also interferes with law enforcement's ability to carry out its speeding ticket mission, a leading group of sheriffs said Wednesday.

The National Sheriffs' Association had previously focused its campaign against Waze on police safety after the fatal shootings of two New York police officers in December. It broadened its campaign with a new statement criticizing Google's software as hampering the use of speed traps. The trade association said radar guns and other speed enforcement techniques have reduced highways deaths.

"This app will hamper those activities by locating law enforcement officers and puts the public at risk," the group said.

In the Waze app, which operates like a free GPS navigation tool, users can tag the locations of parked police vehicles, accidents, congestion, traffic cameras, potholes and more, so that other drivers using Waze are warned as they approach the same location.

In a twist, the newly expressed concern about speeding is also Google's own defense of its software.

"Most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby," Waze spokeswoman Julie Mossler said.

Waze actually gained popularity in the last week since The Associated Press first disclosed law enforcement's concerns, climbing four positions to No. 8 on Apple's ranking of the top free mobile apps.

Waze users mark locations of police vehicles — which are generally stopped in public spaces — on maps without much distinction other than "visible" or "hidden." Users driving nearby see a police icon, but it's not immediately clear whether police are there for a speed trap, a sobriety check or a lunch break.

Police objections to Waze add new complexity to the debate about technology and privacy. Some Waze supporters lashed out at outspoken sheriffs on social media, pointing to the irony of police concerns about being watched amid sensational disclosures about police and government surveillance of citizens.