Dutch IT Contractor Suggests Letting Police Have Direct Real-Time Access To All Of Your Devices… For Your Safety

from the Big-Brother-is-my-co-pilot dept

The premise seems like something right out a Phillip K. Dick novel (or a Doctorow) but the actual deployment is cheerily animated, as if it were selling something as innocuous as breakfast cereal or vehicle insurance. Dutch IT company PinkRoccade envisions a future where all of your everything can be accessed by local law enforcement… for safety!

Here’s the not-actually-a-promo (more on that in a moment) video, helpfully subtitled by the nameless Techdirt reader who submitted the story.

The proposal is simple: all portable and wearable electronics can be given completely accessed (opt-in, apparently) by local law enforcement. The cheery figure who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (an “unsafe area”) is rescued from a certain mugging by local officers, and all he had to give up was biometric data and access to all of his devices.

Heart rate data and perspiration sensors send a distress signal. The local police note that the “distress signal” emanates from an area with a higher-than-normal crime rate. The police access the citizen’s glasses (of the Google variety, presumably) and see what he sees: two approaching figures possibly harboring malicious intent. Police scan GPS signals to see if phones in the area belong to known criminals. The nearest cop car is scrambled to the scene and the citizen who is the police’s eyes, ears and sweat glands Makes It Home Alive.

The reaction in the Netherlands has been fierce. Here’s the headline of one response, automatically translated:

Holy fuck video: PinkRoccade fucks the privacy.

Even in the untranslated version, one can pick up various iterations of WTF scattered through the native Dutch. The author of this post points out how this supposed public safety tool could be abused, or just applied badly with horrific results.

“The GPS in your smart glasses indicates that you are next to an elementary school and the implanted chip in your testicle gives a slight state of excitement… [t]he vice squad is now underway.”

Another Dutch news outlet decided to ask PinkRoccade whether this video was actually, you know, REAL, rather than the misguided attempt at satire it really should be? The answer it received only makes it worse.

Roughly translated, PinkRoccade said that even though the video had been posted to YouTube by the company, it was meant for company personnel and law enforcement only. The general gist of the response is that the public is too stupid to understand this tech proposal and is only mocking it because it’s viewing the video without the proper expertise or context.

The company says that all data sharing is purely voluntary, but doesn’t address what happens when someone rescinds their permission. How can anyone be assured that the Big Brother they invited into their wearables will actually pack up and leave when asked to? Beyond that, there’s the thousands of implications of allowing law enforcement to surveill and respond as it sees fit based on unreliable input like heart rates and perspiration.

It doesn’t surprise me that an IT contractor would promo such a product and sadly even less surprising that it would generate interested responses from law enforcement agencies, who have often approached safety (both officer and public) as an area where no rules should apply. But neither of these entities should ever consider following through, even with consent. The potential for abuse and a long list of unintended consequences should warn anyone away. But PinkRoccade deserves most of the blame: for dreaming up this genocidal attack on privacy and for brushing off criticism by telling the public it’s simply not smart enough to understand what it’s proposing.

Filed Under: devices, information, law enforcement, privacy, real time access, surveillance
Companies: pinkroccade