Les applications transforment les gens en mouchards, disent les experts

It’s easier than ever to use your phone to report other people’s lawbreaking and, in some cases, even make money from the process.

• Catching speeders
• Cash for catching polluters
• Kickstarter for cops

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• Catching speeders
• Cash for catching polluters
• Kickstarter for cops

A new smartphone app will allow members of the public to submit evidence of speeding drivers to police forces. New York City also lets you upload videos of idling trucks. But experts say that the growing number of such apps raises many ethical questions.

“Authorities have often also offered rewards for information regarding serious crimes and bad guys,” Mark Weinstein, a privacy expert, told Digital Trends in an interview. “But training our fellow citizens to spy on each other and report infractions as a common practice and means of generating income essentially turns our privacy-by-constitution democratic society into a tattletale authoritarian culture where respect and trust of each other are replaced with privacy=-infringing tattlers.”

Catching speeders

The app meant for use in the U.K., called Speedcam Anywhere, can also be used on tablets and is currently being tested by volunteers from the nonprofit, which works for lower speed limits.

In the U.K., uploading videos from in-car dash cams and cyclist headcams has been used for some years to report road crimes, and police have set up web portals to upload such videos.

Now Speedcam Anywhere allows the uploading of videos that report the speed of vehicles taken by a pedestrian using a smartph1. It is not the smartphone itself that measures the pace, but an AI analysis of the video and identification of video frames with timestamps.

Rod King, the founder of 20’s Plenty for Us, told Digital Trends in an interview that the use of the speeding app is similar to a member of the public witnessing someone trying to break into a house by smashing a window.

“I wonder what you would suggest a ‘good citizen’ would do,” he contended. “Walk on by and not get involved, apprehend the person involved, or report it to the police. I think most agree that a good and careful citizen would call the police.”

Tom McNamara, the head of Apex Privacy, a global privacy compliance firm, said in an interview that he disagreed with the app’s approach.

“Humans are private beings and need space,” he added. “A feeling of constant observation makes people act differently. Between smartphones tracking online behavior and a feeling of constantly being watched, it may have an impact on how people live their lives, and the outcome does not tend to be law-abiding citizens, more like suspicious and paranoid.”

Cash for catching polluters

New York City residents can make big bucks by reporting trucks idling illegally while making deliveries. The online citizen reporting program the NYC Department of Environmental Protection launched in 2019 is called the Citizens Air Complaint Program. The program allows ordinary New Yorkers to receive a monetary reward for their “enforcement efforts.”

Emissions from idling gasoline and diesel motor vehicle engines can cause health problems, including asthma, respiratory issues, and cardiovascular harm, according to the agency’s website.

Citizens can reap the rewards by shooting a video showing a commercial vehicle idling for more than three minutes. They then log on to the city’s Idling Complaint System to file and track their complaint.

The fine for a first-time offender is $350, and more for repeat offenders. A 25-percent cut of the penalty is paid to the person who shot the video and filed the complaint.

Weinstein said he doesn’t question the regulation behind the program as “it seems reasonable and has good health benefits for the citizenry.”

But, Weinstein said, “if enforcement is so profitable as is in the case of the idling trucks for the citizen crime-busters, then to maintain the common goodwill and public trust of each other, the authorities ought to hire new employees to enforce the règlements."

Kickstarter for cops

The new apps that allow the public to report violations are part of a massive data revolution, Evyatar Ben Artzi, the CEO of Darrow, a software company that scours the web for evidence of legal violations, told Digital Trends in an interview. He said that legal professionals, whether private law firms or state-run enforcement agencies, are starting to understand the need to harness data applications.

“Every day, countless violations take place, from cancer-causing air pollution to data breaches endangering sensitive information to defective medications causing irreversible damage — it's near impossible to find them in the sea of data, let alone build a case around them,” Artzi mentionné.

Les érudits juridiques appellent cette tendance des données de violation de crowdsourcing, qui est parfois utilisée pour suivre les violations des droits de l'homme. "Il augmente la possibilité de se faire prendre de commettre une violation et dissuade donc les mauvais acteurs de faire de mal", a déclaré Artzi. "Cela peut entraîner une justice dans des affaires qui seraient autrement négligées."

Artzi soutient que, tandis que les violations de crowdsourcing peuvent aider à garder les grandes entreprises à vérifier et à défendre les droits de l'homme dans les différends civils, il a des inconvénients substantiels lorsqu'ils sont utilisés pour provoquer des questions pénales, dans lesquelles l'État est le procureur et les individus sont généralement les défendeurs.

"Il y a un énorme déséquilibre entre l'État et un défendeur individuel dans une affaire pénale", a déclaré Artzi. "L'encouragement de la surveillance par des concitoyens dans la vie quotidienne donne à l'État encore plus de pouvoir sur les particuliers et augmente une disparité de pouvoir déjà énorme dans la procédure pénale."

Les applications juridiques de crowdsourcing peuvent créer une "culture de snappe", où les gens cessent de penser comme des individus et commencent à se regarder comme le long bras de l'État, a déclaré Artzi.

«Cela a un effet de refroidissement sur la façon dont nous nous comportons. Le sentiment d'être regardé change de personnes et restreindre la liberté ", a ajouté Artzi." Et n'oublions pas l'idéal américain de fair-play: utiliser le public à la foule Les violations criminelles peuvent très bien permettre à l'État de contourner certaines des restrictions de procédure que le droit pénal s'est développé au cours des 200 dernières années. "