The original note, as written at the time
A security system where users provide all their realtime location data to the local police service so that criminal activity can be tracked and prevented in time.
Ongoing development
A security system in which users provide all their real-time location data to the local police service, so that criminal activity can be tracked and prevented in time.
The case for it is real and should not be brushed aside. Most crime that is preventable is preventable by presence, and presence requires knowing where to be. A police service that can see a city in real time is a different institution from one that reads reports the next morning.
But the design is a trade of the highest order, and the honest version has to be much narrower than the note as written.
“Users provide their location” is not a consent model when the alternative is being the person who did not opt in. And a database of everyone’s movements, held by the police, is a surveillance apparatus whatever its stated purpose — one that has been abused in every country that has built it.
The version that could be defensible is narrow, temporary and symmetric. Location shared for a specific incident and a specific window, triggered by the user or by a reported emergency, expiring automatically, with the sharing visible to the person sharing. Not a permanent feed. An SOS with a location in it is already a better product than a tracking programme.
The symmetry is the part that makes it tolerable: officers on duty visible in the same system, so that the person sharing can see who is coming.
Anyone designing this should ask one question first: who audits it, and can they see their own file.
Protection that requires omniscience is not protection. It is a different arrangement with a friendly name.