Reply to post: Re: It's a hard problem

Re: It's a hard problem

I used to work at a company that handled vehicle tracking systems. We didn't have too much of a problem with it.

Official policy was that we need to be given a crime reference number, we then make an outbound call to the control room of the police jurisdiction that the vehicle is currently(!) located in.

Common sense indicated that there were exceptions, like when someone claiming to be a police officer wanted to know if a vehicle had a tracker in it. I took his name and shoulder number then called the police switchboard on their published number and asked to be transferred.

Of course he might have been a bent cop, but bugger all you can do about that in an unregulated industry. We had a couple of police forces that had a handful of undercover units with tracking from an external provider (us) so that the control room wouldn't know where they were, like they did with all normal police vehicles. Also a couple of mobile speed cameras. So the control room couldn't tell where it was located unless they called us with a crime reference number. I wonder what series of events lead to that policy...