I have another point of view to add: I don't want to see my local cops have all of their actions videotaped and reviewed for quite another reason--I don't want a "mechanization" of the enforcement process!
Its already here. Its a show called COPS. My brother (the black sheep) used to watch it quite a bit before he became one (a cop, not a sheep). More and more police cars here in Texas are becomming equiped with video cameras. Some of the stuff is just unreal, although I prefer the subtle comical tones of one who is under the influence of minde altering subtences.
Forcing the cops to surveill themselves will almost certainly take away what enforcement discretion they now have.
Actually, it usually gives them more credibility in court. I had the pleasure of going to court for a traffic violation to try to plead guilty so they would cut the fine in half at the local court house. What I saw amazed me. I saw person after person trying to defend themselves. They had a police officer referring to his notes, while the government's lawyer quickly won every case. He would ask some simple questions such as, what was the color of the car, etc. and the judge would just fine the defendant guilty. UNTIL, someone came in with his own lawyer. I asked him why he brought a lawyer and he had apparently received a few too many tickets (DUIs) and could loose his license. Anyway, this case started just as the others had. Poor guy, I thought, he's going to loose his license and have to pay this lawyer too. But then just as soon as the officer started to read from his note pad, his lawyer yelled, "OBJECTION! your honor... *please*". To which the judge replied, "your right, " pointed to the officer and told him to put away the notes. After that, he just jumped all over the officer. He went nuts when the officer said he smelled alcohol on his client and even brought in a chemist to testify on the properties of alcohol (which is oderless). To make a long story short, the guy was guilty, but it was thrown out because of the officer. I say this becuase I am tired of hearing about court cases who put the victims on trial rather than the criminals. I would like to see a criminal deny video tape. [ much omited..] Given an effective range of a few miles, your devices must be operating in the 220MHZ + range of freqs (??) and at relatively low power?
(A skier lost in the mountains, a child who has wandered away....all are cases where the needed bits per second is _much_ less than 1000 bps. Indeed, most of the localizers are either not sending info at all, or very sporadically.)
Actually, if you've ever gone on a fox hunt with some amateur radio buffs you would quickly find a problem with this. I'm sure on more than one occasion a fox-hunter has driven several miles only to find that the signal he is tracking is being reflected off of a building or lake. Although I do recall that there was talk of a cellular telephone company (in Chicago??) was working on a software modification to do essentially this. I don't know if they are doing it now, but I remember some of the details... the three closest repeaters would triangulate your possition down to the city block. The police were either very interested or very happy with this... I don't remember which... -- Joe N. Turner Telecheck International turner@telecheck.com 5251 Westheimer, PO BOX 4659, Houston, TX 77210-4659 compu$erv: 73301,1654 (800) 888-4922 * (713) 439-6597