Google Street View may get a bad rap from some overzealous privacy watchdogs and conspiracy theorists, but it just helped police save a young girl who had been kidnapped over the weekend.
In the case, which involved a woman who allegedly kidnapped her granddaughter, Athol Police Officer Todd Neale managed to track down the missing girl by obtaining coordinates of her cell phone from the phone’s carrier. Neale contacted Deputy Fire Chief Thomas V. Lozier who worked with him in trying to figure out exactly where the missing girl was being held.
The two men found that the phone’s coordinates kept coming in within 300 feet of each other at an intersection in Virginia. Unfortunately they were located in Massachusetts, so they couldn’t just drive to the other side of town to take a look. So they turned to Google.
Using Google Street View, they virtually “looked around” the intersection, when they noticed a large building nearby where the pair might have been staying. They subsequently identified the building as a motel (again with Google), and then confirmed that the motel was nearby using Google’s satellite view. The pair notified the Virginia state police of their findings, who then found the 9-year old girl and her grandmother in the motel.
For the full story, check out this Telegram Article.
Nice story. Highlighting why I’ve never had a problem with “big brother.” That works both ways too in that it could cut down on false accusations as well.
I really don’t think police needed to use google on this case, but whatever it’s on TC now
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Well, the police was just being lazy. I wonder how the police did their before the advent of the almighty Google?
Maybe, they just called their fellow police officers over in that other state?
I know that may seem a bit far fetched, although by watching some of those old time movies I get the impression that there might be a grain of truth to this…
After all, it’s the same as with that ubiquitous CCTV:
The police are too lazy to walk around the streets or maybe to scared of entering certain neighbourhoods, so they get fat while munching crisps in front of their very own TV programme.
None of these cameras every prevented a crime. All you can hope for is identifying criminals afterwards, which doesn’t really help the victims at all.
This is why so-called security cameras at the end of the day only provide a treacherous kind of security.
“Well, the police was just being lazy.”
Thats harsh… It saved time and helped them get the job done. I’d call it using their intuition.
“In todays news, a man named Chris was the first to willingly try out the new RFID brain chip. This initiative will no doubt help with cutting down on thought crime in the near future.”
CCTV’s aren’t there because the Bobbies are lazy, the cameras are there to track you.
Thought crime is bad, just ask China’s Andy Rooney…
http://www.theo...videomrss_91874
Nice try with the Onion article. Unless you actually believed it yourself, which would then make you more useless than the lazy Bobbies.
all crime could virtually be eliminated with technology now. problem is it would put alot of city, county, state, federal employees out of work.
CriminalLocator.com – failure is a fortune.
Define crime first…actually, I take that back. Tell me who will be the one defining the word ‘crime’, then ask me if I’d like to vote on it, then prove that my vote actually counts, then we’ll talk about the rest.
According to your description, they basically used Google to do something they could have done otherwise, too. They would have found the intersection, the building and subsequently they would have found the girl. Beside the fact that this was the “usual” crime where a family member committed it. (That’s the case with most kidnappings, murders and stuff.)
Yeah, they probably could have just gone to the location and looked around on their own. But it’s still cool that they did it this way (and using Google may well have been more time-efficient).
Think about it, you get the coordinates, and then how much will it take you to know where the girl is using a) the stake out method, b) consulting paper plans that might be or not accurate or recent, then go to the place to stake it out, c) google maps’ street view ?
Now, i know nothing about law enforcement and such, but if it was not in their jurisdiction, it might have taken some more time (the other district or precinct or state would have had to check the info on their own) and when the case goes to trial there could have been technicalities with them Bobbies being out of their jurisdiction…
The fact is that when a child, any child, gets kidnapped, time is of the essence. I simply think this is easier and faster and meant that said Cops had more time to solve another crime.
P.S.: Adam is a troll and what’s this about CCTVs? This doesn’t use CCTVs. Besides, we are not important, “they” are not looking for us. If “they” where, “they” already know where we live, don’t “they”? If you don’t like CCTVs, newsflash, “they” do keep record of where you go on the Internet!
i totally agree!!
Dude, you could get your news from a newspaper and you could communicate with friends and family with Morse code otherwise, too.
thats presuming the newspapers tell the truth
and pre-1840 (pre-Morse code)? what then? we’d actually have to talk to each other face to face….dude, you’re so wierd! get out of here with your crazy ideas! lol
Kind of a misleading headline… they could’ve just as easily used a map (one of those things made outta paper).
Not really. They used street view to look at the buildings in the vicinity to see if there was a nearby building where the suspect and the girl could possibly be found.
yes, because before there was google, no one knew what buildings were located where…
I agree. It’s not the same. They used google maps in a manner that would be difficult to duplicate otherwise using the same time and acheiving the same accuracy.
The question is when the line comes, where will it be? There are already rumors of criminals locating specific cars in driveways etc. I wonder if the cops or criminals will make more use out of this type of “new” tech.
I guess the cool thing is they didn’t have to leave their house!
IS THIS A PAID ADD BY GOOGLE?
Next time let google know to make the story more appealing.
If you have the coordinates you go the to site and look around yourself.
Athol. Say it again. Athol. Best named town in MA. Second best is Blechertown which is right next to Athol. No joke.
Rob, you’re the athol(e). It’s Belchertown.
if we can utilize google street view correctly, it will help me a lot. just like the story.
Jason, I think the reason some people don’t understand your posting this story is that Athol is in Massachusetts (you don’t have the state listed). Where the officer was able to find the girl in Virginia and using google maps he was able to give the Virginia state pd a solid lead on where to start looking instead of just two cross streets. Saving time and resources.
It’s funny that Google is highlighted here while it’s thanks to the carrier and the cellphone that they got even a remote idea of where the girl was in the first place.
But that’s old news i guess…
Good point Ben, I’ll clarify the post.
Was this really worth a post, Jason? I’m sure you had something more interesting to write about…. Well at least you got me read and comment, so your job is done
Interesting story, but I think the only way Google Street View could have actually contributed to solving this crime is if one of their cameras had caught the little girl looking out of the window, and someone had identified her on Google Maps.
As described, (as others have pointed out) this is less about Google and more about policemen doing their job virtually rather than physically.
Did I miss something here? The person, the police, the telephone, google or even the motel is not the point! The point is that, because of technology, hiding is not going to be possible. But then being lost, or kidnapped or even having a loved one strikened with alzheimers will be less frightening and good people will be saved.
For me that was the point!
b
Sure but if you start writing about this, next thing you know, you will see posts about how an AirBag miraculously saved a woman’s life, or how thanks to a GPS we were able to find 3 missing people in the mountain. We all agree it’s great that tech can save people, but we don’t care much about these old news. That was the point of all the comments!
We only care about how tech helps us. No one would ever consider using it for other purposes.
I was hoping for a pic of someone being caught in the act. But I suppose this will have to do for now. Then again, if they had the coordinates, they could have just notified the VA police who could have “looked around” and would have seen the motel with their own eyes. Anyway…I’m glad the police were even open-minded enough to give this a try.
This is a nice story in that it showcases a good use of technology. From a privacy point of view, I think it is more complicated than the story. And unfortunately is not based on statistics. However, I would like to know, just out of curiosity, how many bad stories of privacy violations are there compare to good stories like this?
And there is the question of quantity vs quality-how many privacy violations does it take to outweigh the positive externalities?
It seems like the bad guys driven by unethical desire/monetary gain are usually more sophisticated and better funded than the police.
There is no doubt however that with the right utilization it can help society greatly. I too would like to see a negative aspect about this brought up every once in a while simply because you know they are out there.
I was hoping to see a picture of a burglar hopping out of a window… dang!
Seems that the cell phone’s GPS was a lot more useful than streetview.
I don’t want the polic to play with cool new toys. I actually would like to know they have their own toys to tinker with to do something like that.
Some law enforcement and and civil engineering firms had to resort to GIS software for translation from geo lat lon or decimal GPS to street addresses. So, Google’s ability to take lat lon and provide not only a map and address, but a street view is impressive in a free service.
A couple of Verizon sales guys (Yellow Pages) came into my orifice wearing cheap suits. I asked them what they thought of search ad and all its rich advantages over the book. They didnt know what I was taking about. I showed them that no matter what business you are looking for, you get better, richer listings by using search, rather than the book, and that younger generations would not even consider using a print directory. I threw all mine out.
almost like in Enemy of the State
I guess you have some hard time being in the Google payroll, right Jason? I wonder what the next story will be.
GPS is more useful
That story is not even funny.
In a few years, all of us will be using Google for everything. Be that software or critical hardware.
And most of the time just because it will be more “convenient”.
And you know that means: a big PRIVACY DATA MONOCULTURE
This is a great article. Mind you, isn’t there an unwarranted lawsuit on the books for this service right now?!
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Thanks for the article Jason. This is very timely since we are working on a project to combat insecurity in Central America leveraging citizen participation and technology, and a key component to our model comes thanks to the value of Google maps.
Nice story. However, it’s a little weird to hear that law enforcement officers are surfing the web to figure out what buildings are near the coordinates vs simply calling the local police dept in that jurisdiction.
wow this is awesome stuff … am actually thinking of using them as navigators for my limo hire trips around london.
We have cameras that can see in almost pitch black.
This is the best use of google maps I’ve seen so far…other than providing me with directions. Ha