The final destination: Incorporating ‘Death by GPS’ into forensic and legal sciences

This article seeks to give visibility to a growing program: Motorists who set out for travel following directions from their GPS device and never return. These occurrences have gained the moniker ‘Death by GPS’. From giving incorrect directions, to taking motorists to isolated areas, to directing motorists into unsafe neighborhoods, GPS technology has led several people into catastrophic scenarios. This article is split into two sections. In the first section, the varying causes of Death by GPS are examined, alongside notable cases. In the second section, as Death by GPS is understudied in forensic science and legal spaces, the author explores the societal and scientific benefits of filling this gap. Relying on relevant collision figures, cultural trends, death science, legal studies, and ethics literature, this article produces groundwork on the growing issue of Death by GPS and identifies areas for future exploration.     

Forensic analysis of newer TomTom devices

Today many investigations involve TomTom devices due to the wide-spread use of these navigation systems. The process of acquiring a memory dump from the first generation of TomTom devices was relatively easy by utilising the USB-connection and standard forensic tools. Newer devices, however, do not provide this or any other readily available data connection, making the task much more complex. In addition to existing and relatively complex chip-extraction procedures, an easier data acquisition method was developed without the need to de-solder flash memory chips. The presence of new files and the differences in data formats found in these devices meant that new methods of data analysis and decoding also needed to be developed.     

The collateral consequences of GPS-LED supervision in hot spots policing

Hot spots policing is popular, yet little is known about officer receptivity to the tactic and its impact on internal procedural justice, organizational commitment, and self-legitimacy. The nature of the tactic means that officers must relinquish their discretionary powers so that they can be directed to crime and disorder locations at specific times and for regimented durations. This loss of ‘spatiotemporal autonomy’ is exacerbated by technological tracking devices. We examined the receptivity of British officers to hot spots patrols, where the deployment was tracked with individual GPS trackers, compared to parallel patrols without hot spots policing or tracking. In contrast to the comparison group, officers in hot spots disliked the routinization of their shifts; regimented patrols were detrimental for internal procedural justice and organizational commitment. The ramifications of the introduction of GPS-enabled systems include certain tracking of officers and their compliance, such as a Taylorist time and motion study. While hot spots policing remains an effective tactic, questions about sustainability may be raised if officers’ expectations, attitudes and receptivity are not managed.     

A novel file carving algorithm for National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) logs in GPS forensics

Globe positioning system (GPS) devices are an increasing importance source of evidence, as more of our devices have built-in GPS capabilities. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to efficiently recover National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) logs and reconstruct GPS trajectories. Unlike existing approaches that require file system metadata, our proposed algorithm is designed based on the file carving technique without relying on system metadata. By understanding the characteristics and intrinsic structure of trajectory data in NMEA logs, we demonstrate how to pinpoint all data blocks belonging to the NMEA logs from the acquired forensic image of GPS device. Then, a discriminator is presented to determine whether two data blocks can be merged. And based on the discriminator, we design a reassembly algorithm to re-order and merge the obtained data blocks into new logs. In this context, deleted trajectories can be reconstructed by analyzing the recovered logs. Empirical experiments demonstrate that our proposed algorithm performs well when the system metadata is available/unavailable, log files are heavily fragmented, one or more parts of the log files are overwritten, and for different file systems of variable cluster sizes.     

GPS tracking and the right of privacy

Government authorities and law enforcement agencies start using the satellite-based GPS tracking technology more often for various purposes. Due to its unique technical features, GPS tracking poses a much greater threat to the right of privacy compared with traditional electronic tracking techniques, such as the Beeper. Comparisons are extensively analyzed and a number of the US cases are quoted for illustrations. In the end, several key principles are proposed to facilitate the supervision of investigation behaviors in China.     

论公安移动台的定位

公安部门移动台的定位是一种重要的技术 ,能够实现定位的方式有多种。在实施各种定位工作的同时 ,必须对各种定位方式的特点、可行性进行较为深入的客观分析 ,为我国公安部门采用定位方式的决策提供依据。     

重点车辆安全监管模式比较研究

重点车辆主要包括运营客货车辆、危险化学物品运输车辆、校车等,对重点车辆进行监管的方式好坏,直接影响着交通的安全。目前,重点车辆的监管模式主要有基于汽车行驶记录仪、基于GPS/GPRS、基于RFID三种模式,但这三种模式又各有利弊,因此,必须将这三种监管模式扬长避短,以寻求一种更科学合理、安全高效的监管模式。     

Location and tracking of mobile devices: Überveillance stalks the streets

During the last decade, location-tracking and monitoring applications have proliferated, in mobile cellular and wireless data networks, and through self-reporting by applications running in smartphones that are equipped with onboard global positioning system (GPS) chipsets. It is now possible to locate a smartphone user's location not merely to a cell, but to a small area within it. Innovators have been quick to capitalise on these location-based technologies for commercial purposes, and have gained access to a great deal of sensitive personal data in the process. In addition, law enforcement utilises these technologies, can do so inexpensively and hence can track many more people. Moreover, these agencies seek the power to conduct tracking covertly, and without a judicial warrant. This article investigates the dimensions of the problem of people-tracking through the devices that they carry. Location surveillance has very serious negative implications for individuals, yet there are very limited safeguards. It is incumbent on legislatures to address these problems, through both domestic laws and multilateral processes.     

GPS的特点及其在公安业务中的应用

GPS ,即全球定位系统 ,具有定位精度高、功能多、应用广、操作简便等特点 ,能够全天候工作 ,测站间无线通视 ,可提供三维坐标。在公安业务中被广泛应用。