Waze allowed the geolocation of police officers’ homes on its application

Users of the Waze GPS application have managed to hijack a function intended to reveal the location of radars or police presence on the road to geolocate the home addresses of French police officers.

In the United States, this practice is not new, it is called ” copwatching “. It consists of citizen surveillance of the police, which sometimes turns into tracking them. At the end of March 2024, the phenomenon was discovered in France by one of the targets of this tracking by GPS, with the Google application, Waze.

Indeed, a police officer and his wife, who were returning home, saw the radar geolocation emoticon displayed on their Waze, at the precise location of their home. This chilling episode reinforces the feeling of insecurity among law enforcement officials, who already suffer from mistrust from certain citizens.

Community, the secret of Waze’s success

Although Waze fell into the hands of Google in 2013, it nonetheless remains independent thanks to its management by its users. This community atmosphere has many advantages, such as displaying the presence of an emergency vehicle on the road or the reporting by users themselves of dangerous elements, such as speed bumps or slightly curved roads. tight.

In short, this GPS application designed for and by its users makes Waze the on-board guidance tool most used by the French. This did not escape the police, also regularly reported by users of the app. Thus, some police officers use it to prepare their interventions and carry out live prevention, or even with a dose of humor, by reporting their presence themselves with a mobile radar at the side of the roads.

A Waze community that is not always benevolent

Unfortunately, as revealed by our colleagues atEurope 1 this Wednesday 1^er May 2024, bad apples cast a veil of insecurity on Waze. Indeed, some users, who have not yet been identified, have hijacked the function of displaying the presence of police officers on the roads to geolocate the addresses of the private homes of certain members of the police. . “ […] A gendarme and a neighboring CRS had the misfortune of discovering a police logo in front of their respective homes ”, according to internal sources.

At the microphone ofEurope 1, a police officer member of the Unité police union highlighted the already present fear of civil servants, given their function, most of whom are obliged to hide their profession from the public and live far from their workstation. He calls for protective measures, “ or even rehousing for those who are not owners » of his colleagues geolocated by Waze users. This malicious diversion is reminiscent of that used by certain convenience stores to scam motorists who have broken down or are victims of accidents, immediately displayed on the app.

For the moment, Google has removed the geolocation of the targeted officials from Waze, but cannot intervene to identify the culprits, because the police, who for their part have filed a complaint, have not yet made a report to the OFAC, the Anti-Cybercrime Office.

Source : Europe 1