Let 10,000 Flowers Bloom
Via Computer Weekly, Gordon Brown’s announcement that 10,000 mobile computers will be given to police to cut down on their paperwork by filing reports online. (Sigh.) I almost hate what’s going to happen next. Expect to see (not necessarily in this order):
1. Belated realisation that there are 144,000 police and that sharing may not be practical on this scale.
2. That training for effective usage may come in at 3 hours per head, which is more than 15 man-years
3. That security for laptops requires planning, practice and execution, and it will not be flawless at first.
4. That police cars, and hence their contents, do go missing
5. That the (mostly male) police force with online access in an often boring and isolated environment may find their thoughts turning to porn
6. That wireless coverage for online work is not universal
7. That laptops break–often at inconvenient times
8. That wireless forms transmitted will probably need to be encrypted
Shoot. I was hoping for 10 top-of-mind reservations–help me out here.
Making mobile technology available to public servants in the field is a really, really good thing and I think the Prime Minister is on to a good thing. But to avoid being blindsided, I hope they prepare a bit in advance. The military might be a good place to start.
Actually, I just thought of numbers 9 and 10–That the media will criticize the cost of the programme and belittle its effectiveness in the early days before it takes hold and police officers will write their usernames and passwords inside their hats.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
So are these”handheld computers” linked online by radio to the central Police systems, or are they just offline data entry boxes ?
Would you really want to be a Confidential Human Informant who has tipped off the authorities in relation to Serious Organised Crime, terrorism or even ASBO deserving neighbours etc. once these handheld devices start getting lost or stolen ?
How is it possible to let these thousands of devices connect to Confidential or Secret intelligence databases, when they are not in a physically secure environment like a proper Police station, but in an unsecured and potentially hostile environment out on patrol ?
How long before Police officers or perhaps PCSOs are kidnapped and tortured or threatened with violence to allow serious criminals or terrorists to access such systems via these mobile handheld devices ? If these mobile devices do not have access to such systems, then what use are they in real crime fighting rather than, say, just for booking overtime and claiming travel expenses ?
What about the likely man-in-the-middle attacks which will capture and replay genuine credentials (no matter how well encrypted) from such remote radio devices ?
Have you ever tried using a handheld computer, of any sort, at night, in the rain or snow, with gloves on, like many Police officers on patrol have to endure ?
A military spec ruggedised handheld computer cannot possibly be as lightweight and small as say an Apple iPhone or other civilian consumer PDA device.
Which bits of allegedly “mobile” equipment will the Police officers choose to drop in a hurry, when they are trying to chase a running suspect ? Stab resistant body armour, handcuffs, baton, pepper spray, Airwave encrypted radio, spare batteries for power hungry Airwave radio, GPRS mobile phone, or the new “handheld computer” ? What about all the other new “mobile” devices that are be trialled and which they might be expected to carry soon, like tasers, mobile fingerprint scanners, personal video cameras and recording equipment (and batteries) or the “handheld weapons detectors” mentioned elsewhere in the speech etc ?
Police forces have been “evaluating” and “piloting” all sorts of mobile computers, both handheld and vehicle mounted, for many years. Why have none of these previous projects been successful enough for an entire Police force to be equipped with them, to the exclusion of the other paper and desktop systems ?
September 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Now, if they were 10,000 Sun Rays (http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop&tab=3&subcat=Sun%20Ray%20Clients ) in a laptop form factor with a 3G interface (see the DT 1202 under “Thin Clients” at http://www.digital-touch.eu/ , which could also be ruggedised and have a suitable encryptor built in), you’d knock quite a few of those risks, off the list. I’d expect that most accreditors would have a conniption about mobile devices (even stateess ones) being allowed to access anything higher than RESTRICTED.
I agree with the above commenter on the risks associated with duress situations, though; see http://blogs.sun.com/davew/entry/on_duress .