Tangent Thought Gallery

Trapster.com: the truth is out there

If you’ve not heard of Trapster.com you may soon. Trapster is the online and mobile phone based application to warn drivers of speed traps (still in beta, according to the Trapster site’s info). It’s the virtual equivalent of flashing your lights as a neighborly warning that “There’s a cop with a Wookie sized radar gun pointed in your direction over the next hill!”

It’s insanely simple and elegant but it does require a few tech pieces to work.

1. A GPS aware mobile phone
2. A Trapster account
3. Other drivers similarly equipped

In theory this should work very well and it also should work, I’m assuming, with a GPS aware laptop. It’s got an API tie in to Google Maps and there’s even a BlackBerry specific version; get the instructions here: http://www.trapster.com/bbinstructions.php.

There’s a lot of blog debate about the viability of the service, particularly if it should become illegal. What? Could this become the first illegal mobile phone application? Perhaps in Canada, which seems to have intensely Draconian views toward traffic violations. But how could anyone technically detect that someone was using the mobile service? Not that this couldn’t happen, but talk about Orwellian visions!

I understand that there will continually be a battle between traffic policing and countermeasures. If the law enforcement community was smart about this, rather than Byzantine or intrusive legislation and straining resources to enforce those questionable laws, wouldn’t it be smarter to swim in the same pool? If I’m running a county traffic program, why don’t I just get numerous Trapster accounts myself, pass these along to my staff, coordinate the “dummy”traps (places where we have *no* intention of actually monitoring traffic), and set up literally dozens upon dozens of false reports? Two things are likely to happen:

1. Trapster’s data integrity would be severely threatened, if done right, so people would be less inclined to trust it and less inclined to use it.

2. There would be so many ‘hot spots’ listed in the Trapster reports, some real and some not, that the county becomes much more placid from a traffic perspective (and this would be the end goal anyway).

Or maybe law agencies outsource this? Hmmm, do I smell a business opportunity here? Not for me, personally; I like to play on the ethical side of games. But it does demonstrate a particularly intriguing maturation and inherent vulnerability in social networking. Value depends on truth.